Part 6

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.