as applied to the room in the royal palace in which the
monarch's private property was kept, and in which he looked after his
private affairs. When royalty took up the cultivation of music it was
as a private, not as a court, function, and the concerts given for
the entertainment of the royal family took place in the king's
chamber, or private room. The musicians were nothing more nor less
than servants in the royal household. This relationship endured into
the present century. Haydn was a _Hausofficier_ of Prince Esterhazy.
As vice-chapelmaster he had to appear every morning in the Prince's
ante-room to receive orders concerning the dinner-music and other
entertainments of the day, and in the certificate of appointment his
conduct is regulated with a particularity which we, who remember him
and reverence his genius but have forgotten his master, think
humiliating in the extreme.

[Sidenote: _Beethoven's Chamber music._]

Out of this cultivation of music in the private chamber grew the
characteristics of Chamber music, which we must consider if we would
enjoy it ourselves and understand the great reverence which the great
masters of music have always felt for it. Beethoven was the first
great democrat among musicians. He would have none of the shackles
which his predecessors wore, and compelled aristocracy of birth to bow
to aristocracy of genius. But such was his reverence for the style of
music which had grown up in the chambers of the great that he devoted
the last three years of his life almost exclusively to its
composition; the peroration of his proclamation to mankind consists of
his last quartets--the holiest of holy things to the Chamber musicians
of to-day.

[Sidenote: _The characteristics of Chamber music._]

Chamber music represents pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep
learning. These attributes are encouraged by the idea of privacy which
is inseparable from the form. Composers find it the finest field for
the display of their talents because their own skill in creating is to
be paired with trained skill in hearing. Its representative pieces are
written for strings alone--trios, quartets, and quintets. With the
strings are sometimes associated a pianoforte, or one or more of the
solo wind instruments--oboe, clarinet, or French horn; and as a rule
the compositions adhere to classical lines (see Chapter V.). Of
necessity the modesty of the apparatus compels it to forego nearly
all the adventitious he