It is during the eighteenth century that the classical symphony
becomes a power that could seriously threaten the supremacy of vocal
and dramatic music. The chief centres of symphonic activity are those
places where northern and southern musical culture met――Vienna,
Mannheim, and in a lesser degree Paris. It was in the north that the
preparatory work had been done long before, in the music meetings at
Oxford and in the _Collegium musicum_ of German universities. That
movement towards instrumental music was largely due to the amateurs.
It must not be forgotten that the orchestra of Prince Esterhazy for
which Haydn composed symphonies was made up mainly from the domestic
servants of the household. The Conservatoire at Vienna was founded
by amateurs in order to provide them with help in their own private
performances. The symphony, along with the string quartet and the
sonata for harpsichord or pianoforte, was the means of transferring
the musical expression of the Italian opera to the homes of people who
had no opportunity of entering an Italian theatre. The operatic aria
became idealized and transfigured in the process just as a hundred
years later the operatic melodies of Bellini were transfigured in
Chopin’s nocturnes. The spiritual result may be looked at in two ways,
according to our temperament and our point of view. We may say that
this transference conveys music to a higher æsthetic plane in that it
removes it from the direct contact with physical human personality to
a region of suggestion, association and evocation. Or we may say that
in losing this direct contact we are losing touch with reality, that
we are sentimentalizing the art until we prefer pretence to truth.
It is at this stage of musical history that the fundamental æsthetic
problem becomes acute, although it must have existed for centuries
beforehand. That the problem was felt to be acute at the moment is
shown by the appearance in 1750 of Baumgarten’s _Æsthetik_, which was
the starting-point of modern æsthetic philosophy.
It has often been said that in the eighteenth century the musician had
no other function than to accompany the clatter of dishes at princely
dinner-tables. Even if this were strictly true one might at least reply
that in this respect the aristocracy of the eighteenth century did more
for the art of music than their descendants. The music of that period
may have been conventional, courtly and designed to give pleasure;
but if so, its freedom from emptiness, vulgarity and triviality is
astonishing. Church and State may have deliberately encouraged the
“light-hearted gaiety of the Viennese” in order to distract their
thoughts from the more serious problems of politics; but music in those
days was at any rate still an art, not a mere commercial product. At
the same time the printing presses were active. A symphony might have
been composed for the entertainment of a prince, but as soon as it was
printed it became accessible to audiences outside the aristocratic
circle. It was an age of “sensibility”; fine feelings, sighs and tears
were all the fashion. Music begins――we can see it in Couperin, in
Boccherini, in Mozart too――to display the quality of refinement, a
quality which in a later generation was to have a disastrous effect on
the vitality of the art.