y earnestness, rich
invention and mirthful spirit. The form is concise and symmetrical, the
part-writing is clear and well-balanced, and a "sunny sweetness" is the
prevailing mood. As a discerning critic has remarked, there is nothing
in the shape of instrumental music much pleasanter and easier to listen
to than one of Haydn's quartets. The best of them hold their places in
the concert-rooms of to-day, and they seem likely to live as long as
there are people to appreciate clear and logical composition which
attempts nothing beyond "organized simplicity." [See W. J. Henderson's
How Music Developed, p. 191: London, 1899]. In this department, as
Goethe said, he may be superseded, but he can never be surpassed.

The Symphony

For the symphony Haydn did no less than for the quartet. The symphony,
in his young days, was not precisely the kind of work which now bears
the name. It was generally written for a small band, and consisted of
four parts for strings and four for wind instruments. It was meant to
serve no higher purpose, as a rule, than to be played in the houses of
nobles; and on that account it was neither elaborated as to length nor
complicated as to development. So long as it was agreeable and likely to
please the aristocratic ear, the end of the composer was thought to be
attained.

Haydn, as we know, began his symphonic work under Count Morzin. The
circumstances were not such as to encourage him to "rise to any pitch of
real greatness or depth of meaning"; and although he was able to build
on a somewhat grander scale when he went to Eisenstadt, it was still a
little comfortable coterie that he understood himself to be writing for
rather than for the musical world at large. Nevertheless, he aimed at
constant improvement, and although he had no definite object in view, he
"raised the standard of symphony--writing far beyond any point which had
been attained before."

"His predecessors," to quote Sir Hubert Parry, "had always written
rather carelessly and hastily for the band, and hardly ever tried to get
refined and original effects from the use of their instruments, but he
naturally applied his mind more earnestly to the matter in hand, and
found out new ways of contrasting and combining the tones of different
members of his orchestra, and getting a fuller and richer effect out of
the mass of them when they were all playing. In the actual style of the
music, too, he made great advances, and in his hands symph