through the collisions and onward movement of parts; the music, both melodically and harmonically, could be as expressive as the particular composer's powers allowed. But the unity was the unity of a number of pieces of wood of varying length laid so as to overlap and nailed together; the superficial unity was due to the words; the real, essential unity depended on all the music being the sincere expression of a steady emotion—in those days religious emotion. Thus were attained the motet forms and the Mass, and, when the method was applied to secular words, the madrigal.

The earlier instrumental pieces were built after the same fashion—see the "fancies" and organ compositions of the time; but in these there were no words either to give the impulse or hold the bits together. With the fugue, music, unaided by words, was held together by its own innate strength; it became a self-sustaining One subject was generally taken; others—oftenest one, sometimes more—were added; all the subjects were passed about from part to part until the end of the composition, with the interspersion of passages called "episodes" for the sake of "variety." Here there was unity, continuity, with a vengeance. It was of the very essence of the fugue that the motion should never be arrested; if it seemed to halt for a moment, then, as in the older music, the stopping-place was the jumping-off place for a fresh start. All the severer men wrote in this form, most of them displaying marvellous mathematical—and some of them, alas! mechanical—ingenuity; a few of them, Bach towering high above the rest, attained a full and truthful expression of deep feeling. Bach, for the organ alone, raised sublime architectural structures, unapproachable, to use Schumann's word, in their magnificence. But the underlying feeling was always the same throughout; it might wax or wane in intensity: its character did not change. The themes, once announced, were rigid and unalterable; the music had always to be more or less like "a tune tied to a post." Dramatic changes of mood had no place. So later, a voice had to be found for shifting, complex, theatrically conflicting moods—states of mind characteristic of the modern and not of the bewigged world. When Haydn was still young the problem composers were more or less at random trying to solve was the creation of a new form of music and a new kind of music to fill the form. Neither the old form nor the old style would serve; the naïve dance-forms were too short. The content had to be as poignantly expressive, as direct in its appeal, as a folk-song; the different passages uttering the different moods had somehow to be welded together into a coherent whole—in one way or another dramatic climaxes and changes had to be arranged in an unbroken, logical, apparently inevitable sequence. I do not say the composers knew what they were after; on the contrary, as in the beginnings of anything new in any art, they simply were vaguely groping after something, they did not by any means realise what.

During the period when the polyphonic writers were pouring out their most glorious and living stuff, in the first lame, crude fugues the medium was being prepared for the triumphs of Handel and Bach; and in the same way, while Bach was writing the G minor and A minor fugues (I am not speaking of vocal music) some smaller men were working at what was destined to grow into the symphony, sonata and quartet. These terms are used here in their present-day signification. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such words as symphony and overture, and suite and sonata, were interchangeable; but that does not at all concern us here. The symphony or sonata or quartet form is what these early groups of movements led up to. That these groups of movements originated in the theatre is quite probable; this is indicated by the mere fact that the word "overture" was frequently used to describe them. When the fugue was in its fullest maturity composers were turning overtures out in vast quantities. Our own Arne tried his hand at them, and no one looking at his would dream that the sonata form was so nearly ripe at the time. Emanuel and Johann Christian Bach wrote them, and from these two Haydn got the hint which he turned to such splendid account. Abel, Stamitz and Wagenseil wrote them, and achieved nothing in particular. These groups consisted of three or four movements, and we need not linger long over them. It goes without saying that all the movements were short; they consisted either of simple tunes or of series of harmonic progressions broken up into figures or patterns. Of real development and climax there is none; of such things as well-defined, characteristic first and second subjects there is little sign. The themes were of the formal mathematical type developed during the fugal period—a type that "worked" easily, and in a way effectively, in the fugue itself, but was unnecessary and, indeed, tiresome when contrapuntal working was not the aim and object. The endless variants on this kind of thing, for example—

were simply a snare, and kept writers from seeing the importance of singing and singable melody in the coming style. To show the difference between the old and the new at once, let me here give two bits of themes from Mozart and Haydn. They are in appearance not so far removed from the contrapuntal type of theme, and while they sing themselves they yet served their inventors capitally for contrapuntal treatment.

Numberless sonatas were written about the same time. Either the subjects were contrapuntal, formal, in build, or consisted of patterns made out of broken chord-series. Domenico Scarlatti got some wonderful results; but his music simply tickles the ear for a moment: meaning it has none. Polyphonic music of every sort had now to go for a while; monodic music was coming in. But before it could come in with any degree of security something else had to come and something else to go. Up till now the old idea of modes had remained strong, despite Sebastian Bach and his marvellous use of chromatic harmonies. It had to yield to the modern idea of key; a sense of key relationships had to be developed—much, at first all, depended on that. The new idea, hinted at by Emanuel Bach, and first seized upon by Haydn, was that a continuous stream of melody—not necessarily always in the top or treble part—should run through a movement, and, whatever the interest of the accompanying parts, should always be of the first importance. For his inspiration, as well as many of his actual themes, Haydn went to his native folk-dances and folk-songs; he brought in the fresh air from the wilds, and the now dusty contrapuntalism was blown out never again to return. We can see above the difference between the full-bottomed wig theme and the newer kind; to show, on the other hand, how near Haydn stood to Beethoven let me give bits of themes from each composer.

With the disappearance of the contrapuntal theme coincides the end of purely contrapuntal "working" or development. The new kind I shall describe later in its proper place. For the present all that need be said is that here again key relationship was of the first importance, as we shall see. Meantime, in this peroration I have sought to outline what Haydn did. For, let there be no mistake, it was Haydn and no other who brought about the change. If he was not the first to write in something very like modern sonata or symphony form, he was the first to see its full possibilities. Had he written no symphonies, but only quartets, his achievement would have been none the less remarkable, and