onies became
by degrees more vigorous, and, at the same time, more really musical."

But the narrow limits of the Esterhazy audience and the numbing routine
of the performances were against his rising to the top heights of his
genius.

The Salomon Set

It was only when he came to write for the English public that he showed
what he could really do with the matter of the symphony. In comparison
with the twelve symphonies which he wrote for Salomon, the other, and
especially the earlier works are of practically no account. They are
interesting, of course, as marking stages in the growth of the symphony
and in the development of the composer's genius. But regarded in
themselves, as absolute and individual entities, they are not for a
moment to be placed by the side of the later compositions. These, so far
as his instrumental music is concerned, are the crowning glory of his
life work. They are the ripe fruits of his long experience working
upon the example of Mozart, and mark to the full all those qualities of
natural geniality, humour, vigour and simple-heartedness, which are the
leading characteristics of his style.

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

The Sonata

Haydn's sonatas show the same advance in form as his symphonies and
quartets. The older specimens of the sonata, as seen in the works of
Biber, Kuhnau, Mattheson and others, contain little more than the germs
of the modern sonata. Haydn, building on Emanuel Bach, fixed the present
form, improving so largely upon the earlier, that we could pass from
his sonatas directly to those of Beethoven without the intervention of
Mozart's as a connecting link. Beethoven's sonatas were certainly more
influenced by Haydn's than by Mozart's. Haydn's masterpieces in this
kind, like those of Mozart and Beethoven, astonish by their order,
regularity, fluency, harmony and roundness; and by their splendid
development into full and complete growth out of the sometimes
apparently unimportant germs. [See Ernst Pauer's Musical Forms.]
Naturally his sonatas are not all masterpieces. Of the thirty-five,
some are old-fashioned and some are quite second-rate. But, like the
symphonies, they are all of historical value as showing the development
not only of the form but of the composer's powers. One of the number is
peculiar in having four movements; another is equally peculiar--to Haydn
at least--in having only two movements. Probably in the case of the
latter the curtailment was due