Haydn | Page 8

The first theme is played and leads on to the pause, after which the second theme is given in the key of the first, so that after a few bars of coda, always in the same key, the movement terminates in a perfectly satisfactory manner. This is a crude description in which much is left out, but it will serve to enable the reader to understand how passages widely different in character are bound together into a coherent whole by the composer continuously leading the ear to expect something--that something being the original key-chord, and, while offering many things, only finally satisfying the ear's craving when the movement is coming to a finish. If the second theme, let us say, were in the same key as the first, it would sound like the beginning of a new movement, and at once we should have the continuity broken. As a passage between two passages in the original key it sounds perfectly in its place, and, no matter how contrasted in character, is a kind of continuation of the first passage. At the same time it creates a strong desire, that must be restrained till the time comes, for what follows. We listen to the second theme and to the "working-out" section, knowing we are far from home, but perfectly aware that we shall get there, and that a certain feeling of suspense will be relieved. Thus the music is like a great arch that supports itself. The unity got in the fugue by continuous motion is got here by one key perpetually leading the ear to ask for another key. It seems simplicity itself; its underlying idea--that of making the ear always expect something, and gratifying it by bits, and only fully towards the close of the movement--is that by which unity is combined with variety in modern music, though we have long since got rid of the "legitimate" series of keys.
The grouping of the movements need not detain us long. Many groupings had been tried; but it seems natural to open with an allegro--preceded or not preceded by a few bars of slow introduction--to follow this with a slow movement of some sort; then to insert or not to insert a movement of medium rapidity as a change from the bustle of the first and the quiet of the second; and finally to end with a merry dancing movement. This, again, is in the merest outline the plan adopted by Haydn. Whether he used three or four movements, the principle was the same--a quick beginning, a slow middle, and a quick ending; afterwards, each movement grew longer, but the way in which he lengthened them can better be treated later when we come to his bigger works.
From the first he used counterpoint, canon, imitation, and all the devices of the contrapuntal style. But the difference between his newer style and that of Wagenseil and the rest is that he neither uses counterpoint of any sort nor chord figures to make up the true substance of the music, but merely as devices to help him in maintaining a continuous flow of melody. That melody, as has already been said, might be in the top or bottom part, or one of the middle parts; but though it may, and, indeed, always did pause at times, as the melody of a song pauses at the end of each line, it is unbroken from beginning to end. The first part of a movement might be compared to the first line of a song: there is a pause, but we expect and get the second line; there is another pause, and we get a line which is analogous to the "working-out" section, and the last line, ending in the original key if not on the same note, corresponds to the final section of the movement, after which we expect nothing more, the ear being quite satisfied.
Werner, his musical chief in his next station, had the sense to see that this continuous melody was the thing aimed at, and because Haydn placed counterpoint in a subsidiary condition he called him a "charlatan." Poor man, had his sense pierced a little deeper! For Haydn was--after Bach and Handel and Mozart--one of the finest masters of counterpoint who have lived. When the time came to write fugues he could write them with a certain degree of power. But his aim was not writing fugues any more than an architect's aim is painting in water-colours. Water-colours are very useful to architects, and they make use of them; but because they do not rival Turner or David Cox it does not follow that they are not masters of the art of architecture. Haydn aimed at--or rather, at this epoch, groped after--a kind of music in which continuous melody expressive of