Consider his musical position also. He
was born twenty-seven years before the death of Handel, eighteen before
that of the greatest Bach; Bach was writing gigantic works in the
contrapuntal style and forms; Handel had not composed the chain of
oratorios on which his fame rests. It is conceivable that had Haydn been
born in less humble circumstances, that had he easily reached a high
position, he, too, might have commenced writing fugues, masses and
oratorios on a big scale--and be utterly forgotten to-day. His good luck
thrust him into a lowly post, and by developing the forms in which he
had to compose, and seeking out their possibilities, he became a great
and original man.
It is hard, of course, to say how much any given discoverer actually
discovers for himself, and how much is due to his predecessors and
contemporaries. The thing certain is that the great man, besides finding
and inventing for himself, sums up the others. All the master-works have
their ancestry, and owe something to contemporary works. The only piece
of music I know for which it is claimed that it leaped to light suddenly
perfect, like Minerva from Jupiter's skull, is "Sumer is icumen in," and
almost as many authors have been found for it as there are historians.
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