Part 5

The Scherzo, with its _obbligato_ constituent element, the "Trio," is on the same great scale, and in the same epic spirit (we see no particular need, with Wagner, to seek a connection,) as the first movement. Here we _see_ the gods and heroes, the immortals, at sport in their own high hall--green-hill'd theatre, and "deep-domed empyrean." Here Optimism is not only victor, but full of play and humour. Such Olympian sport, such great picturesque music, was inconceivable to Beethoven's predecessors; and we get some idea of his merit when we reflect that the ground, when he began to write quartets and symphonies, seemed already occupied, the sphere exhausted; and when we reflect, how, of all Haydn's 119 symphonies (!) not one, in some seasons, is performed; whereas, Beethoven's are the feature of almost every performance, and are found now to be "favourite with all classes," as the Sydenham programme asserts--a statement which, otherwise, rather provokes an elevation of the eyebrows. The trio, especially, is of exceeding original beauty; there are few more grateful pages in Beethoven; none where his peculiarly characteristic _healthy_ sweetness (freshness-and-power--_depths_ of purity, beyond plummet's sound,) is so strikingly, so enchantingly displayed. At the base of a great mountain in Switzerland, with his foot in two lakes, and with sides that might almost have been an envy in Eden, there runs--from one magical sheet of water to the other--a heavenly valley. There we once saw a local military _Fest_, with flying banners and echoing music; and, as we walked along, under the eternal brow of that immense emerald bastion, with the spring sun before us, we thought of this Trio, and said--"Here is where it ought to sound, by a noble army on its return, laurel-laden, from righteous victory;" and Shakespeare's lines again _festeggiavano_ in the memory:--

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lower'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings; Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbèd steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute."

How exquisitely we can fancy the horns making those mountain-walls and woodlands ring! and the hautboys in response, gladdening the pastures; while the flutes (later) curl the wave; and the bassoons, along with the other two epico-pastoral instruments, after the maiden welcome of the violins--welcome by maidens:--

"Oneste e leggiadre in ogni atto."--

"Set all the bells a-ringing--over lake and lea, Merrily, merrily, along with them in tune."

It is all enchanting; no greater epico-lyric poem in Beethoven--who, even in the midst of this triumph and beauty, cannot (thank inspiration!) but speak from the profundities of him. I allude to that wonderful passage where he brings in (hitherto reserved) the clarinets (that voice of heroic women, as Berlioz finds it), over the intensely expressive progression of the strings, in response to the breathings of the horns. In music perhaps there is no profounder interchange of heart and soul, of sorrow and affection, touching reminiscence from the lowest well-spring. This, perhaps, is a glance at the "happy autumn days that are no more;" or an heroic wail over the dead and desolated; a glance back at the horrors of war--a thought for the widows and orphans' tears falling even now around; and yet, under all, a stern determination to brook no tyranny, love of duty, and a high submission, cost what it might, to the Supreme Will.

SYMPHONY IN B FLAT, NO. 4, OP. 60.

This Symphony is only another proof of Beethoven's kinship with Shakespeare. The terrible romance of "Romeo and Juliet" (where the atmosphere seems loaded with love and doom); the classic grandeur of "Coriolanus" and "Julius Cæsar"; the passionate intensity of "Othello"; the fearful sublimity (depth, as well as height and breadth) of "Macbeth" and "Lear;" the beautiful greatness of the "Tempest"; and the subtlety (seraphic, not demoniac), tragic picturesqueness, inner life, and almost superhuman power and insight of "Hamlet," are all, more or less (and, indeed, more rather than less), to be found reproduced in Beethoven; and truly, as it is borne in on us, in him, the tone-poet, more than in speech-poet, certainly more than in Schiller and Goethe; more also than in our own men, of whom none after Shakespeare can compare with Beethoven except Milton--and him we reckon inferior. There are indeed two elements of Shakespeare which Beethoven lacks, his characteristic serenity and humour; besides that, _Beethoven's tragedy is the tragedy of his own soul, whereas Shakespeare wrote outside himself_. Beethoven was a colossally subjective storm-tossed spirit (though also eminently objective--none surpasses him in broad vivid painting of images, as well as "the life of the soul";)--the dove of whose ark (to speak figuratively) never found soil for her foot after youth had died out, and the flood fairly set in. But, in his prime, also in the "April of his prime", and at his best, he bears a greater family likeness to the great ancestor than any other man, though he really resembles no one but himself, just like Shakespeare, as we feel after long but futile efforts to pair him with somebody--a fact highly curious and interesting! The kinship, however, is equally striking and fascinating; and nowhere, perhaps, is it more fascinating than in this B flat Symphony, which we are inclined to term _par excellence_ beautiful; as its predecessors are powerful and great. Indeed there seems something of the opaline varnish--or rather, lustre, like a leaf's--_from within_--of Mozart; specially beautiful, as _he_ is specially beautiful, and is not powerful or great, profound and earnest, grand. But, again, _plus_ the grace, there is also, below, the characteristic depth; after all, and as ever, power is _doch_ the soul of the beauty--as--and here is our point--in the "Tempest" (and "Midsummer Night's Dream"), as in Shakespeare, rather than in Mozart; indeed, we know not but what Haydn's beauty has more a soul of power.

The enchanting spirit of Shakespeare's fairy plays, and the enchanting spirit world, seems that too of this symphony. Here are Puck and Blossom, Oberon and Titania; here are Ferdinand and Miranda--above all, Ariel and Prospero. Prospero, whose sublime spirit shines and rules in this inaugural adagio--adumbration of Chopin (?) which dwarfs Chopin indeed!--is much nearer akin to Schumann. It is like an inspired dream (a Jacob's, or Elijah's, or Daniel's). It seems a great foreshadowing of his later style; in its vagueness it is vast--as it were, a vestibule or forecourt of the Infinite, of higher life; of that beyond, methinks, whereinto Prospero (our own great dear, sad Beethoven, tired of all, and of himself,) sinks his dreamy glance, when he casts away for ever his magic wand (magic only in a lower sphere, where life and character are inferior); "deeper than did plummet sound," and cries, wrapt from the bystanders:--

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind."

In the allegro we seem to continue our analogy--in the wondrous isle itself (Isle of Formosa), "full of strange sights and sounds." Here, not Greek Naiads and Dryads, but Christian sprites and fairy-things, or both in loving rivalry, flit and trip invisibly and visibly; here is freshness! here are sunbeams! here simplicity and sweetness (woodland and pastoral beauty)! And if, in the matchless adagio the sea murmurs round the "still-vext Bermoothes," and Ariel fetches thence dew; here we have all-compelling Prospero commanding the most exquisite airy sport--but not for himself--but for the lovers.

The scherzo (to take that next), forces upon us once more the question--how far did Beethoven, in composing, draw upon his early treasures? This delicious burst--or gush--of inspiration, as it were a moment flashing over, might have been written in the same spring months as that other delicious morsel--specially cherished by us; the scherzo ("Allegro") in E flat, in the early sonata of the same key--which has always seemed to us the very breath of spring itself--a page of nature in April. And why should a Beethoven disparage his early works? were they not _doch_ the works of a Beethoven! Alas, he can never be young again, never after equal them, for their breath and spirit, for the April of their prime.

We should like to hear Liszt or Rubinstein play this morsel arranged. It is as delicate as Heller (whom it indeed anticipates) and Mendelssohn, and strong as Wagner;--but nay, Beethoven will compare only with himself. It is originally exquisite and exquisitely original. It has, too, the same magical, nay, mystical beauty whose glamour is over all this musical mirror of the "Tempest." The imaginative Sonata in D minor, which Beethoven himself referred to the enchanting drama--especially the first movement--reflects, I take it, the deeper bases and significance of the poem; tempest-tossed man, with his cries to the Unknowable, almost like a wounded animal, and rays of sunshine pouring still through storm; man, at war with the elements and himself, the elements without and within him; man, so little on this stupendous stage; man, so great with his alone-perception of it; man, so mean and hateful in his baser parts, so colossal, so divine in his higher; so low as animal (lower than they), so high as hero and sage. Indeed, the tremendous conflict of outer and inner life, this appalling discrepancy we seem to meet with everywhere; man's struggle with nature, and the struggle of both with themselves, seems to be the inner picture both of Shakespeare and Beethoven--especially the latter, who was a mighty brooding fermenting soul--how far transcending our Byron and his "Manfreds"!--more allied to "Faust," yet greater, nobler, dearer, difficult to arrive at harmony with others and himself ("perplext in faith, yet pure in deeds"), who seems happy only in the first part of his progress (expedition, undertaking, crusade), and victorious in the middle; and whom, alas! we fancy almost as despairing of solving the problem (_é pure troppo per me_) in the end, and going down in the tempest--yet, like the traditional Vengeur, with guns all shooting, and flag at the mast-head flying, and glorified in the setting sun.

I will not dwell on the finale, but conclude with some fancies suggested by the rarely beautiful adagio--like a lovely bird from another world, like the ph[oe]nix new born. Here is what Elterlein says of the finale:--"The truly phantastic, airy, sprite-like (_elfenartige_), at times even boding twilight" (the Scotch uncanny gloaming would more approach the original, _Unheimlicht Düstere_--Scotch, by the way, would often marvellously translate German--they have a mass of expressive words which we have not)--"boding twilight, nay, wild culminates, however, only in the fourth movement. How light and vanishing do these tone-pictures hover and pass, what characteristic glooming (_Helldenkel_) does not envelope this scene too."

Of course, this symphony cannot compare one moment with the Eroica and C minor, for grandeur, opulence, and power; but it is a lovely interlude, giving us a divine moment of gratification and repose--an Italian spring day by a lake, to a tropical one, with its Himalayas and interwoven forest, "like a cathedral with service on the blazing roof."

And now for the adagio! which I will only preface by this admonition, always to be recollected; viz., that whatever fancies or figures music may suggest, and however the abstract terms--such as sweet, tender, vigorous, grand, &c.--may, and must be applied in common to all composers, yet each composer has a special individuality; and _the music that suggests the figures and fancies, the ideas, has, apart from this, for ever a special charm of its own_, which cannot be lost, nor yet transcribed. To those who do not, and to those who do approve the fancies, this charm _per se_ remains.

THE ADAGIO.

A work of supererogation, the adagio is still sometimes executed at concerts, which rejoices in the sensational title of "Le trille du Diable;" founded, it is said, on a dream of the composer's (Tartini); this, simply-named "Adagio," of Beethoven's, then--in considering which, I mean to surrender myself wholly to poetry--might be a reminiscence of his of music, in a dream, by the angel, Gabriel; or such, for instance, as might have escorted the seraph when he descended, and said, "_Ave Maria!_"--or it might be an unconscious reminiscence of previous existence of the great and good man; or the strain the Shepherds heard, in the field, watching their flocks by night--again, and more specially, a

"Dolce melodia in aria lumino,"

through the purple air, mingled with ambrosia, and the beams of _that_ evening star. Nay, it might have lulled that head which had nowhere to rest, when perchance it _did_ find some rocky corner; or Saul of Tarsus, or Jonah below on the raging sea. It puts us in mind of the immortal line--

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."

Ah! we see therein the great weary spirit of its own eternal messenger, for once at least, rocked on its waves and soothed by its balm, in the sea of immortality. It is a pleasure to throw together all the ideas with which it inspires us. It seems a foretaste of Schumann and Ernst ("Elegy"); it has their glimmering romance, and Beethoven's own peculiar profound sweetness, _not_ tainted (at least here and yet) by anything morbid, or the suspicion of it. It, too, suggests earlier years--"_Ach!_" a reminiscence of childhood in Rhineland. It is glamorous, but with the glamour of Ariel--a spirit of good--the spirit of Shakespeare. It is tender and beautiful as Jean Paul; deep, sweet, unutterably. Methinks it paints this:--

"Oh sea! that lately raged and roared-- Art now unruffled by a breath?-- So shall it be, thou Mighty Teacher, With us--after Death."

And this:--

"And balmy drops in summer dark Slide from the bosom of the stars."

And this:--

"When summer's hourly mellowing change May breathe with many roses sweet, Upon the thousand waves of wheat That ripple round the lovely grange."

And this--with peculiar propriety:--

"Fair ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings and waft him o'er.

So draw him home to those that mourn In vain; a favourable speed Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead Through prosperous floods his holy urn.

All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on thy dewy decks.

Sphere all your lights around, above, Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love."

(Note especially the truly seraphic ineffability of the passage in G flat). It is such music as might have accompanied Him who made the storm his mere mantle, and the raging sea the mere pathway of power; of Him who had the right of all men to say--out of whose mouth the word sounded fullest--Peace!

SYMPHONY IN C MINOR, NO. 5, OP. 67.

Beethoven might well write an Heroic Symphony, for the very soul of his symphonies is heroism. He _named_ one "heroic," but he _wrote_ many, including the sonatas, which are unfortunately limited to the piano, whose powers they utterly transcend. Heroism is the soul, and antagonism the substance, through which heroism ultimately fights its way. Beethoven is the Hercules of music (Hercules was in some sort also the Pagan Christ), undertaking labours for men's emancipation and help; beating Hydros down; conquering all sorts of opposition--unconquerable except by love; and, like the antique hero, alas! with an end as tragic. Such comparisons we are obliged to have recourse to, to explain Beethoven's music--its might and significance. "What, then, does this eternal conflict, and victorious heroism storming through, mean?" Ah! how they still paint the conflict of rule and anarchy, of the intellect and reason, of passion and prejudice!

Man is called the microcosm of nature, and music is the microcosm of man; _his_ antagonism and heroism, internal as well as external, are herein mirrored. Music is the highest art; because the most spiritual, infinite, self-existent (creating, not copying), and comprehensive. No statue, picture, or pile, can compare with the power of a symphony--which, indeed, all but rivals that of nature herself, of the great world and starry heavens; the secret of whose power is also the Infinite, with its whispered promise--its soul--Immortality. Art is the shadowing forth of the infinite: music does this most, and Beethoven's is most music. Music, as we said, is the microcosm of man. As the world is comprised in him--alone realized _by_ him, and therefore in some sort alone existent _in_ him, so are his nature and history comprised in music--his depths and heights, beauties and deformities, aspirations and passions, circumstances and powers. It is the "might, majesty, and dominion," inarticulateness, _profound_ beauty--as it were searching flower-cups with star-beams: the effluence of a soul deep as heaven (beyond the other side of earth)--of man (not "_etwas_," of a man) that Beethoven shadows forth. That one, also, who struggled in the womb--what was he but a type of man in the all-comprising womb of nature? And this, also, Beethoven's music suggests; not least the music of this stupendous symphony--only another "Eroica," and greater, without the name (better so). _More suo_, Beethoven himself flashed a meaning more or less on it. "So knocketh Fate at the portal;" yes! with the portentousness of the "knocking at the gate" (see Lamb's remarks), in "Macbeth;" yes! fate in the form of duty. And truly, what higher subject--subject dear to the ancients as they are called--subject constantly treated in his own inspired way (Nature's), by Shakespeare--could be chosen? And Beethoven has rivalled Aiskulos and Shakespeare. Here is battle! here is victory!--here, too, the air seems almost oppressive with love and doom; and here, too, in the background, and from the deepest deeps, are wreaths and similes of celestial beauty. "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Another thing the first movement suggests is, that it is the greatest of "_Dies Iræ_." That passage, especially on the second page of the second part, where one half the orchestra answers the other with the same terrific unisons--

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(_en passant_, did ever reiteration play such a part?), prompts the wildest fancies. We think of

"The glooms of hell Echoed with thunder, while the angels wailed;"

or again, echoes of deserted hell on the day of doom--the fiends summoned to the judgment-seat. But let us recur to Beethoven's more human suggestion. Fate knocketh in the form of Duty; Promethean free-will, human passion, rebels and struggles for a time, but at last yields; and heroic resolve is triumphant--heroic love. For, "Ach!" methinks these terrible blows are indeed those of Fate; but also those, viz., which nailed Heroic Love (comprehend both words) to the cross--heroic love that made even

"Destiny coincide with Choice;"

--that from the horrible instrument of torture and death itself, cried, "Father! forgive them, for they know not what they do;" and in the midst of the greatest of struggles and temptations (viz., with himself), wrestled and conquered, and cried, "Not my will (the local), but Thine (the universal) be done."--Such is the colossal difference between the pictures of Christ submitting, and Prometheus cursing the gods. It is a remarkable fact, that this symphony is so great--indeed, the greatest; and yet, it is a fact fundamentally, instructively natural; for, not premeditating it beforehand, Beethoven sat down to write about the greatest thinkable subject out of his inmost own heart--nay, as it were, with his own heart's blood. Another remarkable fact is, that the so much abused public soon realized that this symphony was the greatest. This symphony paints Beethoven's life--especially inner life--which "life" properly means. Here we see genius struggling with fate, in which his life was sunk (like every life); wherewith our little life is rounded, as with a sleep. Fate! What had it done for Beethoven? What does it mean?

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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