Epilogue

Summary

A complex dynamic of continuity and change for Haydn and Mozart individually and together characterizes 120 years of reception. Mozart gained a reputational upper hand over Haydn in the first decade of the nineteenth century, remaining a step ahead thereafter (at least in terms of volume of scholarship); the Haydn–Mozart–Beethoven progression narrative began as one among several competing representations of the Viennese triumvirate, assumed hermeneutic prominence mid-century, and then subsided; popularly orientated biographies, biographical sketches, and fiction flourished from the early 1800s onwards, bearing especially ripe fruit in the second half of the nineteenth century; big scholarly strides were made for Haydn from the late 1860s, and Mozart in isolated works from the second quarter of the century, for three decades from the mid-1850s onwards and then from 1906; major anniversaries were celebrated to differing extents (Haydn) and in similar and different ways (Mozart), growing out of existing reception-related activities in each case rather than jolting reception to a new level; and both composers came alive for readers, listeners, performers, music lovers, and scholars alike through the publication of letters, other primary-source materials, and ‘new’ works inter alia in complete editions.