But now comes the fundamental difficulty in all attempts to distinguish the classical from the pseudo-classical. Every in dividual work must be judged on its own merits. No generaliza tions are trustworthy. Many movements by Mozart are as alike as peas. But, being alive, they are not as alike as buttons. With Mozart and Haydn the individuality of each work is all-important for the critic, and if he neglects this all that he says about the common form is superficial. On the other hand, the materials of Beethoven's work developed so rapidly that he seems to be driven to invent a new technique for almost each composition. Hence the external differences become obvious; and unless the critic penetrates to the common form he is lost.
With the symphonic classics we enter the period when these considerations become important; for there is no gulf between that period and our own. No musical art known to Haydn has suffered, like the art of Bach, a period of total eclipse ; nor, on the other hand has it had preserved a character that Haydn could have understood. Not much light is shed on Haydn and Mozart by calling them court composers, and little more on Beethoven by calling him a child of the French Revolution. In an age of court patronage Bach the theologian had been inspired to write warlike music not more by ancestral memories than by scriptural texts of war in Heaven. Mozart and Haydn were restive in the service of courts and their musical language was that of the com edy of manners when it was not racy of the soil. In Paris, where musicians might be expected to know most about the French Revolution, the modest, lovable Etienne Mehul (famous for the biblical opera Joseph) produced his prettiest comic operetta Le Jeune Sage et le Vieux Fou in the year of the Terror ; and on French music the immediate effect of these tremendous days was the rise of a new type of sentimental opera concerning the hair breadth escapes and sufferings of the political prisoner rescued by the heroic wife. Hence Cherubini's Les Deux Journies (The Water-Carrier) and Beethoven's Fidelio. Genius is the wind that
bloweth where it listeth. In Bach's day Beethoven would have been musical interpreter of the Apocalypse ; and in this loth century Bach would be something like Dr. Schweitzer.
When we contemplate the impassable gulf that separates Bach's art not only from Haydn's and Mozart's but from the apparently more kindred spirit of Beethoven, we find it hard to realize that contemporaries were unaware of any catastrophic development.
In the case of choral music a little study shows us that its forms and language remained Neapolitan. Haydn's and Mozart's masses are flamboyant Neapolitan music ; and Michael Haydn, who was merely decorative as an instrumental composer, was rightly thought by his brother to be the better man at church music. Again we regard Philipp Emmanuel Bach as bridging the gulf be tween his father's and the new art ; but Philipp Emmanuel was writ ing quite mature sonatas in the year of his father's B minor Mass and his last set of sonatas was produced in the year of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Clementi, born in the year after Bach's death, was an infant prodigy of eight when Handel died ; he had developed an extraordinarily massive and genuine pianoforte technique (more powerful than beautiful) when he encountered Mozart in a musical tournament, and he survived Weber, Beethoven and Schubert. Nothing can be gained by a further attempt to sum marize this "Viennese" period. We may call it the period of the sonata and of Mozartean comic and French romantic opera. More particular information is given in the following technical and categorical articles: HARMONY (on Key-relations) ; INSTRUMEN TATION ; MELODY ; OPERA : ORATORIO ; OVERTURE ; RONDO; SCHERZO; SONATA FORMS; SYMPHONY; VARIATIONS, and the biographies ABEL (K. F.) ; BACH (C. P. E.) ; BEETHOVEN ; BENDA ; BOCCHERINI ; CHERUBINI ; CLEMENTI ; DITTERSDORF ; DUSSEK ; GLUCK ; HAYDN ( J. and M.) ; MOZART; PUCCINI; SCHUBERT ; SPOHR ; WEBER.