there, on the banks of the Leitha, a monument with a bust of him. They
visited his birthplace, and Haydn went down on his knees and kissed the
threshold. Then he showed his companions the stove where, as a baby, he
had sat and pretended to play the violin. "There," he said, "is where my
musical career began." He had had many triumphs, and more were to come,
but none can have been more pleasant to him than this.




CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT SYMPHONIES


Till Haydn came to London, he had nearly always been compelled to
compose for small bands. Count Morzin's, in fact, could scarcely be
called a band. It consisted of a few strings, with a few wind
instruments to increase the volume of the tuttis. The contrast of loud
with soft passages was the most frequently used way of getting change
and variety; though often solos were given to one instrument or another.
Of orchestral colour, of orchestration in the modern sense, there was
little. Haydn himself confessed in his old age that only then, when he
had to leave the world, had he learnt how to use the wind instruments.
But if Mozart's delightful tone-colouring cannot be found in the London
symphonies, there is at any rate much greater fullness and richness than
we find in the earlier ones. Yet here, again, Mozart was ahead of him,
and one reason for this was the very different natures and textures of
the two men's music. Haydn spoke naturally through the string quartet,
and many of the slow movements of his symphonies, beautiful and