His will was a wonder of good-feeling and
discretion; and when old he was still glad to make money, that he might
leave more to his poor relatives. He seems always to have been in love
with one lady or another, and it was more by luck than anything else
that he got into no serious scrapes. His method of working was as
regular as his other habits. He sat at the piano extemporizing until he
got his themes into some sort of shape, then he sketched them on paper
and went to lunch. Later in the day he worked them out more fully, and
proceeded to make a finished score. His scores are as neat as
Beethoven's are disgracefully untidy. Haydn's way of composing at the
piano--and it was Mozart's way, and Beethoven's, not to mention
Wagner's--has been condemned by many theorists and theoretical writers.
After seeing many of the compositions of these gentry, I wish they
themselves would find and employ any other method than that they adopt
at present. Haydn's cheerfulness has often been commented on, and it
certainly pervades his music. He was also given to joking, but the one
or two jokes which have been pointed out to me in his music would
nowadays be considered in bad taste if people knew what they were meant
for. Music has no sense of humour, and simply won't countenance it.
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