the wind instruments express musical ideas proper to them and appropriate
to their special qualities of utterance. The form and character of the
symphony were established permanently.
Simplicity, clearness of style, grace and playfulness are the leading
features of Haydn's symphonies. There are few of the more notable of them
in which his command over the science of his art is not delightfully
manifested. Haydn is invariably lucid, always finished to the highest
point, always logical and always free from display for the mere sake
of display. It is a prevailing fault to dwell too persistently on the
cheerful simplicity of Haydn's music and to forget how serious and
profound he could be when occasion demanded. These latter qualities are
nobly manifested in his more important symphonies in those portions
of them devoted to the "working out." Such symphonies as appeared
before Haydn fixed the form and showed the capacity of that species of
composition have wholly disappeared. It would perhaps be over dogmatic
to assert that had it not been for Haydn the symphonies of Mozart and of
Beethoven would not have been what they are; but it is certain that Haydn
gave the impulse to both in as far as their symphony writing is concerned.
Of the quartet Haydn may be justly called the inventor, and it is in this
phase of his art that he may be most profitably studied. The quartet
was, as Otto Jahn truly says, "Haydn's natural mode of expressing his
feelings," and it is in the quartet that Haydn's growth and progress in
his art are most strikingly illustrated. Their influence on music has been
greater than that exerted by his symphonies. Here he is seen in his full
and his best strength, and it is here too that his extraordinary creative
powers are most brilliantly emphasized. When these works first appeared
they were sneered at by the pedagogues of the day, but by-and-by more
respect was shown to them even by their earlier antagonists, for it was
seen that the quartet was not only susceptible of depth of sentiment and
seriousness of treatment, but that musical learning also had in them a
field for its finest development. These quartets, from the opportunities
they afforded for performance in the family circle, exercised great
influence in raising the standard of taste, and in their educational
aspects they were thus of the highest service. They crystallized form
and in essence may be looked on as the parent of all the serious and
so-called classical music that has been composed since. The progeny may
only distantly resemble the parents, but the form establishes beyond all
cavil the family resemblance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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