Bob Draper made a list of Haydn's innovative achievements.  At one level,
Haydn's great achievement, that was acclaimed at once by both the populace
and the cognoscenti, was simply the fulfillment of that humanitarian and
democratic ideal that music should please everyone.

Haydn almost single-handedly forged a musical style that joined galant
elegance and formality with expressiveness and drama.  Haydn's music
retained the Enlightenment ideal of being simple and pleasing.  It was
music that could bring enjoyment and refreshment to the most untutored
music lover.  But it also had an intellectual and emotional depth and
sophistication that prompted Brahms to say that after Haydn writing a
symphony was no joke.

In the end, in one of the great achievements in the history of music, Haydn
fused the elegant and the expressive, the orderly and the capricious, the
formal and the dramatic.

Laus Deo.

Mark