The worn-out despot offered a premium for a new pleasure; the critic
would often do so for a new epithet. How shall I characterize this
exquisite prelude? It is as the portico to the Walhalla of the gods.
Here we have the real Beethoven in his _divine_ profundity--profound,
_because_ beautiful; its very beauty constituting the depth, as it
were, _thickening_ into it, like the ocean and heaven. This beauty,
the true Proteus, is evasive; its import was not clear to the utterer
himself, no message of the Divine is, to the human vehicle--
"A coral conduit ivory cisterns filling."
We cannot exactly translate or interpret it, only we feel that _were_
it translated, we should have a divine poem in a divine language. One
could spend hours going into the details of it--for every note
demands a word; those two opening ones namely. How characteristic!
There is the Emperor Tone-Poet, Napoleon of music, commanding
"Attention!" and not--God forbid!--for himself, but for his message.
It is the "Thus saith the Lord" of the prophet (some Elijah) of old.
Utterance so simple--so all-compelling! Those two notes, merely, are,
as it were, like the slightest scratch of an apostle. Then the next
three bars! They at once usher us into that ineffability of
Beethoven's which we spoke of. We have no reluctance to admitting
that originality is not particularly studied here. Nay, we are
inclined to say something higher--the modesty and moral courage to
reject originality is displayed. Beethoven had to deliver that "Thus
saith the Lord!" and he did it. First feel, and then study, the
_un_studied eloquence of it. It is one of the beautiful instances
whose name is legion in Beethoven, of simplicity--
"In its simplicity sublime."
To me it says--"There! the storms _are_ all fought out. Peace, after
all, is at the bottom, and in the heart." Or it is like a high
man--say Beethoven himself--after the despicable petty disgusts, as
well as chaotic horrors of life, falling back upon nature, the
eternal star-glimmering universe--"they will not repel and deceive
me, they are everlasting and sublime!" The phrase--like every great
message--is really indescribable except by itself; the profound
peace, or rather peaceful profundity of it, are unutterable--
"O that my tongue could utter"--
It is a great instance of height towering out of depth, high because
deep, a peak in music, yet not clad with eternal glacier, except for
its purity of heart, but eternal sunbeams.
After an interesting passage of "harmonious breathing" interposed,
and the still more interesting one of chromatic part-repetition, the
shakes--which are ultimately to play a great part--first make their
appearance. The taste for the shake can soon degenerate; and
Beethoven himself sometimes used it incontinently. But, when properly
introduced, as here, and especially at the last, it is an ornament
that has a more or less magical charm.
The next noble bit reminds us a little of the "Funeral March" in the
A flat Sonata. Thereupon Beethoven, in his unconscious or conscious
unconscious progress, promulgates some of these characteristic
utterances of his--those harmonious and melodic breathings, so
profound and pregnant with we know not what. Who or what moved him to
his wonderful "progressions?" Truly indescribable tone-poet! so deep
with tenderness, so rich with glow--glow is where Beethoven exceeded
all of them, especially the Saxon school; he added glow to height,
breadth, and depth; or, rather, his glow and depth--as in the
sun--are like cause and effect, one.