Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/93

Rh ever attaining it. I shall not pretend, therefore (for that would be absurd), that the new symphonists broke the old framework and liberated thought from the slavery of form; on the contrary, they established new forms; and it was at this period that the classic types of the sonata and the symphony, as defined to-day in the schools of music, definitely imposed themselves. But although to us these types may have become superannuated, although our modern emotions are inconvenienced and to some extent hampered by them, although they have at last assumed an appearance of scholastic conventionality, we must reflect how free and vital they appeared then, by comparison with the accustomed forms and style. Moreover, we may affirm that to the inventors of these new forms, or to those who first made use of them, they seemed much freer than to those who followed. They had not yet become general; they were still personal to their creators, fashioned according to the laws of their own thought, modelled on the very rhythm of their breathing. I have no hesitation in saying that the symphony of a Stamitz, though less rich, less beautiful, less exuberant, is much more spontaneous than that of a Haydn or a Mozart. It is made to its own measure; it creates its forms; it does not submit to them.

What impulsive creatures are these first symphonists of Mannheim! To the indignation of the old musicians, and above all the pontiffs of northern Germany, they dare to shatter the æsthetic unity of their work, to mix one style with another, and to put into their compositions, as a critic observes, "halting, unmelodious, base, burlesque and dismembered elements, and all the feverish paroxysms 1em