Between the culmination of the vocal style of Bach and Handel and the development of modern instrumental music there was an interregnum, a period of overlapping tenden cies, and of experimentation as to what the course of music should be.
Sebastian Bach himself said in the latter part of his life that musical taste had altered wonderfully and that the old music no longer sounded good to the ear.
Among many worthy names, two are of real prominence. Gluck (q.v.) (1714-87), will al ways be honored as the first reformer of the opera, and although his best works, (Iphigenia in Aulis' and in Tauris,' were written to French libretti and brought out in Paris, the peculiarly Teutonic characteristics of the man, his sincerity, his courage and unerring instinct for dramatic truth were the animating causes of his reforms. To carry them out Gliick needed all the strong physical and mental qualities which came to him from his peasant ancestry. Italian opera as he found it was an artificial and undignified form of art, in com plete subservience to the capricious whims of singers and the vitiated taste of ignorant pa trons. Gluck's title to fame is the fact that in such circumstances he set himself resolutely to express himself in his music, and to make it manly and sincere. His dramatic creed is ex pressed in the famous preface to One of his chief canons was to make the music subordinate to the spirit of the words,— a principle sometimes carried so far as to make the music lacking in beauty for its own sake.
Gluck is rightly regarded as the father of modern opera; his theories and reforms have had great influence upon all opera composers, notably upon Wagner, and his works are the earliest which hold the stage to this day. He was great both in impassioned and pathetic melody and his dramatic use of the chorus is unsurpassed. He was also the first to antici pate in many ways the organization of our modern orchestra.
Emmanuel Bach (q.v.) (1714-88), third son of the great Sebastian, the forerunner of Haydn and Mozart, is important for his contri bution to the development of instrumental form, especially in music for the clavier. In fact many of his first movements all but reach the completely organized sonata form as found in Haydn. He was also an important factor in settling the most effective manner of writing for the clavier, i.e., solo-melodies lightly ac companied, brilliant passage-work, etc., instead of the old polyphonic style on a vocal basis. His celebrated treatise on 'The true. art of playing the Clavier) contains the principles which have since been developed by Clementi, Cramer and others into the pianoforte style of our own time.
Haydn (q.v.) (1732-1809) is called the father of the symphony and the string quartet, and the term, though a slight exaggeration, is well deserved, for he summed up and amplified the tentative efforts of the many instrumental composers of the period. Born at Rohrau in Austria, near the Hungarian frontier, his peas ant origin and his life-long contact with the common people and with rural life must be kept in mind in estimating his music. Much light has been shed upon the causes of Haydn's peculiar genius by the researches of a Croatian scholar, Dr. Kuhac, who has shown conclusively that Haydn was of Croatian stock. The evi dent and pervasive signs in Haydn's music of light gipsy dance rhythms and of folk-songs are thus accounted for. His earlier years were of intense hardship and his musical education due almost entirely to his own efforts. Finally he came in 1761 under the patronage of the Esterhazy family in Hungary — a post held uninterruptedly for 30 years, in which Haydn's status was typical of the musical patronage in vogue at that epoch. The most prominent external events of Haydn's life were the two visits to London in 1791 and 1794 at the invi tation of the violinist Salomon. For these occasions were composed the 12 "Salomon Symphonies"' which include Haydn's best work —the 'Surprise,' the 'Oxford,) etc. Haydn received the degree of doctor of music at Ox ford and also became acquainted with the vocal style of Handel, which influenced him in the composition of the 'Creation' and the 'Seasons,' those remarkable works of his old age. Haydn. a distinctly uneducated man, but one of great musical concentration, was just suited to organize the tunes and rhythms of the people into coherent forms of art. In move ments in the so-called sonata form his estab lishment of the second theme and free treatment of thematic development were organic changes of the greatest moment. To the old three movement sonata or symphony with its mechanical contrast of fast, slow, fast, Haydn •added the minuet, in which his fondness'f or light graceful rhythms and spirit of playful humor found free scope. The modern string quartet owes almost more to Haydn than the symphony. His string quartets contain his most vital and lasting work and show his in exhaustibly fertile invention in varied rhythms and in the individualizing of the instruments. Haydn's .music is noted for its cheerfulness and dainty grace, and though it seldom rises to a high. level of dignity, bids fair to be immortal as a genuine expression of the optimistic sunny temperament of the man.