A German critic has jocosely remarked that the early writers meant the
sonata to show first what they could do, second what they could feel,
and third how glad they were to have finished. Time vastly increased its
importance. Two subjects, a melody in the tonic, another usually in the
dominant, came to set forth the exposition of the opening movement,
leading to a free development, with various episodes, and an assured
return to the original statement. The prevailing character being thus
defined, the story readily unfolds, aided by related keys, in a slow
movement and perhaps a minuet or scherzo, and gains its denouement in a
stirring finale, written in the original key. Each movement has its own
subjects, its individual development, with harmony of plan and idea for
a bond of union.

The name symphony, from sinfonia, a consonance of sounds, applied
originally to any selection played by a full band and later to
instrumental overtures, was given by Joseph Haydn to the orchestral
sonata form inaugurated by him. His thirty years of musical service to
the house of Esterhazy, with an orchestra increasing from 16 to 24
pieces to experiment on, as the solo virtuoso experiments on piano or
violin, brought him wholly under the spell of the instruments. Their
individual characteristics afforded him continually new suggestions in
regard to tone-coloring, and he rose often to audacity, for his time, in
his harmonic devices. Grace and spirit, originality of invention, joyous
abandon, a fancy controlled by a studious mind, a profusion of quaint
humor and a proper division of light and shade, combine to give the
dominant note to his music. His symphonies recall the fairy tale, with
its sparkling "once upon a time," and yet like it are not without their
mysterious shadows. In everything he has written is felt that faculty
of smiling amid grief and disappointment and pain that made Haydn, the
Father of the Symphony, exclaim in his old age, "Life is a charming
affair."

With Mozart, whose life-work began after, but ended before that of
Haydn, influencing and being influenced by the latter, the symphony
broadened in scope and grew richer in warmth of melodious expression,
definiteness of plan and completeness of form. His profoundly poetic
musical nature, with its high capacity for joy and sorrow and infinite
longing, was reflected in all that he wrote. By means of a generous
employment of free counterpoint, in other words a kind of pol