When asked by a friend how it happened that his church music was almost always of an animating, cheerful, and almost festive quality, the great composer, Franz Joseph Haydn, replied: "I cannot make it otherwise. I write according to the thought I feel. When I think upon God my heart is so full of joy that notes dance and leap, as it were, from my pen, and since God has given me a cheerful heart, it will be easily forgiven me that I serve Him with a cheerful spirit."

—Selected