ABSTRACT
Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote mainly for social and recreative purposes. Their music had beauty in balance and design; its mood was usually cheerful, often even frivolous; at other times it merely touched the fringe of melancholy, and then chiefly for purposes of contrast. It must be remembered, that whereas bulk of Haydn's and Mozart's music was designed for private performance by Court musicians, that of Ludwig van Beethoven, almost from first, had the public in view. It is generally agreed that Beethoven's most important contributions to music were on the constructional side. Beethoven's output for the orchestra contains at least half-a-dozen of the most popular works ever composed for that medium. Volumes have been written on the symphonies alone, and the details concerning their origin, instrumentation, construction, and interpretation, have been set forth with a care and elaboration given to no group of compositions by any other composer.
