MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills: Passage 9 — Flashcards

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The only examples of Joseph Haydn's immense    work that the present generation knows are two or three symphonies, rarely and perfunctorily performed. This is the same as saying that we do not know him at all. No musician was ever more prolific or showed a greater wealth of imagination. When we examine this mine of jewels, we are astonished to find at every step a gem which we would have attributed to the invention of some modern or other. We are dazzled by their rays, and where we expect black-and-whites we find pastels grown dim with time.    

Of Haydn's one hundred and eighteen    symphonies, many are simple trifles written from day to day for Prince Esterhazy's little chapel, when the master was musical director there. But after Haydn was called to London by Salomon, a director of concerts, where he had a , and the instrument was invented to replace the shrill tones that the trumpet lost as it gained in depth of tone.    

Like Gluck, Joseph Haydn had the rare advantage of developing constantly. He did not reach the height of his genius until an age when the finest faculties are, ordinarily, in a decline.    

He astounded the musical world with his Creation, in which he displayed a fertility of imagination and a magnificence of orchestral richness that the oratorio had never known before. Emboldened by his success he wrote the Seasons, a colossal work, the most varied and the most picturesque in the history of ancient or modern music. In this instance the oratorio is no longer entirely religious. It gives an audacious picture of nature with realistic touches which are astonishing even now. There is an artistic imitation of the different sounds in nature, as the rustling of the leaves, the songs of the birds in the woods and on the farm, and the shrill notes of the insects. Above all that is the translation into music of the profound emotions to which the different aspects of nature give birth, as the freshness of the forests, the stifling heat before a storm, the storm itself, and the wonderful sunset that follows. 

Then there is a huntsman's chorus which strikes an entirely different note. There are grape harvests, with the mad dances that follow them. There is    the winter, with a poignant introduction which reminds us of pages in Schumann. But be    reassured, the author does not leave us to the rigors of the cold. He takes us into a farmhouse    where the women are spinning and where the peasants are drawn about the fire, listening to a funny tale and laughing immoderately with a gaiety which has never been surpassed.    

But this gigantic work does not end    without giving us a glimpse of Heaven, for with one grand upward burst of flight, Haydn    reaches the realms where Handel and 69 Beethoven preceded him. He equals them and 70 ends his picture in a dazzling blaze of light.    

— excerpt from Musical Memories by Camille Saint-Saëns