Chapter IV: Ludwig Van Beethoven (2)

Beethoven regarded Napoleon as the embodiment of the new hopes for the freedom of mankind which had been fostered by the Revolution. That he had also been affected by the martial spirit of the times is revealed in the first and second symphonies. It was the third, however, which was to prove the true monument to republicanism. The story is one of the familiar tales of musical history. Still full of confidence and faith in the Corsican hero, Beethoven composed his great ‘Eroica’ symphony (1804) and inscribed it with the name ‘Buonaparte.’ A fair copy had already been sent to an envoy who should present it to Napoleon, and another finished copy was lying on the composer’s work table when Beethoven’s friend Ries brought the news that Napoleon had assumed the title of emperor. Forthwith the admiration of Beethoven turned to hatred. ‘After all, then,’ he cried, ‘he is nothing but an ordinary mortal! He will trample all the rights of man underfoot, to indulge his ambition, and become a greater tyrant than anyone!’ The title page was seized, torn in half and thrown on the floor; and the symphony was rededicated to the memory of _un grand’ uomo_. It is said that Beethoven was never heard to refer to the matter again until the death of Napoleon in 1821, when he remarked, in allusion to the Funeral March of his second movement, ‘I have already foreseen and provided for that catastrophe.’ Probably nothing, however, beyond the title page was altered. ‘It is still a portrait--and we may believe a favorable portrait--of Napoleon, and should be listened to in that sense. Not as a conqueror--that would not attract Beethoven’s admiration--but for the general grandeur and loftiness of his course and of his public character. How far the portraiture extends, whether to the first movement only or through the entire work, there will probably be always a difference of opinion. The first movement is certain. The March is certain also, as is shown by Beethoven’s own remark--and the writer believes, after the best consideration he can give to the subject, that the other movements are also included in the picture, and that the _poco andante_ at the end represents the apotheosis of the hero.’[55]

IV

It is in vain, however, that one looks for a parallel between the life and the work of the master. In everyday matters he was impatient, abrupt and often careless; while in his art his patience was such as to become even a slow brooding, an infinite care. His life was often distracted and melancholy; his music is never distracted or melancholy, except in so far as great art can be melancholy with a nobly tragic, universal depth of sadness. In political matters a revolutionist and in social life a rebel, in his art he accepted forms as he found them, expanding them, indeed, but not discarding them. Audacious and impassioned not only in private conduct but in his extempore playing, in his writing he was cautious and selective beyond all belief. The sketch books are a curious and interesting witness to the slow and tentative processes of his mind. More than fifty of these--books of coarse music paper of two hundred or more pages, sixteen staves to the page--were found among his effects after death and sold. One of these books was constantly with him, on his walks, by his bedside, or when travelling, and in them he wrote down his musical ideas as they came, rewrote and elaborated them until they reached the form he desired. They are, as Grove points out, perhaps the most remarkable relic that any artist or literary man has left behind him. In them can be traced the germs of his themes from crude or often trivial beginning, growing under his hand spontaneously, as it seemed, into the distinguished and artistic designs of his completed work. A dozen or a score attempts at the same theme can often be found, and ‘the more they are elaborated, the more spontaneous they become.’ In these books it can also be seen how he often worked upon four or five different compositions at the same time; how he sometimes kept in mind a theme or an idea for years before finally using it, and how extraordinary was the fertility of his genius. Nottebohm, the author of ‘Beethoveniana,’ says: ‘Had he carried out all the symphonies which are begun in these books, we should have at least fifty.’ Thus we see his method of work, and the stages through which his compositions passed. ‘He took a story out of his own life, the life of a friend, a play of Goethe or Shakespeare--and he labored, eternally altering and improving, until at last every phrase expressed just the emotions he himself felt. The exhibition of his themes, as expressed in the sketch books, show how passionately and patiently he worked.’

Although he certainly sometimes allowed his music to be affected by outside events, as has been traced, for example, in the Eroica Symphony, yet in most instances his work seems to be independent of the outward experiences of his life. One of the most striking examples of the detachment of his artistic from his everyday life is in connection with the Second Symphony, written in 1802, the year in which he wrote, also, the celebrated ‘Heiligenstadt Will.’ This document was prompted by his despair over his bad health, frequent unhappiness on account of his brothers, and his deafness, which was now pronounced incurable. In it he says:

‘During the last six years I have been in a wretched condition--I am compelled to live as an exile. If I approach near to people, a feeling of hot anxiety comes over me lest my condition should be noticed. At times I was on the point of putting an end to my life--art alone restrained my hand. Oh, it seemed as if I could not quit this earth until I had produced all I felt within me, and so I continued this wretched life--wretched, indeed, with so sensitive a body that a somewhat sudden change can throw me from the best into the worst state. Lasting, I hope, will be my resolution to bear up until it pleases the inexorable Parcæ to break the thread. My prayer is that your life may be better, less troubled by cares, than mine. Recommend to your children _virtue_; it alone can bring happiness, not money. So let it be. I joyfully hasten to meet death. O Providence, let me have just one pure day of _joy_; so long is it since true joy filled my heart. Oh, when, Divine Being, shall I be able once again to feel it in the temple of Nature and of men.’

Such was his expression of grief at the time when the nature of his malady became known to him; and who can doubt its depth and sincerity? In it the man speaks from the heart; but in the same year also the Second Symphony was written, and in this the artist speaks. What a wonderful difference! ‘The _scherzo_ is as proudly gay in its capricious fantasy as the _andante_ is completely happy and tranquil; for everything is smiling in this symphony, the warlike spirit of the _allegro_ is entirely free from violence; one can only find there the grateful fervor of a noble heart in which are still preserved unblemished the loveliest illusions of life.’[56]

There seem to be two periods--one from 1808 to 1811, during his love affair with Therese Malfatti, and again after his brother’s death in 1815--when outward circumstances prevailed against the artist and rendered him comparatively silent. Unable to loosen the grip of personal emotion, during these periods he wrote little of importance. ‘During all the rest of his agitated and tormented life nothing, neither the constant series of passionate and brief loves, nor constant bodily sickness, trouble about money, trouble about friends, relations, and the unspeakable nephew, meant anything vital to his deeper self. The nephew helped to kill him, but could not color a note of his music.’[57] If, as in the case of the ‘Eroica,’ music was sometimes the reflection of present emotion, it was still oftener, as in the case just cited, his magic against it, his shelter from grief, the rock-wall with which he shut out the woes of life.

V

In the development of his artistic career three circumstances may be counted as strongly determining factors: his early experience in the theatre at Bonn, his skill on the pianoforte, and his lifelong preference for the sonata form.

In regard to the first, it is clearly evident that, although Beethoven was moved least of all by operatic works, yet his constant familiarity with the orchestra during the formative years of his life must have left a strong impression. From 1788 to 1792 at the National Theatre in Bonn he was playing in such works as _Die Entführung_, _Don Giovanni_, and _Figaro_ by Mozart, _Die Pilgrime von Mekka_ by Gluck, and productions by Salieri, Benda, Dittersdorf, and Paesiello. That in after life he wrote but one opera was probably due to a number of causes, one of which was his difficulty in finding a libretto to his liking. His diary and letters show that he was frequently in correspondence with various poets concerning a libretto, and that the purpose of further operatic work was never dismissed from his mind. But he always conceived his melodies and musical ideas instrumentally rather than vocally, and never was able or willing to modify them to suit the compass of the average voice. One consequence of this was that he had endless trouble and difficulty in the production of his opera, _Fidelio_, which was withdrawn after the first three performances. Upon its revival it was played to larger and more appreciative audiences, but was again suddenly and finally withdrawn by the composer after a quarrel with Baron von Braun, the intendant of the theatre.

It was but natural that such difficulties and vexations should turn the attention of the composer away from operatic production, but he undoubtedly hoped that better fortune would sometime attend his endeavors. In one respect, at least, he reaped encouragement from the experience with _Fidelio_, for it helped him to overcome his sensitiveness in regard to his deafness. On the margin of his sketch book in 1805 he writes: ‘Struggling as you are in the vortex of society, it is yet possible, notwithstanding all social hindrances, to write operas. Let your deafness be no longer a secret, even in your art.’ Great as _Fidelio_ is, it does not possess the vocal excellences even of the commonplace Italian or French opera of its day. Its merit lies in the greater nobility of conception, the freedom and boldness of its orchestral score, and in its passionate emotional depth. The result of Beethoven’s early practice with the theatre, undoubtedly, was of far deeper significance in relation to his symphonies than to his operatic work.

During the early days in Vienna his reputation rested almost entirely upon his wonderful skill as player upon the pianoforte, or, more especially, as improviser. It was a period of great feats in extempore playing, and some of the greatest masters of the time--Himmel, Woelfl, Lipawsky, Gelinek, Steibelt--lived in Vienna. They were at first inclined to make sport of the newcomer, who bore himself awkwardly, spoke in dialect, and took unheard-of liberties in his playing; but they were presently forced to recognize the master hand. Steibelt challenged him at the piano and was thoroughly beaten, while Gelinek paid him the compliment of listening to his playing so carefully as to be able to reproduce many of his harmonies and melodies and pass them off as his own. Technically, only Himmel and Woelfl could seriously compare with Beethoven, the first being distinguished by clearness and elegance, and the second by the possession of unusually large hands, which gave him a remarkable command of the keyboard. They, as well as Beethoven, could perform wonders in transposition, reading at sight, and memorizing, just as Mozart had done. But Beethoven’s reputation as the ‘giant among players’ rested upon other qualities--the fire of his imagination, nobility of style, and great range of expression. Understanding as he did the capabilities of the pianoforte, he endowed his compositions for this instrument with a wealth of detail and depth of expression such as had hitherto not been achieved. Czerny, himself an excellent pianist, thus describes his playing: ‘His improvisation was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out in loud sobs; for there was something wonderful in his expression, in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas, and his spirited style of rendering them.’[58] Ries and other artists have also borne testimony to his skill, wealth of imagery and inexhaustible fertility of ideas. Grove says: ‘He extemporized in regular form; and his variations, when he treated a theme in that way, were not mere alterations of figure, but real developments and elaborations of the subject.’

In close connection with his work as pianist, and exercising a powerful influence not only upon Beethoven but also upon all later composers, was the mechanical development of the pianoforte. The clavichord and clavicembalo, which had occupied a modest place during the eighteenth century merely as accompanying instruments to string or wind music, were now gradually replaced by the _Hammer-clavier_, as it was called, which, by the middle of the century, began to be considered seriously as a solo instrument of remarkable powers. Important piano manufacturers, such as Silbermann in Strassburg, Späth in Regensburg, Stein in Augsburg, Broadwood in London, and Érard in Paris, did much to bring about the perfection of the instrument and so indirectly assisted in the development of pianoforte music. In 1747 Sebastian Bach had played a Silbermann piano before Frederick the Great in Potsdam, but the important development came after the middle of the century. In London, in 1768, Johann Christian Bach used the pianoforte for the first time in a public concert, and we know that Mozart possessed instruments both from Späth and Stein, and that in 1779 some of his work was published ‘for Clavier or Pianoforte.’ An immediate consequence of this sudden rise of the pianoforte into popularity was, of course, the appearance of a new musical literature adapted to the peculiarities of the instrument. Among the first of the technical students of the pianoforte was Muzio Clementi,[59] whose _Gradus ad Parnassum_, or hundred exercises ‘upon the art of playing the pianoforte in a severe and elegant style’ made a deep impression upon the rising generation of musicians and are still considered of the highest educational value. Some of these exercises were published as early as 1784, though the collection was not made until 1817. An extract from the writing of one of Clementi’s best pupils throws some light upon the standard of taste in regard to pianoforte playing which prevailed in Beethoven’s early days. He says: ‘I asked Clementi whether, in 1781, he had begun to treat the instrument in his present (1806) style. He answered _no_, and added that in those early days he had cultivated a more brilliant execution, especially in double stops, hardly known then, and in extemporized cadenzas, and that he had subsequently achieved a more melodic and noble style of performance after listening attentively to famous singers, and also by means of the perfected mechanism of English pianos, the construction of which formerly stood in the way of a cantabile and legato style of playing.’ It is evident that Beethoven came upon the scene as pianoforte player not only when the improved instrument was almost in the first flush of its popularity, but also when virtuosity and the ability to astonish by difficult technical feats were sometimes mistaken for true artistic achievement.

By the time Beethoven’s career as a composer began the sonata had already been developed, as we have seen, especially by Haydn and Mozart, into a model form whose validity was established for all time. Technically, it was a compromise between the German effort toward a logical and coherent harmonic expression, as represented by Emanuel Bach and others, and the Italian tendency toward melodic beauty and grace. The first thirty-one published instrumental compositions of Beethoven, as well as the great majority of all his works, are in this form, which seemed, indeed, to be the ‘veil-like tissue through which he gazed into the realm of tones.’[60] With Haydn this form had reached a plane where structural lucidity was almost the first consideration. ‘Musicians had arrived at that artificial state of mind which deliberately chose to be conscious of formal elements,’ says Parry, ‘and it was only by breathing a new and mightier spirit into the framework that the structure would escape becoming merely a collection of lifeless bones.’ It was this spirit which Beethoven brought not only to the pianoforte sonata, but also to the symphony and quartet. His spirit, as we have seen, both in daily intercourse and in art, was of the sort to scoff at needless restrictions and defy conventionality. While, however, his rebellion against conventionality of conduct and artificiality in society was often somewhat excessive and superfluous, in his art it led him unerringly, not toward iconoclasm or even disregard of form, but toward the realities of human feeling.

VI

Beethoven’s works extend to every field of composition. They include five concertos for piano and orchestra, one concerto for violin and orchestra, sixteen quartets for strings, ten sonatas for piano and violin, thirty-eight sonatas for piano, one opera, two masses, nine overtures and nine symphonies--about forty vocal and less than two hundred instrumental compositions in all. The division of the work into three periods, made by von Lenz in 1852 is, on the whole, a useful and just classification, when due allowance is made for the periods overlapping and merging into each other according to the different species of composition. The ideas of his mature life expressed themselves earlier in the sonatas than in the symphonies; therefore the first period, so far as the sonatas are concerned, ends with opus 22 (1801), while it includes the Second Symphony, composed, as has been noted, in 1802. Individual exceptions to the classification also occur, as, for example, the Quartet in F minor, which, though composed during the first period, shows strongly many of the characteristics of the second. In general, however, the early works may be said to spring from the pattern set by Haydn and Mozart. In regard to this Grove says: ‘He began, as it was natural and inevitable he should, with, the best style of his day--the style of Mozart and Haydn, with melodies and passages that might be almost mistaken for theirs, with compositions apparently molded in intention on them. And yet even during this Mozartian epoch we meet with works or single movements which are not Mozart, which Mozart perhaps could not have written, and which very fully reveal the future Beethoven.’

In spite of being fully conscious of himself and knowing the power that was in him, Beethoven never was an iconoclast or radical. He was rather a builder whose architectural traditions came from ancient, well-accredited sources, in kinship probably somewhat closer to Haydn than to Mozart, though traces of Mozart are clearly evident. ‘The topics are different, the eloquence is more vivid, more nervous, more full-blooded--there is far greater use of rhythmic gesture, a far more intimate and telling appeal to emotion, but in point of actual phraseology there is little that could not have been written by an unusually adult, virile, and self-willed follower of the accepted school. It is eighteenth century music raised to a higher power.’[61]

The promise of a change in style, evident in the Kreutzer Sonata (1803) and in the pianoforte concerto in C minor, is practically completed in the Eroica Symphony (1804)--a change of which Beethoven was fully conscious and which he described in a letter as ‘something new.’ It began the second period, lasting until 1814, to which belongs a striking and remarkable group of works. In the long list are six symphonies, the third to the eighth inclusive, the opera _Fidelio_ with its four overtures, the Coriolan overture, the Egmont music, the pianoforte concertos in G and E flat, the violin concerto, the Rasoumowsky quartets, and a dozen sonatas for the piano, among which are the D minor and the Appassionata. It was a period characterized by maturity, wealth of imagination, humor, power, and individuality to a marvellous degree. If Beethoven had done nothing after 1814, he would still be one of the very greatest composers in the field of pure instrumental music. His ideas increase in breadth and variety, the designs grow to magnificent proportions, the work becomes more harmonious and significant, touching many sides of thought and emotion.

In this period he broke through many of the conventions of composition, as, for example, the idea that certain musical forms required certain kinds of treatment. The rondo and scherzo, formerly always of a certain stated character, were made by him to express what he wished, according to his conception of the requirements of the piece. Likewise the number of his movements was determined by the character and content of the work, and the conventional repetition of themes was made a matter of choice. Moreover, the usual method of key succession was used only if agreeable to his idea of fitness. In the great majority of sonatas by Haydn and Mozart, if the first theme be given out in a major key, the second is placed in the dominant; or, if the first is in minor, the second would be in the relative major. Beethoven makes the transition to the dominant only three times out of eighty-one examples, using instead the subdominant, the third above, or the third below. He changes also from tonic major to tonic minor, and _vice versa_. With him the stereotyped restriction as to key succession was no longer valid when it conflicted with the necessity for greater freedom.

Again, Beethoven ignored the well-established convention of separating different sections from one another by well-defined breaks. It was the custom with earlier masters to stop at the end of a passage, ‘to present arms, as it were,’ with a series of chords or other conventional stop; with Beethoven this gives place to a method of subtly connecting, instead of separating, the different sections, for which he used parts of the main theme or phrases akin to it, thus making the connecting link an inherent part of the piece. He also makes use of episodes in the working-out section, introduces even new themes, and expands both the coda and the introduction. These modifications are of the nature of enlargements or developments of a plan already accepted, and seem, as Grove points out, ‘to have sprung from the fact of his regarding his music less as a piece of technical performance than his predecessors had perhaps done, and more as the expression of the ideas with which his mind was charged.’ These ideas were too wide and too various to be contained within the usual limits, and, therefore, the limits had to be enlarged. The thing of first importance to him was the idea, to be expressed exactly as he wished, without regard to theoretical formulæ, which too often had become dry and meaningless. Therefore he allows himself liberties--such as the use of consecutive fifths--if they convey the exact impression he wishes to convey. Other musicians had also allowed themselves such liberties, but not with the same high-handed individualistic confidence that Beethoven betrays. ‘In Beethoven the fact was connected with the peculiar position he had taken in society, and with the new ideas which the general movement of freedom at the end of the eighteenth century, and the French Revolution in particular, had forced even into such strongholds as the Austrian courts.... What he felt he said, both in society and in his music.... The great difference is that, whereas in his ordinary intercourse he was extremely abrupt and careless of effect, in his music he was exactly the reverse--painstaking, laborious, and never satisfied till he had conveyed his ideas in unmistakable language.’[62]

In other words, conventional rules and regulations of composition which had formerly been the dominating factor were made subservient to what he considered the essentials--consistency of mood and the development of the poetic idea. He becomes the tone poet whose versatility and beauty of expression increase with the increasing power of his thought. Technical accessories of art were elevated to their highest importance, not for the sake of mere ornamentation, but because they were of use in enlarging and developing the idea.

During these years of rich achievement the staunch qualities of his genius, his delicacy and accuracy of sensation, his sound common sense and wisdom, his breadth of imagination, joy, humor, sanity, and moral earnestness--these qualities radiate from his work as if it were illuminated by an inward phosphorescent glow. He creates or translates for the listener a whole world of truth which cannot be expressed by speech, canvas, or marble, but is only capable of being revealed in the realm of sound. The gaiety of his music is large and beneficent; its humor is that of the gods at play; its sorrow is never whimpering; its cry of passion is never that of earthly desire. ‘It is the gaiety which cries in the bird, rustles in the reeds, shines in spray; it is a voice as immediate as sunlight. Some new epithet must be invented for this music which narrates nothing, yet is epic; sings no articulate message, yet is lyric; moves to no distinguishable action, yet is already awake in the wide waters out of which a world is to awaken.’[63]

The transition to the third period is even more definitely marked than that to the second. To it belong the pianoforte sonatas opus 101 to 111, the quartets opus 127 to 135, the Ninth Symphony, composed nearly eleven years after the eighth, and the mass in D--works built on even a grander scale than those of the second epoch. It would almost seem as if the form, enlarged and extended, ceased to exist as such and became a principle of growth, comparable only to the roots and fibres of a tree. The polyphony, quite unlike the old type of counterpoint, yet like that in that it is made up of distinct strands, is free and varied. Like the other artifices of technique, it serves only to repeat, intensify, or contrast the poetic idea. The usual medium of the orchestra is now insufficient to express his thought, therefore he adds a choral part for the full completion of the idea which had been germinating in his consciousness for more than twenty years. Moreover, these later works are touched with a mysticism almost beyond any words to define, as if the musician had ceased to speak in order to let the prophet have utterance. ‘He passes beyond the horizon of a mere singer and poet and touches upon the domain of the seer and the prophet; where, in unison with all genuine mystics and ethical teachers, he delivers a message of religious love and resignation, identification with the sufferings of all living creatures, depreciation of self, negation of personality, release from the world.’[64]

More radical than the modifications mentioned above were the substitution of the scherzo for the minuet, and the introduction of a chorus into the symphony. It will be remembered that the third symphonic movement, the minuet, originally a slow, stately dance, had already been modified in spirit and tempo by Mozart and Haydn for the purpose of contrast. In his symphonies, however, Beethoven abandoned the dance tune almost entirely, using it only in the Eighth. Even in the First, where the third movement is entitled ‘menuetto,’ it is in fact not a dance but a scherzo, and offers almost a miniature model of the longer and grander scherzos in such works as the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, where, as elsewhere, he made the form subservient to his mood.

Of the second innovation mentioned, the finale of the Ninth Symphony remains as the sole, but lasting and stupendous, monument. This whole work, the only symphony of his last period, deserves to be studied not only as the crowning achievement of a remarkable career and the logical outcome of the eight earlier symphonies with their steadily increasing breadth and power, but also as in itself voicing the last and best message of the master. Its arrangement, consisting of five parts, is rather irregular. The _allegro_ is followed by the scherzo, which in turn is followed by a slow movement. The finale consists of a theme with variations and a choral movement to the setting of Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ The thought of composing a work which should express his ideals of universal peace and love had been in his mind since the year 1792. It seems as if he conceived the use of the chorus as an enlargement and enrichment of the forces of the orchestra, rather than as an extraneous addition--as if human voices were but another group of instruments swelling that great orchestral hymn which forms the poetic and dramatic climax to the work, ‘carrying sentiment to the extremest pitch of exaltation.’ The melody itself is far above the merely æsthetic or beautiful, it reaches the highest possible simplicity and nobility. ‘Beethoven has emancipated this melody from all influences of fashion and fluctuating taste, and elevated it to an eternally valid type of pure humanity.’[65]

The changes in technical features inaugurated by Beethoven are of far less importance, comparatively, than the increase in æsthetic content, individuality, and expression. As has been noted, he was no iconoclast; seeking new effects in a striving for mere originality or altering forms for the mere sake of trying something new. On the contrary, his innovations were always undertaken with extreme discretion and only as necessity required; and even to the last the sonata form, ‘that triune symmetry of exposition, illustration, and repetition,’ can be discerned as the basis upon which his most extensive work was built. Even when this basis is not at first clearly apparent, the details which seemed to obscure it are found, upon study, to be the organic and logical amplification of the structure itself, never mere additions. It should be pointed out, however, that the last works, especially those for the piano, are of so transcendental or mystic a nature as to make it impossible for the average listener to appreciate them to their fullest extent; indeed, they provide a severe test even for a mature interpreter and for that reason they will hardly ever become popular.

VII

In spite of Beethoven’s own assertion that his work is not meant to be ‘program music,’ his name will no doubt always be connected with that special phase of modern art. We have seen how distinctly he grasped the true principles of program or delineative music in his words, _Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei_ (the expression of feeling, not a painting); never an imitation, but a reproduction of the effect. More than any musician of his own or earlier times was he able to saturate his composition with the mood which prompted it. For this reason the whole world sees pictures in his sonatas and reads stories into his symphonies, as it has not done with the work of Haydn, Emanuel Bach, or Mozart. With the last-named composer it was sufficient to bring all the devices of art--balance, light and shade, contrast, repetition, surprise--to the perfection of an artistic ensemble, with a result which satisfies the æsthetic demands of the most fastidious. Beethoven’s achievement was art plus mood or emotion; therefore the popular habit of calling the favorite sonata in C sharp minor the ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ unscholarly though it may be, is striking witness to one of the most fundamental of Beethoven’s qualities--the power by which he imbued a given composition with a certain mood recognizable at once by imaginative minds. The aim at realism, however, is only apparent. That he is not a ‘programmist,’ in the accepted sense, is evident from the fact that he gave descriptive names to only the two symphonies, the _Eroica_ and _Pastoral_. He does not tell a story, he produces a feeling, an impression. His work is the notable embodiment of Schopenhauer’s idea: ‘Music is not a representation of the world, but an immediate voice of the world.’ Unlike the artist who complained that he disliked working out of doors because Nature ‘put him out,’ Beethoven was most himself when Nature spoke through him. This is the new element in music which was to germinate so variously in the music drama, tone poems and the like of the romantic writers of the nineteenth century.

In judging his operatic work, it has seemed to critics that Beethoven remained almost insensible to the requirements and limitations of a vocal style and was impatient of the restraints necessarily imposed upon all writing for the stage; with the result that his work spread out into something neither exactly dramatic nor oratorical. In spite of the obvious greatness of _Fidelio_, these charges have some validity. With his two masses, again, he went far beyond the boundaries allotted by circumstance to any ecclesiastical production and arrived at something like a ‘shapeless oratorio.’ His variations, also, so far exceed the limit of form usually maintained by this species of composition that they are scarcely to be classed with those of any other composer. For the pianoforte, solo and in connection with other instruments, there are twenty-nine sets of this species of music, besides many brilliant instances of its use in larger works, such as the slow movement in the ‘Appassionata,’ and the slow movements of the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies. Sometimes he keeps the melody unchanged, weaving a varied accompaniment above, below, or around it; again he preserves the harmonic basis and embellishes the melody itself, these being types of variation well known also to other composers. Another method, however, peculiar to himself, is to subject each part--melody, rhythm, and harmony--to an interesting change, and yet with such skill and art that the individual theme still remains clearly recognizable. ‘In no other form than that of the variation,’ remarks Dannreuther, ‘does Beethoven’s creative power appear more wonderful and its effect on the art more difficult to measure.’

It is, however, primarily as symphonist and sonata writer that Beethoven stands preëminent. At the risk of another repetition we must again say that with Beethoven’s treatment the sonata form assumes a new aspect, in that it serves as the golden bowl into which the intensity of his thought is poured, rather than the limiting framework of his art. He was disdainful of the attitude of the Viennese public which caused the virtuoso often to be confused with the artist. Brilliant passages were to him merely so much bombast and fury, unless there was a thought sufficiently intense to justify the extra vigor; and to him cleverness of fingers could not disguise emptiness of soul. ‘Such is the vital germ from which spring the real peculiarities and individualities of Beethoven’s instrumental compositions. It must now be a form of spirit as well as a form of the framework; it is to become internal as well as external.’ A musical movement in Beethoven is a continuous and complete poem; an organism which is gradually unfolded before us, rarely weakened by the purely conventional passages which were part of the _form_ of his predecessors.

It must be noted, however, that Beethoven’s subtle modifications in regard to form were possible only because Mozart and Haydn had so well prepared the way by their very insistence upon the exact divisions of any given piece. Audiences of that day enjoyed the well-defined structure, which enabled them to follow and know just where they were. Perhaps for that very reason they sooner grew tired of the obviously constructed piece, but in any case they were educated to a familiarity with form, and were habituated to the effort of following its general outlines. Beethoven profited by this circumstance, taking liberties, especially in his pianoforte compositions, which would have caused mental confusion and bewilderment to earlier audiences, but were understood and accepted with delight by his own. His mastery of musical design and logical accuracy enabled him so to express himself as to be universally understood. He demonstrated both the supremacy and the elasticity of the sonata form, taking his mechanism from the eighteenth century, and in return bequeathing a new style to the nineteenth--a style which separated the later school of Vienna from any that had preceded it, spread rapidly over Europe, and exercised its authority upon every succeeding composer.

His great service was twofold: to free the art from formalism and spirit-killing laws; and to lift it beyond the level of fashionable taste. In this service he typifies that spirit which, in the persons of Wordsworth, Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, has rescued literary art from similar deadening influences. Wagner expressed this feeling when he said, ‘For inasmuch as he elevated music, conformably to its utmost nature, out of its degradation as a merely diverting art to the height of its sublime calling, he has opened to us the understanding of that art in which the world explains itself.’ Herein lies his true relation to the world of art and the secret of his greatness; for almost unchallenged he takes the supreme place in the realm of pure instrumental music. His power is that of intellect combined with greatness of character. ‘He loves love rather than any of the images of love. He loves nature with the same, or even a more constant, passion. He loves God, whom he cannot name, whom he worships in no church built with hands, with an equal rapture. Virtue appears to him with the same loveliness as beauty.... There are times when he despairs for himself, never for the world. Law, order, a faultless celestial music, alone exist for him; and these he believed to have been settled before time was, in the heavens. Thus his music was neither revolt nor melancholy,’ and it is this, the noblest expression of a strange and otherwise inarticulate soul, which lives for the eternal glory of the art of music.

F. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Edward Dickinson: ‘The Study of the History of Music.’

[51] _Dichtung und Wahrheit._

[52] Thayer, Vol. I, p. 227.

[53] Nottebohm: _Beethoveniana_, XXVII.

[54] Arthur Symons, Essay ‘Beethoven.’

[55] Grove: ‘Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies,’ pp. 55-56.

[56] Berlioz: _Étude critique des symphonies de Beethoven_.

[57] Arthur Symons, Essay ‘Beethoven.’

[58] Thayer: Vol. II, p. 10.

[59] Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) is now remembered chiefly by his technical studies for the pianoforte, though a much greater portion of his work deserves recognition. He was a great concert pianist, a rival of whom Mozart was a little unwilling to admit the ability. A great part of his life was spent in England. He composed a great amount of music for the pianoforte which has little by little been displaced by that of Mozart; and in his own lifetime symphonies which once were hailed with acclaim fell into neglect before Haydn’s. His pianoforte works expanded keyboard technique, especially in the direction of double notes and octaves, and were the first distinctly pianoforte works in distinction to works for the harpsichord.

[60] Wagner, Essay ‘Beethoven.’

[61] ‘Oxford History of Music,’ Vol. V.

[62] Grove, Vol. I, p. 204.

[63] Arthur Symons, Essay ‘Beethoven.’

[64] Dannreuther, ‘Beethoven,’ Macmillan’s Magazine, July, 1876.

[65] Richard Wagner, Essay ‘Beethoven.’