Scarlatti was the creator of modern opera, and the “Father of Classical Music,” the forerunner of Gluck, Mozart and Haydn and many others. Dr. Burney put the debt that great composers owe to Scarlatti concisely when he said: “I find part of Scarlatti’s property among the stolen goods of all the best composers of the first forty years of the present century.”

With regard to his treatment of the violoncello, Dr. Burney says:

“The violoncello parts of many of his cantatas were so excellent that whoever was able to do them justice was thought a supernatural being. Geminiani used to relate that Francischello, a celebrated performer on the violoncello at the beginning of this century, accompanied one of these cantatas at Rome so admirably, while Scarlatti was at the harpsichord, that the company, being good Catholics and living in a country where miraculous powers have not yet ceased, were firmly persuaded it was not Francischello who had played the violoncello, but an angel that had descended and assumed his shape.”

Scarlatti also divided his strings into four parts and carefully balanced with them the wind instruments that he used; but the strings were the most important and stood out in relief against the wind; or, if we prefer to think of the matter another way, the wind was subordinate to the strings.

Very little is known regarding his private life.

His son, Domenico, was also a prolific composer and was a famous player on the harpsichord (Gravicembalo). To him is due the original idea of the form of the Sonata which Haydn afterwards perfected. Domenico Scarlatti is remembered, too, for his “Cat’s Fugue,” written on the notes that his favorite cat touched one day when she walked down the keys of the harpsichord.

Next in line comes Rameau, who was born in Dijon, in 1683, just two years before Bach. He was at the height of his fame when Mozart was born. Rameau came of a musical family, showed his talent early, played the clavecin at seven and studied the violin and organ. Eventually he settled in Paris. First he wrote little musical comedies, and, finally, operas—Hippolyte et Arcie, Les Indes Galantes, Castor et Pollux are some of them—and ballets, which as M. Choquet truly says, “contain beauties which defy the caprices of fashion and will command the respect of true artists for all time.” Rameau died in 1774. Rameau looked very much like Voltaire. He always used the violin when composing. Rameau’s new ideas of orchestration created animosity among the followers of Lully.

What did Rameau do for the Orchestra?

He gave to the different members of the Orchestra an individual rôle; he extended the technique of the violins; he made an increasing use of arpeggios; and he was the first to use pizzicato chords with all the strings at once. He also made a delicate and light use of the woodwind.

Every day Rameau is taking a larger place in Music. French critics consider him the most French of all their composers.

While the Italian Renaissance had developed the opera, the dance and music that delighted the drawing-room, under the bright skies of Italy, in the colder North, under the influence of stern Martin Luther, the Chorale, or hymn-tune, had arisen to supply the needs of the new Lutheran religion. The Chorale is austere and solemn, although melodious. It was largely owing to these chorales that the new Reformed religion made its way so rapidly among the people of Northern Germany. The sources of these Chorales were various: some came from old church-hymns; others, from folk-songs. A good example is the “Old Hundredth Tune” beginning “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

The custom of playing these Chorales on the organ with elaborate accompaniments and treating them also as themes for fugues and counterpoint was a special fancy of the German organists.

Germany had the finest organists in Europe in the Seventeenth Century; and there was no greater one among them than Johann Sebastian Bach.

Moreover, no one understood the Chorale better, or made more use of it, than Bach.

Bach’s life was uneventful. He was born in 1685 in Eisenach, near the Wartburg (celebrated for the legend of Tannhäuser), was organist at Weimar and Kapellmeister at Cothen for the Prince Leopold and Cantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig from 1723 until his death in 1750. He was also organist and director of the two chief churches in Leipzig.

Bach wrote every form of music except the opera. His industry was prodigious. “In Bach’s hands the music of the period marked its climax of expression, the Chorale was idealized to its highest pitch, the combination of Orchestra, chorus and solo voices in the Passions, the B-minor mass and the Church Cantatas became pillars of the house of musical art for all time, the principle of equal temperament[51] was fixed for good in Clavichord work, the violin became a solo instrument which could speak unaided for itself, and the organ came finally into its own. All this immense range of work was accomplished by an unobtrusive, unadvertising man of the highest moral force and of simple, deeply religious and deep-feeling character, a personality who would have considered it the highest possible tribute to be called the worthy father of a devoted family.”[52]

When Bach and his son, Philipp Emmanuel, went to work to draw their family tree, they found they had fifty-three musicians to hang on the boughs.

The whole Bach family played the organ and every other keyboard instrument. They were all marvellous players of the harpsichord.

Bach’s contribution to the development of the Orchestra is that he treated each separate instrument lovingly and as if it were an individual, so that he prepared the way for the occasional solos in orchestral compositions. He wrote for a great many instruments that were rapidly going out of fashion, such as the oboe d’amore, the oboe di caccia, the viola d’amore and the viola da gamba.

Bach stands at the parting of the ways of ancient music and modern music. Bach is the bridge between the Old and the New. He is often called the “musicians’ musician.”

Bach’s four Overtures for Orchestra are usually spoken of as Suites; but they are compositions on the Lully type. Critics have pointed out that Bach uses instruments to get the effect of fulness rather than color.

Bach’s compositions for a solo violin, unaccompanied, are the most stupendous works ever written by anybody for a single instrument. Great players have always delighted in mastering their technical difficulties, which are very great.

Handel was born the same year as Bach, in 1685, though he seems a little nearer to us somehow. While Bach was living his quiet, uneventful life, Handel was gaining experience in the world. He was a native of Saxony and was the son of a surgeon, who considered music a degrading business. We know under what difficulties little Handel practised the spinet in the garret. The Duke of Saxe-Wessenfels heard him play and persuaded his father to let him follow the bent of his genius. Handel played in the Orchestra in the Opera House of Hamburg, “the Northern Venice,” a cosmopolitan city where the people had the best of music.

Then Handel travelled in Italy, where he met the famous Alessandro Scarlatti[53] and had his opera of Agrippina performed. Then he went to the Court of Hanover to become Kapellmeister.

But Handel wanted a larger field for his activity, and so he went to London in 1710 and brought out several operas. Queen Anne was reigning at this time and her Court was famous for its brilliant literary men—Pope, Addison, Steele, Sheridan and many others; and Handel’s music pleased many of the Court, as well as the Queen herself. In 1713 he wrote a Birthday Ode for her, which delighted Her Majesty. It was literally “to the Queen’s taste.”

But Queen Anne died in 1714; and a strange thing happened for Handel—the Elector of Hanover, his old patron, was called to the British throne as George I. Handel now became director of the King’s Music.

In 1717 he left George I to become Chapel-master for the Duke of Chandos, who had a palace at Cannons, not far from London, where he lived in great magnificence. For instance, he had a guard of a hundred Swiss soldiers and a chapel like those of Italy. His Orchestra was of the best.

Handel stayed at Cannons three years and then he became director of the Italian opera in London, where he produced one opera after another, some of which brought forth witty satires from Addison and Steele, but all of which attracted large audiences. Most of them were on mythological subjects, were written in the Italian style and were superbly staged. Occasionally, a beautiful aria from one or another of these operas appears on a programme to-day; and it is so noble and lovely that we long to hear the old operas themselves. As a rule, these arias are accompanied by several instruments supporting one that plays an obbligato part; and these show what Handel did to develop and exhibit the technique of various instruments.

The last years of his life were devoted to composing the magnificent oratorios of Saul, Samson, The Messiah and Israel in Egypt.

Handel became a naturalized English subject and lived far into the reign of George II. When he died in 1751, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Handel’s contribution toward building up our modern Orchestra is that he helped make it more solid, more sonorous and more vital.

The balance of Handel’s Orchestra was very different from ours, because of the overwhelming number of woodwind instruments. If he had twenty-five strings, he would sometimes have as many as five oboes and five bassoons! The clarinet had not then come into use, and some stringed and some woodwind instruments that Handel used became obsolete after his death. Handel was particularly fond of the oboe: it is often conspicuous in his scores.

Handel made his Orchestra a very strong ally of his operas and his oratories. He conducted seated at the clavier, or organ, and accompanied the singers with the most marvellous art possible to imagine, following their fancies and pleasures and whims; and then, when they had finished, he would improvise to suit his own taste. His audience was always enraptured.

It is little wonder, therefore, that Handel’s orchestration sounds scanty to our ears, if his works are played from the original scores; for we miss the filling in of all this elaborate work done on the spur of the moment and in all the excitement and exhilaration of the concert-hall before the audience who had learned what to expect.

We are told that when Handel conducted one of his oratorios the chorus had their leaders who listened to the organ from which they took their cues. The Orchestra was divided into three sections. Section No. I was the Concertino, consisting of a first and second violin and a solo violoncello. Section No. II was the Concerto Grossi, consisting of eight first violins, eight second violins, six violas, four to six violoncellos and four double basses. Section No. III was the Ripienist, or the supplementary band, consisting of six first violins, six second violins, four violas, three to four violoncellos and three basses. This Ripienist band was employed to fill in the harmonies, or to support the solos, and the concertante parts.

The picture facing this page, taken from an old print in the British Museum, represents Handel seated at the clavecin (a cembalo with two keyboards), of which the lid is raised. On his right hand is the violoncellist. Before his eye are two violins and two flutes. The solo singers are near him, on his left, close to the clavecin. The rest of the instrumentalists are behind him, out of sight. “Thus his directions and his glances would control the Concertino who would transmit, in their turn the chief conductor’s wishes to the Concerto Grossi and they, in their turn, to the Ripienists. In place of the quasi-military discipline of the modern Orchestra, controlled under the bâton of a chief conductor the different bodies of the Handelian Orchestra governed one another with elasticity; and it was the incisive rhythm of the cembalo that put the whole mass into motion.”[54]

We rarely hear any of Handel’s music with exactly the Orchestra for which he wrote. All conductors realize the difficulty of having anyone improvise on the organ, or piano, to fill in the bald and empty spaces. Moreover, it would confuse the singers and terrify the audience. Improvising at concerts has gone out of fashion.

This was even realized in Mozart’s day; and so Mozart wrote those beautiful “additional accompaniments” to The Messiah, which give to that oratorio no little of its grace and nobility. Mozart, as we know, was a genius in instrumentation and even in his day people demanded something different from the Handelian concert.

Handel, however, was always seeking for novel effects. He was one of the first to introduce the horn into the Orchestra and he was “the first to assert the expressive personality of the violoncello.”[55] He also appreciated the fantastic and lugubrious quality of the bassoons; experimented with all kinds of instruments; and used the kettledrums as a solo for Jupiter’s oath in Semele. This was so unusual and so startling that Sheridan in his burletta on Jupiter had a pistol fired suddenly, upon which one of the characters exclaims: “This hint I took from Handel!”

Handel was considered horribly noisy in his day. His friend, Goupy, the artist, made a caricature that doubtless amused Handel, who saw himself represented at the organ as a huge, unwieldy figure with a boar’s head and enormous tusks (referring to his violent temper) and the room full of horns, trumpets and kettledrums, while a donkey is also present braying loudly and in the distance a battery of artillery is ready for action.

It is noticeable, too, in Handel’s Orchestra, as in Bach’s, that we get no (or very little) tone-color. Handel’s Orchestra is neutral in tint. The organ and the keyboard idea is still prevailing—all the instruments combine, as it were, to produce the one hue.

“But great painter as Handel was, he did not work so much through the brilliancy, variety and novelty of his tone-colors as by the beauty of his designs and his effects of light and shade. With a voluntarily restrained palette and by satisfying himself with the sober colors of the strings, he yet was able to produce surprising and thrilling effects. Volbach has shown that he did not contrast and mix his strings but divided the same family of instruments into different groups. In the introduction to Esther (1732), the violins are divided into five groups, in the Resurrection (1708) into four groups. The violas are sometimes divided into two, the second group being reinforced by the third violin, or the violoncellos. On the other hand, when Handel wanted to do so, he reduced his instrumental forces by suppressing the viola and the second violin, whose places were taken by the clavecin. All his orchestral art is the true instinct of balance and economy, which, with the most restricted means in managing a few colors yet knows how to obtain as powerful impressions as our musicians to-day with their crowded palettes.

“One is prone to accept too readily the idea that expressive nuance is the privilege of modern musical art and that Handel’s Orchestra knew only the great theatrical contrasts between force and sweetness, or loudness and softness. It is nothing of the kind. The range of Handel’s nuances is extremely varied. We find with him pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, un poco più F., un poco F., forte, fortissimo. We never find the orchestral crescendo and decrescendo, which hardly appears marked until the time of Jomelli and the school of Mannheim; there is no doubt, however, but that it was practised long before it was marked in the music. The President of Brosses wrote in 1739 from Rome: ‘The voices like the violins used with light and shade with unconscious swelling of sound, which augments the force from note to note, even to a very high degree since its use as a nuance is extremely sweet and touching.’ And endless examples occur in Handel of long crescendi and diminuendi without their expression being marked in the scores. Another kind of crescendo and diminuendo—made on the same note—was very common in the time of Handel. His friend, Geminiani, helped to set the fashion.

“As Geminiani explains it: ‘The sound ought to commence softly and should swell out in a gradual fashion to about half its value. Then, it should diminish to the end. The movement of the bow should continue without interruption.’”[56]

Padre Martini said that Gluck combined in the music-drama “all the finest qualities of Italian and many of those of French music with the great beauties of the German orchestra.”

Gluck began where Handel left off. Handel had already treated mythological subjects. He had also written an Alceste and an Armida before Gluck appeared on the scene. Handel (who is said not to have liked Gluck at all) was Gluck’s chosen master on account of “the wonderful beauties of his melodies, the grandeur of his style and his rhythms like armies on the march.”

Gluck not only followed Handel, but he adored him. He kept Handel’s portrait over his bed!

“Gluck gave the Orchestra a new life, assigning the first place to it in some cases, letting it express the feeling that captivates the listener. With him violins, oboes and trombones are not merely sonorous agents; they are living entities, personages of action. Through the Orchestra he adds dazzling beauty to a temple scene, or a scene in the Elysian Field; and by little touches on certain instruments here and there he can make us feel the mystery of the infernal regions. Gluck’s great gift to the Orchestra was to make it speak.”[57]

Christoph Willibad Gluck was born near Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate (Austria) in 1714. He was educated in music in Prague and in Vienna; and fortunately attracted the attention of Prince Melzi, who took him to Milan to direct his private Orchestra. We all know how his successful operas in Vienna prepared the way for still greater triumphs in Paris, where Gluck enjoyed the patronage of the Queen Marie Antoinette, who, being an Austrian, had known and loved Gluck’s works in Vienna.

All the histories and memoirs of the time speak of the quarrel between the followers of Gluck and Piccini. Piccini represented the old Italian style and Gluck stood for the new dramatic style—the latest thing out it happened to be. The Piccinists accused Gluck of composing operas with little melody, no truth to nature, little elegance or refinement, and a noisy Orchestra. “Gluck’s modulations,” they said, “were awkward and he had no originality, no finish, no polish.” In short, Gluck was everything that was abominable.

Dr. Burney informs us that: “No door in Paris was opened to a visitor without the question being asked—‘Monsieur, are you a Picciniste, or a Gluckiste?’”

The Piccinists are forgotten: the Gluckists still live. We are among them; for, to our way of thinking, nothing more noble and inspired than Orfeo was ever written. And if polish and elegance are to be found anywhere in music, they appear in the scores of Gluck.

“Yet, if he had merely carried to perfection the work begun by Lully and Rameau; if his efforts had been limited to removing the harpsichord from the Orchestra, introducing the harp and trombones, employing the clarinets, scoring with skill and effect, giving more importance and interest to the overture and using with such magic effect the artifice of momentary pauses to vary or emphasize speech in music,—if he had done no more than this, he would have earned our gratitude, but he would not in that case have been one of the monarchs of art.

“What then did he accomplish that was so extraordinary?

“He grasped the idea that the mission of music was not merely to afford gratification to the senses, and he proved that the expression of moral qualities is within its reach. He disdained all such tricks of the trade as do not appeal to the heart—in fact, he preferred the Muses to the Sirens. He aimed at depicting historic, or legendary, characters and antique social life; and in his works of genius he put into the mouths of each of his heroes accents suited to their sentiments and to the spirit of the time in which they lived. He made use of the Orchestra to add to the force of a dramatic situation, or (in one noble instance) to contrast external repose with the internal agitation of a remorseful conscience. In a word, all his French operas show him to have been a noble musician, a true poet and a deep thinker.”

Gluck also contributed to the development of the ballet and made the dance a vital part of the story of the opera, as, for instance, the ballet of the Spirits of the Blest in Orfeo.

His ballet-music is very beautiful in form and melody and choice of instruments that play it.

“With Gluck,” says Romain Rolland, “the ballet lost some of the delightful exuberance it had had in Rameau’s operas; but what it lost in originality and richness, it gained in simplicity and purity; and the dance airs in Orfeo are like classic bas-reliefs, the frieze of a Greek Temple.”

“To think,” said Beethoven in his last days, looking at a picture of Haydn’s birthplace, “that so great a man should have first seen the light in a peasant’s wretched cottage!”

Haydn’s career once again proves that genius finds its level in the world. Haydn was born of poor parents in Rohrau, a small Austrian village near the borders of Hungary, in 1732. We all know how as a child he sang in the choir at St. Stephen’s in Vienna and played the kettledrums, piano and violin. At an early age he began to compose; and when he was about thirty he became assistant director of music in Prince Esterhazy’s house at Eisenstadt.

The story of Haydn’s entering into the service of one of the most important princes in Europe is interesting.

Haydn had attracted the attention of Prince Esterhazy by one of his symphonies; and friends of Haydn’s arranged that he should compose a symphony to be performed at Eisenstadt on the Prince’s birthday.

“Haydn executed it and it is worthy of him. The day of the ceremony having arrived, the Prince, seated on his throne and surrounded by his court, attended at the usual concert. Haydn’s symphony was begun. Scarcely had the performers got to the middle of the first Allegro, than the Prince interrupted them and asked who was the author of that fine composition.

“‘Haydn,’ replied Friedberg, and he made the poor young man, all trembling, come forward.

“‘What!’ exclaimed Prince Esterhazy, ‘is it this Moor’s music?’ (Haydn’s complexion, it must be confessed, gave some room for this sarcasm.) ‘Well, Moor,’ he said, ‘from henceforth you remain in my service. What is your name?’

“‘Joseph Haydn.’

“‘Surely I remember the name. You are now engaged to me. Go and dress yourself like a professor. Do not let me see you any more in this trim. You cut a pitiful figure. Get a new coat, a wig and buckles, a collar and red heels to your shoes; and I particularly desire that your shoes may be high, in order that your stature may correspond to your intelligence. You understand me? Go your way and everything will be given to you.’

“Haydn kissed the Prince’s hand, and retired to a corner of the Orchestra, a little grieved at being obliged to hide his natural hair and youthful figure. The next morning he appeared at his Highness’s Levee imprisoned in the grave costume which had been ordered. He had the title of Second Professor of Music, but his new comrades called him simply the Moor.”[58]

In 1762 Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy succeeded his brother and Haydn soon became head of the entire music of the household. The “Magnificent Prince Esterhazy,” as he was called, now turned an old hunting-lodge into a splendid residence, making it a miniature Versailles. The house was not only palatial, but there were deer-parks, gardens, hot-houses, summer-houses, temples, grottoes, “hermitages,” two theatres equipped with scenery and also a chapel. The musical establishment was large. The Prince paid big salaries and the musicians were engaged for several years at a time. There was a large opera company, a large Orchestra and individual solo players on certain instruments. Haydn had charge of it all. He was on friendly terms with Prince Esterhazy himself, for whose viola di bardone, or baryton, he had to write a new piece every day. Haydn lived at “Esterhazy,” as the place was called, until Prince Nicolaus died in 1790. Then he went to Vienna, where he died in 1809.

Haydn was fortunate in having such a patron as Prince Esterhazy; for, of course, he had no trouble in getting his works performed. For thirty years he had an opera-house, an Orchestra—and both of the best—and a cultivated audience as well; for Prince Esterhazy entertained royal and noble personages and amateurs from every nook and corner of Europe.

When Haydn first went to Eisenstadt the Orchestra numbered eighteen instruments, six violins, viola, violoncello, double-bass, flute, two oboes, two bassoons and four horns. Then it was enlarged to twenty-two and twenty-four instruments, including trumpets and kettledrums. There was a great advance in the Orchestra of Esterhazy as the years rolled by; and the last symphonies that Haydn wrote are very much richer than his early ones.

Haydn represents the Orchestra in the same way that Gluck represents the music-drama, Bach the organ and Handel the oratorio. He has been called the “Father of the Orchestra”; and the name, “Papa Haydn,” that Mozart gave to him, has been affectionately retained by posterity.

Haydn fixed the form of the quartet and the Symphony. Mozart and Beethoven were his actual pupils as well as followers. Yet from Mozart, Haydn learned much in the way of writing for instruments. Haydn left the Orchestra in shape for Beethoven to carry still farther.

Haydn’s Orchestra consisted of the string-quartet, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and kettledrums.

His practical knowledge of the kettledrums made him very partial to them; and he was the first to give this instrument an individuality and artistic part in the Orchestra.

Haydn introduced a loud blow on the kettledrum in the Surprise Symphony to startle and wake up the audience. “Here all the women will scream,” he laughingly said when he wrote the part.

Regarding Haydn’s quartets we have the following clever and humorous analysis by Stendhal:

“An intelligent woman said that when she heard a quartet of Haydn’s she fancied herself present at the conversation of four agreeable persons. She thought that the first violin had the air of an eloquent man of genius of middle age who supported a conversation, the subject of which he had suggested. In the second violin she recognized a friend of the first, who sought by all possible means to display himself to advantage, seldom thought of himself and kept up the conversation rather by assenting to what was said by the others than by advancing any ideas of his own. The alto was a grave, learned and sententious man. He supported the discourse of the first violin by laconic maxims, striking for their truth. The bass was a worthy old lady, rather inclined to chatter, who said nothing of much consequence, and yet was always desiring to put in a word. But she gave an additional grace to the conversation, and while she was talking, the others had time to breathe. It was, however, evident that she had a secret inclination for the alto, which she preferred to the other instruments.”

Stendhal, who knew Haydn well, also writes:

“You must know, my friend, that before Haydn, no man had conceived the idea of an Orchestra composed of eighteen kinds of instruments. He is the inventor of prestissimo, the very idea of which made the old square toes of Vienna shudder. In music, as in everything else, we have little conception of what the world was a hundred years back; the Allegro, for instance, was only an Andantino.

“In instrumental music Haydn has revolutionized the details as well as the masses. It is he who has obliged the wind instruments to execute pianissimo.

“In the same way as Leonardo da Vinci sketched in a little book which he always carried with him the singular faces he met with, Haydn also carefully noted down the passages and ideas which came into his head. When he was in good spirits and happy he hastened to his little table and wrote subjects for airs and minuets. Did he feel himself disposed to tenderness and melancholy, he noted down themes for Andantes and Adagios; and, afterwards, in composing, when he wanted a passage of such a character, he had recourse to his note-book.

“Haydn, like Buffon, thought it necessary to have his hair put in the same nice order, as if he were going out, and dressed himself with a degree of magnificence. Frederick II had sent him a diamond ring; and Haydn confessed that, often, when he sat down to his piano, if he had forgotten to put on his ring, he could not summon a single idea. The paper on which he composed must be of the finest and whitest possible; and he wrote with so much neatness and care that the best copyist could not have surpassed him in the regularity and clearness of his characters. It is true that his notes had such little heads and slender tails that he used, very properly, to call them his flies’ legs.

“It is said that no man had such a knowledge of the various effects and relations of colors and the contrasts which they were capable of forming as Titian. Haydn, likewise, possessed an incredible acquaintance with each of the instruments which composed his Orchestra. As soon as his imagination supplied him with a passage, a chord, or a single note, he immediately saw by what instrument it should be executed, in order to produce the most sonorous and agreeable effect. If any doubt arose during the composition of a symphony, his situation at Eisenstadt enabled him easily to resolve it. He rang his bell in the way agreed on to announce a rehearsal; the performers repaired to the rehearsing-room. He made them execute the passage which he had in his mind in two or three different ways; and, having made his choice, he dismissed them and returned to resume his composition.

“Sometimes he supposed that one of his friends, the father of a numerous family, ill provided with the goods of fortune, was embarking for America in the hope of improving his circumstances. The first events of the voyage formed the symphony. It began with the departure. A favorable breeze gently agitated the waves. The ship sailed smoothly out of the port; while on shore the family of the voyager followed him with tearful eyes and his friends made signals of farewell. The vessel had a prosperous voyage and reached at length an unknown land. A savage music, dances and barbarous cries were heard towards the middle of the symphony. The fortunate navigator made advantageous exchanges with the natives of the country, loaded his vessel with rich merchandise and at length set sail for Europe with a prosperous wind. Here the first part of the symphony returned. But soon the sea begins to be rough, the sky grows dark and a dreadful storm confounds together all the chords and accelerates the time. Everything is in disorder on board the vessel. The cries of the sailors, the roaring of the waves, and the whistling of the wind, carry the melody of the chromatic scale to the highest degree of the pathetic. Diminished and excited chords, modulations, succeeded by semitones, describe the terror of the mariners.

“But, gradually, the sea becomes calm, favorable breezes swell the sails and port is reached. The happy father casts anchor in the midst of the congratulations of his friends and the joyful cries of his children and of their mother, whom he at length embraces safe on shore. Everything at the end of the symphony is happiness and joy.

“I cannot recollect to which of the symphonies this little romance served as a clue. I know that he mentioned it to me, as well as to Professor Pichl, but I have totally forgotten it.

“For the subject of another symphony, Haydn had imagined a sort of dialogue between Jesus Christ and an obstinate sinner, and afterwards followed the parable of the Prodigal Son.

“From these little romances were taken the names by which our composer sometimes designated his symphonies. Without the knowledge of this circumstance, one is at a loss to understand the meaning of the titles The Fair Circassian, Roxalana, The Hermit, The Enamoured Schoolmaster, The Persian, The Poltroon, The Queen, Laudohn, all which names indicate the little romance which guided the composer. I wish the names of Haydn’s symphonies had been retained instead of the numbers.”

When Dr. Burney had nearly finished his immense History of Music he wrote the following words:

“I am now happily arrived at that part of my narrative where it is necessary to speak of Haydn, the admirable and matchless Haydn! from whose productions I have received more pleasure late in my life, when tired of most other Music, than I ever received in the most ignorant and rapturous part of my youth, when everything was new and the disposition to be pleased undiminished by criticism, or satiety.

“The first time I met with his name in the German catalogues of Music is in that of Breitkopf of Leipzig, 1763, to a Divertimento a Cembalo, 3 Concerti a Cembalo, 6 Trios, 8 Quados, or Quartets, and 6 Symphonies in four. The chief of his early music was for the Chamber. He is said at Vienna to have composed before 1782 a hundred and twenty-four pieces for the baryton, for the use of his prince, who is partial to that instrument and a great performer upon it. Besides his numerous pieces for instruments he has composed many operas for the Esterhazy theatre and Church Music that has established his reputation as a deep contrapuntist.

“His innumerable symphonies, quartets and other instrumental pieces, which are so original and so difficult, have the advantage of being rehearsed and performed at Esterhazy under his own direction, by a band of his own forming, who have apartments in the palace and practise from morning to night in the same room, according to Fischer’s account, like the students in the conservatories of Naples.

“Ideas so new and varied were not at first so universally admired in Germany as at present. The critics in the northern parts of the empire were up in arms. And a friend at Hamburg wrote me word in 1772 that ‘the genius, fine ideas and fancy of Haydn, Ditters and Filtz were praised, but their mixture of serious and comic was disliked, particularly as there is more of the latter than the former in their works; and as for rules, they knew but little of them.’ This is a censure which the admirable Haydn has long since silenced; for he is now as much respected by professors for his science as invention. Indeed his compositions are in general so new to the player and hearer that they are equally unable, at first, to keep pace with his inspiration. But it may be laid down as an axiom in Music that whatever is easy is old, and what the hand, eye and ear are accustomed to; and, on the contrary, what is new is, of course, difficult, and not only scholars but professors have it to learn. The first exclamation of an embarrassed performer and a bewildered hearer is, that the Music is very odd, or very comical; but the queerness and the comicality cease, when, by frequent repetition, the performer and hearer are at their ease. There is a general cheerfulness and good humor in Haydn’s Allegros which exhilarate every hearer. But his Adagios are often so sublime in ideas and the harmony in which they are clad that though played by inarticulate instruments they have a more pathetic effect on my feelings than the finest opera air united with the most exquisite poetry. He has likewise movements that are sportive, folâtres, and even grotesque, for the sake of variety; but they are only the entremets, or rather intermezzi, between the serious business of his other movements.”

Haydn’s Symphonies are to-day considered very simple and easy, so it is interesting to learn from Dr. Burney that a hundred years ago they were thought difficult and full of new effects and violent contrasts.

What would Dr. Burney have thought of Richard Strauss!

And now let us place by the side of Dr. Burney’s criticism one by a writer of to-day, which will show us how Haydn is regarded at the present time.

“Of Haydn’s general style as a composer it is hardly necessary to speak. To say that a composition is ‘Haydnish’ is to express in one word what is well understood by all intelligent amateurs. Haydn’s music is like his character—clear, straightforward, fresh and winning, without the slightest trace of affectation, or morbidity. Its perfect transparency, its firmness of design, its fluency of instrumental language, the beauty and inexhaustible invention of its melody, its studied moderation, its child-like cheerfulness—these are some of the qualities which mark the style of this most genial of all the great composers.”[59]

Mozart was, perhaps, the greatest musical genius that ever lived. There was no branch of music in which he did not shine. His life was short. He only lived thirty-five years, but every moment of it was full of music and experience.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. He picked out chords on the harpsichord when he was only a baby and began to compose when he was but four years old. His sister was also a musical genius; and his father, Leopold Mozart, a violinist of reputation, took these two children on concert tours throughout Europe. They visited all the German cities, Paris and London, and in 1769-1770 they travelled through Italy, where Mozart performed in Rome the great feat of writing from memory Allegri’s famous Miserere performed in the Sistine Chapel during Passion Week.

In reviewing Mozart’s life it seems almost impossible that anyone could have composed so many works, travelled so much and lived so much in the world besides. His long list of compositions includes operas, church-music, pieces for the piano, chamber-music, concertos for nearly every kind of known instrument; and for the Orchestra there is an astonishing number of works, among which forty-nine Symphonies are included!

Such genius cannot be accounted for, nor explained: it has to be accepted. We cannot stop to talk of his many great works. We can only say that the older one grows and the more musical knowledge and experience one has, the more one appreciates the charm and greatness of Mozart.

Mozart had the gift of beauty and grace; and those two qualities blended together produce that quality so hard to define and so easy to feel,—charm. Mozart has charm.

Whatever Mozart does, he, like Raphael, to whom he has been compared, is always beautiful. He is sunny and fresh and smiling, clear and delightful. His melodies, moreover, are like a never-failing spring,—they flow from an inexhaustible source.

Stendhal wrote in 1808:

“Like Raphael, Mozart embraced his art in its whole extent. Raphael appears to have been unacquainted with one thing only,—the mode of painting figures on a ceiling in contracted proportion, or what is termed foreshortening. As for Mozart, I am not aware of any department in which he has not excelled: operas, symphonies, songs, airs for dancing,—he is great in everything. The most remarkable circumstance in his music, independently of the genius displayed in it, is the novel way in which he employs the Orchestra, especially the wind instruments. He draws surprising effects from the flute, an instrument of which Cimarosa hardly ever made any use. He enriches the accompaniment with all the beauties of the finest symphonies.”