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As it was, his fame was now manifestly spreading. Thus the
Wiener Diarum for 1766 includes him among the most distinguished
musicians of Vienna, and describes him as "the darling of our
nation." His amiable disposition, says the panegyrist, "speaks
through every one of his works. His music has beauty, purity,
and a delicate and noble simplicity which commends it to every
hearer. His cassations, quartets and trios may be compared to a
pure, clear stream of water, the surface now rippled by a gentle
breeze from the south, and anon breaking into agitated billows,
but without ever leaving its proper channel and appointed course.
His symphonies are full of force and delicate sympathy. In his
cantatas he shows himself at once captivating and caressing, and
in his minuets he is delightful and full of humour. In short,
Haydn is in music what Gellert is in poetry." This comparison
with Gellert, who died three years later, was at that date, as
Dr Pohl remarks, the most flattering that could well be made.
The simplicity and naturalness of Gellert's style were the very
antithesis of the pedantries and frigid formalities of the older
school; and just as he pioneered the way for the resuscitation of
German poetry under Goethe and Schiller, so Haydn may be said to
have prepared the path for Beethoven and the modern school.
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