in the royal household.  This relationship endured into the present century.  Haydn was a Hausofficier of Prince Esterhazy.  As vice-chapelmaster he had to appear every morning in the Prince’s ante-room to receive orders concerning the dinner-music and other entertainments of the day, and in the certificate of appointment his conduct is regulated with a particularity which we, who remember him and reverence his genius but have forgotten his master, think humiliating in the extreme.

[Sidenote:  Beethoven’s Chamber music.]

Out of this cultivation of music in the private chamber grew the characteristics of Chamber music, which we must consider if we would enjoy it ourselves and understand the great reverence which the great masters of music have always felt for it.  Beethoven was the first great democrat among musicians.  He would have none of the shackles which his predecessors wore, and compelled aristocracy of birth to bow to aristocracy of genius.  But such was his reverence for the style of music which had grown up in the chambers of the great that he devoted the last three years of his life almost exclusively to its composition; the peroration of his proclamation to mankind consists of his last quartets—­the holiest of holy things to the Chamber musicians of to-day.

[Sidenote:  The characteristics of Chamber music.]

Chamber music represents pure thought, lofty imagination, and deep learning.  These attributes are encouraged by the idea of privacy which is inseparable from the form.  Composers find it the finest field for the display of their talents because their own skill in creating is to be paired with trained skill in hearing.  Its representative pieces are written for strings alone—­trios, quartets, and quintets.  With the strings are sometimes associated a pianoforte, or one or more of the solo wind instruments—­oboe, clarinet, or French horn; and as a rule the compositions adhere to classical lines (see Chapter V.).  Of necessity the modesty of the apparatus compels it to forego nearly all the adventitious helps with which other forms of composition gain public approval.  In the delineative arts Chamber music shows analogy with correct drawing and good composition, the absence of which cannot be atoned for by the most gorgeous coloring.  In no other style is sympathy between performers and listeners so necessary, and for that reason Chamber music should always be heard in a small room with performers and listeners joined in angelic wedlock.  Communities in which it flourishes under such conditions are musical.

[Sidenote:  Programme music.]

[Sidenote:  The value of superscriptions.]

[Sidenote:  The rule of judgment.]