If Haydn and Mozart did not create the symphony, the excellence of their music standardized it. The blemish of conventionality and empty formalism cannot touch the excellence of their best work. Such excellence would have no power to move us were it only skill. There is genuine emotional inspiration in most of the Salomon symphonies and in the three great symphonies of Mozart. In Haydn’s music it is the simple emotion of folk songs; in Mozart’s it is more veiled and mysterious, subtle and elusive. In neither is it stormy and assertive, as in Beethoven, but it is none the less clearly felt. That is why their works endure. That is the personal touch, the special gift of each to the art. Attempts to exalt Beethoven’s greatness by contrasting his music with theirs are, in the main, unjust and lead to false conclusions. Their clarity and graceful tenderness are not less intrinsically beautiful because Beethoven had the power of the storm. Moreover, the honest critic must admit that the first two symphonies of Beethoven fall short of the artistic beauty and the real greatness of the Mozart G minor or C major. Indeed, it is to be doubted if any orchestral music can be more beautiful than Mozart’s little symphony in G minor, for that is perfect. We find in them the fresh-morning Spring of symphonic music, when the sun is bright, the air still cool and clear, the sparkling dew still on the grass. After them a freshness has gone out of music, never to return. Never again shall we hear the husbandman whistle across the fields, nor the song of the happy youth of dreams stealing barefoot across the dewy grass. C. S. FOOTNOTES: [36] Superstition was still so widespread that Paganini was actually forced to produce evidence that he did not derive his ‘magic’ from the evil one. [37] Burney in describing his travels says: ‘So violent are the jolts, and so hard are the seats, of German post wagons, that a man is rather kicked than carried from one place to another.’ Mozart in a letter recounting to his father his trip from Salzburg to Munich avows that he was compelled to raise himself up by his arms and so remain suspended for a good part of the way! [38] After Augustus’ death, in 1763, musical life at this court deteriorated, though Naumann was retained as kapellmeister by Charles, Augustus’s son. [39] _Cf._ Charles Burney: ‘The Present State of Music in Germany,’ London, 1773. [40] Among other musicians he met is old Wagenseil, who was confined to his couch, but had the harpsichord wheeled to him and ‘played me several _capriccios_ and pieces of his own composition in a very spirited and masterly manner.’ Merely mentioned are Ditters, Huber, Mancini, the great lutenist Kohaut, the violinist La Motte, and the oboist Venturini.