"Nobler and balmier for her bath of storm."
The grim tempests of early winter have passed over, and after a
South-Italian night--a perfect blaze of constellations, with the
Evening Star incredible in the west, large, lustrous, evanescent--and
Orion sublime in the forehead of the Night over the mountain--with
Jupiter passed over, Mars and Sirius not far off, and the eternal
cluster of the Pleiades (those beautiful heralds) winging its flight
towards the north-west, and the leading star of the Ursus Major
plunging through the dusk (yet shining) over Naples; after such a
night, lo! the great amphitheatre of the world is a spectacle indeed!
The mountain-island sweeps like a garden at our feet to the sea; the
sea itself like an unspeakable floor or carpet spread out _for us_,
bearing the islands--the "great globe itself"--so proudly on its
nourishing bosom; and all round, out of a tender dusk (as it were,
like Compassion) rises the snow-peaked world (like virtue clothing
beauty, reason crowning power), the magnificent spur of the
Alps--showing what mountains can do at an effort--called the
Apennines, stretching down and around from Gaeta to Alicote, towering
over treasures, as it seems, of unearthly beauty; Monte St. Angelo,
with his colossal foot in the sea and roots in the world, his
wrinkles lined with snow, looms and towers before us; on the right
sweeps and bares itself the grand Bay of Salerno, and on the left the
proud Bay of Naples, with its eternal Watch-fire, like a sentinel
over all. Stupendous scene of beauty and power! and all that--on this
heavenly morning, when the world once more seems made again, and to
overpower us with its reiteration of Immortality--all that comes
before us as a grand subject set to music in this larghetto of
Beethoven's; all that, too--if the fancy may be allowed--seems in the
key of A natural. Before _it_, we should like to hear this exquisite
masterpiece--this, I will not say, Song without Words, but rather Te
Deum laudamus--adequately performed, say by the Künstler of his
"Vaterland." Here we have a sweetness and a serenity the more
touching, because they are _not_ those of a Mozart, but a Beethoven;
those of nature, "_nobler and balmier_ for her bath of storm" (human
as well as physical nature); whether Mozart do or do not represent
the storm already fought out, this is the sweetness, not of
sweetness, but depth--the serenity, not of serenity, but power. And,
indeed, we must hold, and urge, that however the objective may be of
value, and rank pre-eminent in poetry, the greatest music has come
down to us from perhaps the greatest subjective soul; and
essentially, much of contemporary, morbidly-conscious music seems in
comparison not only objective but material, not only material but
sensational; the delusively brilliant (phosphorescently brilliant)
product of a decaying time--we had almost said the elaborate
effeteness of a written-out age.
This larghetto is of Beethoven's first period, ripened of course
(strive as refiners may, they will scarcely be able to alter the
time-honoured division, so obviously founded in truth). Haydn and
Mozart are distinctly discerned glimmering through it, but not very
much more; it is Haydn and Mozart _plus_ Beethoven, which makes all
the difference. We repeat, it is _his_ serenity and sweetness, his
youth (so full and rich--of such _infinite_ promise), not theirs.
Theirs be the grace, but his the grandeur; theirs the amiability, but
his the milk of human kindness--so broad and deep (as of a yet
unsoured Hamlet, an Othello, a King Lear; for there are great
characters in Shakespeare which we _can_ blend Beethoven with, but
not the others). The details of the larghetto must be studied (say,
at the organ). I will here only advert to its reminiscence of the
andante (the exquisite episode) in the pastoral sonata, written about
the same period, truly worthy of symphonic treatment, with the
deliciously-delicate passage, as it were like a shower of sunbeams,
of gold sparkles--
"In the æther of Deity"
(as the manifestations named men have been called). The movement is
rich both in the great strokes and tender touches of genius--of
genius which is power; and what we call the phraseology of the man as
a whole, and in its parts, is again beautifully Beethovenian. Here is
a lovely bit:--
[Music]
The movement is not so _great_ as the preceding, and is perhaps too
long (which is a decided art-fault--not merely a mistake in
judgment); but, as a whole, it reminds us of Shakespeare's "entire
and perfect chrysolite;" we greet it (and other movements of
Beethoven's) with feelings of profound affection; as though we had
realised those words "Yet a little while and ye have me with ye"; as
though we had been living, for at least a breathing space, in the
atmosphere and society of higher life, out of the sphere of time and
in the sphere of the eternal. We have had such pleasure that we feel
more good; we issue grateful and earnest, happier, better men. There
have been sighs of regret that Beethoven did not write more music
like his Symphony in F; but not only this movement, but these two
first symphonies, the sonatas in E flat, "Adelaide"--nay, almost all
his first period compositions. And here our glances at this symphony
must cease. The trio, with its delicious strain, pleases us more than
the scherzo (a strain that might be made much more of). The scherzo
itself is less sympathetic than that of No. 1: seems, in fact, rather
heavily frolicsome. The finale is a masterpiece, though decidedly
inferior to the first movements. Do composers often write their
finale when they are jaded? they should make this their golden rule,
_toutes les choses ont leur matinée_.