"Wild bird! whose warble liquid sweet
Rings Eden through the budded quicks,"
and "deep answering unto deep," which we mentally alluded to at the
outset, hard to decipher, seraphically beautiful. In what a musical
river, to employ another figure, or concourse of confluences, the
inspired orchestra rolls on; for yes, verily, the river is inspired
with utterance, big with its message. And this is no merely European
river, but rather some tropical Zambesi or Amazon with its colossal
origin and surroundings; or, again, the river that rolls from the
throne of the Fountain of Life--which truth it seems to declare, in
the magnificent emphatic passage (anticipating the choral symphony?)
so originally grand, in D minor, in unison, mark that. It seems to
say--"Hear that, and believe it. The rolling river which this
universe is, does not flow from Chaos and Diabolus, but from Eternal
Self-Justified Will--humanly named, in short, 'God'; as it were,
takes its course through the bosom of God, as 'King John' wished the
rivers of his realm to, through his." After this colossal passage, we
seem to be invited to listen to the warblings and happy murmurs in
the halls of heaven--the habitation of the blest, of just spirits
made perfect. It is all delicately, crystallinely ineffable; and the
language of imaginative sympathy itself can scarcely transcend the
beauty and exceeding excellence of the whole movement--that profound
inspiration--any more than it can transcend the beauty and exceeding
excellence, amounting to divinity, of the universe, that "Midsummer
Night's Dream!" THE ALLEGRO.
I often doubt, war can never cease, for its element is so great and
potent in art--especially music and her twin-sister, poetry. Carlyle
specially speaks of the "great stroke, too, that was in Shakespeare,
had it come to that;" and, indeed, makes this--together with the "so
much unexpressed in him to the last"--in short, his infinitude, the
very thing which Schubert's kindred eye saw in Beethoven,
differentiating him, his two chief points of admiration and test in
general of a man. Besides, in our great historian himself--in Milton,
too--we feel that there was a great stroke, as of the sublime
Ironside; before him, in Dante; before him, in Homer--perhaps,
Virgil; but not Horace. In our own day, the noble ring of our
poet-laureate's verse, to mention no more, is at once a voucher for
the same fact, apart from his "Maud," and more than one indignant
utterance. The poetic imagination and classic beauty of all such men
is not only concomitant with, but inseparable from, a "good stroke in
them" (Dante and Cervantes were actually on the battle-field)--from
an heroic element, the best thing they have. The greatest
utterance--inspiration--cannot possibly come from any other. The hero
is dear to God; the coward perhaps most despised of all. And why? The
reason is philosophical enough. Because the soul of the universe is
power--and without courage there can be no goodness. The grand
doctrine of evolution, penetrating everywhere, has brought home to
us, and borne in upon us, that there is not a field or a grove which
is not the theatre of perpetual struggle--not one manifestation
exempt from it. _Vae victis_ is the word of Nature herself, and the
"struggle" is divinely ordained (competition is the salt of
existence) for the elaboration of energies--the eventuation in higher
life. What man would wish for the _dolce far niente_ of the Fool's
Paradise? The world hath been groaning and travailing until now, and
must for a long, long time to come; only one-fourth of it is even now
"civilized," and in that civilisation what dregs and dens of
barbarism seem ineradicable. All sorts of wrong still tyrannise;
therefore, spiritually and physically, the warrior must stand forth
great to wage war against the bad everywhere, politically and
intellectually--against social evils, and art-darkness--against lies,
and for truth--against weakness, and for strength; for Might _is_
Right in the universe--weakness is one with evil, strength with good.
Only the good is strong; only the bad is weak.
We have been led into these remarks by dwelling on the fact, how
frequently the warlike spirit manifests itself forth in our
Beethoven--indeed, is irrepressible; nay, I am urged to say,
cardinal. In spite of Beethoven's truly divine beauty, he is stamped
and distinguished by power. When he issues young into the arena, we
see "victorious success" gleaming on his brows. Handel is
distinguished in the same way. Hence the secret of Beethoven's
own hero-worship for him. Apollo is great, but Jupiter is
greater--Jupiter Optimus Maximus. If Mozart, Weber, Schubert may,
more or less, figure as the sun-god, they cannot figure as the god of
the sun-god. We might almost say, the first notes of Beethoven
proclaimed power. He had to go forth and do battle with things. Nor
is his own struggle for existence (not mere being, but immortality--a
life in immortality here; that is existence to your Beethoven) in his
own life-element, so strong and chaotic, in his own soul progress,
undepicted, or shadowed forth. With unconscious-consciousness did he
do it--on, right on to the end, the bitter end; on the verge of
blindness, insanity--we know not what. Rushing as he did, into the
conflict, conscious only of power, Beethoven would have been struck
had he seen what, through the long vista of "stifled splendour and
gloom," that power boded and implied: he would have been awed, had it
been revealed to him what that power represented--little short of the
Nineteenth Century itself, with all its Hamlet doubts, and chaotic,
yet germ-rich smouldering of transition, whereof more anon.
If the ineffable adagio--prelude of preludes (?), out, as Marx says,
the last movement is the finale of finales--shows us the young
God-disguised athlete, with the morning light on his brow, making
ready to enter only the Olympian Games, the _allegro con brio_ shows
him to us rushing into battle! The "heroic symphony" is by no means
the first or last symphony heroic--indeed, could not have been
written but for the pre-existence and exercise of that full power in
the inspired young composer. Here is a grand epic outburst and
onrushing worthy of that immortal masterpiece, and essentially one
with it. We could almost say, not only the same power, but the same
sort of power, is indiscernible in Haydn and Mozart. The style (which
is truly the man--that to the man what the bark is to the tree) is so
different--the man's dialect, as well as message; the phraseology
altogether. These modulations are not those of Haydn and Mozart!
(beyond praise grand is the _ff_ on the dominant of A minor--one of
those glorious bursts and surprises of Beethoven's--we expect D
minor); nor is the masculine fancy (god-like shall we say? and a
Mozart's, goddess-like) theirs; and the great broad, quasi-Titanic
strains and themes. This movement (Op. 36) is an advance on that of
the symphony No. 1 (Op. 21), if in grade only, not kind. Here we see
the young giant, not yet done growing, a little riper. There is no
strain in it which we feel inclined to qualify, which "gives us
pause," like the second motiv in its predecessor; all is homogeneous,
epically great. But let us descend a little to details. At bars 1, 2,
and 3, we imagine the firm tread of the warriors, singing (like the
Ironsides before Dunbar--the 68th Psalm, "Let God arise,") on their
way to victory, which they never doubt for a moment, not only because
they are triumphant veterans, but on account (and more) of their
cause. At bar 4 what a poetic rush (inrush) of fifes is suggested!
then the great step is heard again; a great strain joins in; the
chaunt of the warrior basses becomes more and more ominous;
preliminary thunder is heard, and at last, with Olympian pæan and
war-cry battle is joined;--great is the shock, and glorious is the
struggle!
The second subject in A is ushered in by those grand _third-less_
chords (long before our modern writers):--
[Music]
the chromatic passage being doubled two octaves below by the basses.
The new subject, more absolutely melodious, still keeps up the same
theme--(for, _apropos_, we may also look upon this allegro as some
Homeric or Shakespearian recital of a great victory--recall the
superb opening lines of "Richard the Third," the "warriors' wreathed
brows, and their bruised arms hung up for monuments"). At first it is
heard softly--like a reinforcement in the distance (we think of the
Prussians at Waterloo, in the westering summer sun)--then as it were
in a blaze of music bursts in. Immediately after, where its exquisite
first half (so simple--mark that--but so eloquent and picturesque)
reappears in the basses (high), we are rather reminded of
Mendelssohn's "Huntsman's Song without Words," in A (the same key),
Book 1; but--we need not say--Mendelssohn has not gilded gold, or
improved the lily; for his fancy was distinctly lighter and smaller
than Beethoven's--or, let us say, he had fancy, Beethoven
imagination. And now a happy spirit of triumph sings in the basses;
and then burst out some crashing Beethoven-chords, of which I will
but point to the one _ff_ (5th bar of them); it is characteristically
the 6--4 of D--not, as anticipated, the 5--3 of F sharp minor.
Then, after a foreboding crescendo--characteristic growth out of an
initial fragment--and these two emphatic notes:--
[Music]
--Beethoven all over--the first part closes, so to say, in a breadth
of thunder-peals and fiery rain. Technically, note the grand entry of
D minor, and mi--do--si--la--mi in unison, with the 3rd omitted; and
the minor-seventh chords, resolving into the tonic dominant of the
minor (D^1), so exquisitely expressive--alike of the pangs of victory
and the heroic resolution to endure them.
In the 2nd Part, on the way to G minor (Beethoven himself often never
knew whither he was taking us, or at least the precise route--and so
much the better!), we soon meet with a remarkable juncture of notes,
viz., do and mi of the chord (G minor), with fa superadded:--
[Music]
This fa, at first sight perplexing, turns out to be a stray note (as
it seems) of the minor seventh chord on its way to the seventh,
which, however, ultimately appears (with beautiful effect) as the 3rd
of the dominant-seventh chord (to C minor). This powerfully,
painfully expressive dissonance is likewise to be found in his "Lied
Vom Tode" (Op. 48), amongst other instances; and the opening to
Schubert's "Wanderer" owes its intense expression to the same. The
_raison d'être_ of such discords is perhaps to be found in the
enhancement they give to the resolution. We could not bear them too
long, or too frequent; but, as a passing reminder of the tragedy of
life, they profoundly move and interest us; and, perhaps, discords in
life (likewise instituted by no Dryasdust) have essentially the same
_raison d'être_ and explanation--life is _agro-dolce_, not _dolce_
alone, and better so. Thereupon we have a new idea, surely as
playfully felicitous and characteristic as the scherzo of the
"Eroica" itself--like the warriors at sport after victory; or like a
glimpse of the same by them, back in a pause in the battle, which
soon recommences, with the shouts of the combatants and groans of the
wounded and dying. A page farther on, we have a truly sublime
episode; great is the chaunt on the earnest theatre (proclaiming
Right must and shall win) made up of the sufficient chord of F sharp
minor, and the basses moving in such a way as served as a model for
Wagner; this is epic, heroic, indeed! and--even greater--Pelion upon
Ossa, piled by this Titan fighting on the side of the gods, is the
culmination. Semitone by semitone mount the basses; and over all the
great clouds become richer in the setting sun, and pealing hosts of
heaven (as it were) join in the shouts of the victors,
crying--"Hosanna in excelsis! Alto trionfo del regno verace! Right
_is_ done!"
"Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
Paid with a voice flying by, to be lost on an endless sea.
Glory of virtue to fight! to struggle, to right the wrong,
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be."