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--
[Illustration: some bars of music]
--if Mozart had not woven the _Zauberflöte_ overture out of it? And who
save Beethoven saw the possibilities of this?--
[Illustration: some bars of music]
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--
[Illustration: some bars of music]
--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:
[Illustration: some bars of music]
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
[Illustration: some bars of music]
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:
[Illustration: some bars of music]
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:
[Illustration: some bars of music]
--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.