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_.