or Mozart and Beethoven,
especially Mozart; but that was early, more than twenty years before
his death, and it is significant that the portion of his life-work which
most influenced and directed Mozart and Beethoven is chiefly second-rate
music. When he was writing the music that forces us to place him near
the noblest composers, he obeyed the invariable rule, and was in turn
being influenced by Mozart. The case is remarkable, but it is only what
anyone with a seeing eye might have predicted, and to us to-day it is
quite plain.

It is the constructive part of his work--the work of his middle
period--we must now briefly examine. In the list of his principal
compositions for the period 1761-1790 are included nearly one hundred
symphonies and other orchestral works, innumerable trios, quartets,
operas, songs, and clavier or piano pieces, one oratorio, _The Seven
Words_, and other sacred pieces. How many of them are heard to-day? How
many could be heard with pleasure? Very, very few. If anyone who
happened to be familiar with the Salomon symphonies--belonging to his
last period, after he had known Mozart--and _The Creation_ heard some of
this older stuff for the first time, he would hardly believe that the
man who in his age wrote so much fresh, vital music, charged with colour
and energy, could in the prime of physical life have written music that
is now so old-fashioned and stale. To this general verdict exceptions
must be made in the cases of some of the quartets, the clavier pieces,
and _The Seven Words_, the last especially being, as I have already
said, in his most splendid manner. Haydn did not stereotype the
symphony, because it never was at any time stereotyped; but he made
endless experiments in the search for a general profound principle which
underlies all music composed since his time. Mozart helped to make his
own meaning clear to him, divined what he was groping after, and himself
seized it and made glorious use of it, and Haydn profited, so that we
have his master-works. But the experiments possess for us little more
than the interest of experiments. Yet they were new and inspiring at the
time. Had he continued to write in the pre-1761 manner, he would never
have by 1790 won his world-wide fame, and made London seek him and so
draw from him his finest work.

After, say, 1785, the old contrapuntal smack has gone out of his
writing, and his form has grown definite. Often, indeed, his outlines
are much too h