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Scan 260
Grove's Dictionary of music and musicians, 1927
9 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 214. See the scan on archive.org.
1to, illustrates several of the above points at once.
3The period of Haydn and Mozart is in every respect the principal crisis in the history of the symphony. When they came upon the scene, it was not regarded as a very important form of art. In the good musical centres of those times—and there were many—there was a great demand for symphonies; but the bands for which they were written were small, and appear from the most natural inferences not to have been very efficient or well organised. The standard of performance was evidently rough, and composers could neither expect much attention to pianos and fortes, nor any ability to grapple with technical difficulties among the players of bass instruments or violas. The audiences were critical in the one sense of requiring good healthy workmanship in the writing of the pieces—in fact much better than they would demand in the present day; but with regard to deep meaning, refinement, poetical intention, or originality, they appear to have cared very little. They wanted to be healthily pleased and entertained, not stirred with deep emotion; and the purposes of composers in those days were consequently not exalted to any high pitch, but were limited to a simple and unpretentious supply, in accordance with demand and opportunity. Haydn was influenced by these considerations till the last. There is always more fun and gaiety in his music than pensiveness or serious reflection. But in developing the technical part of expression, in proportioning the means to the end, and in organising the forces of the orchestra, what he did was of the utmost importance. It is, however, impossible to apportion the value of the work of the two masters. Haydn did a great deal of important and substantial work before Mozart came into prominence in the same field. But after the first great mark had been made by the 'Paris' symphony, Mozart seemed to rush to his culmination; and in the last four of his works reached a style which appears richer, more sympathetic and more complete than anything Haydn could attain to. Then, again, when he had passed away, Haydn produced his greatest works. Each composer had his distinctive characteristics, and each is delightful in his own way; but Haydn would probably not have reached his highest development without the influence of his more richly gifted contemporary; and Mozart for his part was undoubtedly very much under the influence of Haydn at an important part of his career. The best that can be said by way of distinguishing their respective shares in the result is that Mozart's last symphonies introduced an intrinsically musical element which had before been wanting, and showed a supreme perfection of actual art in their structure; while Haydn in the long series of his works cultivated and refined his own powers to such an extent that when his last symphonies had made their appearance, the status of the symphony was raised beyond the possibility of a return to the old level. In fact he gave this branch of art a stability and breadth which served as the basis upon which the art of succeeding generations appears to rest; and the simplicity and clearness of his style and structural principles supplied an intelligible model for his successors to follow.
5GOSSEC AND OTHERS.—One of the most important of the contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart in this department of art was F. J. Gossec. He was born in 1733, one year after Haydn, and lived like him to a good old age. His chief claim to remembrance is the good work which he did in improving the standard of taste for instrumental music in France. According to Fétis such things as instrumental symphonies were absolutely unknown in Paris before 1754, in which year Gossec published his first, five years before Haydn's first attempt. Gossec's work was carried on most effectually by his founding, in 1770, the Concert des Amateurs, for whom he wrote his most important works. He also took the management of the famous Concert Spirituel, with Gaviniés and Leduc, in 1773, and furthered the cause of good instrumental music there as well. The few symphonies of his to be found in this country are of the same calibre, and for the same groups of instruments, as those of J. C. Bach, Abel, etc., already described; but Fétis attributes importance to him chiefly because of the way in which he extended the dimensions and resources of the orchestra. His symphony in D, No. 21, written soon after the founding of the Concert des Amateurs, was for a full set of strings, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets and drums; and this was doubtless an astonishing force to the Parisians, accustomed as they had been to regard the compositions of Lully and Rameau as the best specimens of instrumental music. But it is clear from other indications that Gossec had considerable ideas about the ways in which instrumental music might be improved, analogous on a much smaller scale to the aspirations and attempts of Berlioz at a later date. Not only are his works carefully marked with pianos and fortes, but in some (as the symphonies of op. 12) there are elaborate directions as to how the movements are to be played. Some of these are curious. For instance, over the first violin part of the slow movement of the second symphony is printed the following:
6'La différence du Fort au Doux dans ce morceau doit être excessive, et le mouvement modéré, à l'aise, qu'il semble se jouer avec la plus grande facilité.'
8Nearly all the separate movements of this set have some such directions, either longer or shorter; the inference from which is that Gossec had a strong idea of expression and style
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