Part 8

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.

[Music]

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.

Here we have indeed the broad breath of the fields; we perfectly revel in the flowery gold; the sweet streams winding there enchant us; the blue mountains sublime us with their great tender reminders; in the divine whole--this "_transcenden Tempel des Frühlings_"--we are ready to fall on our knees for joy. Rural, without doubt, are these opening strains; "escaped into the country"--"love in the country," seems written over them. Later, Alberti's and Elterlein's notion (independent) more obtains; "the symphony represents humour," (chiefly caprice, mood); "the base and character of the work is throughout humouristic." This, however, may well be, and the scene of these caprices still remains the divine country; the lights and shadows and fleecy clouds of the soul amid those of nature. Here we may fancy the scene of a superior Watteau. By running brook and swaying bough, gracious nymph and gallant swain exchange fancies and glances, and sport, and make love. Nay it is indeed like a back-glance of our Beethoven himself into his early years--when the days were bluer, the world broader, by the celestial Rhine yonder, and when he too, in his sweet and awful heart, felt shy unutterable emotions; thrill'd, as though fire had flashed in waves through his veins when _she_ touched his hand--that hand to be so creative. This may be a glance at those days, as the Countess Guicciardini Sonata (most lyric of all, like the passion of an Oriental night) is a burning record of others.

In a word, and finally, Beethoven, who was essentially imaginative, has in this pendent to the Fourth Symphony, given himself up to, and given us, fancy; and a gracious present it is, like a handful of pearls, from the master. Not less precious, but more precious, are the smiles and sportive caresses of Hercules--the pleasantries of Jove. Ah! He who challenged the terrors of the cross, and threatened _Dies Irae_, (we must ever recur to Him as our highest type), spoke of the lilies of the field, and gathered to him little children; and more precious, if possible, than his words, or very deeds, were--if He ever had them--his smiles.

The query is suggested by this youth-fresh work--did Beethoven write this Opus 93 out of his heart at that age (if so, what a heart!--with styles one and three close together), or did he draw upon fancies of his early years--tone-lyrics of that time?

The Allegretto Scherzando, that Ariel-gush ("On a bat's back I do fly") is thus described by the German critic:--"In the second movement we have, especially, naïve joy; nay, at once the child-like innocence and mischievous sport of humour. The first motiv (as is well known) had its origin in a playful canon improvised by Beethoven for the metronome-maker, Maelzel; the whole piece has been praised by many, as the most charming morçeaux of Beethoven's." The Minuet he speaks of as dry humour, the Trio as revealing an inner _Liebesdrange_ (urgent need of and for love)--"such as is ever innate in the true humourist."

The Finale seems another piece of "Tempest" music; now grateful as chased or filagree silver, now inly tender, as the soul of Ferdinand and Miranda of course is; now, even with a glance at the "dæmonish." These extraordinary "_Schreckennoten_," now as C sharp, now as D flat--which we were tempted to substitute on the first appearance of the note as C sharp--may furnish another pretty quarrel between the wranglers over "False Notation." They form one of the most original flashes of Beethoven (if not a hint of aberration), and strike us as properly belonging to a profoundly tragic movement, and not to such a one as this; where, indeed, their value seems hardly utilised. Such notes might have been blown as the "Blast of the breath of His displeasure"--before the Hand-writing on the Wall; at the Rending of the Veil 'fore the Holy of Holies; at the dawn of the Day of Doom; though, indeed, this latter also would break upon fairy revels, foambells, and butterflies, as well as wars, earthquakes, and volcanoes.

In conclusion, we regret the absence of an Adagio in this genial work. We now turn to the portentous Choral Symphony.

THE CHORAL SYMPHONY, OP. 125.

A noble poet, on reading certain strophes in a long poem to a friend, remarked that they were experiments. The remark rather jarred, at the time, on the friend's ear, and sunk into his mind. _Apropos_, say what one will about the Choral Symphony, it strikes us as an experiment. The very title seems empiric. What we should understand by a choral symphony would be a symphonically grand chorus blended with a symphony; but this is rather a chorus preceded by a symphony--its opposite, too (though intentionally), in character; in part independent of, in part made up of the themes of the chorus. Now, a similar work--Mendelssohn's "Lobgesang,"--struck us as being likewise an experiment, and not a happy one; the prevailing and overpowering impression was--"Oh! when will the singers begin?" This gigantic preluding of the essential is a distracting postponement, a colossal interruption--difficult to be done justice to by the impatient hearer, even if perfect in itself. But, if perfect _in_ itself, it would be more perfect _by_ itself--(?)--for, as a prelude, it remains subordinate; and this to the symphony is fatally derogatory. Most "experiments" are mistakes in judgment, and these in art. This symphony strikes us as disproportionate as well as incongruous--no less serious musical than statuesque and architectural faults. We feel that it is indeed bound up with, but not one of the others; that it is an appendix. Beethoven himself began, after it, another symphony, whole in itself, like the others. No doubt he was impressed (and rightly) with the feeling that an Ode to Joy demanded a grandiose introduction; but he made an elementary mistake (?) in making that introduction too long and heterogeneous--in short, by giving us a symphony instead of an overture. With respect to its character, let us draw a little nearer--it is, no doubt, of the greatest importance. In this symphony, Beethoven summoned up all his then powers to pour forth and portray in one tremendous focus _the_ conflict which his symphonies and deeper music more or less generally depict, viz., that of Pessimism and Optimism--of good and evil. And in this he was herald-representative of the nineteenth century. Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, did not depict this struggle; at least we are not _struck_ by it. Pathos, and even tragedy, in general they too of course reveal--for joy and sadness make up music; nay, sadness is perhaps the soul of music, at least Beethoven makes us think so; but the characteristic Hamletism of the nineteenth century (which is Hamlet--as, according to Freiligrath, Germany is, or was before 1870),--it was reserved for Beethoven to manifest forth; Beethoven, the greatest Hamlet (not Faust he was too good) of all. The other centuries were centuries of belief or unbelief; this is one of doubt, with a soul--belief, groping after a new one. It _will_ be new, and not local--let alone parochial. Fearful doubts must have seized thinking, feeling men, at all times, after looking abroad and pondering what we have called this tremendous paradox and discrepancy, the universe. St. Paul himself said, with poignant realization, "The world groaneth and travaileth until 'now';" and it is difficult to overstate the wide-spread and individual imperfection and unhappiness. This sense, of old, drove men into what we called a frenzy of belief--in something exterior. That they clutched, and to that they clung, nailing their gaze, as it were, to happiness promised for faith bestowed; and full of such a fearful sense of the wretchedness below, that they laughed to scorn even torture and the stake; and warped away from this world, to bide wholly in the contemplation of another. As might have been predicted, however, this, too, could only be a phase and period of transition (and that not a long one in the history of man; we must revolutionise our ideas of time and greatness); and, inevitably, when science, beginning greatly with Copernicus, set in, Luther, the first Freethinker (modern), would soon follow, and in due course a Hume, a Spinoza, a Schopenhauer, and a Kant. Our Beethoven, who had his own "categorical inspiration," no doubt derived terrible arguments for Pessimism from few things more emphatic than his own life--so mysteriously gifted and afflicted, stinted and endowed. Hence, then, the Titanic character of his music; the tremendous temptation in the wilderness (of his own heart, of a feared to be God abandoned world), of a soul inclining to good, to go over to evil--but the good in the end is triumphant, and we see it ever struggling through:--

In pits of passion and dens of woe We see strong Eros struggling through.

At the end of the awful conflict shadowed forth in the colossal opening of the choral symphony, we have been tempted to inscribe, "as if the world's heart-strings were cracking":--

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--the atheism of a King David himself: "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God!" but after that (the recitative to "O'er the raging waters of Galilee, the voice of One 'who made the storm his mere mantle, and the sea the pathway of power'":) the voice of peace--in modern dialect the voice of man; in the light of which reading, this entry of the human voice becomes portentous, as though it said, let the elements rage, let the arts stutter, the human voice alone can bring relief--light, and hope, and joy.

Thus, Beethoven's design was characteristically and colossally grand; he wished to strive to paint what painting certainly could not, and what sculpture could not--nay, in a sense, what poetry could not, for words cannot represent a conflict (especially of the emotions) like music, cannot so awfully or sweetly thrill the soul. And he succeeded in a way that Michael Angelo (his analogue) and Raphael (whom Beethoven also blended with the Angelo in him), certainly did not, when they foolishly attempted to paint the unpaintable (the Last Judgment, and Transfiguration). Whether, however, he succeeded musically, in this symphony, as a tail-work, is a debateable question. The query may be put--Might he not have treated the Pessimism also vocally, and thereby avoided the undue length and unsupported character of the instrumental prelude? The work would then have been a homogenous whole. But, and perhaps even more importantly, the question arises--Might not the music itself have been better? The second movement, _Molto vivace_, marvellously pourtrays (before Wagner) the _Venusberg_--the Mephistopheles-pact into which the poor despairing Pessimist may be driven to plunge; and we recollect well how we felt after first hearing the _Adagio molto e cantabile_, and going away perforce into the outside world; _Ach! that_ is the true world--that world we have been in; and this is a world of dross! But the first movement we cannot help feeling to be laboured, especially in parts, compared with that of the C minor, which is simply one rush of inspiration, and the chief theme of the last movement is, we must say it, tame and undignified, if not commonplace--nay, almost "jiggy," played and sung so fast (_allegro assai_)--not to compare for one moment with that other burst, the Hallelujah Chorus, (or "For unto us"), or many of Beethoven's own motivs. But, besides, it is guilty of the gross, the heinous offence in this instance, of setting words utterly different. Here is the melody; notice, besides its extremely smooth (amounting, as we say, to the commonplace) character (and so, not characteristic)--notice, that it consists (_mirabile dictu!_) merely of one strain repeated, with the cadence slightly altered (full, instead of half):--

[Music:

"Joy, thou gracious spark of God, His daughter, out of heaven sped." "With thy fire intoxicated, we thy sanctuary tread." ]

it continues--

[Music:

"Thy blessed magic binds again, Ties sever'd by the world." ]

and then the phrase to the words "With thy fire intoxicated," &c., is used for:--

"All men are Brothers, where, sweet Joy, Thy gentle wing is furl'd."

But, much worse--nay, absolutely shocking to the spiritual sense, is the persistent use of the same phrase, mediocre as it is, to these words:--

"Who that victory hath gained, Of a friend, the friend to be; Who a graceful wife hath gained

(This, too, should hardly be sung by women?)

Mix with ours his 'holy glee';[A] Yea, who calls but one soul his In all this round of sea and land: He who never knew that blessing Steal in tears from this bright band."

[A] Wordsworth's sonnet on the Swiss.

Would it have been thought possible for Beethoven (Inspired Instinct), to set these last lines to the same--we are almost provoked to say, rattling jingle. To a lower deep, alas! our Beethoven-Hamlet could scarcely fall--

"Oh, what a sovereign mind is there o'erthrown!"

It was an incredible aboriginal mistake to set these lines to the same time, let alone same tune. Nor, indeed, can his choice of the words be considered happy. What made him in his grand old age (old for him) so harp upon Schiller's crude performance, we know not; nay, we ask whether a Beethoven should not have treated the glorious subject, Joy, when he was already young;--despise as he might (an egregious error) his earlier works. Had he at least undertaken it when he wrote the Symphony in D and the "Eroica"; or, in the "high and palmy state" of his powers, when he wrote the _facile princeps_ C minor! Schiller's first words would alone repel us; he talks--"babbles" would be the strictly truer word, barbarously babbles--of joy, as that spark of the gods, and, in the same breath, daughter out of Elysium. How could he so talk of that grand abstract fact--Joy! Joy, the sunshine of the soul--whose glow, thence outwards, fills the Universe; life, absolute being; wherein alone we rightly, fully live. We have no patience with such barbarous metaphorising, such schoolboy personification, such hectic rapture! No wonder Beethoven failed, falling on such words as these.

(In passing--he has a few bars of interlude which Mendelssohn's famous "'Tis thus decreed," strangely resembles.)

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If the C were sharp, the passages would be identical.

In continuation--Beethoven seems in general equally careless (or perverse) and unhappy in his treatment of the words--a curious misfortune in an expressly vocal celebration. We have the same smooth passages, and the same rattling pace, for various inflections of thought and feeling. He does not fail, however, to give us one of those "flashes" of his true genius, old power, which Spohr alluded to, at the words _ver Gott_:--

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He proceeds thenceforth to intermix symphony with words in the way we spoke of as that which would seem natural to a choral symphony; and of the passage where the great broad theme (far happier) is _blended_ below, with the original motiv. Dr. Nohl strikingly remarks, that "Lo! here was a proof that music is also a thinker!" No doubt in our glorious Beethoven, who was all heart, and soul, and brain, (_plus_ robust body, till his sad latter days), if not exactly _mens sana in corpore sano_.

Nevertheless, on the whole, we feel we must agree with Spohr (surely no unworthy judge, unless blinded by envy); and still rank this symphony as a colossal experiment rather than a genial success. As far as our feelings are a guide (and we have expressly acknowledged at the outset, how each one of us is the creature of prejudice and mood), we find the work veritably stamped and distinguished by laboured elaboration--nay, almost painful labour. Beethoven (we feel) perpetuated a fundamental, primary, pregnant mistake, in _setting himself_ to "work out" one melodic idea, and that such a poor one--disappointing almost to exasperation. Above all, varied words cannot be so set. Even in purely instrumental music the possibility soon has its natural limits, whatever the genius of the composer, and despite the undeniably great effects that may be accomplished. Did not Beethoven himself, on overhearing his--how many variations was it, on a theme?--exclaim: "Oh, Beethoven, what an ass thou art!" There spoke the great man! Nature will never be sacrificed to a crotchet.

The design of this celebrated work was grand, characteristic, worthy of its great designer; but the execution we cannot feel corresponded. It seems to us the A-B-C of reasoning, that a time _must_ come in the career of every man when his powers decay. We speak, and rightly, of the records of his brain as messages from the Infinite; but, nevertheless, when those cells get enfeebled, that telegraph of nervous tissue corrupted, the messages are no longer mighty as of yore: Divine messages do not and will not come, except through the mystically-operating (for they also are divine) healthy physical mediums. Psychology and physiology are inextricably blended, if not one. Beethoven's faculties, then, it seems to us, had already begun to decay--he was older than other men at his years. He had been long deaf; was almost broken down with worry and care; and, probably, alas! trembled on the verge of incipient insanity (were it not already incipient). He was no longer rich in the fresh originality of his prime--in the original freshness of his youth; he had, perhaps, essentially written himself out (herein below Shakespeare). He began to repeat himself, to theorise, to _make_ music. Did he not himself say, "I plan, but when I sit down to perform, I find I have nothing to write." There again spoke the truly great man, honest to the last. He could, of course, never get away from his individuality--get out of himself; no man can. But even ideas now seemed to fail him, and their absence is no compensation for a new style of the old individual, let alone when that is dubious.

To sum up. The Choral Symphony seems, at the best, a grand but doubtful experiment. Its greatest, its only inspired movement, is the adagio; and that, heavenly as it is, interferes with the progress of the work--with the scheme of it--as depicting doubt, denial, and despair ("there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"), to be followed by oil upon the waters--by an uncontrollable outburst, sacred fury almost, of joy, at the perception by man that he is imperishable, part of the All; not only recipient of joy here, but justified demander and mortgagee of it hereafter; and joy of joy even at the high perception that even if we personally are not immortal, we are bubbles of the eternal sea, and that is immortal.

SUMMING UP.