in the dance as indicated by its name “ballad.”  It is a comparatively simple matter to trace its upward course in instrumental music, as such.  It is conceivable that people from remote times on, had the faculty of originating tunes, and of humming and singing them, and dancing to them long before such things as scales and notation were conceived of.  Song and dance must have come into being at the same time, and the earliest dancing was done with a singing accompaniment.  As people advanced in the art and became able to manufacture instruments with which to produce music to dance by, it is readily apparent that those persons who did not dance, derived pleasure from listening to it.  The next step was to play these dance tunes without dancing.  This naturally led to a collection of dance tunes.  By playing three or four in succession it was soon found that a more agreeable effect was produced by selecting those differing in rhythm.  Here we have the suite, the earliest orchestral form.  After a while it was found that a change of key heightened the effect, and, when composing purely orchestral music not intended for actual use in dancing, the more original of the composers at times allowed the strict dance form to fall into abeyance in one or two movements to enable them to try their hand in another style, and also for contrast.  A broadening and augmenting of the different forms and we have the sonata.  The symphony is an enlargement of the sonata.  All our intellectual progress is an unfolding, like a flower from the bud.  We have first an impression, then an opinion, then demonstration.

Many years were to elapse before the next and last symphony was to appear; years in which the ripening process was to go on, and which were to culminate in the Mass in D, the Choral Symphony and the last quartets,—­works that are in a class by themselves in the same sense that the works from the Third Symphony on, up to, and including the Eighth, are in a class apart from the others.  His compositions prior to the Third Symphony are in the style of Mozart and Haydn.  They are the naive utterances of the young musician who does not yet realize that he has a mission to perform; whose ambition was to be ranked with his great predecessors.  Of the works of the second period, it can be said that their most prominent characteristic is gayety (Heiterkeit).  They are not all in this mood, and but rarely is the mood maintained throughout a single work, but it exists to the extent that it dominates it, just as the key-note to his later works is to be found in his mysticism.  The works of the second period are coincident with his best years physically and when his mental powers had reached their highest maturity.  When he found out what manner of man he was and realized the place he was destined to occupy among the great ones of earth; when he had accepted his destiny and had made his peace with himself it is easy to understand how a certain gayety and serenity should have spread itself