Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

772 SYMPHONY
Presto.
Comi in E.
Violas & r J
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is almost insuperable ;
and so their greater representatives
come to be regarded, not only as
giving an epitome of the history of the epoch,
but as comprising it in themselves. Mozart's
first specially notable symphony falls in 1778.
This was the one which he wrote for Paris after
his experiences at Mannheim ; and some of his
Mannheim friends who happened to be in Paris
with him assisted at the performance. It is in
almost every respect a very great advance upon
Haydn's E minor Symphony, just quoted. The
treatment of the instruments is very much freer,
and more individually characteristic. It marks
an important step in the transition from the
kind of symphony in which the music appears
to have been conceived almost entirely for
violins, with wind subordinate, except in
special solo passages, to the kind in which
the original conception in respect of subjects,
episodes, and development, embraced all the
forces, including the wind instruments. The
first eight bars of Mozart's symphony are
sufiicient to illustrate the nature of the artistic
tendency. In the firm and dignified beginning
of the principal subject, the strings, with flutes
and bassoons, are all in unison for three bars,
and a good body of wind instruments gives the
full chord. Then the upper strings are left
alone for a couple of bars in octaves, and are
accompanied in their short closing phrase by
an independent full chord of wind instruments,
piano. This chord is repeated in the same form
of rhythm as that which marks the first bars of
the principal subject, and has therefore at once
musical sense and relevance, besides supplying
the necessary full harmony. In the subsidiary
subject by which the first section is carried on,
the quick lively passages of the strings are
accompanied by short figures for flute and
horns, with their own independent musical
significance. In the second subject proper,
which is derived from this subsidiary, an
excellent balance of colour is obtained by pah's
of wind instruments in octaves, answering with
an independent and very characteristic phrase
of their own the group of strings which give
out the first part of the subject. The same
well-balanced method is observed throughout.
In the working out of this movement almost
all the instruments have something special and
relevant of their own to do, so that it is made
to seem as if the conception were exactly
apportioned to the forces which were meant to
utter it. The same criticisms apply to all the
rest of the symphony. The slow movement
has beautiful independent figures and phrases
for the wind instruments, so interwoven with
the body of the movement that they supply
necessary elements of colour and fulness of
harmony, without appearing either as definite
solos or as meaningless holding notes. The
fresh and merry last movement has much the
same characteristics as the first in the matter
of instrumental utterance, and in its workingout
section all the forces have, if anything,
even more independent work of their own to
do, while still supplying their appropriate
ingredients to the sum total of sound.
The succeeding ten years saw all the rest
of the work Mozart was destined to do in the
department of symphony ; much of it showing
in turn an advance on the Paris Symphony,
inasmuch as the principles there shown were
worked out to greater fulness and perfection,
while the musical spirit attained a more definite
richness, and escaped farther from the formalism
which characterises the previous generation.
Among these symphonies the most important
are the following : a considerable one (in E(>)
composed at Salzburg in 1780 ; the 'Haffner'
(in D), which was a modification of a serenade,
and had originally more than the usual group
of movements ; the Linz ' ' Symphony (in G ;
'
No. 6 ') and the last four, the crown of the
;
whole series. The first of these (in D major)
was written for Prague in 1786, .and was received
there with immense favour in Jan. 1787. It
appears to be far in advance of all its predecessors
in freedom and clearness of instrumentation, in
the breadth and musical significance of the
subjects, and in richness and balance of form.
It is one of the few' of Mozart's which open
with an adagio, and that too of unusual proportions
; but it has no minuet and trio. This
symphony was in its turn eclipsed by the three
great ones in E flat, G minor, and C, which
were composed at Vienna in June, July, and
August 1788. These symphonies are almost
the first in which certain qualities of musical
expression and a certain method in their treatment
stand prominent in the manner which
was destined to become characteristic of tlie
great works of the early part of the 19th century.
Mozart having mastered the principle upon
which the mature art-form of symphony was
to be attacked, had greater freedom for the
expression of his intrinsically musical ideas, and
could emphasise more freely and consistently