ersons who did not
dance, derived pleasure from listening to it. The next step was to play
these dance tunes without dancing. This naturally led to a collection of
dance tunes. By playing three or four in succession it was soon found
that a more agreeable effect was produced by selecting those differing
in rhythm. Here we have the suite, the earliest orchestral form. After a
while it was found that a change of key heightened the effect, and, when
composing purely orchestral music not intended for actual use in
dancing, the more original of the composers at times allowed the strict
dance form to fall into abeyance in one or two movements to enable them
to try their hand in another style, and also for contrast. A broadening
and augmenting of the different forms and we have the sonata. The
symphony is an enlargement of the sonata. All our intellectual progress
is an unfolding, like a flower from the bud. We have first an
impression, then an opinion, then demonstration.

Many years were to elapse before the next and last symphony was to
appear; years in which the ripening process was to go on, and which were
to culminate in the Mass in D, the Choral Symphony and the last
quartets,--works that are in a class by themselves in the same sense
that the works from the Third Symphony on, up to, and including the
Eighth, are in a class apart from the others. His compositions prior to
the Third Symphony are in the style of Mozart and Haydn. They are the
naive utterances of the young musician who does not yet realize that he
has a mission to perform; whose ambition was to be ranked with his great
predecessors. Of the works of the second period, it can be said that
their most prominent characteristic is gayety (_Heiterkeit_). They are
not all in this mood, and but rarely is the mood maintained throughout a
single work, but it exists to the extent that it dominates it, just as
the key-note to his later works is to be found in his mysticism. The
works of the second period are coincident with his best years physically
and when his mental powers had reached their highest maturity. When he
found out what manner of man he was and realized the place he was
destined to occupy among the great ones of earth; when he had accepted
his destiny and had made his peace with himself it is easy to understand
how a certain gayety and serenity should have spread itself over his
life and have communicated itself to his works; and though this serenity
was