Their
individual characteristics afforded him continually new suggestions in
regard to tone-coloring, and he rose often to audacity, for his time, in
his harmonic devices. Grace and spirit, originality of invention, joyous
abandon, a fancy controlled by a studious mind, a profusion of quaint
humor and a proper division of light and shade, combine to give the
dominant note to his music. His symphonies recall the fairy tale, with
its sparkling "once upon a time," and yet like it are not without their
mysterious shadows. In everything he has written is felt that faculty
of smiling amid grief and disappointment and pain that made Haydn, the
Father of the Symphony, exclaim in his old age, "Life is a charming
affair."
With Mozart, whose life-work began after, but ended before that of
Haydn, influencing and being influenced by the latter, the symphony
broadened in scope and grew richer in warmth of melodious expression,
definiteness of plan and completeness of form. His profoundly poetic
musical nature, with its high capacity for joy and sorrow and infinite
longing, was reflected in all that he wrote.
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