The substance is there; every note is
struck exactly in the middle--but what outlandish tone colours, what
strange, unearthly sounds! It is not Bach, however, who first comes to
mind when Huneker is at his tricks, but Papa Haydn--the Haydn of the
Surprise symphony and the Farewell. There is the same gargantuan gaiety,
the same magnificent irreverence. Haydn did more for the symphony than
any other man, but he also got more fun out of it than any other man.
"Old Fogy," of course, is not to be taken seriously: it is frankly a
piece of fooling. But all the same a serious idea runs through the book
from end to end, and that is the idea that music is getting too
subjective to be comfortable. The makers of symphonies tend to forget
beauty altogether; their one effort is to put all their own petty trials
and tribulations, their empty theories and speculations into cacophony.
Even so far back as Beethoven's day that autobiographical habit had
begun. "Beethoven," says Old Fogy, is "dramatic, powerful, a maker of
storms, a subduer of tempests; but his speech is the speech of a
self-centred egotist.
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