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 Zauberflöte 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.
