The music of Beethoven has left a profound impress on art. In speaking
of his genius it is difficult to keep expression within the limits of
good taste. For who has so passed into the very inner _penetralia_ of
his great art, and revealed to the world such heights and depths of
beauty and power in sound?
Beethoven composed nine symphonies, which, by one voice, are ranked as
the greatest ever written, reaching in the last, known as the
"Choral," the full perfection of his power and experience. Other
musicians have composed symphonic works remarkable for varied
excellences, but in Beethoven this form of writing seems to have
attained its highest possibilities, and to have been illustrated by
the greatest variety of effects, from the sublime to such as are
simply beautiful and melodious. His hand swept the whole range of
expression with unfaltering mastery. Some passages may seem obscure,
some too elaborately wrought, some startling and abrupt, but on all is
stamped the die of his great genius.
Beethoven's compositions for the piano, the sonatas, are no less
notable for range and power of expression, their adaptation to meet
all the varied moods of passion and sentiment. Other pianoforte
composers have given us more warm and vivid colour, richer sensual
effects of tone, more wild and bizarre combination, perhaps even
greater sweetness in melody; but we look in vain elsewhere for the
spiritual passion and poetry, the aspiration and longing, the lofty
humanity, which make the Beethoven sonatas the _suspiria de profundis_
of the composer's inner life. In addition to his symphonies and
sonatas, he wrote the great opera of "Fidelio," and in the field of
oratorio asserted his equality with Handel and Haydn by composing "The
Mount of Olives." A great variety of chamber music, masses, and songs
bear the same imprint of power. He may be called the most original and
conscientious of all the composers. Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert,
and Mendelssohn were inveterate thieves, and pilfered the choicest
gems from old and forgotten writers without scruple. Beethoven seems
to have been so fecund in great conceptions, so lifted on the wings of
his tireless genius, so austere in artistic morality, that he stands
for the most part above the reproach deservedly borne by his brother
composers.
Beethoven's principal title to fame is in his superlative place as a
symphonic composer. In the symphony music finds its highest
intellectual dignity; in Beethoven the symphony has found its loftiest
master.
_SCHUBERT AND SCHUMANN._