These essays originally appeared in _The Musical Standard_, for which
paper they were written.
While admitting that the author has at times been carried away by his
exuberant fancy, it is impossible to deny that he possesses in a very
high degree those powers of analysis without which it is impossible
to do justice to, or even approximately to understand, Beethoven.
Music is verily the language of the soul--higher, finer, more
delicate in its methods, and more ethereal in its results, than
anything to which the tongue can give utterance; expressing what
speech cannot speak, and affecting, as no mere talking can, the
invisible player who manipulates the keyboard of the human intellect,
and whom we call _The Soul_. Music is truly of such a nature, and
appeals so powerfully and mysteriously to that soul, that the words
of Jean Paul seem quite justified,--
_Ich glaube, nur Gott versteht unser Musik._
Beethoven wrote such music as few even among those calling themselves
musicians can understand, as the word is generally used; and which,
in Jean Paul's sense of the word, is understood not at all. Like the
ocean, or Mont Blanc, we can feel its power, while at the same time
we are conscious that explanation would be almost desecration. We do
not want Beethoven's music explained, but would rather be left alone
with that which we can only feel, but cannot understand while
hampered with "this mortal coil." Under the spell of such music, we
can only explain the emotions it produces in us, and we can only do
this in a fashion far from complete. Mr. Teetgen has only attempted
an explanation of Beethoven's symphonies in this latter sense; and so
far from feeling his little book as an impertinence--which any
attempt to explain Beethoven's music (his soul, _id est_) would
be--we feel helped in our endeavours to understand something of the
means by which the greatest tone-poet worked his incantations and
wove his spells.
We cannot always agree with Mr. Teetgen in his estimate of other
composers--notably, Mendelssohn, whom he holds in much lighter esteem
than we do, and we could not endorse all he says of Mozart, either;
he does not worship his great hero too much, but the others too
little. Of his most intense admiration for Beethoven, however, none
can doubt; and those who read this little work will, we think, agree
with us in saying that Mr. Teetgen's analytical and descriptive
powers, in dealing with the symphonies, are on a par with his
veneration for the great master whom we all delight to honour, and
who realised his own ideal--some of us, at least, think so--"There is
nothing higher than this--to get nearer the Godhead than other men,
and thence diffuse its beams over mankind." Fashions change in music
as in other things; but Beethoven's music has in it that truth which,
being eternal, cannot change; and we cannot conceive a state of
culture so advanced that these Symphonies shall be deemed
old-fashioned. If ever that condition is reached, it will be reached
not by progression, but retrogression.