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At this point there was a faint stir among the visitors. A mother of a family interrupted the doctor. She begged to know whether music "every evening" included Sunday evening; and, if so, what music was performed? "Sacred music, of course, ma'am," said the doctor. "Handel on Sunday evening and Haydn occasionally, when not too cheerful.
After the death of her husband, she persuaded Haydn to sign a promise to marry her if his wife should die, but the composer afterward repudiated the agreement, very likely not wishing to repeat his first matrimonial blunder. Another romance is found in the love-letters sent to the composer by a charming London widow named Schroeter.
His father and grandfather were state or municipal officials both; and bearing in mind Wagner's frank detestation of officialdom, the scientist can scarcely draw much comfort from that. The grandfather, Gottlob Friedrich Wagner, was born in 1736, only a few years later than Haydn.
And just think what genius followed: Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Mehül, Boieldieu, and, above all, our good friend Beethoven." The Chapel-master was silent for a little as though the name of his idol imposed on him a religious silence. Presently he continued.
He studied in Vienna with Haydn, with whom he did not always agree, however, and afterwards with Albrechtsberger. His first symphony appeared in 1801, his earlier symphonies, in what is called his first period, being written in the Mozart style.
"The bouquet is doubtless a gift from one of the many fair admirers of our maestro?" asked Schmid, laughing. Haydn looked up to him smilingly and shook his head gently. "No," he said, "it is the last souvenir of Nature, to which I have bidden farewell. I worshipped to-day in the open air, and this is the rosary with which I will pray. Ah, I love Nature so passionately!"
It was this same woman to whom Haydn dedicated three trios, his first, second, and sixth. It was undoubtedly she to whom he referred when he made that little speech which Dies probably misquoted, in telling the answer Haydn gave him when he was asked what the letters were.
The attachment of these two men remains accordingly one of the most honourable monuments of the virtuous love of art that musical history can produce. Haydn was at this period about fifty years of age.
Romanticism was a revolt against eighteenth-century pseudo-classicism, and it had its day, and did its work, and went out. Haydn did not want to revolt against classicism, nor even pseudo-classicism. In fact, in music Haydn stands for classicism, and this is no contradiction of what I have written about his throwing away the formulas of his predecessors.
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.
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