between the repetitions. The minuet and trio are little, if at all,
different from those of Emanuel Bach. The finale is generally a bit of a
romp; the structural plan is that of the first movement, or a rondo. So
much for the form. As for the music, it is, I say, free from
counterpoint, and is more and more filled with the spirit of folk-song.
The themes sing and the music takes its impulse and motion from them;
the web is no longer made up of contrapuntal workings: counterpoint is
never more than an accompaniment, a helpful device. What Wagner called
the melos, the melody, or melodic outline, that begins at the beginning
and ends only at the end--this is the thing. The influence of the
folk-song is certainly most marked in the slow movements, just as that
of the dance is shown in the finales. Haydn's adagios, at his best,
speak with the deepest yet the simplest feeling. A fairly close analogy
is that of Burns, who, with little natural inspiration, found
inspiration in his native ballads, and often worked up the merest
doggerel into artistic shapes of wondrous poignancy. Haydn's habitual
temper was cheerful, and his music rattles along with a certain gaiety
of gallop very far away from the mechanical grinding or pounding accents
of the contrapuntalists. (I don't mean the great men; I mean the
Wagenseils, Gossecs and the rest, who were trying to do the new thing
without shaking off the old contrapuntal fetters.) But the spirit of his
native songs was continually touching him and informed his melodies with
a degree of emotion that we find in none of the other strivers after
symphonic form.

We are far removed from Haydn now, and if often his second subjects seem
little different from his first, we must remember that when all was
fresh contrasts would be perceived that now have vanished out of the
music. Haydn, neither now nor in his final period, was excessively fond
of violent contrasts. Often the new start in the new key seems to have