Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/109

HISTORY.] MUSIC 97 experimented -without infallible success on every unusual combination he wrote, and because likewise in orchestra tion his writing often appears to have been tentative rather than proving intuition of an effect and a means for its production it is for these reasons, in spite of his pro digious command of counterpoint, that he may without disrespect be classed after the man whom circumstances compel us to regard as his rival. Mozart wrote 48 sym> phonies, some of them in the tenderest years of childhood, and repeated the design in many chamber works for several or for a single instrument. These differ in merit, mainly, it may be assumed, because some were written to meet the exigencies and the limitations of particular occasions ; but, every one compelling admiration, the last three are con spicuous among the music of all time for the excellence of each and for their difference in character from one another, and these were composed in less than seven weeks, between 26th June and 10th August 1788, during which interval several other lesser and larger pieces also were produced, some for voices and some for instruments. The symphony in E flat, No. 46, is notable for sweetness and playful grace; that in G minor, No. 47, is a torrent of passionate fervour; and that in C, No. 48 (in England named Jupiter), is a combination that has never been surpassed of all the means possible to a musician. In the final movement of this last, a fugue is wrought on the symphonic plan, which is also the case in the overture to the author s latest opera, Die Zauberflote, a completer fusion than has elsewhere been made of the two most distinguishable art-forms, and the formalism is hidden under the beauty of the ideas. History now steps on to the great name of Beethoven (1770-1827), who in his 9 symphonies, his 6 concertos (which are pieces on the same plan with the addition of a part for a solo instrument), and his priceless bequest of chamber music commands the world s adoration. It is the shallow practice of the present day to depreciate his two great predecessors, especially Mozart, in his favour ; but comparative criticism is to ill purpose if it can only exalt one master by the dethronement of another. Beethoven enlarged the symphony, in some respects changed its character, and perhaps advanced its consideration ; above" all, after writing for a while in the idiom of those two masters, he stamped his own individuality upon music. One finds, however, a prototype for each thing critics describe as particularly Beethovenish in the writings of Mozart, so that the manifest originality of the later musician lies in the new aspect given by happy expansion to prior existences more than in the creation of new forms of thought. Though he often strove at fugal excellence, he was a child at counterpoint as compared with the two adults who preceded him, and he lost rather than gained fluency in this branch of art as his life proceeded. The ideas of a great artist bear the impress of his age, which is remarkably the case with the musical thoughts of Beethoven, and as his age was nearer to our own, so is his frame of mind more congenial with that of present hearers than are those of Haydn and Mozart. The figure may be reversed ; the individuality of an artist is the matrix in which the feelings and thoughts of his age, and still more of the age that next follows him, are moulded, but there must be affinity of temperament between the one and the many for this interchange of impressions to be possible. We of to-day have Beethoven and the con sequences of Beethoven, and the influences of these have been active in the interval between our time and the period previous to the French Revolution ; and the poli tical, moral, and artistic changes that have been wrought by the ones upon the many as much as by the many on the ones indispose us to the recognition of the beautiful under its earlier aspect. Let us delight in Beethoven who can fail 1 but let us also love Mozart and revere Haydn. Two points are notable in Beethoven s instru mental music (1) the linking together of the several movements of a work which usually are separated by an interval of silence ; but such union is in some of Mozart s early symphonies and some also of Emanuel Bach s ; (2) the expression of feelings excited by subjects external to the music and entitling works accordingly, as Sinfonia Pastorale, and sonata, Les Adieux, V Absence, et le Retour; but Dietrich Buxtehude of Liibeck had a century earlier produced seven pieces characteristic of the seven planets, and Vivaldi had represented the four seasons in as many concertos, to say nothing of the chaos which opens Haydn s Creation. Beethoven s professed purpose in this last particular was to give utterance to impressions rather than to present pictures, and such is the legitimate scope of music, which is not an imitative but an expressive art. Next in time came Spohr (1784-1859), whose delici- Suhse- ously-phrased rich-toned symphonies have lost regard in quent late years, but not beauty. Of his seven symphonies, four >s ^ m ". bear titles which refer them to an objective purpose ; but .they are still subjective, for the personality of the writer is expressed in every bar. Mendelssohn (1809-1847) did less but achieved more than Spohr ; far less numerous, his instrumental writings for the concert-room and for the chamber have vitality and permanence which are not in those of the other master ; they belong as much to here after as to now, while those of Spohr are already of the past. Mendelssohn too made musical pictures, owning that " as Beethoven had opened the road it was impossible not to follow ; " his two finest symphonies, those in A and in A minor, represent, though not so entitled by him, his im pressions of Italy and Scotland, and his characteristic over tures are translations into sound of the poems after which they are named. He also, in more than one instance, joined the several movements of a work, and he employed other devices his own by felicity of appropriation more than by first use for enforcing the relationship of the several portions of a musical structure. Schumann (181 0-1856) has suffered through the persistence of his partisans in compar ing him with another instead of displaying and extolling his own merit. Party spirit and the opposition it kindles has passed, and the delicacy, often subtle in its refinement, the grace, the deep feeling, the ingenuity, but rarely grandeur, that mark his symphonic and chamber music, are now fully perceived. Johannes Brahms is a iJTinyworker in this class of art who has already planted his foot in the future and given warrant for transmitting to the coming genera tion the great model he received from the past, which, because of the masterpieces that have been cast in it, justly bears the name of classical. Cherubini (1760-1842) is the one Italian known to have written a symphony, and this work gives small reason for regret that it stands thus alone ; he arranged the same as a violin quartet and wrote two original pieces of this class. Mehul (1763-1817) is the French representative of the symphonic art best known and best esteemed. The Englishmen who have best succeeded in this English highest form of music are Dr Crotch (1775-1847), s J" m - Cipriani Potter, J. Henry Griesbach (1798-1875), Henry l lic Westrop (1812-1879), and Sterndale Bennett (1816- 1875). The last-named cannot be passed with a mere mention. The wide recognition of Bennett s genius at home and in Germany distinguishes him; far more so does the quite individual charm of his music, and most of all does the tender age at which he wrote his best works and the facility with which he produced them. Three of his pianoforte concertos, one of his symphonies, and four of his concert overtures may be cited as repre sentative pieces, wherein sometimes the plan, always the XVII. 13