CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT SYMPHONIES

Till Haydn came to London, he had nearly always been compelled to compose for small bands. Count Morzin's, in fact, could scarcely be called a band. It consisted of a few strings, with a few wind instruments to increase the volume of the tuttis. The contrast of loud with soft passages was the most frequently used way of getting change and variety; though often solos were given to one instrument or another. Of orchestral colour, of orchestration in the modern sense, there was little. Haydn himself confessed in his old age that only then, when he had to leave the world, had he learnt how to use the wind instruments. But if Mozart's delightful tone-colouring cannot be found in the London symphonies, there is at any rate much greater fullness and richness than we find in the earlier ones. Yet here, again, Mozart was ahead of him, and one reason for this was the very different natures and textures of the two men's music. Haydn spoke naturally through the string quartet, and many of the slow movements of his symphonies, beautiful and profoundly moving though they are, are quartet movements, only requiring a larger number of instruments because greater fullness and force were needed to make the music satisfying in a large hall. Mozart's music was entirely different in texture. One cannot imagine the slow movement of the G Minor Symphony without wood wind. Haydn knew what his music was, and what orchestration it wanted, and he never dreamed of over-orchestrating. What he would have said of such music as that of Berlioz, where the orchestration is ridiculously out of proportion to the phrases, where the orchestra makes all the effect, if any at all is made, I cannot guess. He used extra instruments when he needed them, as, for example, in the "Military" symphony. The touch of instrumentation in the andante of the "Surprise" is another instance. The idea of scaring sleepy old ladies with a sudden bang on the drums—the kettle-drum bolt—is often mentioned as an example of Haydn's "humour."

When we compare the London symphonies to the earlier ones, we feel at once a stronger, more vehement spirit driving the music on. They seem richer in themes than the others, partly because the themes are bigger, partly because they are more perfectly adapted to monodic, harmonic treatment, and out of every bar something is made. A theme is pregnant, of course, according to what a composer sees in it and gets out of it. Who would know this of old Clementi—



—if Mozart had not woven the Zauberfloete overture out of it? And who save Beethoven saw the possibilities of this?—



But Haydn had to find such themes and see their possibilities before Mozart or Beethoven, and it was only after Mozart's death he was completely successful. He still largely depended upon fanfares and key-relationships in leading from passage to passage, and getting variety while keeping unity. There is still, compared with Beethoven, a huge amount of formalistic padding; but so far as he dared and could, he was loading his rifts with ore. Such a subject as this—



—is far removed from his earlier folk-song themes, but it is further still from the old fugal type of subject. It is suited to symphonic development, and to no other kind.

The theme quoted in my first chapter is one of a singing kind, and, as if Haydn had planned the whole symphony with a prophetic glance at these remarks, the subject of the last movement is either a peasant-dance or a good imitation:



This movement is rich in invention, even for Haydn at his best; it is full of jollity far removed from vulgarity; the atmosphere is continuously fresh, almost fragrant, and there are endless touches of poetic seriousness. The Adagio is as profound as anything he wrote. Perhaps, on the whole—and it may be wrong to indicate a choice at all—the slow movement of the symphony in C is fullest of sustained loveliness. That phrase beginning



is, in its sheer beauty, reminiscent of Mozart, though the way the balance of feeling is recovered at the end is pure Haydn; there is the deepest human feeling, but perfect sanity is never lost. Towards the end the development is carried on in quite the Beethoven way, quite a long passage growing out of the simple phrase:



Nearly all Haydn's art, and a good deal of the art of Beethoven, may be found in the B flat symphony. The theme is announced in a minor form, adagio:



—taken up at once in the major, allegro, and wrought into most beautiful and expressive strains, each one growing out of the last (if I may once again use Wordsworth's magnificent word) "inevitably"; it could not be different.

This is a very paltry discussion of a great matter, but no more space can be given to it here. In spite of all that has been written since Haydn drew the final double-bar of the D symphony, all the twelve are yet worth days and nights of study. All that Haydn is not may be freely granted; but when we learn to know the London symphonies we learn to realize in some degree what a mighty inventive artist and workman he was.



CHAPTER VIII

1795-1809

During his stay in London, Haydn's good wife had asked him to buy her that house in the suburbs of Vienna which would come in so conveniently when he left her a widow. The request was not entirely wasted—that is, he bought the house, made some additions, and from 1797 lived in it himself. Here he composed The Creation, The Seasons, and the bulk of his church music; and here he died.

It is said that the notion of composing the Austrian National Hymn was suggested to Haydn by the Prussian National Hymn which George I. had brought to England with him from his beloved Hanover; but however that may be, and whether the abominable melody known then and now as "God Save the King" inspired him or not, he determined to write a tune for his countrymen, and he did. On the Emperor's birthday in 1799 the new tune was played in every theatre in the Empire. Next to the Marseillaise, it is certainly the finest thing of the sort in existence.

Salomon had wanted Haydn to write an oratorio in London, and handed him a copy of a libretto of The Creation, which one Lidley had compiled from the Bible and Milton's "Paradise Lost" for Handel. The proposal came to nothing then, but when Haydn got comfortably settled down in Vienna van Swieten repeated the suggestion. This van Swieten had been a parasitic patron of Mozart. He was an enthusiast for the older-fashioned forms of music, and he had concerts of oratorio in an institution of which he was librarian. Haydn passed on Lidley's book to him, van Swieten had it translated and doctored to suit his own taste, and Haydn set to work. He faced the task with a degree of seriousness and solemnity which the music would never suggest. In April of 1798 it was given for the first time, privately, at the Schwartzenburg Palace; in March of the following year it was given publicly at the National Theatre. From the beginning it was an electrical success, and was immediately performed everywhere. Haydn had been guaranteed 500 ducats for it, but gained very much more. In the end, in the way I have previously mentioned, it became the property of the Tonkuenstler Societaet of Vienna. In England it was for over half a century the "Messiah's" one great rival. Lately it has dropped out of the repertories of London and provincial choral societies. Fashions in sacred music, like fashions in popular preachers, have a trick of changing.

No sooner was The Creation fairly launched on a fairly long career than van Swieten wanted another oratorio. Somehow—or perhaps naturally—he associated oratorio with England, and as he could not get the music from us, he did as badly as he could—he came here for the poetry. The words of nearly all the oratorios are ridiculous. Those of The Creation are no worse than the words of many by Handel. Van Swieten, however, did his honest best to provide Haydn with a downright silly book for his last work, and it must be admitted that by going to James Thomson's Seasons he succeeded. Like The Creation, it rapidly became popular in Germany, Austria, and England. It went out sooner than The Creation, and went out, I suspect, also like The Creation, never to return. It was given in April, 1802, at the Schwartzenburg Palace.

During the period after his return from England—or, more exactly, from 1796 till 1802—Haydn wrote most of his bigger church works. They may be sufficiently discussed here in a few lines; for, though they are still much sung in churches where the Pope's edicts are regarded merely as things to be laughed at, musically they are by no means of the same importance as his symphonies. Like all the Viennese school of church composers, Haydn thought nothing of the canons, and, indeed—also like the others—he seemed generally to think very little of the meaning of the words. He was serious and sincere enough, no doubt, but the man was a peasant, and in many respects his mind was a peasant's. He had quite a plausible excuse or reason to give for the note of jollity which prevails in his Masses. When he thought of God, he said, his heart was filled with joy, and that joy found a voice in his music. He spoke in perfect good faith, but with a little more brains he would have had other feelings than joy in his heart at the more solemn moments of the Mass. However, he had not, so he missed giving us music to compare with the finest parts of his symphonies and quartets. What he did write would serve well for the Empire Music Hall to-day were it not so entirely monopolized by churches like the Italian in Hatton Garden, and in its day it was highly thought of. The fact that the Princes of Esterhazy did not like to be made to feel uncomfortable in church had perhaps something to do with Haydn always feeling elated when he was going to write a mass—use is second nature. Not that there are no fine things in his sacred music; only they are rare, and the spirit of the whole is utterly undevotional. After all, being the man he was, having the mission he had in life to carry out, it may be questioned whether he could have done anything nobler, in which case it is a pity he touched church music. However, it is easily forgotten, and will be some day.

Haydn wrote The Seasons, as it were, under protest, and he always declared that it gave him the finishing touch. He composed little more, but arranged accompaniments for Scotch songs for one Mr. Whyte, of Edinburgh. His powers failed fast. The last time he conducted in public, The Seven Words—now with the words—was the piece. This was in 1807. He was now without a rival in Vienna. Gluck had been dead twenty years, and Mozart had died in 1791; Beethoven was regarded as a great eccentric genius who would not rightly apply his undoubted talents. The last time Haydn was seen in public at all was on November 27, 1808. He was far too weak to dream of conducting. He was carried to the hall, and great ladies disputed as to who should be allowed to throw their wraps over him to protect him against the cold. He was taken away after the first part. He still lingered on a while. Next year—1809—Vienna was bombarded by the French, who had done the same thing in 1805, and when the victorious army came in a French officer visited him and sang "In Native Worth." On May 26 Haydn called in his servants and played the National Hymn three times; he was then carried to his bed, and on May 29, he died.

He was buried at Hundsthurm Churchyard with military honours, the French invaders helping, on June 15. Mozart's Requiem was sung later, in memoriam. In 1820 Prince Esterhazy had the remains, or such of them as had not been stolen, transferred to Eisenstadt.



CHAPTER IX

SUMMING UP

As small a proportion as possible of my space has been devoted to technical matters, and I have only used text-book terminology where no other served to explain what Haydn did in building up the symphony form. This spade-work of his Esterhazy period was of the greatest importance to himself, to Mozart and to Beethoven. He is the only composer of the first rank who did second-rate work of immense and immediate value to his successors, just as he is the only second-rate writer who ever in his age rose to be a composer of the first rank. Both as pioneer and perfecter and as great original composer I have sought roughly to place him. A few remarks about the man and his habits and characteristics may be added.

His methodical habits and neatness have already been mentioned. He must have been a first-rate companion, friend and master. His successive Princes loved him, his band adored him. He was generous; there is not a mean action to his discredit. His will was a wonder of good-feeling and discretion; and when old he was still glad to make money, that he might leave more to his poor relatives. He seems always to have been in love with one lady or another, and it was more by luck than anything else that he got into no serious scrapes. His method of working was as regular as his other habits. He sat at the piano extemporizing until he got his themes into some sort of shape, then he sketched them on paper and went to lunch. Later in the day he worked them out more fully, and proceeded to make a finished score. His scores are as neat as Beethoven's are disgracefully untidy. Haydn's way of composing at the piano—and it was Mozart's way, and Beethoven's, not to mention Wagner's—has been condemned by many theorists and theoretical writers. After seeing many of the compositions of these gentry, I wish they themselves would find and employ any other method than that they adopt at present. Haydn's cheerfulness has often been commented on, and it certainly pervades his music. He was also given to joking, but the one or two jokes which have been pointed out to me in his music would nowadays be considered in bad taste if people knew what they were meant for. Music has no sense of humour, and simply won't countenance it.

I suppose nine hundred and ninety-nine listeners in a thousand find Haydn's music a trifle tame. Now, I myself—in all humility let me say it—would not stand being bored for ten minutes by any composer, not though he were ten times as great as the greatest man who has ever lived. There is not a note of Haydn's I would not wish to hear, but there is a very great deal I would refuse to listen to twice, and much that I would only listen to in small bits at a time. Having willingly conceded this, let me warn anyone who takes up Haydn against expecting and wasting time in looking for the wrong thing, for qualities that are not in Haydn, and are not claimed for him. Especially have we to discard the text-book rubbish about his "service to art," the "tradition he established," about the "form stereotyped by him." I have just said that in his Esterhazy time he was of great service to artists, but the music he then wrote was mainly second-rate, and I am now speaking of his best. Here his form is clear enough, but one does not listen to music merely for that. His form, indeed, became formalism and formality. It was natural to a man who had spent his life in looking for a principle that he should to a degree mistake the accident for the essence. Those first and second subjects with the half-closes between—they became as dreadful in their unfailing regularity as the contrapuntal formalism they drove out of fashion. In themselves they are a weariness to the flesh; if there were nothing but them to be found in Haydn, we should not go to Haydn. But there was a great deal more. There was a poetic content, a burden, if you like, a message, in his music, and it was different from anything that had been before or has been since.

There is nothing of the gorgeous architectural splendours of Bach, nothing of Bach's depth nor high religious ecstasy. His passion, joy and sorrow are all milder than Beethoven's. He has little of Beethoven's grandeur nor feeling too deep for tears or words. As for Mozart's beauty and sadness—that blend of deep pathos with a supernal beauty of expression that transcends all human understanding—Haydn is only with the others in having none of it. The spirit of Mozart dwelt in some ethereal region not visited by any spirit before nor after him. And, finally, in Haydn there is no touch of the romantic. Romanticism was a revolt against eighteenth-century pseudo-classicism, and it had its day, and did its work, and went out. Haydn did not want to revolt against classicism, nor even pseudo-classicism.

In fact, in music Haydn stands for classicism, and this is no contradiction of what I have written about his throwing away the formulas of his predecessors. When we talk of classical music we mean Haydn's. He created the thing, and it ended with him. He has sanity lucidity, pointedness, sometimes epigrammatic piquancy, of expression, dignity without pompousness or grandiloquence, feeling without hysteria. His variety seems endless, his energy never flags, and often he has more than a touch of the divine quality. He did not attempt to compose tragedies of life, for his temperament forbade it; but in his finest music he is never commonplace, because he had a strongly marked temperament and was poetically inspired. By dint of a sincerity that was perfect he made music which, though it is shaped in outline by the classical spirit, will be for ever interesting. To listen to him immediately after Tschaikowsky is hard, sometimes impossible, yet to me it seems anything but impossible that our descendants will be listening to him when students are turning to the biographical dictionaries to find out who Tschaikowsky was. A century ago Haydn was as fresh and novel as Tschaikowsky is now, and as overwhelming a personality in the world of music as the mighty Wagner. But time equalizes and evens things, and in another hundred years all that is merely up-to-date in musical speech and phraseology will have lost its flavour and seductiveness; but the voice that is sincere, whether the word is spoken to-day or was spoken a century ago, will sound as clear as ever, and the one voice shall not be clearer nor more convincing than the other.



HAYDN'S PRINCIPAL COMPOSITIONS

125 Symphonies and orchestral pieces. 31 Concertos. 176 pieces for the baryton. 77 Quartets. 14 Masses. English canzonets. The Spirit Song. Several operas. The Creation. The Seasons. The Seven Words.

A large number of pieces for harpsichord or piano.



BOOKS ABOUT HAYDN

POHL: "Joseph Haydn." POHL: "Haydn and Mozart in London." MICHAEL KELLY: "Reminiscences."



BELL'S MINIATURE SERIES OF MUSICIANS

COMPANION SERIES TO Bell's Miniature Series of Painters

Each volume 6-1/4 inches, price 1s. net; or in limp leather, with photogravure frontispiece, 2s. net.

EDITED BY G.C. WILLIAMSON. LITT.D.

NOW READY.

BACH. By E.H. THORNE. BEETHOVEN. By J.S. SHEDLOCK, B.A. BRAHMS. By HERBERT ANTCLIFFE. CHOPIN. By E.J. OLDMEADOW. GOUNOD. By HENRY TOLHORST. GRIEG. By E. MARKHAM LEE, M.A., Mus.D. HANDEL. By W.H. CUMMINGS, MUS.D., F.S.A., Principal of the Guildhall School of Music. HAYDN. By JOHN F. RUNCIMAN MENDELSSOHN. By VERNON BLACKBURN. MOZART. By EBENEZER PROUT, Professor of Music, Dublin University, B.A., Mus.D. ROSSINI. By W. ARMINE BEVAN. SCHUMANN. By E.J. OLDMEADOW. SULLIVAN. By H. SAXE WYNDHAM, Secretary of the Guildhall School of Music. TCHAIKOVSKI. By E. MARKHAM LEE, M.A., Mus.D. VERDI. By ALBERT VISETTI. WAGNER. By JOHN F. RUNCIMAN.

Also in the Press.

SCHUBERT. By W.H. CUMMINGS, MUS.D., F.S.A.

Others to follow.



BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

WAGNER. BY JOHN F. RUNCIMAN.

"Here is Wagner written upon by one who knows all there is to be known about his music, and who is particularly sensitive to its beauty and its strength. Hackneyed as the subject is, the whole point of view is quite fresh, and there is an astonishing amount of matter compressed into a very small space. Altogether, the book has a critical value much beyond what is usually expected in publications of this class."—Manchester Guardian.

"Mr. Runciman has not, of course, made any attempt to give an extended biography of the man, or indeed to analyse his work with any minuteness; to do that one would require ten times the space which has been allowed him. But he has given us a rough word-sketch of the man and a more than adequate account of the musician. There is more thought, more 'body,' more common-sense in this booklet than in many a large tome that comes from Germany.... Mr. Runciman is to be congratulated on an excellent piece of work—an essay that is acute, illuminating, and tactful."—Musical Standard.

THE END