IV
THE ORIGINS OF THE "CLASSIC" STYLE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC.
Every musician will at once perceive the profound differences which divide the so-called "classic" style of the close of the eighteenth century from the grand "pre-classic" style of J. S. Bach and Händel; the one with its ample rhetoric, its strict deductions, its scholarly polyphonic writing, its objective and comprehensive spirit; the other lucid, spontaneous, melodious, reflecting the changing moods of individual minds which throw themselves wholly into their work, presently arriving at the Rousseau-like confessions of Beethoven and the Romantics. It seems as though a longer period must have elapsed between these two styles than the length of a man's life.
Now let us note the dates: J. S. Bach died in 1750, Händel in 1759. C. H. Graun also died in 1759. And in 1759 Haydn performed his first symphony. The date of Gluck's Orfeo is 1762; that of P. E. Bach's earliest sonatas, 1742. The ingenious protagonist of the new symphony, Johann Stamitz, died before Händel—in 1757. Thus the leaders of the two great artistic movements were living at the same time. The style of Keiser, Telemann, Hasse and the Mannheim symphonists,
69
