He is stated to have always composed with the aid of the pianoforte or harpsichord; and indeed we find him writing to Artaria in 1788 to say that he has been obliged to buy a new instrument "that I might compose your clavier sonatas particularly well." This habit of working out ideas with the assistance of the piano has been condemned by most theorists as being likely to lead to fragmentariness. With Haydn at any rate the result was entirely satisfactory, for, as Sir Hubert Parry points out, the neatness and compactness of his works is perfect. It is very likely, as Sir Hubert says, that most modern composers have used the pianoforte a good deal—not so much to help them to find out their ideas, as to test the details and intensify their musical sensibility by the excitant sounds, the actual sensual impression of which is, of course, an essential element in all music. The composer can always hear such things in his mind, but obviously the music in such an abstract form can never have quite as much effect upon him as when the sounds really strike upon his ear. [See Studies of Great Composers, by C. Hubert H. Parry, p. 109.]
No Pedant
Like all the really great composers, Haydn was no pedant in the matter of theoretical formulae, though he admitted that the rigid rules of harmony should rarely be violated, and "never without the compensation of some inspired effect." When he was asked according to what rule he had introduced a certain progression, he replied "The rules are all my very obedient humble servants." With the quint-hunters and other faddists who would place their shackles on the wrists of genius, he had as little patience as Beethoven, who, when told that all the authorities forbade the consecutive fifths in his C Minor Quartet, thundered out: "Well, I allow them." Somebody once questioned him about an apparently unwarranted passage in the introduction to Mozart's Quartet in C Major. "If Mozart has written it, be sure he had good reasons for doing so," was the conclusive reply. That fine old smoke-dried pedant, Albrechtsberger, declared against consecutive fourths in strict composition, and said so to Haydn. "What is the good of such rules?" demanded Haydn. "Art is free and must not be fettered by mechanical regulations. The cultivated ear must decide, and I believe myself as capable as anyone of making laws in this respect. Such trifling is absurd; I wish instead that someone would try to compose a really new minuet." To Dies he remarked further: "Supposing an idea struck me as good and thoroughly satisfactory both to the ear and the heart, I would far rather pass over some slight grammatical error than sacrifice what seemed to me beautiful to any mere pedantic trifling." These were sensible views. Practice must always precede theory. When we find a great composer infringing some rule of the old text-books, there is, to say the least, a strong presumption, not that the composer is wrong, but that the rule needs modifying. The great composer goes first and invents new effects: it is the business of the theorist not to cavil at every novelty, but to follow modestly behind and make his rules conform to the practice of the master. [Compare Professor Prout's Treatise on Harmony.]
Thus much about Haydn the man. Let us now turn to Haydn the composer and his position in the history of music.
CHAPTER X. HAYDN: THE COMPOSER
The Father of Instrumental Music—The Quartets—The Symphonies—The Salomon Set—The Sonatas—Church Music—Songs—Operas—Orchestration—General Style—Conclusion.
The Father of Instrumental Music
Haydn has been called "the father of instrumental music," and although rigid critics may dispute his full right to that title, on broad grounds he must be allowed to have sufficiently earned it. He was practically the creator of more than one of our modern forms, and there was hardly a department of instrumental music in which he did not make his influence felt. This was emphatically the case with the sonata, the symphony and the string quartet. The latter he brought to its first perfection. Before his time this particular form of chamber music was long neglected, and for a very simple reason. Composers looked upon it as being too slight in texture for the display of their genius. That, as has often been demonstrated, was because they had not mastered the art of "writing a four-part harmony with occasional transitions into the pure polyphonic style—a method of writing which is indispensable to quartet composition—and also because they did not yet understand the scope and value of each individual instrument."
The Quartet