[1] London Ales.
[2] Strong Burton Mild Ale.
[3] Fairly representative of "Pale Ales."
[4] Heavy Stock Ales.
[5] Irish Stout.
[6] Nos. 2 and 3 are respectively "single" and "double" London Stouts
from the same brewery.
[7] London Porter or Cooper.
[8] The specific gravity, or "gravity" as it is always termed in the
industry, of the brewer is 1000 times the specific gravity of the
physicist. This is purely a matter of convention and convenience.
Thus when a brewer speaks of a wort of a "gravity" of 1045
(ten-forty-five) he means a wort having a specific gravity of 1.045.
Each unit in the brewer's scale of specific gravity is termed a
"degree of gravity." The wort referred to above, therefore, possesses
forty-five _degrees_ of gravity. The "original gravity," it may here
be mentioned, represents the specific gravity of the wort (see
BREWING) before fermentation. The solids in the original wort may be
ascertained by dividing the excess of the gravity over 1000 by 3.86.
Thus in the case of Mild Ale No. 1 the excess of the original gravity
over 1000 is 1055.13 - 1000 = 55.13. Dividing this by 3.86 we get
14.28, which indicates that the wort from which the beer was
manufactured contained 14.28% of solids. In the trade the gravity of
a beer (or rather of the wort from which it is derived) is generally
expressed in pounds per barrel. This means the excess in weight of a
barrel of the wort over the weight of a barrel of water. The weight
of a barrel (36 gallons) of water is 360 lb.; in the above example
the weight of a barrel of the beer wort is 360 X 1.05513 = 379.8. The
gravity of the wort in lb. is therefore 379.8 - 360 = 19.8. The beer
which is made from this wort would also be called a 19.8 lb. beer,
the reference in all cases being to the original wort.
[9] A particularly heavy beer, only brewed at certain times in the
year.
[10] The maxima of production and consumption were reached in
1899/1900, when the production amounted to 1,337,509,116 gallons (at
the standard gravity) and consumption to 32.28 gallons per head.
BEERSHEBA, a place midway between Gaza and Hebron (28 m. from each),
frequently referred to in the Bible as the southern limit of Palestine
("Dan to Beersheba," Judg. xx. i, &c.) Its foundation is variously
ascribed to Abraham and Isaac, and different etymologies for its name
are suggested, in the fundamental documents of Genesis (xxi. 22, xxvi.
26). It was an important holy place, where Abraham planted a sacred tree
(Gen. xxi. 23), and where divine manifestations were vouchsafed to Hagar
(Gen. xxi. 17), Isaac (xxvi. 24), Jacob (xlvi. 2) and Elijah (1 Kings
xix. 5). Amos mentions it in connexion with the shrines of Bethel and
Gilgal (Amos v. 5) and denounces oaths by its _numen_ (viii. 14). The
most probable meaning of the name is "seven wells," despite the
non-Semitic construction involved in this interpretation. Seven ancient
wells still exist here, though two are stopped up. Eusebius and Jerome
mention the place in the 4th century as a large village and the seat of
a Roman garrison. Extensive remains of this village exist, though they
are being rapidly quarried away for building; some inscriptions of great
importance have been found here. Later it appears to have been the site
of a bishopric; remains of its churches were still standing in the 14th
century. Some fine mosaics have been here unearthed and immediately
destroyed, in sheer wantonness, by the natives quarrying building-stone.
The Biblical Beersheba probably exists at Bir es-Seba', 2 m. distant.
BEESLY, EDWARD SPENCER (1831- ), English historian and positivist, son
of the Rev. James Beesly, was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire, on the
23rd of January 1831. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, which
may be regarded as the original centre of the English positivist
movement. Richard Congreve (q.v.) was tutor at Wadham from 1849 to 1854,
and three men of that time, Frederic Harrison (q.v.), Beesly and John
Henry Bridges (1832-1906), became the leaders of Comtism in England.
Beesly left Oxford in 1854 to become assistant-master at Marlborough
College. In 1859 he was appointed professor of history at University
College, London, and of Latin at Bedford College, London, in 1860. He
resigned these appointments in 1893 and 1889, and in 1893 became the
editor of the newly-established _Positivist Review_. He collaborated in
the translation of Comte's system of _Positive Polity_ (4 vols.,
1875-1879), translated his _Discourse on the Positive Spirit_ (1903),
and wrote a biography of Comte for a translation of the first two
chapters of his _Cours de philosophie positive_, entitled _Fundamental
Principles of Positive Philosophy_ (1905). Professor Beesly stood
unsuccessfully as Liberal candidate for Westminster in 1885 and for
Marylebone in 1886, and is the author of numerous review articles on
social and political topics, treated from the positivist standpoint,
especially on the Irish question. His works also include a series of
lectures on Roman history, entitled _Catiline, Clodius, Tiberius_
(1878), in which he rehabilitates in some degree the character of each
of his subjects, and _Queen Elizabeth_ (1892), in the "Twelve English
Statesmen" series.
BEET, a cultivated form of the plant _Beta vulgaris_ (natural order
Chenopodiaceae), which grows wild on the coasts of Europe, North Africa
and Asia as far as India. It is a biennial, producing, like the carrot,
a thick, fleshy tap-root during the first year and a branched, leafy,
flowering stem in the following season. The small, green flowers are
borne in clusters. A considerable number of varieties are cultivated for
use on account of their large fleshy roots, under the names of
mangel-wurzel or mangold, field-beet and garden-beet. The cultivation of
beet in relation to the production of sugar, for which purpose certain
varieties of beet stand next in importance to the sugar cane, is dealt
with under SUGAR. The garden-beet has been cultivated from very remote
times as a salad plant, and for general use as a table vegetable. The
variety most generally grown has long, tapering, carrot-shaped roots,
the "flesh" of which is of a uniform deep red colour throughout, and the
leaves brownish red. It is boiled and cut into slices for being eaten
cold; and it is also prepared as a pickle, as well as in various other
forms. Beet is in much more common use on the continent of Europe as a
culinary vegetable than in Great Britain, where it has, however, been
cultivated for upwards of two centuries. The white beet, _Beta cicla_,
is cultivated for the leaves, which are used as spinach. The midribs and
stalks of the leaves are also stewed and eaten as sea-kale, under the
name of Swiss chard. _B. cicla_ is also largely used as a decorative
plant for its large, handsome leaves, blood red or variegated in colour.
The beet prospers in a rich deep soil, well pulverized by the spade. If
manure is required, it should be deposited at the bottom of the trench
in preparing the ground. The seeds should be sown in drills 15 ins.
asunder, in April or early in May, and the plants are afterwards to be
thinned to about 8 in. apart in the lines, but not more, as
moderate-sized roots are preferable. The plants should grow on till the
end of October or later, when a portion should be taken up for use, and
the rest laid in in a sheltered corner, and covered up from frost. The
roots must not be bruised and the leaves must be twisted off--not
closely cut, as they are then liable to bleed. In the north the crop may
be wholly taken up in autumn, and stored in a pit or cellar, beyond
reach of frost. If it is desired to have fresh roots early, the seeds
should be sown at the end of February or beginning of March; and if a
succession is required, a few more may be sown by the end of March.
BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN (1770-1827), German musical composer, was baptized
(probably, as was usual, the day after birth) on the 17th of December
1770 at Bonn. His family is traceable to a village near Louvain, in
Belgium, in the 17th century. In 1650 a lineal ancestor of the composer
settled in Antwerp. Beethoven's grandfather, Louis, quarrelled with his
family, came to Bonn in 1732, and became one of the court musicians of
the archbishop-elector of Cologne. He was a genial man of estimable
character, and though Ludwig van Beethoven was only four years old when
his grandfather died, he never forgot him, but cherished his portrait to
the end of his life. Beethoven's father, a tenor singer at the
archbishop-elector's court, was of a rough and violent temper, not
improved by his passion for drink, nor by the dire poverty under which
the family laboured. He married Magdelina Leim or Laym, the widow of a
_valet-de-chambre_ of the elector of Trier and daughter of the chief
cook at Ehrenbreitstein. Beethoven's father wished to profit as early as
possible by his son's talent, and accordingly began to give him a
severe musical training, especially on the violin, when he was only five
years old, at about which time they left the house in which he was born
(515 Bonngasse, now preserved as a Beethoven museum, with a magnificent
collection of manuscripts and relics). By the time Beethoven was nine
his father had no more to teach him, and he entered upon a perhaps
healthier course of clavier lessons under a singer named Pfeiffer. A
little general education was also edged in by a certain Zambona. Van den
Eeden, the court organist, and an old friend of his grandfather, taught
him the organ and the pianoforte, and so rapid was Beethoven's progress
that when C.G. Neefe succeeded to Van den Eeden's post in 1781, he was
soon able to allow the boy to act as his deputy. With his permission
Beethoven published in 1783 his earliest extant composition, a set of
variations on a march by Dressler. The title-page states that they were
written in 1780 _"par un jeune amateur Louis van Beethoven age de dix
ans_." Beethoven's father was very clumsy in his unnecessary attempts to
make an infant prodigy of his son; for the ante-dating of this
composition, implying the correct date of birth, contradicts the
post-dating of the date of birth by which he tried to make out that the
three sonatas Beethoven wrote in the same year were by a boy of eleven.
(Beethoven for a long time believed that he was born in 1772, and the
certificate of his baptism hardly convinced him, because he knew that he
had an elder brother named Ludwig who died in infancy.) In the same
year, 1783, Beethoven was given the post of cembalist in the Bonn
theatre, and in 1784 his position of assistant to Neefe became official.
In a _catalogue raisonne_ of the new archbishop Max Franz's court
musicians we find "No. 14, Ludwig Beethoven" described "as of good
capacity, still young, of good, quiet behaviour and poor," while his
father (No. 8) "has a completely worn-out voice, has long been in
service, is very poor, of fairly good behaviour, and married."
In the spring of 1787 Beethoven paid a short visit to Vienna, where he
astonished Mozart by his extemporizations and had a few lessons from
him. How he was enabled to afford this visit is not clear. After three
months the illness of his mother, to whom he was devoted, brought him
back. She died in July, leaving a baby girl, one year old, who died in
November. For five more years Beethoven remained at Bonn supporting his
family, of which he had been since the age of fifteen practically the
head, as his father's bad habits steadily increased until in 1789 Ludwig
was officially entrusted with his father's salary. He had already made
several lifelong friends at Bonn, of whom the chief were Count Waldstein
and Stephan Breuning; and his prospects brightened as the
archbishop-elector, in imitation of his brother the emperor Joseph II.,
enlarged the scale of his artistic munificence. By 1792 the
archbishop-elector's attention was thoroughly aroused to Beethoven's
power, and he provided for Beethoven's second visit to Vienna. The
introductions he and Count Waldstein gave to Beethoven, the prefix "van"
in Beethoven's name (which looked well though it was not really a title
of nobility), and above all the unequalled impressiveness of his playing
and extemporization, quickly secured his footing with the exceptionally
intelligent and musical aristocracy of Vienna, who to the end of his
life treated him with genuine affection and respect, bearing with all
the roughness of his manners and temper, not as with the eccentricities
of a fashionable genius, but as with signs of the sufferings of a
passionate and noble nature.
Beethoven's life, though outwardly uneventful, was one of the most
pathetic of tragedies. His character has had the same fascination for
his biographers as it had for his friends, and there is probably hardly
any great man in history of whom more is known and of whom so much of
what is known is interesting. Yet it is all too much a matter of detail
and anecdote to admit of chronological summarizing here, and for the
disentangling of its actual incidents we must refer the reader to Sir
George Grove's long and graphic article, "Beethoven," in the _Dictionary
of Music and Musicians_, and to the monumental biography of Thayer, who
devoted his whole life to collecting materials. These two biographical
works, read in the spirit in which their authors conceived them, will
reveal, beneath a mass of distressing, grotesque and sometimes sordid
detail, a nobility of character and unswerving devotion to the highest
moral ideas throughout every distress and temptation to which a
passionate and totally unpractical temper and the growing shadow of a
terrible misfortune could expose a man.
The man is surpassed only by his works, for in them he had that mastery
which was denied to him in what he himself calls his attempt to "grapple
with fate." Such of his difficulties as lay in his own character already
showed themselves in his studies with Haydn. Haydn, who seems to have
heard of him on his first visit to Vienna in 1787, passed through Bonn
in July 1792, and was so much struck by Beethoven that it was very
likely at his instigation that the archbishop sent Beethoven to Vienna
to study under him. But Beethoven did not get on well with him, and
found him perfunctory in correcting his exercises. Haydn appreciated
neither his manners nor the audacity of his free compositions, and
abandoned whatever intentions he may have had of taking Beethoven with
him to England in 1794. Beethoven could do without sympathy, but a
grounding in strict counterpoint he felt to be a dire necessity, so he
continued his studies with Albrechtsberger, a mere grammarian who had
the poorest opinion of him, but who could, at all events, be depended on
to attend to his work. Almost every comment has been made upon the
relations between Haydn and Beethoven, except the perfectly obvious one
that Mozart died at the age of thirty-six, just at the time Beethoven
came to Vienna, and that Haydn, as is perfectly well known, was
profoundly shocked by the untimely loss of the greatest musician he had
ever known. At such a time the undeniable clumsiness of Beethoven's
efforts at academic exercises would combine with his general
tactlessness to confirm Haydn in the belief that the sun had set for
ever in the musical world, and would incline him to view with disfavour
those bold features of style and form which the whole of his own
artistic development should naturally have predisposed him to welcome.
It is at least significant that those early works of Beethoven in which
Mozart's influence is most evident, such as the Septet, aroused Haydn's
open admiration, whereas he hardly approved of the compositions like the
sonatas, _op._ 2 (dedicated to him), in which his own influence is
stronger. Neither he nor Beethoven was skilful in expressing himself
except in music, and it is impossible to tell what Haydn meant, or what
Beethoven thought he meant, in advising him not to publish the last and
finest of the three trios, _op._ 1. But even if he did not mean that it
was too daring for the public, it can hardly be expected that he never
contrasted the meteoric career of Mozart, who after a miraculous boyhood
had produced at the age of twenty-five some of the greatest music Haydn
had ever seen, with the slow and painful development of his uncouth
pupil, who at the same age had hardly a dozen presentable works to his
credit. It is not clear that Haydn ever came to understand Beethoven,
and many years passed before Beethoven realized the greatness of the
master whose teaching had so disappointed him.
From the time Beethoven settled permanently in Vienna, which he was soon
induced to do by the kindness of his aristocratic friends, the only
noteworthy external features of his career are the productions of his
compositions. In spite of the usual hostile criticism for obscurity,
exaggeration and unpopularity, his reputation became world-wide and by
degrees actually popular; nor did it ever decline, for as his later
works became notorious for their extravagance and unintelligibility his
earlier works became better understood. He was no man of business, but,
in a thoroughly unpractical way, he was suspicious and exacting in money
matters, which in his later years frequently turned up in his
conversation as a grievance, and at times, especially during the
depreciation of the Austrian currency between 1808 and 1815, were a real
anxiety to him. Nevertheless, with a little more skill his external
prosperity would have been great. He was always a personage of
importance, as is testified by more than one amusing anecdote, like
those of his walks with Goethe and his half-ironical comments on the
hats which flew off more for him than for Goethe; and in 1815 it seemed
as if the summit of his fame was reached when his 7th symphony was
performed, together with a hastily-written cantata, _Der glorreiche
Augenblick_ and the blazing piece of descriptive fireworks entitled
_Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria_, once popular in
England as the _Battle Symphony_. The occasion for this performance was
the congress of Vienna; and the government placed the two halls of the
Redouten-Saal at his disposal for two nights, while he himself was
allowed to invite all the sovereigns of Europe. In the same year he
received the freedom of the city, an honour much valued by him. After
that time his immediate popularity, as far as new works were concerned,
became less eminent, as that of his more easy-going contemporaries began
to increase. Yet there was, not only in the emotional power of his
earlier works, but also in the known cause of his increasing inability
to appear in public, something that awakened the best popular
sensibilities; and when his two greatest and most difficult works, the
9th symphony and parts of the _Missa Solemnis_, were produced at a
memorable concert in 1824, the storm of applause was overwhelming, and
the composer, who was on the platform in order to give the time to the
conductor, had to be turned round by one of the singers in order to
_see_ it.
Signs of deafness had given him grave anxiety as early as 1708. For a
long time he successfully concealed it from all but his most intimate
friends, while he consulted physicians and quacks with eagerness; but
neither quackery nor the best skill of his time availed him, and it has
been pointed out that the root of the evil lay deeper than could have
been supposed during his lifetime. Although his constitution was
magnificently strong and his health was preserved by his passion for
outdoor life, a post-mortem examination revealed a very complicated
state of disorder, evidently dating almost from childhood (if not
inherited) and aggravated by lack of care and good food. The touching
document addressed to his brothers in 1802, and known as his "will,"
should be read in its entirety, as given by Thayer (iv. 4). No verbal
quotation short of the whole will do justice to the overpowering
outburst which runs almost in one long unpunctuated sentence through the
whole tragedy of Beethoven's life, as he knew it then and foresaw it. He
reproaches men for their injustice in thinking and calling him
pugnacious, stubborn and misanthropical when they do not know that for
six years he has suffered from an incurable condition, aggravated by
incompetent doctors. He dwells upon his delight in human society, from
which he has had so early to isolate himself, but the thought of which
now fills him with dread as it makes him realize his loss, not only in
music but in all finer interchange of ideas, and terrifies him lest the
cause of his distress should appear. He declares that, when those near
him had heard a flute or a singing shepherd while he heard nothing, he
was only prevented from taking his life by the thought of his art, but
it seemed impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought out
all that he felt to be in his power. He requests that after his death
his present doctor, if surviving, shall be asked to describe his illness
and to append it to this document in order that at least then the world
may be as far as possible reconciled with him. He leaves his brothers
his property, such as it is, and in terms not less touching, if more
conventional than the rest of the document, he declares that his
experience shows that only virtue has preserved his life and his courage
through all his misery.
And, indeed, his art and his courage rose far above any level attainable
by those artists who are slaves to the "personal note," for his chief
occupation at the time of this document was his 2nd symphony, the most
brilliant and triumphant piece that had ever been written up to that
time. On a smaller scale, in which mastery was the more easily
attainable as experiment was more readily tested, Beethoven was sooner
able to strike a tragic note, and hence the process of growth in his
style is more readily traceable in the pianoforte works than in the
larger compositions which naturally represent a series of crowning
results. Only in his last period does the pianoforte cease to be
Beethoven's normal means of expression. Accordingly, if in the
discussion of Beethoven's works, with which we close this article, we
dwell rather more on the pianoforte sonatas than on his greater works,
it is not only because they are more easily referred to by the general
reader, but because they are actually a key to his intellectual
development, such as is afforded neither by his life nor by the great
works which are themselves the crowning mystery and wonder of musical
art.
Deafness causes inconvenience in conversation long before it is
noticeable in music, and in 1806 Beethoven could still conduct his opera
_Fidelio_ and be much annoyed at the inattention to his nuances; and his
last appearance as a player was not until 1814, when he made a great
impression with his B flat trio, _op._ 97. At the end of November 1822
an attempt to conduct proved disastrous. The touching incident in 1824
has been described, but up to the last Beethoven seems to have found or
imagined that ear-trumpets (of which a collection is now preserved at
Bonn) were of use to him in playing to himself, though his friends were
often pained when the pianoforte was badly out of tune, and were
overcome when Beethoven in soft passages did not make the notes sound at
all. The instrument sent him by Broadwood in 1817-1818 gave him great
pleasure and he answered it with a characteristically cordial and quaint
letter in the best of bad French. His fame in England was often a source
of great comfort to him, especially in his last illness, when the London
Philharmonic Society, for which the 9th symphony was written and a 10th
symphony projected, sent him L100 in advance of the proceeds of a
benefit concert which he had begged them to give, being in very
straitened circumstances, as he would make no use of the money he had
deposited in the bank for his nephew.
This nephew was the cause of most of his anxiety and distress in the
last twelve years of his life. His brother, Kaspar Karl, had often given
him trouble; for example, by obtaining and publishing some of
Beethoven's early indiscretions, such as the trio-variations, _op._ 44,
the sonatas, _op._ 49, and other trifles, of which the late _opus_
number is thus explained. In 1815, after Beethoven had quarrelled with
his oldest friend, Stephan Breuning, for warning him against trusting
his brother in money matters, Kaspar died, leaving a widow of whom
Beethoven strongly disapproved, and a son, nine years old, for the
guardianship of whom Beethoven fought the widow through all the law
courts. The boy turned out utterly unworthy of his uncle's persistent
devotion, and gave him every cause for anxiety. He failed in all his
examinations, including an attempt to learn some trade in the
polytechnic school, whereupon he fell into the hands of the police for
attempting suicide, and, after being expelled from Vienna, joined the
army. Beethoven's utterly simple nature could neither educate nor
understand a human being who was not possessed by the wish to do his
best. His nature was passionately affectionate, and he had suffered all
his life from the want of a natural outlet for it. He had often been
deeply in love and made no secret of it; but Robert Browning had not a
more intense dislike of "the artistic temperament" in morals, and though
Beethoven's attachments were almost all hopelessly above him in rank,
there is not one that was not honourable and respected by society as
showing the truthfulness and self-control of a great man. Beethoven's
orthodoxy in such matters has provoked the smiles of Philistines,
especially when it showed itself in his objections to Mozart's _Don
Giovanni_, and his grounds for selecting the subject of _Fidelio_ for
his own opera. The last thing that Philistines will ever understand is
that genius is far too independent of convention to abuse it; and
Beethoven's life, with all its mistakes, its grotesqueness and its
pathos, is as far beyond the shafts of Philistine wit as his art.
At the beginning of 1827 Beethoven had projects for a 10th symphony,
music to Goethe's _Faust_, and (under the stimulus of his newly acquired
collection of Handel's works) any amount of choral music, compared to
which all his previous compositions would have seemed but a prelude. But
he was in bad health; his brother Johann, with whom he had been staying,
had not allowed him a fire in his bedroom, and had sent him back to
Vienna in an open chaise in vile weather; and the chill which resulted
ended in a fatal illness. Within a week of his death Beethoven was
still full of his projects. Three days before the end he added a codicil
to his will, and saw Schubert, whose music had aroused his keen
interest, but was not able to speak to him, though he afterwards spoke
of the Philharmonic Society and the English, almost his last words being
"God bless them." On the 26th of March 1827, during a fierce
thunderstorm, he died.
_Beethoven's Music._--The division of Beethoven's work into three styles
has become proverbial, and is based on obvious facts. The styles,
however, are not rigidly separated, either in themselves or in
chronology. Nor can the popular description of Beethoven's first manner
as "Mozartesque" be accepted as doing justice to a style which differs
more radically from Mozart's than Mozart's differs from Haydn's. The
style of Beethoven's third period is no longer regarded as "showing an
obscurity traceable to his deafness," but we have, perhaps, only
recently outgrown the belief that his later treatment of form is
revolutionary. The peculiar interest and difficulty in tracing
Beethoven's artistic development is that the changes in the materials
and range of his art were as great as those in the form, so that he
appears in the light of a pioneer, while the art with which he started
was nevertheless already a perfectly mature and highly organized thing.
And he is perhaps unique among artists in this, that his power of
constructing perfect works of art never deserted him while he
revolutionized his means of expression. No doubt this is in a measure
true of all the greatest artists, but it is seldom obvious. In mature
art vital differences in works of similar form are generally more likely
to be overlooked than to force themselves on the critic's attention. And
when they become so great as to make a new epoch it is generally at the
cost of a period of experiment too heterogeneous and insecure for works
of art to attain great permanent value. But in Beethoven's case, as we
have said, the process of development is so smooth that it is impossible
to separate the periods clearly, although the ground covered is, as
regards emotional range, at least as great as that between Bach and
Mozart. No artist has ever left more authoritative documentary evidence
as to the steps of his development than Beethoven. In boyhood he seems
to have acquired the habit of noting down all his musical ideas exactly
as they first struck him. It is easy to see why in later years he
referred to this as a "bad habit," for it must often take longer to jot
down a crude idea than to reject it; and by the time the habit was
formed Beethoven's powers of self-criticism were unparalleled, and he
must often have felt hampered by the habit of writing down what he knew
to be too crude to be even an aid to memory. Such first intuitions, if
not written down, would no doubt be forgotten; but the poetic mood, the
_Stimmung_, they attempt to indicate, would remain until a better
expression was forthcoming. Beethoven had acquired the habit of
recording them, and thereby he has, perhaps, misled some critics into
over-emphasizing the contrast between his "tentative" self-critical
methods and the quasi-extempore outpourings of Mozart. This contrast is
probably not very radical; indeed, we may doubt whether in every
thoughtful mind any apparently sudden inspiration is not preceded by
some anticipatory mood in which the idea was sought and its first faint
indications tested and rejected so instantaneously as to leave no
impression on the memory.
The number and triviality of Beethoven's preliminary sketches should
not, then, be taken as evidence of a timid or vacillating spirit. But if
we regard his sketches as his diary their significance becomes
inestimable. They cover every period of Beethoven's career, and
represent every stage of nearly all his important works, as well as of
innumerable trifles, including ideas that did not survive to be worked
out. And the type of self-criticism is the same from beginning to end.
There is no tendency in the middle or last period, any more than in the
first, to "subordinate form to expression," nor do the sketches of the
first period show any lack of attention to elements that seem more
characteristic of the third. The difference between Beethoven's three
styles appears first in its full proportions when we realize this
complete continuity of his method and art. We have ventured to cast
doubts upon the Mozartesque character of his early style, because that
is chiefly a question of perspective. While he was handling a range of
ideas not, in a modern view, glaringly different from Mozart's, he had
no reason to use a glaringly different language. His contemporaries,
however, found it more difficult to see the resemblance; and, though
their criticism was often violently hostile, they saw with prejudice a
daring originality which we may as well learn to appreciate with study.
Beethoven himself in later years partly affected and partly felt a lack
of sympathy with his own early style. But he had other things to do than
to criticize it. Modern prejudice has not his excuse, and the neglect of
Beethoven's early works is no less than the neglect of the key to the
understanding of his later. It is also the neglect of a mass of mature
art that already places Beethoven on the same plane as Mozart, and
contains perhaps the only traces in all his work of a real struggle
between the forces of progress and those of construction. We will
therefore give special attention to this subject here.
The truth is that there are several styles in Beethoven's first period,
in the centre of which, "proving all things," is the true and mature
Beethoven, however wider may be the scope of his later maturity. And he
did not, as is often alleged, fail to show early promise. The pianoforte
quartets he wrote at the age of fifteen are, no doubt, clumsy and
childish in execution to a degree that contrasts remarkably with the
works of Mozart's, Mendelssohn's or Schubert's boyhood; yet they contain
material actually used in the sonatas, _op._ 2, No. 1, and _op._ 2, No.
3. And the passage in _op._ 2, No. 3, is that immediately after the
first subject, where, as Beethoven then states it, it embodies one of
his most epoch-making discoveries, namely, the art of organizing a long
series of apparently free modulations by means of a systematic
progression in the bass. In the childish quartet the principle is only
dimly felt, but it is nevertheless there as a subconscious source of
inspiration; and it afterwards gives inevitable dramatic truth to such
passages as the climax of the development in the sonata, _op._ 57
(commonly called _Appassionata_), and throughout the chaos of the
mysterious introduction to the C major string-quartet, _op._ 59, No. 3,
prepares us for the world of loveliness that arises from it.
Although with Beethoven the desire to express new thoughts was thus
invariably both stimulated and satisfied by the discovery of the
necessary new means of expression, he felt deeply the danger of spoiling
great ideas by inadequate execution; and his first work in a new form or
medium is, even if as late as the Mass in C, _op._ 89, almost always
unambitious. His teachers had found him sceptical of authority, and
never convinced of the practical convenience of a rule until he had too
successfully courted disaster. But he appreciated the experience, though
he may have found it expensive, and traces of crudeness in such early
works as he did not disown are as rare as plagiarisms. The first three
pianoforte sonatas, _op._ 2. show the different elements in Beethoven's
early style as clearly as possible. Sir Hubert Parry has aptly compared
the opening of the sonata, _op._ 2, No. 1, with that of the finale of
Mozart's G minor symphony, to show how much closer Beethoven's texture
is. The slow movement well illustrates the rare cases in which Beethoven
imitates Mozart to the detriment of his own proper richness of tone and
thought, while the finale in its central episode brings a misapplied and
somewhat diffuse structure in Mozart's style into direct conflict with
themes as "Beethovenish" in their terseness as in their sombre passion.
The second sonata is flawless in execution, and entirely beyond the
range of Haydn and Mozart in harmonic and dramatic thought, except in
the finale. And it is just in the adoption of the luxurious Mozartesque
rondo form as the crown of this work that Beethoven shows his true
independence. He adopts the form, not because it is Mozart's, but
because it is right and because he can master it. The opening of the
second subject in the first movement is a wonderful application of the
harmonic principle already mentioned in connexion with the early piano
quartets. In all music nothing equally dramatic can be found before the
D minor sonata, _op._ 31, No. 2, which is rightly regarded as marking
the beginning of Beethoven's second period. The slow movement, like
those of _op._ 7 and a few other early works, shows a thrilling
solemnity that immediately proves the identity of the pupil of Haydn
with the creator of the 9th symphony. The little _scherzo_ no less
clearly foreshadows the new era in music by the fact that in so small
and light a movement a modulation from A to G sharp minor can occur too
naturally to excite surprise. If the later work of Beethoven were
unknown there would be very little evidence that this sonata was by a
young man, except, perhaps, in the remarkable abruptness of style in the
first movement, an abruptness which is characteristic, not of
immaturity, but of art in which problems are successfully solved for the
first time. This abruptness is, however, in a few of Beethoven's early
works carried appreciably too far. In the sonata in C minor, _op._ 10,
No. 1, for example, the more vigorous parts of the first movement lose
in breadth from it, while the finale is almost stunted.
But Beethoven was not content to express his individuality only in an
abrupt epigrammatic style. From the outset breadth was also his aim, and
while he occasionally attempted to attain a greater breadth than his
resources would properly allow (as in the first movement of the sonata,
_op._ 2, No. 3, and that of the violoncello sonata, _op._ 5, No. 1, in
both of which cases a kind of extempore outburst in the coda conceals
the collapse of his peroration), there are many early works in which he
shows neither abruptness of style nor any tendency to confine himself
within the limits of previous art. The C minor trio, _op._ 1, No. 3, is
not more remarkable for the boldness of thought that made Haydn doubtful
as to the advisability of publishing it, than for the perfect smoothness
and spaciousness of its style. These qualities Beethoven at first
naturally found easier to retain with less dramatic material, as in the
other trios in the same _opus_, but the C minor trio does not stand
alone. It represents, perhaps, the most numerous, as certainly the
noblest, class of Beethoven's early works. Certainly the smallest class
is that in which there is unmistakable imitation of Mozart, and it is
significant that almost all examples of this class are works for wind
instruments, where the technical limitations narrowly determine the
style and discourage the composer from taking things seriously. Such
works are the beautiful and popular septet, the quintet for pianoforte
and wind instruments (modelled superficially, yet closely and with a
kind of modest ambition, on Mozart's wonderful work for the same
combination) and, on a somewhat higher level, the trio for pianoforte,
clarinet and violoncello, _op._ 11.
It is futile to discuss the point at which Beethoven's second manner may
be said to begin, but he has himself given us excellent evidence as to
when and how his first manner (as far as that is a single thing) became
impossible to him. Through quite a large number of works, beginning
perhaps with the great string quintet, _op._ 29, new types of harmonic
and emotional expression had been assimilated into a style at least
intelligible from Mozart's point of view. Indeed, Beethoven's favourite
way of enlarging his range of expression often seems to consist in
allowing the Titanic force of his new inventions and the formal beauty
of the old art to indicate by their contrast a new world grander and
lovelier than either. Sometimes, as in the C major quintet, the new
elements are too perfectly assimilated for the contrast to appear. The
range of key and depth of thought is beyond that of Beethoven's first
manner, but the smoothness is that of Mozart. In the three pianoforte
sonatas, _op._ 31, the struggle of the transition is as manifest as its
accomplishment is triumphant. The first movement of the first sonata (in
G major) deals with widely separated keys on new principles. These are
embodied in a style which for abruptness and jocular paradox is hardly
surpassed by Beethoven's most nervous early works. The exceptionally
ornate and dilatory slow movement reads almost like a protest; while the
finale begins as if to show that humour should be beautiful, and ends by
making fun of the beauty. The second sonata (in D minor) is the greatest
work Beethoven had as yet written. Its first movement, already cited
above in connexion with the dramatic sequences in _op._ 2, No. 2, is,
like that of the _Sonata Appassionata_, a _locus classicus_ for such
powerful means of expression. And it is worth noting that the only
sketch known of this movement is a sketch in which nothing but its
sequential plan is indicated. In the third sonata Beethoven enjoys on a
higher plane an experience he had often indulged in before, the
attainment of smoothness and breadth by means of a delicately humorous
calm which gives scope to the finer subtleties of his new thoughts.
Beethoven himself wrote to his publisher that these three sonatas
represented a new phase in his style; but when we realize his artistic
conscientiousness it is not surprising that they should be contemporary
with larger works like the 2nd symphony, which are far more
characteristic of his first manner. His whole development is entirely
ruled by his determination to let nothing pass until it has been
completely mastered, and long before this his sketch-books show that he
had many ambitious ideas for a 1st symphony, and that it was a
deliberate process that made his ambitions dwindle into something that
could be safely realized in the masterly little comedy with which he
began his orchestral career. The easy breadth and power of the 2nd
symphony represents an amply sufficient advance, and leaves his forces
free to develop in less expensive forms those vast energies for which
afterwards the orchestra and the string-quartet were to become the
natural field.
In the "Waldstein" sonata, _op._ 53, we see Beethoven's second manner
literally displacing his first; that is to say, we reach a state of
things at which the two can no longer form an artistic contrast. The
work, as we know it, is not only perfect, but has all the qualities of
art in which the newest elements have long been familiar. The opening is
on the same harmonic train of thought as that of the sonata, _op._ 31,
No. 1, but there is no longer the slightest need for a paradoxical or
jocular manner. On the contrary, the harmonies are held together by an
orderly sequence in the bass, and the onrush is that of some calm
diurnal energy of nature. The short introduction to the finale is
harmonically and emotionally the most profound thing in the sonata,
while the finale itself uses every new resource in the triumphant
attainment of a leisure more splendid than any conceivable in the most
spacious of Mozart's rondos. Yet it is well known that Beethoven
originally intended the beautiful _andante_ in F, afterwards published
separately, to be the slow movement of this sonata. That andante is,
like the finale, a spacious and gorgeous rondo, which probably Beethoven
himself could not have written at an earlier period. The modulation to D
flat in its principal theme, and that to G flat near the end, are its
chief harmonic effects and stand out in beautiful relief within its
limits. After the first movement of the Waldstein sonata they would be
flat and colourless. The sketch-books show that Beethoven, when he first
planned the sonata, was by no means inattentive to the balance of
harmonic colour in the whole scheme, but that at first he did not
realize how far that scheme was going to carry him. He originally
thought of the slow movement as in E major, a remote key to which,
however, he soon assigned the more intimate position of complementary
key in the first movement. He then worked at the slow movement in F with
such zest that he did not discover until the whole sonata was finished
that he had raised the first and last movements to an altogether higher
plane of thought, though the redundancy of the two rondos in
juxtaposition and the unusual length of the sonata were so obvious that
his friends ventured to point them out. Beethoven's revision of his
earliest works is now known to have been extensive and drastic; but this
is the first instance, and _Fidelio_ and the quartet in B flat, _op._
131, are the only other instances, of any later work needing important
alteration after it was completely executed. From this point up to _op._
101 we may study Beethoven's second manner entirely free from any
survivals of his first, even as a legitimate contrast; though it is as
impossible to fix a point before which his third manner cannot be traced
as it is to ignore the premonitions of his second manner in his early
works. The distinguishing features in Beethoven's second style are the
result of a condition of art in which enormous new possibilities have
become so well known that there is no need for stating them abruptly,
paradoxically or emphatically, but also no need for working them out to
remote conclusions. Hence these works have become for most people the
best-known and best-loved type of classical music. In their perfect
fusion of untranslatable dramatic emotion with every beauty of musical
design and tone they have never been equalled, nor is it probable that
any other art can show a wider range of thought embodied in a more
perfect form. In music itself there is nothing else of so wide a range
without grave artistic defects from which Beethoven is entirely free.
Wagnerian opera aims at an ideal as truly artistic, and in so far of
wider range than Beethoven's that it passes beyond the bounds of pure
music altogether. Within those bounds Beethoven remained, and even the
apparent exceptions (such as _Fidelio_ and his two great examples of
"programme music," the _Pastoral Symphony_ and the sonata, _Les Adieux_)
only show how universal his conception of pure music is. Extraneous
ideas had here struck him as magnificent material for instrumental
music, and he never troubled to argue whether instrumental music is the
better or worse for expressing extraneous ideas. To describe the works
of Beethoven's second period here would be to describe a library of
well-known classics, and we must refer the reader for further details to
the articles on SONATA FORMS, CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS, HARMONY and
INSTRUMENTATION. It remains for us to attempt to indicate the essential
features of his third style, and to conclude with a survey of his
influence on the history of music.
Beethoven's third style arose imperceptibly from his second. His
deafness had very little to do with it, for all his epoch-making
discoveries in orchestral effect date from the time when he was already
far too much inconvenienced to test them in a way which would satisfy
any one who depended more upon his ear than upon his imagination. It is
indeed highly probable that there are no important features in
Beethoven's latest style that may not be paralleled by the tendencies of
all great artists who have handled their material until it contains
nothing that has not been long familiar with them. Such tendencies lead
to an extreme simplicity of form, underlying an elaboration of detail
which may at first seem bewildering until we realize that it is purely
the working out to its logical conclusions of some idea as simple and
natural as the form itself. The form, however, will be not merely
simple, but individual. Different works will show such striking external
differences of form that a criticism which applies merely _a priori_ or
historic standards will be tempted by the fallacy that there is less
form in a number of such markedly different works than in a number of
works that have one scheme in common. All this is eminently the case
with Beethoven's last works. The extreme simplicity of the themes of the
first two movements of the quartet in B flat, _op._ 131, and the
tremendous complexity of the texture into which they are woven, at first
impress us as something mysterious and intangible rather than
astonishing. The boldness with which the slow introduction is blended in
broad statement and counter-statement with the _allegro_, is directly
impressive, as is also the entry of the second subject with its dark
harmony and tone, but the work needs long familiarity before its vast
mass of thought reveals itself to us in its true lucidity. Such works
are "dark with excessive bright." When we enter into them they are
transparent as far as our vision extends, and their darkness is that of
a depth that shines as we penetrate it. In all probability only a veil
of familiarity prevents our finding the same kind of difficulty in
Beethoven's earlier works. What is undoubtedly newest in the last works
is the enormous development of those polyphonic elements which are
always essential to the life of a composition, but which have very
different functions and degrees of prominence in different forms and
stages of the art. Polyphony inevitably draws attention to detail, and
thus Beethoven in his middle period found its more obvious
manifestations but little conducive to the breadth of designs which were
not as yet sufficiently familiar to take any but the foremost place.
Hence, among other interesting features of that second period, his
marked preference for themes founded on rhythmic figures of one note,
e.g. the famous "four taps" in the C minor symphony; an identical rhythm
in a melodious theme of very different character in the G major
concerto; a similar figure in the _Sonata Appassionata_; the first theme
of the _scherzo_ of the F major quartet, _op._ 59, No. 1, and the
drum-beats in the violin concerto. Such rhythms give thematic life to an
inner part without causing it to assume such melodic interest as might
distract the attention from the flow of the surface. But in proportion
as polyphony loses its danger so does the prominence of such rhythmic
figures decrease, until in Beethoven's last works they are no more
noticeable than other kinds of simplicity. The impression of crowded
detail is naturally more prominent the smaller the means with which
Beethoven works and the less outwardly dramatic his thought. Thus those
most gigantic of all musical designs, the 9th symphony, and the Mass in
D, are, but for the mechanical difficulties of the choral writing,
almost like works of the second period as far as direct impressiveness
is concerned; and in the same way the enormous pianoforte sonata, _op._
106, is in its first three movements easier to follow than the extremely
terse and subtle works on a smaller scale that preceded it (sonata in A
major, 101, and the two sonatas for violoncello, _op._ 102).
His enormous development of polyphonic interest soon led Beethoven to
employ the fugue, not only, as in previous works, by way of episodic
contrast to passages and designs in which the form and not the texture
is the main object of interest, but as the culminating expression of a
condition or art in which the unity of form and texture is so perfect
that the mind is free to concentrate itself on the texture alone. This
union was not effected without a struggle, the traces of which present a
close parallel to that abrupt emphasis which we noticed in some of
Beethoven's early works. In his fugue-writing the notion that the chief
interest lies in the texture is as yet so difficult to hold together
with the perception that these fugues are based on a modern firmness and
range of form, that the texture is forced upon the listener's attention
by a continual series of ruthlessly logical bold strokes of harmony.
From this and from the notorious violence of Beethoven's choral writing,
and also from his well-known technical struggles in his years of
pupilage, the easy inference has been drawn that Beethoven never was a
great master of counterpoint, an inference that is absolutely
irreconcilable with such plain facts as, to take but one early example,
the brilliant piece of triple counterpoint in the _andante_ of the
string quartet in C minor, _op._ 18, No. 4, and the complete absence of
anything like crudeness in his handling of harmonics, basses or inner
parts at any period of his career. Beethoven may have mastered some
things with difficulty, but he mastered nothing incompletely; and where
he is not orthodox it is safest to conclude that orthodoxy is wrong. Had
he lived for another ten years he would certainly have produced an
immense amount of choral work, and with it many other great instrumental
works in which this last remaining element of conflict between texture
and form would have dwindled away. But while this would doubtless result
in such work being easier to follow and might even have given us a
version of the great fugue, _op._ 133 (discarded from the
string-quartet, _op._ 131), that did not surpass the bounds of practical
performance, it would yet be no sound criterion by which to stigmatize
as an immaturity the roughness of the polyphonic works that we know.
That roughness is, like the abrupt epigrammatic manner of some of his
early works, the necessary condition in which such material realizes
mature expression. Without it that material could receive but the
academic handling of a dead language. And by it was created that
permanent reconciliation of polyphony and form from which has arisen
almost all that is true in "Romantic" music, all that is peculiar to the
thematic technique of Wagnerian opera, and all the perfect smoothness of
Brahms's polyphony.
The incalculable depth of thought and closeness of texture in
Beethoven's later works are, of course, the embodiment of a no less
incalculable emotional power. If we at times feel that the last quartets
are more introspective than dramatic, that is only because Beethoven's
dramatic sense is higher than we can realize. The subject is too large
and too subtle for dogmatism to be profitable; and we cannot in
Beethoven's case, as we can in Bach's, cite a complete series of
illustrations of his musical ideas from his treatment in choral music
of words which themselves interpret the intention of the composer. There
is so little but the music itself by which one can express Beethoven's
thought, that the utmost we can do here is to refer the reader, as
before, to the articles on SONATA FORMS, HARMONY, INSTRUMENTATION, OPERA
and MUSIC, where he will find further attempts to indicate in what sense
pure music can be described as dramatic and expressive of emotion.
As our range of investigation widens, and thoroughness of analysis and
study increases, so we shall surely find in ourselves an ever-deepening
conviction that Beethoven, whether in range, depth and truth of thought,
perfect sense of beauty, or absolute conscientiousness of execution, is
the greatest musician, perhaps the greatest artist, that ever lived.
There is no means of measuring Beethoven's influence upon subsequent
music. Every composer of every school claims it. The immense changes he
brought about in the range of music have their most obvious effect in
the possibilities of emotional expression; and so any outbreak of
vulgarity or sentimentality can with impunity claim descent from
Beethoven, though its ancestry may be no higher than Meyerbeer. Again,
we have already referred to that confusion of thought which regards a
series of works markedly different in form as containing less form than
any number of works cast in one mould. Hence the works of Beethoven's
third period have been cited in defence of more than one "revolution,"
attempted in a form which never existed in any true classic, for the
purpose of setting up something the revolutionist has not yet succeeded
in inventing. To measure Beethoven's influence is like measuring
Shakespeare's. It is an influence either too vaguely universal to name
or too profoundly artistic to analyse. Perhaps the truest account of it
would be that which ignored its presence in the works of ill-balanced
artists, or even in the works of those who profited merely by an
increase of technical and harmonic resource which, though effected by
Beethoven, would, after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars,
almost certainly have to some extent arisen from sheer necessity of
finding expression for the new experience of humanity, if Beethoven had
never existed. Setting aside, then, all instances of mere domination,
and of a permanently established new world of musical thought, and
omitting Schubert and Weber as contemporaries, the one attracted and the
other partly repelled, we may, perhaps, take three later composers,
Schumann, Wagner and Brahms, as the leading examples of the way in which
Beethoven's influence is definitely traceable as a creative force. The
depth and solemnity of Beethoven's melody and later polyphonic richness
is a leading source of Schumann's inspiration, though Schumann's
artistic schemes exclude any high degree of formal organization on a
large scale. Beethoven's late polyphony is carried on by Brahms to the
point at which perfect smoothness of style is once more possible, and
there is no aspect of his form which Brahms neglects or fails to realize
with that complete originality which has nothing to fear from its
ancestry. Wagner does not handle the same art-forms; his task is
different, but Beethoven was the inspiring source, not only of his
purely musical sense, but also of his whole sense of dramatic contrast
and fitness. When he had shaken off the influence of Meyerbeer, which
has so often been confused with that of Beethoven, there remained to
him, pre-eminently in his music and more imperfectly realized in his
drama, a power of combining contrasted emotions such as is the privilege
of only the very greatest dramatic artists. Bach and Beethoven are the
sources of the polyphonic means of expression by which he attains this.
Beethoven alone is the extraneous source of his knowledge that it was
possible. And it is as certain as anything in the history of art that
there will never be a time when Beethoven's work does not occupy the
central place in a sound musical mind.