Something has already been said concerning Haydn’s popularity in England, and the genuine appreciation accorded him in that country. Haydn himself remarked that he did not become famous in Germany until he had gained a reputation elsewhere. Even in his old age he remembered, rather pathetically, the animosity of certain of the Berlin critics, who had used him very badly in early life, condemning his compositions as ‘hasty, trivial, and extravagant.’ It is only another proof that Beckmesser never dies. Haydn was his own best critic, though a modest one, when he said, ‘Some of my children are well bred, some ill bred, and, here and there, there is a changeling among them.... I know that God has bestowed a talent upon me, and I thank Him for it. I think I have done my duty, and been of use in my generation by my works.’ He rises above all his contemporaries, except Mozart, as a lighthouse rises above the waves of the sea. With Mozart and Beethoven he formed the immortal trio whose individual work, each with its own quality and its own weight, are the completion and the sum of the first era of orchestral music. F. B. IV WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Radically different from the career of Haydn is that of Mozart, which, indeed, has no parallel in the annals of music or any other art. It partakes so much of the marvellous as to defy and to upset all our notions of the growth of creative genius. What Haydn learned by years of endeavor and experience Mozart acquired as if by instinct. The forms evolved by the previous generation, that new elegance of melodic expression, the _finesse_ of articulation and the principles of organic unity, all these were a heritage upon which he entered with full cognizance of their meaning and value. It was as though he had dreamed these things in a previous existence. They made up for him a language which he used more easily than other children use their mother tongue. It is a fact that he learned to read music earlier than words. What common children express in infantile prattle, this marvel of a boy expressed in musical sounds. At three he attempted to emulate his sister at clavier playing and actually picked out series of pleasing thirds; at four, he learned to play minuets which his father taught him ‘as in fun’ (a half-hour sufficed for one), and, at five, he composed others like them himself. At six, these compositions merited writing down, which his father did, and we have the dated notebook as evidence of these first stirrings of genius. At the age of seven Mozart appeared before the world as a composer. The two piano sonatas with violin accompaniment which he dedicated to the Princess Victoire have all the attributes of finished musical workmanship, and, even if his father retouched and corrected these and other early works, the performance, as that of a child, is none the less remarkable.