Chapter III: Part 3

In the first place--mysteriously great fact--Fate had from the outset given him her own answer, had put into his hands _the_ weapon for defeating her, viz., Genius. Armed with this, he can bide his time, and take all the drawbacks _plus_; especially as with him genius implies, what, properly, it always implies, Valour--or, in the valuable Latin double-sense or many-sense of the word, Virtue. The drawbacks--disagreeables, obstacles, from drunken father, aye, and own character, downward--in no wise fail to come. Amongst the gravest are the physical, deafness; one mixed, unsatisfied heart; and one spiritual, unsatisfied soul--all sunk in the adamantine environment of Fate. But then, as observed, Fate equips her adversary for the battle. And mark how Beethoven quits himself in the encounter. In early morning, in the burden and heat of the day, and by declining sun, he--like every true man, (like the Son of Man, or Brother of Man)--fights Fate with his life; makes his _life_ answer doubts; and queries; and despair, the crucial questions which Fate forces on him. It is in this sense Emerson's saying applies. Beethoven thus answered questions he was not conscious enough to put; as, on the other hand, he also put questions he had not the power to answer--like the nineteenth century itself--questions which the twenty-ninth will probably be seeking a solution for. When Fate buffeted Beethoven at home (bitter mockery!), he worked in the direction, and with the instrument, which nature gave him; when she appeared as grim _Vièrge de Fer_, commanding him to earn his bread, he worked; when she appeared (more cruelly) as syren (mocking him), he worked (not went away and rioted); when--the most unkind cut of all--she made him deaf (him, Beethoven the grandest representation of man for the constituency, Music), he worked harder than ever; and all through the time, down to the end, _when_ he could not, _though_ he could not, satisfy the most irrepressible and unsatisfiable of all inquirers, his own unsettled soul--incapable of _grasping_ eternity, _knowing_ it must exist; incapable of _proving_ immortality, feeling it is the very breath of life and beauty, and must be--from first to last, he worked. For this, he could dispense with going to hear Immanuel Kant; though, assuredly, their understanding of the "Categorical Imperative" was one, viz., Conscience(?). "Two things strike me dumb,--the heavens by night, and the moral law in man." Let Fate knock as she may,--unannounced, her loudest, long-sustained--as in these portentous notes (was ever chord of the dim. 7th so treated--so inspiredly?):--

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in these notes--whose indefinite dwelling seems to say, "I pause for a reply." Fate confronts man--a being _repleto di virtù_; a being bound by will, but with an unique sense of freewill: here she meets consciousness-and-conscience. Her blows are hard; but "a soft answer (the _p_ ensuing) turneth away wrath"--Beethoven turns her blows (_her_ blows) into beauty. I am also here struck by the reflection, that we may consider these as the blows of death (_cum æquo pede_)--_that_ form of fate; and they are answered by the soft whisper--"immortality." This soft whisper rises into storm-loudness, at its grandest (further on), that is, where man cries, "Aye, and though personal immortality be a vain dream, I will be immortal here, and thus answer thee, thou bug-bear, Death! Suffice it for me to be here great and good!"

Mark especially, somewhat further on, after the stormy passage, the strain in the major (E flat). I have no words for its beauty (especially if played _andante_); it is like star-dew fallen into the bosom of a lily. Or, again, "deep answering unto deep," he rises and strikes her back with power. Every depth into which her blows fell him, only confers on this Antæus new power. Though o'er him, in the words of the Greek Beethoven (Aiskulos--in the Greek Macbeth, Agamemnon)--

"Billow-like, woe rolls on woe,
In the light of heaven,"

they

"Cannot bring him wholly under, more
Than loud south-westerns, rolling ridge on ridge,
The buoy that rides at sea, and dips and springs
For ever;"

--to use our own poet's magnificent image--(type, as here applied, of character; or of immortality--the eternal hope of it in man). Such we figure the conduct of this Titan in the stupendous conflict--Titan, who made the very gods tremble:--

"FIALTE.--La nome; e fece le gran prove,
Quando i giganti fer paura ai Dei."--

He conquers, because

"Soleva la lancia
D'Achille e del suo padre esser cagione
Prima di triste e poi di buona mancia,"

to quote the _Italian_ Beethoven; the spear of Achilles, and his father, heals its wounds. The cruel blows of Fate and Temptation (to error and despair) are resisted, cured, and beaten, as before said, by her own gift, or by herself, in the form of character and genius. In the light of the higher reading before-mentioned, Fate, under the terrible but divine form of duty (divine necessity), knocks at man's heart, and bids it open; but that being human--

"Frailty, thy name is Man,"--

hesitates, protests, rebels, in all the strength of selfish passion, of full-armed nature. As before thrown out, the grand lesson (whatever dialect man may speak or think), the tremendous spectacle, is in the Garden of Gethsemane and in Golgotha. Thither we must repair, if we would realize the force of this idea--of this music. In the light of morning we have once again played it (_gewiss_ not like a Rubinstein), and find our words no whit too strong (after orchestral performance one is simply overpowered). We are struck with the impression that it is the most dramatic work, not only in music, but human performance (no painting, even, can so evoke all the feelings of the Cross); and we would use the higher imaginings we have to give our brother musicians an idea of the true greatness, the sacred grandeur, of their art: it knows no rival but poetry.

Let us, then, with a final glance at that stupendous drama, close. Fate, in the thunder-pregnant darkness, over all the cypress-bowers and cedar-glooms, "commends" the fearful chalice to the lips. Ensues the highest of struggles--godlike; but, finally, with the most immortal of earth's words, Character, the softly invincible heroism of self-sacrificing love, the grandeur of filial submission to the Universal Will, conquers; and a strain of seventh-heaven triumph bears away the words--"FATHER, not my will, but Thine be done!" It is the same in the fell scene of Golgotha. As we said, these blows are the nails driven home; _but they cannot nail down the spirit_; and the spouting blood is a fountain of glory; the cross by magic, made the highest symbol of men. Fate may do her worst now--from without or within; temptation was trampled under foot; and, lo! Fate is conquered!--or rather, one with apotheosis and immortality.

THE ANDANTE.

I recollect reading, some one exclaimed, in natural rapture on hearing this andante of andantes (the only rival of the sonata theme in A flat--?) "Oh! what must that man have felt who wrote this!" Yes; felt when he wrote it, and all through life. What inner life was not his! "It comes before me," as the Germans say, that this movement should be played before the distant sea, in the westering sun of a summer's day. Methinks, on its heavenliest of dreams, in view of that suggested sea of immortality, Beethoven's own spirit might pass away; had a sanctioned longing so to do; not in misanthropic disgust (nothing Byronic, _à la_ Manfred) but at peace--with all, all. This is the celestial _Nunc Dimittis_: the life and worship, including work, in the temple--this infinite--is over; the Messiah is come; higher life dawns upon men--therefore, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!"

It is impossible to express, only possible in some sort to feel, the unfathomable peace shadowed forth in this music. Or, again, it is a _Kinderscene_, greater than any of any Schumann. As for "Songs without words," they are tinsel to it. Here is a reverie by one of the highest, dearest, of men, from the summit where he first sees his shadow slope towards the grave, back into the holy dreamland of childhood. Here is its mystic infinitude reflected and shadowed forth by a heart that almost dies in the process for yearning and love. _Dies heisst Sehnsucht, dies Liebe!_

If Shakespeare, in his marvellous serenity, implies all the storms fought out beforehand (a description difficult to mend); here we have, at least, "the Peace of God which passeth understanding" (is superior to--as Goethe reads it--as well as, baffles), when they _have_ been fought out by the man, the sight of whom struggling with adversity (inner as well as outer, faults of character as well as blows of fate) benefits the gods. Here we have a spirit sunk in such peace as Petrarch's departed Laura speaks of--

"Mio ben non cape in intelletto umano"--

in the sphere Mamiani's "Ithuriel" describes, where there reigns an eternal

"Santa armonia di voglie e di pensieri"--

sacred harmony of thought and will--which is the eternal desideratum, which so few men have, even the greater ones; sphere wherein our Beethoven himself, that

"Anima alpestre,"

storm-tossed soul, buffeted spirit, out of harmony with himself and others, did not most reside (Shakespeare, on the contrary, did--seemed a _native_ of it, nay, dwelling _in_ it, and speaking _thence_ of the tragedies and annoys of earth); but of whose profoundest heart in compensation he knew the deepest secret, in whose bosom's centre he nestled (in his happy hours), repairing thither from the disgusts and battles of the world, or expatiating in the blessed hope of everlasting life, after the raging conflict of doubts and queries, to whose inmost holy of holies he penetrated, and was welcomed; he, the wayward child--to extend the idea--leaving all his toys, and running in a passion of sobs to the Eternal Bosom, with a more peculiar smile than that other who dwelt for ever in its courts, or lingered round his mother's (the Madonna's) knee; for Mozart I fancy the Mother's favourite, Beethoven the Father's; o'er Mozart's music one would inscribe this--

"Madre, fonte d'amore
Ove ogni odio s'ammorza
Che su dal ciel tanta dolcezza stille,"

but over Beethoven's--

"Ma sovra Olimpo ed Ossa
Trona il gran Giove."

Here, in this andante of andantes, we have, as in the bosom of spring after the storms of winter--as over cerulean seas in a southern clime after them,--that effluence, which is like the satisfaction of a good conscience; that breath which went up from the dominated ocean, when One said--"Be Still!"

THE ALLEGRO.

"_Quando Giove fu arcanamente giusto._"
"_Ich glaube, nur Gott versteht unser Musik._"

These two mottoes, from Dante and Jean Paul, give some sort of expression to the feelings excited by this music--music which makes rather premature that offer of a premium for a new epithet, at Symphony, No. 2. And yet it is distinctly the same Beethoven here, only full grown; not only serpent-strangling, but hydra-killing and labour-doing Hercules. Jove, left for ever the society of the nymphs, and speaking from the central throne, _orcanamente giusto_. One is certain, Beethoven himself could not have _explained_ this music; there is such a mysterious pregnancy in it, such a holy ominousness (if not played too fast), such a shadowy sorrow, such other-world tones of pathos and resolution and triumph. This is a message the prophet does not dream of daring to try and comprehend; an utterance which oracle itself would never attempt to explain. This is the sort of music Jean Paul alluded to, when he declared that it was above our own understanding, clear only to the Divine. This is the sort of music which might illustrate his sublime utterance, "Women are beautiful, because they suffer so much." Here (once more), we have the Invisible Host chaunting in almost appalling mournfulness round the cross, or the tomb--"It is over; it is over. The Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief! Thus have they 'done to death' their Highest among them!" But then--

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ensues such high retrospect and encouragement--

"Love bears it out even to the end of doom;"

then such angelic clamour of triumph--"O grave, where is thy victory! O death, where is thy sting?" This, too, is a walk "over the field of battle by night" (Marx, _re_ the Funeral March, _Eroica_); but it is another battle-field than a Napoleonic one--the world is the field, and Heroic Love has gone down on it, like a cloven star at sea. The world is the field, and the highest and the lowest in us doing battle therein, amidst heaps of slain. Poor humanity!

It has been a fearful conflict. What do we not deplore? But, lo! as the infernal volumes roll sluggishly away, as though loth to quit the hateful banquet, high above all an unspeakable orb shines through, the orb of promise and peace. "Ach!" poor man, there is enough, indeed, to root pessimism in thee; evil seems to have nestled in every pore; life seems to try how hard she can make it to live; thou thyself shudderest at thy self; art tortured by appetites, goaded by passions, infested by thoughts, distracted by doubts, almost driven to despair. But, no! do _not_ despair. Progress is slow, but sure. All is justified at last; and higher life lightens in the dawn. Nay, even if thy dearest hope be a dream--that word too great for any mouth, Immortality--be good (great and strong) _here; that_, if not so happy, is a still higher immortality--

"Then what could death do, if thou should'st depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?"

In such a sea of thoughts--such a thousand-path'd forest--does Beethoven's music plunge us; such a branching piece of the Infinite is it. For the rest, apart from ideas and images, the mere notes have an eternal self-charm. Who fore-ordered this collocation and sequence? Who suggested these harmonious mysteries? How minor and major here phrase and fall together! Never did they do so before; rarely will they do so again. Beethoven was a divine kaleidoscope in a divine hand.

* * * * *

The _fugato_ page takes us into another order of ideas. Here it would almost seem as though tragedy, which threatened to take entire possession of the spirits, were shaken off, and cheerful activity resumed. Here we seem to have the chase, or a military _festival_, or the resolute alacrity which precedes a patriotic war. The climax, those _klingende_ concords, in C _alt._, are very fresh and brilliant; and the imitation is a very interesting characteristic bit of Beethoven (proof amongst many that he studied Handel, if he studied anybody); nevertheless, though the resumption of the original inspired motive is simply grand (peculiar to Beethoven), a slightly uncomfortable feeling is occasioned by this music, in juxtaposition with its predecessor. A certain violence seems done to us; we feel "Is not this rather an incongruous intercalation?" Contrast it certainly is, and excellent in itself; but, had it not been better to have left it out altogether? nay, to have been content with the wonderful allegro as it stood--in those continent bars sublime, and not to be eclipsed. Are we not here too suddenly transported from sub-tropical to temperate zone; or, rather, from some undiscovered inter-world, where is the highest discourse on the

"Issues of Life and Death"

to every-day life? In any case, the music is curiously lighter than the preceding; nay, almost suggests the thought that Beethoven might have here made use of a more youthful idea. And, in strict justice, we must say, it is below the level--if not, indeed, unworthy of, incompatible with, this stupendous symphony. In one word, it does not seem to exist of inner necessity (the eternal test), like its marvellous predecessor: it was written, but not inspired.

THE FINALE.

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This, rather than, as Marx says, the last movement of Symphony No. 2, might be designated the finale of finales (?)--"The most sublime chaunt of triumph ever pealed forth by an orchestra." _Multum in parvo_ I have put a mark against the D, because that one touch (of nature) makes all the difference; nay, I had almost said, stamps the passage. Substitute a B, and the emphasis is lost, together with the originality. Nevertheless, the movement is hardly of equal value throughout; it has its "worser half;" and is also, unfortunately, too long. As in so many other cases, ideas are repeated, repeated already. But this is not the worst; the worst is, that the overwhelming effect of the stupendous burst is seriously impaired. It should have

"Smitten once, to smite no more."

This terrible "elaboration," so superfluously "necessary"; such a fancied _sine quâ non_! Here, we must seriously repeat the protest against the conventional custom; nay, almost raise the question, whether it is not rather a reproach to Beethoven (the original) that he did not get out of this thoughtless old groove. Here, the idea did not extrude the form, but rather _con_formed to it; was, as it were, poured into the traditional mould. But the form should be the eventuation of the idea, of the germ-soul ("_pensiero di Dio_"), as in a living organism (tree, _e.g._, or man).[A] With regard to the "worser half" we ventured to speak of, it is simply, as in so many cases, even in Beethoven himself, and notably (as we have so often felt) in the _Lieder ohne Worte_; there, very rarely is the second motive equal to the first; the first _was motive_--the "germ-soul," inner necessity of the piece, _perforce_ giving birth to it; the second was factitious. In the present case, does not this subject--

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seem really trifling (nay, almost jiggy) by the side of the grand opening, so broad and victorious? We are rather reminded of that traditional movement, whose ambling hilarity is our special horror, viz., the Rondo--we hope by now decently dead and buried; nay, we think, too, of the Sonata in G (Op. 31). This unlucky subject seems to us as unworthy its glorious predecessor as the last movement of that sonata is unworthy of the first--that burst of inspiration, like water from the rock, rolling on into broad _Symphonische Dichtung_. (In the course of the present _motiv_, consecutive octaves are prominent). A little further on--one bar and a half, true Beethoven, is worth a page of such undignified _Tonspiel_. It is one of those bars which convey a "shock of delight" whenever they catch the musician's eye--

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[A] Neither can we but regret the re-introduction of the "allegro" subject; that sublime idea had already done its true work (as we feel), and there only remained to break into one overwhelming burst of triumph, and then an end.

Few pleasures could be more elegant than to extend such an idea _ad lib._ as an andante on the organ. (We can imagine its effect as a prelude in some old rural church--say on a mellow Sunday afternoon).

Another notable point is, the "grinding out" (long before Berlioz) of the minor second against the tonic; an effect of extraordinary resolution and power--

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eloquently expressive, indeed, of a determination to bear it out against the shocks of doom. In this and other traits, we have the true Beethoven--such spiritual energy as (except in Handel, and with him it was less human) had not yet been dreamt of; such suffering in strife, and yet such glorying in it; such temptations in the wilderness (of his own heart, as well as elsewhere); such final victorious success! And, here we are brought back into our old more genial vein and strain; we forget the spots on the sun, and lose ourselves in his overpowering effulgence. This "_erhabensten Triumphgesang_" is, to us, that of resurrection; when the ponderous lid was burst from within with light, which at once--so the great fancy expatiates--redoubled the splendour of day all over the world. Handel's selected words--nay, and very remarkably, the great flash-of-chorus itself (one could, indeed, imagine it as having suggested Beethoven's, they are so much alike)--come into the mind,--

"By Man came also the Resurrection of the Dead."

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And these--

"LA RISURREZIONE."

"Viva l'eterno Dio: sconfilto e vinto
D'Averno il crudo regnator sen giace:
L'empio pur sente il fiero braccio avvinte.
E l'aspra morte abbassa it ciglio, e tace.
Cade all'uom la catena onde fu cinto
Per fallo antico di pensiero audace:
Iddio, dell'nom vendicatore ha vinto!
Il ciel canta vittoria, e annunzia pace.
Io veggo gia sovra l'eterea mole
Erger di Croce trionfale insegna,
Primo terror d'ogni tartarea trama.
E veggo in alto soglio il sommo Sole,
Che a regnare in eterno ov'egli regna
I redenti mortali aspetta, e chiama."

In Teutonic language, which finds in the highest imaginings only the symbol and apotheosis of human worth and endeavour; which believes, indeed, that by man came and comes the resurrection from the dead; and which regards that life as the most priceless page in human history, to be for ever applied and interpreted by sympathy at will; and first becoming truly divine when we regard it as truly human--in Teutonic thought and dialect, we will conclude with this eloquent and intrinsic application to the greatest of Beethoven's symphonies:--"Nohl names the work the musical Faust of the moral will and its conflicts; a work whose progress shows that there is something greater than Fate, namely, Man, who, descending into the abysses of his own self, fetches counsel and power wherewith to battle with life; and then, re-inforced through his conviction of indestructible oneness with the god-like, celebrates, with dythyrambic victory, the triumph of the eternal Good, and of his own inner Freedom."

THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY, NO. VI, OP. 68.

"Here (in Heiligenstadt, near Vienna, in the summer of 1808, lying by the brook with nut-trees, listening to the birds singing), I wrote the 'Scene by the Brook,' and the goldhammers there up above me, the quails and cuckoos round about me, helped compose."--Beethoven to Schindler. These last words throw a light on the oft-abused passage where the birds are imitated. We should not judge a Beethoven hastily--especially not assign to his action low grounds. We here see that the passage was not introduced in mere material imitation, but rather as a genial tribute and record; _so_ the passage becomes beautiful, and the opposite of superficial. Emerson says, "Yon swallow weaving his straw into his nest should weave it into my poem." No doubt, in the savage--in his passionate love of freedom and roaming--we already find the germ of the poetic love of nature; and some two thousand years ago we find such sublime celebration as this (and what ages of evolution does it imply!)--

"As when in heaven the stars about the morn
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest."--Iliad (Tennyson).

"A rock-wall'd glen, water'd by a streamlet,
And shadowed o'er with pines."--Euripides (Milman).

"Yon starry conclave
Those glorious dynasts of the sky, that bear
Winter and summer round to mortal man."

--Aiskulos (Idem).

"Smooth lies the surface of the purple seas,
Nor curl'd, nor whiten'd, by the gentle breeze;
No more, hoarse dashing from the breakers steep,
The heavy waves recoil into the deep;
The zephyrs breathe, the murm'ring swallow weaves
Her straw-built chamber 'neath the shadowy eaves."

--Agathias (Idem).

And yesterday, was written--

"Vesuvius wears his brilliant plume
Above a sun-lit dome of snow;
And darkly thro' the illumin'd gloom
Extends his mighty base below:
On Mount St. Angelo's ponderous crest,
And in his furrows, snow, too, sleeps;
Great glitt'ring clouds are piled o'er that:
All rises out of glamourous deeps;

For, glinting up, thro' olive bowers,
And many an arm-outstretching tree,
Is the sun-tipt, early-winter-morning,
Slumberous, breathing sea."

In the sister arts--sister graces--painting and music, down to Turner and the Turner of music, Beethoven (he also would have given us the Python slaying Apollo, and the going home of the Teméraire, the Plague of Darkness, Æneas leaving Carthage, and Italy, Ancient and Modern: Schumann, too, is very Turner-like, perhaps more so, has more of that mystical glamour--Beethoven, like Rembrandt, only ideal); in the sister arts, Nature could not fail to be celebrated, or rather let us say ideally reproduced, and even transfigured, through the geniuses of these arts, her eldest children--nay, herself (made man). In Beethoven, then--a tone-poet, German, and _born on the Rhine_, at, perhaps, its grandest part--as we might expect, this worship and celebration of nature, this apotheosis in tone, culminates. Her sweetness and her grandeur, coloured, too, by his own Beethoven-soul, are by him sublimely revealed--in many a page and passage dear to the sympathetic knower. It was, then, impossible that Beethoven should _not_ write (betitled or not) a Pastoral Symphony; and this, if only as one manifestation of his (like nature) many-sidedness. Moreover, though the Greek poesy reads as fresh as if written yesterday, nevertheless nature-worship, such as we understand it--an overpowering sense of her mysticism, a rapturous _losing_ of ourselves in her--seems a thing not only specially Teutonic and modern, but modern even among the Teutonic peoples themselves, dating after the Reformation; and, indeed, almost as though nature-worship was to supply the place of religion (in the narrow sense, worship of an anthropomorphic maker of nature), rapture in her to supply the place of religious rapture, no longer possible; if so, a beautiful ordinance! Hence, then, if we go a little way below the surface, the present masterpiece, Beethoven's universally favourite (though far from greatest, indeed, the Symphony in D is superior--much more powerful, especially the first movement, and at least equally fresh) "Pastoral Symphony." It does not, indeed (at least the opening allegro), celebrate that peculiar, that sacred sentiment we have been speaking of; it does not utter the unutterable, but it is a true and lovely nature-poem nevertheless, worthy of all acceptation; without it the splendid series of symphonies would have been incomplete. Let us approach it.

What STRIKES us in this "household-word" work, especially in the first movement, is its significant simplicity. It is wonderful, as revealing to us how _profoundly_ simple a great man can be, and is; sublime in that, as well as in his opulence and power; indeed, simplicity is an inevitable concomitant and _sine quâ non_ of power; even in a Napoleon, let alone a Shakespeare, a Newton, and a Beethoven.

So simple is the allegro, that it almost seems studiously so--almost as though Beethoven thereby wished to convey a reproach, at least a monition, to the artificial, and said, "Thus I hold the mirror up to Nature!" Musically, the piece (as it has always seemed to us) rather suffers by this. The ideas are more than usually re-repeated; and, remarkably, reiterations (though perhaps there was a psychological reason for this in the soul of Beethoven, as instinctively expressive, over and over again, of the one great joy he felt, or as saying--"After all, the essence and compelling spirit of this great Nature is one"). Moreover, the ideas, though in themselves beautifully pure and characteristic, seem almost _too_ simple, nay we had almost said languid, for they rather suggest to us the gratification of a convalescent than of a passionately profound (aye, and profoundly passionate) lover of nature, such as all Germans are, such as Schumann intensely was, and such as Beethoven must have exceptionally been. (Brendel says, Haydn's love of nature, as revealed in his music, was that of her very child, unconscious; Beethoven's, that of a town-dweller, conscious. But to this I would reply, town-dweller by compulsion). On the other hand, if Beethoven wished to enter a protest against _Schwärmerei_, for nature, none could be more effective than this movement. But nature ever was and remains mystic, and no celebration of her, above all by a Beethoven, can satisfy us which does not shadow forth, is not overpowered by, a sense of this--sense peculiar to this latter age; more so, even, than the similar companion-sense of love. Love without _Schwärmerei_ were not love; no more is love of nature. For these profounder realizations of nature, "glances into the deepest deeps of beauty," (Carlyle, on the remark about "the lilies of the field") reflected adumbrations of her wizardry, a sense of her intoxicating aroma, the ecstasy in her bosom, that mesmerizing infinitude of hers, we must look to Beethoven's sonatas, or other portions of his symphonies; and to such music as Schumann's; hardly in his Pastoral Symphony (except somewhat in the andante); more in his Pastoral Sonata--_that_ first movement is _profound_, as well as richer. There we see the poet-philosopher, nay, high-priest of nature; and the movement, four-square, almost perfect, is one of the masterpieces, and most precious legacies of Nature's Eldest Child. In the present movement we have peaceful pleasure, but not rapture, if even joy, or delight (in the Sonata Pastorale we have contemplative joy)--though Beethoven may possibly have expressly chastened the expression of feeling, as being, so, more "pastoral." Be that as it may, here we have sweetness rather than power (except, indeed, behind all); nay, rather the gratification of an habitual dweller in the country (and he no longer a young man), than the burst of rapture we might have expected from a lover of nature only just let loose from town. However, Beethoven _has_ written over the movements--"_Awakening_ of cheerful emotions on arrival in the country." He further said, the symphony was feeling rather than painting. This is a matter of course from a Beethoven; and note, it is a Beethoven's feelings that are depicted. What we have in the work is Nature _plus_ Beethoven--nature photographed after passing through him, and so becoming idealised. We have, however, both scene-painting and soul-painting through the emotions here excited and described; we see also the landscape which to a great extent occasioned them; (thus, this, like Goethe's, is an occasional poem). It is a truly pastoral district; quiet, sunny scenery, with a scent of the earliest hay; but nature in her splendour, with, say, in the distance, the great sea; nature, a blaze of flowers embosomed in hills, as in our own beautiful England in May; let alone nature in spring, with her background of Alps and Appenines. Nature, whose greatest hint--the secret of whose greatest power is, Immortality; a promise of that is hardly here celebrated; or, rather, that hint is not, for it is in every landscape:--"I, too, have looked upon the hills in their hazy veil, but their greatest charm, to me, was their promise." Neither, in spite of Elterlein's charming allusion, have we the scenery where, or the time when (_soust_) as Goethe so truly, sublimely expresses it (in two of his most inspired lines)--

"_Stürzte_ sich der Himmelsliebe Kuss
Auf mich herab in ernsber Sabbath stille."

When Beethoven wrote this music he had not in mind his revered Shakespeare's magnificent--

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heaving alchemy."

This, rather, the immortal Symphony in A suggests; or such lines as these:--

"My other mighty passion was for thee,
Thou glimmering, glamouring, manifestation of God!
Unspeakable Nature, with thy distant sea,
Wave-framing hills, dim woods, and flowery sod;
My haziest, sweetest memories, are of you,
Where inland-county beauty guards its stream;
Oh! 'violet' memory 'dim' with _my_ tears' dew;
Oh! shadowy pausing, touch'd with earliest beam;
And sea-side recollections stir my heart,
The calm's majestic cheerfulness, the storm,
The bluff that through the vapours seem'd to start,
A thousand miracles of tint and form;
And ever as I yearn'd on wave and hill,
The unconscious secret was thy Promise still."

The "Scene by the Brook"--

"I draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river;
Men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever."

(exquisite image of immortality bearing along mortality)--is richer in significance. There, indeed, we do get some of those deep glimpses, far glances (and tender ones into flower-cups)--those unspeakable hints (note especially, as usual, the passage in the extra-poetic key of G flat; where, however, also as usual, Beethoven lingers too little; indeed, even he seems rather to _deviate_ into such keys, and to be afraid of dwelling in them). We see Beethoven, the colossally _un_happy soul, here at least happy, nay, blessed; lapped in flowers; caressed by the stream; soothed and tended by all the "angels and ministers of grace" of nature; while the everlasting heaven pronounces its benediction over him.

For our own part, we are specially affected, because we call to mind a brook where we also were wont to be happy. But, it was not in quiet scenery, but in a Swiss mountain-valley; the brook came from heaven, and coursed through pine-woods and pastures into a stupendously beautiful lake, the shadows of whose mighty guardian Alps are reflected also in the Moonlight Sonata; while, afar off, as it were in colossal admonition, towered those eternal reminders, the peaks of the Bernese Oberland.

The Scherzo has always seemed to us an inspiration--as much as the storm; so original and powerful, so tuneful in its picturesque, spontaneous gaiety. It is Beethoven at his genialist. The sublimity of the storm may speak for itself: I will only remark, in reply to the German Hume, who rather cavils and carps, and is no Beethoven-worshipper (but Mozart), and says "the cause for such a very loud storm is too trifling"--that the storm _also_ perchance broke over crowned heads and the fate of empires (Napoleon died in a storm, and so, just as curiously characteristic, did Beethoven). Storms do, too, come up in the brightest summer day (without or within us); and, in short, though the criticism is truly philosophical, that it should be left doubtful whether the storm was a physical or moral one--of nature or human nature--Beethoven, as ever, is entitled to a genial interpretation, a liberal application. In the meanwhile, _as_ a storm--storm of music, as well as musical storm--it is as grand as original; shaking us with the fullness of those sublime emotions of the natural storm (and surely our German Hume would not disparage these!), and its introduction is a happy felicity.

_Beethoven's_ "Lobgesang," which concludes the work, is very noble in its unstudied beauty, expressing "pious and grateful feelings" by unsophisticated men after storm. The treatment of the greatly-simple theme is a masterpiece and model. Here is Wagner anticipated, but not spoilt! To sum up: the first movement, very exceptionally, is the weakest of all; and the whole work, though a treasure of its own, coming from Beethoven, revealing him as singularly loveable, is in no way so surpassing as to preclude the attempt by a follower also to compose a Pastoral Symphony. We conclude with Herr Elterlein's summary of the work--very charming, although he finds in the allegro considerably more than we do.

"A refreshing morning breeze greets us; we have left behind the crowds and walls of the town. We are in the mood of Faust, on the sunny Easter spring morning. At first we are in silent rapture, the climax is not yet reached, Nature's myriad living voices do not at once re-echo in our inmost spirit. The farther we wander, the more natural beauties open up and greet us, the more multifarious becomes the scene. In proportion as the variety becomes richer, and the impression of this divine beauty--(_Gottesnatur_--German ought to be _known by every musician_, and read in the original, because their pregnant, often pantheistic, shades of expression, become lost in English; or, if 'transcribed,' are 'not English')--deeper, the more our rapture swells to utmost joy. Now, we perfectly revel (_schwelgen ganz_) in the full feast; entirely abandon ourselves to the impressions of absolute Nature; completely at one with ourselves, in this kingdom, we feel ourselves at one with her.

"We have now reached the acmé of enthusiasm; our soul trembles in silent ecstasy; involuntarily the desire awakes in us, after expatiating in the universal beauty of Nature, to contemplate and enjoy her still life and operations in intimate communion.

"Therefore, the scene changes in the second movement. We are transplanted to a peaceful woodland vale, through which a brook babbles. _'Scene am Bach_,' the tone-picture is also called by the master; it is elaborated out in the most thoughtful manner, and displays before us, in the richest, fullest colours, the murmur of the brook, the rustling of the swayed tree-tops, and the song of the birds. At last the brook is still, the trees rustle no more; we have already once said farewell to the soft babbling that long kept us spell-bound--quail, cuckoo, and nightingale are alone still heard.--(Beautifully imagined!) as it were, also saying 'farewell' to the sympathetic wanderer up the vale; who, only another human form of them, had stayed so long with them, loving them like their brother, enchanted by their song--enchanted in Nature's bosom. This way of putting it (of receiving it) is only another proof of the non-materialism, non-superficialism, nay, of the beauty of this passage (withal, quite brief--_only introduced at the end_); and a proof of the value and necessity of sympathetic audition of a Beethoven's works. (Only a poet--never Dryasdust--can rightly criticise a poet).

"In the third movement the scene is again changed. We find ourselves in meadows. The characteristic multiformity of this piece would have told us its meaning, without the master's words. So, too, the storm--those tones full of fearful, dark sublimity. At last, the tempest and its fury cease, only in the distance the thunder still growls; the blue sky again opens up, the evening sun casts its mild light o'er the landscape--(genial thought)--enlivened by shepherds whose shalm now sounds.

"The fourth movement, therefore, is dedicated to 'Shepherd's Song,'--'pious and grateful feelings after the storm.' The grateful strains begin softly, then swell ever more and more to topmost joy, pouring forth at their climax an intense, solemn, and yet again such a plain, simple thank-offering to Nature's Creator."

SYMPHONY, NO. 7, OP. 92.

In this magnificent symphony, the most picturesque of all, Beethoven seemed to have taken a new lease of originality. It is specially instructive and encouraging on that account; and, amongst other evidences, makes us weigh, whether his "third manner" (whereof this may be considered the noble isthmus that joins those continents), was really progress or decay, or a dubious transition step to something higher. However, the work is reckoned among those of his second manner, and so is certainly a potent argument for those who, with enlightened honesty (and not Philistine blindness), feel that Beethoven's second style is, _par excellence_, Beethoven--whether Wagner began or not where Beethoven left off. _Apropos_ of Wagner, does not this "Poco Sostenuto" call to mind that Wizard of the South's famous morçeaux in "Lohengrin," in the same key? Is not the style--nay, the motiv--much the same?--

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There seems something of the same _mysticism_, though Beethoven is not tainted with the morbidness one scents in Wagner; seems, as a whole, broader, nobler, more _natural_, more truly deep; in a word, more healthy, and therefore greater, notwithstanding Wagner's undoubted genius, and still more stupendous energy for which we most envy him. This opening theme has a powerful tranquility about it--like that, say, of some Epaminondas; seems, as it were, an assurance and announcement that Beneficence, at bottom and after all, is paramount in this stupendous paradox and discrepancy called the universe; notwithstanding, it seems to go on to say, the ground-bass of storm, on and over which true heroism will ever ride (_re-entry of the theme ff_); notwithstanding the painfulnesses, which are only subtler proofs and manifestations of self-justified righteousness and power--most sublime in its subtlest judgments--as the private life of every self-strict person knows. Then, a new theme--fragment of the same essential peace--enters; curiously (and beautifully) reminding us of that early, early work of Beethoven's (Oh, Rhine-lad, written _how_ long ago!), the Sonata in C dedicated to Haydn--

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but gaining by being slow.

But "action, action, action," which these climbing basses--("And ever climbing up the climbing wave"), "life is painfully real,"--seem to say, soon break in again on this Elysian dream. It re-appears, however, like a heavenly messenger, holding us spell-bound, in a trance or veritable dream, whereof these two conflicting elements form the chief apparitions; conflicting, yet viewed largely, harmonious, like their counterparts in that oneness, Life,--whose painfulnesses are as much a _necessary_ part of it, as discords are of entire music.

THE VIVACE.

Great pictures--pictures of great action (like the actions themselves)--represent the moral qualities behind. Hence, many a page of music, eminently of Beethoven, may be objectively or subjectively interpreted, or both. It is the usual practice, and a natural one, to regard the "Eroica" symphony as objective, and the C minor as subjective--both illustrating the grand abstract fact, Conflict. The _vivace_ of the A major symphony _strikes_, no less, as objective. There is a ringing cheerfulness about it that suggests no spiritual struggles, psychological battle, but the open air and its beloved objects--by no means excluding the world's great foreground feature, man; rather, pre-eminently presenting and illustrating him, and this from your Beethoven, the intensely subjective soul. Intensely subjective, yes! far more so,--more grandly so,--than your Byron; more _characteristically_ so than Shakespeare; but, nevertheless--nay, therefore--also more truly, nobly objective than the former, kin with the latter (Turner is greater than Rosa).

It is impossible to overstate the bright, the exhilarating impression of these tones. Here we at once revel in the outer world, in all the

April of its prime,

and feel ourselves magically strung up to virile deeds, to face the "rugged Hyrcanian boar"--"to do or die." Here the ringing woodland of feudal times is around us, and all the panoply, pride, pomp, and circumstance of a royal chase. The motto of Stephen Heller's admirable "Chasse" was very apt, which records how the French monarch, plunged in gloom by the death of his beloved, seeks distraction in the chase. Sir Walter--of our erst beloved "Ivanhoe"--comes sweeping through the mind; a rush of joy almost to tears. We see Garth, born thrall of Cedric, and the Jester in the gladed woodland; and there, at the glittering jousts (even more so) the heavenly Rebecca, Rowena, the Hero, and the Knight Templar; Jew and Christian; plumèd knight and lovely dame. This music is Ivanhoe, not forgetting the glamour of the Crusades, with knight and Saracen, and the breath of the Holy Land through it. Here is the chivalry of warriors, who fought for the Cross; in an age--so different from ours--when there was a frenzy of belief (thus we be-soul our objective); here is a phalanx of Bayards _sans peur et sans reproche_, inflamed with passion of hatred and love, _en route_ to storm their way to Calvary. This is the picture to fill our mind with; though we may also think of this glorious music as painting forth the Conqueror William, breaking up the chase to invade Harold's England, as being rock'd over thither on crisp seas in knight-throng'd vessels, gallant with streaming pennon; though we may also think of Ferdinand going out to welcome Columbus (in our copy, at the passage in G minor we have ejaculated, "Our Columbus"--Beethoven!--"has found a New World"), of Cortes and Pizarro invading Mexico (copper-coloured men and tropical scenery we may also conjure up); or, again, of Philip and his pompous Armada--of Elizabeth and English chivalry preparing to greet him. But that picture of the Crusades best suits us. So our nothing-if-not-religious Beethoven, the glorious genius, in the name of music, whose High Priest he was (and whom other great spirits serve), concerned only to pour forth what streamed into him; or rather, concerned only to let it stream through him (for it is certain he did not intentionally celebrate and pourtray all that his mighty music suggests, however the Germans may stamp it as Intellectual Music, _die Musik des Geistes_), so our hardly-entreated, much-bound, but triumphant immortal shadowed forth, on canvas made of air, pictures surpassing Angelo and Raphael--pictures that only a painter-Shakespeare could surpass or rival--pictures that have the material splendour and _éclat_ of a Rubens, the intense originality of a Rembrandt, _plus_ a _soul_ behind and within them, which only higher spirits than they can glimmeringly reveal. We have but to repeat, that these tone-pictures have always a charm _plus_ (or even apart from), viz., that of the tones themselves. Our interpretation of this master-movement is the same as that of Marx Nohl and Elterlein (whom we should _like_ to quote at length). Wagner's idea, genially understood, is also acceptable. That gifted despot "finds in the Symphony the apotheosis of the Dance _der in Tönen idealisch verkörperten Leibesbewegung_." Yes, it is a dance that sings; high dance and song together, as at some Pindar-celebrated Festival of Apollo; nay, of some ideal, some skylark soul of joy, not so much convinced of, as absolute lyrical part of, and one with the All; and threatening to melt for very rapture in its bosom. The Dance!--that is applicable enough, too! What a majestic _pas de deux_ is this ever advancing and retiring Day and Night! What a stately minuet the Four Seasons! The river dances to the sea; the blood (of the lover-poet) dances in the veins; what a wild waltz of elements we have!--galop of the north wind; the very sea as it were dances in prolonged rhythmic sway, "_molto maestoso_," to the all-compelling moon; nay, the moon and stars themselves, with stupendous majesty "keep time" to their "music of the spheres" through space; and the great rhythm of obedience--action and re-action, attraction and repulsion--is the grand universal law.

Such are some of the lessons and suggestions of this curiously happy, magnificently pregnant rhythmic movement of Beethoven's; his first great performance in his new lease of originality--great step on the new road to immortality. The motive itself, truly a motive, is as exquisitely tuneful and simple (how great was Beethoven in not straining after effect!) as _grossartig_; and, _en passant_, it has only to be compared for our instruction for one moment with Mendelssohn's "Song without words." "The Chase," in the same key and time, Book I, to show the _striking_ superiority of Beethoven; nay, their generic difference--Mendelssohn was talent, and Beethoven genius. The grandiose breadth, the unstudied inspiration (cause of the former) is essentially, fatally absent in Mendelssohn, say what his fascinated devotees may! It is with him almost all talent and fancy, not oracle and prophecy. He is only a nephew of Beethoven's, Schumann his "well-beloved" son (as Wagner is of Schumann).

I should be wrong not to give some of Herr Elterlein's ideas. After citing Wagner's notion, and repudiating it (naturally enough, unless one gives due weight to the word apotheosis, and due interpretation to the word dance), he alludes to (and also rejects as premature) the notion of Alberti, and others, that the symphony is an "announcement of German triumph and enthusiasm at their freedom at length from the French yoke." He then says, "Marx and Nohl seem to us to come nearer the truth, when the former finds embodied in the symphony the life of a southern people, especially of the Moorish race in ancient Spain,"--(picturesquely suggestive this; only does not the key-colouring seem rather too cool? have we not Teutonic brilliance rather than Oriental?)--"and the latter" (Herr Dr. Nohl), "_ritterliche Festpracht_" in general (the festival splendour of chivalry). He continues:--"We also, the more and more profoundly we have entered into this creation, have become clearer convinced, that, as in the "Eroica," we have displayed political heroism, battling and victorious; in the C minor symphony, the moral conflicts and triumphs of man; so in the A major symphony, we behold the manifold life and phenomena (_Lebensströmungen_) of a chivalrous, imaginative, hot-blooded people, in the full enjoyment of their health and power." We fancy one might prefix Goethe's words--

"_Im_ vollgewühl, im lebensregen Drange
Vermischte sich die thätige Völkerschaar."

("In lusty swarms, crowds full of life,
The deedful peoples intermixed.")

"To arms! is now the word--arms and harness; and forwards to the peaceful jousts in the fair land. And now, how all hearts at first lightly thrill! then pulses beat ever higher; the crowds muster; the warrior horsemen curvet and gambol on slender steeds; pennons glitter, armour dazzles, swords flash in the sun; and the motley swarms stream forth pell-mell, not to bloody battle, like the hero-spirits of the "Eroica,"--no, but the peaceful tournament!"

The scherzo and finale ("a sort of Bacchus triumph"--?) we shall abstain from discussing (they are of much less intrinsic import than the first two movements); but conclude with a glance at the greatest movement of all (with creditable and instinctive instinct almost always redemanded) the allegretto; first, however, citing two remarkable passages from the finale, worthy the attention of those correspondents of the _Musical Standard_ on "False Notation," especially of that one "whose memory could not serve him whether such a passage occurred in the masters":--

[Music] This repeatedly and persistently occurs; and it would have been gratifying had Beethoven indicated what he meant by it:--"Bacchusfest?"--or something deeper? The other passage is curiously like the one ventured by Dr. Macfarren's criticiser. The venture was no doubt perfectly justifiable--almost everything is allowable in music, for deliberate poetic effect.

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Beethoven no doubt did it for the sake of intensity.

[P.S.--Since writing the above we have come across a chance remark of Goethe's, which struck us as singularly applicable to this great picturesque symphony. During the campaign in France, he noticed in one of the old German towns, the living contrast of knighthood and monkhood (or chivalry and the cloister, we might say). The suggestive words set us thinking if they might not prompt a symphony; and soon after, we saw that they may be applied, perhaps with curious felicity, to Beethoven's A major. Have we not here, indeed, an epitome of the olden time, with its knights, monks, revels, and all?]

THE ALLEGRETTO.

This has been well called "the riddle" of the symphony; nor can we altogether accept Herr Elterlein's solution of it, though _geistreich_. He prolongs his fancy, and looks upon this music as a contagious pause and period of melancholy, of pathetic reminiscence in the "hot-blooded southern folk." Imaginative sympathy has a right to its own fancies, and these fancies will ever be more or less true; nevertheless, a more profound, more sacred gloom--mystery of sorrow--is borne in upon us in these unfathomable tones. Here we seem to have the portentous, almost God-accusing, grief of insane love and virtue, in this fate-and-madness-haunted world--of Juliet in the tomb (re-read the tremendous lines)--of the ineffable Ophelia, after outraged princeliness and intellect had lost its reason, and killed Ophelia's own venerable father;--"Ach!" previous to the violent death (her own) of an angel. Or, we might feel here the incipient atheism of a Hamlet himself; wrestling with it, but dreading he wrestles in vain. Later, it is true (the A major melody--"immortal" Berlioz calls it), solace descends from heaven, through the toppling sun-gilt clouds; but it is unavailing (indeed, we rather regret the introduction of this episode? we had liefer be plunged to, and remain in, the heart of this "deeper, and deeper still" of grief): Rachel will not be comforted, in her _sublime_ despair; and the final strains seem those of incurable, illimitable woe. Ah! these are the strains, too, the accents--"Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets, how often would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens and thou wouldst not!" The divine resolution to sacrifice self for all that (the A major motive?) remains even firmer, but the divine sorrow _at_ it remains even deeper and inextinguishable.

SYMPHONY NO. 8. OP. 93.

Man divides his time chiefly between love (of all sorts) and action. One of his most passionate, as well as purest, loves, is of nature. When the two blend--when at once the lover, and lover of nature, roams in nature, besouling and transfiguring her by love, then is passion at its sweetest, life at its highest. In this opening gush, or burst, of the 8th Symphony (_allegro vivace e con brio_) we seem to have such love. Here is that rapture we missed in the expressly culled Pastoral Symphony--rapture of emancipation, thrill and burst of joy! The great action of the Eroica, and C minor--aye, and of the A major symphonies--here gives place to the pure ecstatic emotion.