len:

>Robert W. Shaw writes, re Mozart vs. Haydn:
>
>>Listen to Syms 40 & 41 and what was to come would have been spectacular.
>>Frankly, Haydn never wrote music that sublime.  Cute, funny, and well
>>orchestrated and written, but not that sublime...
>
>Why is it that Haydn gets "dissed" this way so regularly?  The Paris and
>London Symphonies?  The string quartets?

Good question.  I don't really know why, but it seems that Haydn presents
a rather massive barrier to those "unfamiliar" with his music:  three
distinct "epochs" in his output with qualitatively different musical
character, large numbers of works in a variety of forms in each epoch, and
the "diffculty" (for lack of a better word) of his music in that it needs
attention and concentration from the listener to parse its deeper content
apart from its surface features of "cuteness" and "fun." Combined with
competition from Mozart with his overwhelming initial "brightness" and
melodic appeal (not the mention the popular myth of his sublime genius),
all these make it easy for the uninitiated to pooh pooh Haydn.

FWIW, my opinion still is that overall Haydn is a greater composer than
Mozart, even though Mozart's "peaks" often exceed those of Haydn.

Ulvi
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