public following his points; and with Haydn, whose heart beat in
sympathy with the common people, music begins to be a truly
popular art.
[Footnote 106: See hisStudy of the History of Music, p. 154.]
The striking features in Haydn’s works are three: (1) The wealth
of spontaneous and sparkling melodies, for he was born with this
lyric gift and never had to cudgel his wits for a tune. That in-
strumental melody could make such sudden progress as we find
between the dryness of Emmanuel Bach and the freshness of
Haydn, was long a puzzle to scholars, and only recently has the
proof been submitted that Haydn was largely of Croatian an-
cestry. Now the Croatians of Southern Austria are one of the
most musical races in the world, with a wealth of folk-songs and
dances. Haydn therefore did not have to “invent” melodies in
the ordinary sense of the term; they were his birthright. Many
of his melodies are adaptations of actual folk-songs[107] or orig-
inal melodies coming from an imagination saturated with the
folk-song spirit.[108] For this reason they seem like wild flowers
in their perennial freshness and charm. (2) The precision and
clarity with which his ideas are presented. These qualities were
due to his well-balanced and logical intellect that impressed ev-
eryone with whom he came in contact. His style, moreover, was
the result of indefatigable labor, for he was largely self-taught.
If the balance of his phrases and the general symmetry of his
style seem to our modern taste a bit excessive, we must remem-
ber that he was a pioneer and could run no risks in the way of
non-acceptance of his message through puzzling complexities.
Everything must be so clear that the ordinary mind could at
once accept it. Nor is the “sing-song,” “square-toed” element so
prevalent in Haydn as is commonly supposed. In his melody a
distinct feature—no doubt of racial origin—is his fondness for
odd rhythms of three, five and seven measures, of which exam-
ples abound in the Quartets. In his Minuets and Finales there
is a rollicking effect of high spirits which could never have been
attained by mere labored pedantry. In his mature works we
find a pervading spontaneity which is one of the outstanding
examples in all literature of “art concealing art.” Never do these
works smell of the lamp, and let us remember it is far easier to
criticize them than to create them.[109]
[Footnote 107: See for example theSalomon Symphony in E-
flat, every movement of which is founded on a Croatian folk-