leasant to him than this.

CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT SYMPHONIES

Till Haydn came to London, he had nearly always been compelled to
compose for small bands. Count Morzin's, in fact, could scarcely be
called a band. It consisted of a few strings, with a few wind
instruments to increase the volume of the tuttis. The contrast of loud
with soft passages was the most frequently used way of getting change
and variety; though often solos were given to one instrument or another.
Of orchestral colour, of orchestration in the modern sense, there was
little. Haydn himself confessed in his old age that only then, when he
had to leave the world, had he learnt how to use the wind instruments.
But if Mozart's delightful tone-colouring cannot be found in the London
symphonies, there is at any rate much greater fullness and richness than
we find in the earlier ones. Yet here, again, Mozart was ahead of him,
and one reason for this was the very different natures and textures of
the two men's music. Haydn spoke naturally through the string quartet,
and many of the slow movements of his symphonies, beautiful and
profoundly moving though they are, are quartet movements, only requiring
a larger number of instruments because greater fullness and force were
needed to make the music satisfying in a large hall. Mozart's music was
entirely different in texture. One cannot imagine the slow movement of
the G Minor Symphony without wood wind. Haydn knew what his music was,
and what orchestration it wanted, and he never dreamed of
over-orchestrating. What he would have said of such music as that of
Berlioz, where the orchestration is ridiculously out of proportion to
the phrases, where the orchestra makes all the effect, if any at all is
made, I cannot guess. He used extra instruments when he needed them, as,
for example, in the "Military" symphony. The touch of instrumentation in
the andante of the "Surprise" is another instance. The idea of scaring
sleepy old ladies with a sudden bang on the drums--the kettle-drum
bolt--is often mentioned as an example of Haydn's "humour."

When we compare the London symphonies to the earlier ones, we feel at
once a stronger, more vehement spirit driving the music on. They seem
richer in themes than the others, partly because the themes are bigger,
partly because they are more perfectly adapted to monodic, harmonic
treatment, and out of every bar something is made. A theme is pregnant,
of course, according