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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 symphonies
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.
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