Beethoven might well write an Heroic Symphony, for the very soul of
his symphonies is heroism. He _named_ one "heroic," but he _wrote_
many, including the sonatas, which are unfortunately limited to the
piano, whose powers they utterly transcend. Heroism is the soul, and
antagonism the substance, through which heroism ultimately fights its
way. Beethoven is the Hercules of music (Hercules was in some sort
also the Pagan Christ), undertaking labours for men's emancipation and
help; beating Hydros down; conquering all sorts of
opposition--unconquerable except by love; and, like the antique hero,
alas! with an end as tragic. Such comparisons we are obliged to have
recourse to, to explain Beethoven's music--its might and significance.
"What, then, does this eternal conflict, and victorious heroism
storming through, mean?" Ah! how they still paint the conflict of rule
and anarchy, of the intellect and reason, of passion and prejudice!
Man is called the microcosm of nature, and music is the microcosm of
man; _his_ antagonism and heroism, internal as well as external, are
herein mirrored. Music is the highest art; because the most spiritual,
infinite, self-existent (creating, not copying), and comprehensive. No
statue, picture, or pile, can compare with the power of a
symphony--which, indeed, all but rivals that of nature herself, of the
great world and starry heavens; the secret of whose power is also the
Infinite, with its whispered promise--its soul--Immortality. Art is
the shadowing forth of the infinite: music does this most, and
Beethoven's is most music. Music, as we said, is the microcosm of man.
As the world is comprised in him--alone realized _by_ him, and
therefore in some sort alone existent _in_ him, so are his nature and
history comprised in music--his depths and heights, beauties and
deformities, aspirations and passions, circumstances and powers. It is
the "might, majesty, and dominion," inarticulateness, _profound_
beauty--as it were searching flower-cups with star-beams: the
effluence of a soul deep as heaven (beyond the other side of
earth)--of man (not "_etwas_," of a man) that Beethoven shadows forth.
That one, also, who struggled in the womb--what was he but a type of
man in the all-comprising womb of nature? And this, also, Beethoven's
music suggests; not least the music of this stupendous symphony--only
another "Eroica," and greater, without the name (better so). _More
suo_, Beethoven himself flashed a meaning more or less on it. "So
knocketh Fate at the portal;" yes! with the portentousness of the
"knocking at the gate" (see Lamb's remarks), in "Macbeth;" yes! fate
in the form of duty. And truly, what higher subject--subject dear to
the ancients as they are called--subject constantly treated in his own
inspired way (Nature's), by Shakespeare--could be chosen? And
Beethoven has rivalled Aiskulos and Shakespeare. Here is battle! here
is victory!--here, too, the air seems almost oppressive with love and
doom; and here, too, in the background, and from the deepest deeps,
are wreaths and similes of celestial beauty. "Well done, good and
faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Another thing
the first movement suggests is, that it is the greatest of "_Dies
Iræ_." That passage, especially on the second page of the second part,
where one half the orchestra answers the other with the same terrific
unisons--
[Music]
(_en passant_, did ever reiteration play such a part?), prompts the
wildest fancies. We think of
"The glooms of hell
Echoed with thunder, while the angels wailed;"
or again, echoes of deserted hell on the day of doom--the fiends
summoned to the judgment-seat. But let us recur to Beethoven's more
human suggestion. Fate knocketh in the form of Duty; Promethean
free-will, human passion, rebels and struggles for a time, but at last
yields; and heroic resolve is triumphant--heroic love. For, "Ach!"
methinks these terrible blows are indeed those of Fate; but also
those, viz., which nailed Heroic Love (comprehend both words) to the
cross--heroic love that made even
"Destiny coincide with Choice;"
--that from the horrible instrument of torture and death itself,
cried, "Father! forgive them, for they know not what they do;" and in
the midst of the greatest of struggles and temptations (viz., with
himself), wrestled and conquered, and cried, "Not my will (the local),
but Thine (the universal) be done."--Such is the colossal difference
between the pictures of Christ submitting, and Prometheus cursing the
gods. It is a remarkable fact, that this symphony is so great--indeed,
the greatest; and yet, it is a fact fundamentally, instructively
natural; for, not premeditating it beforehand, Beethoven sat down to
write about the greatest thinkable subject out of his inmost own
heart--nay, as it were, with his own heart's blood. Another remarkable
fact is, that the so much abused public soon realized that this
symphony was the greatest. This symphony paints Beethoven's
life--especially inner life--which "life" properly means. Here we see
genius struggling with fate, in which his life was sunk (like every
life); wherewith our little life is rounded, as with a sleep. Fate!
What had it done for Beethoven? What does it mean?
In the first place--mysteriously great fact--Fate had from the outset
given him her own answer, had put into his hands _the_ weapon for
defeating her, viz., Genius. Armed with this, he can bide his time,
and take all the drawbacks _plus_; especially as with him genius
implies, what, properly, it always implies, Valour--or, in the
valuable Latin double-sense or many-sense of the word, Virtue. The
drawbacks--disagreeables, obstacles, from drunken father, aye, and own
character, downward--in no wise fail to come. Amongst the gravest are
the physical, deafness; one mixed, unsatisfied heart; and one
spiritual, unsatisfied soul--all sunk in the adamantine environment of
Fate. But then, as observed, Fate equips her adversary for the battle.
And mark how Beethoven quits himself in the encounter. In early
morning, in the burden and heat of the day, and by declining sun,
he--like every true man, (like the Son of Man, or Brother of
Man)--fights Fate with his life; makes his _life_ answer doubts; and
queries; and despair, the crucial questions which Fate forces on him.
It is in this sense Emerson's saying applies. Beethoven thus answered
questions he was not conscious enough to put; as, on the other hand,
he also put questions he had not the power to answer--like the
nineteenth century itself--questions which the twenty-ninth will
probably be seeking a solution for. When Fate buffeted Beethoven at
home (bitter mockery!), he worked in the direction, and with the
instrument, which nature gave him; when she appeared as grim _Vièrge
de Fer_, commanding him to earn his bread, he worked; when she
appeared (more cruelly) as syren (mocking him), he worked (not went
away and rioted); when--the most unkind cut of all--she made him deaf
(him, Beethoven the grandest representation of man for the
constituency, Music), he worked harder than ever; and all through the
time, down to the end, _when_ he could not, _though_ he could not,
satisfy the most irrepressible and unsatisfiable of all inquirers, his
own unsettled soul--incapable of _grasping_ eternity, _knowing_ it
must exist; incapable of _proving_ immortality, feeling it is the very
breath of life and beauty, and must be--from first to last, he worked.
For this, he could dispense with going to hear Immanuel Kant; though,
assuredly, their understanding of the "Categorical Imperative" was
one, viz., Conscience(?). "Two things strike me dumb,--the heavens by
night, and the moral law in man." Let Fate knock as she
may,--unannounced, her loudest, long-sustained--as in these portentous
notes (was ever chord of the dim. 7th so treated--so inspiredly?):--
[Music]
in these notes--whose indefinite dwelling seems to say, "I pause for a
reply." Fate confronts man--a being _repleto di virtù_; a being bound
by will, but with an unique sense of freewill: here she meets
consciousness-and-conscience. Her blows are hard; but "a soft answer
(the _p_ ensuing) turneth away wrath"--Beethoven turns her blows
(_her_ blows) into beauty. I am also here struck by the reflection,
that we may consider these as the blows of death (_cum æquo
pede_)--_that_ form of fate; and they are answered by the soft
whisper--"immortality." This soft whisper rises into storm-loudness,
at its grandest (further on), that is, where man cries, "Aye, and
though personal immortality be a vain dream, I will be immortal here,
and thus answer thee, thou bug-bear, Death! Suffice it for me to be
here great and good!"
Mark especially, somewhat further on, after the stormy passage, the
strain in the major (E flat). I have no words for its beauty
(especially if played _andante_); it is like star-dew fallen into the
bosom of a lily. Or, again, "deep answering unto deep," he rises and
strikes her back with power. Every depth into which her blows fell
him, only confers on this Antæus new power. Though o'er him, in the
words of the Greek Beethoven (Aiskulos--in the Greek Macbeth,
Agamemnon)--
"Billow-like, woe rolls on woe,
In the light of heaven,"
they
"Cannot bring him wholly under, more
Than loud south-westerns, rolling ridge on ridge,
The buoy that rides at sea, and dips and springs
For ever;"
--to use our own poet's magnificent image--(type, as here applied, of
character; or of immortality--the eternal hope of it in man). Such we
figure the conduct of this Titan in the stupendous conflict--Titan,
who made the very gods tremble:--
"FIALTE.--La nome; e fece le gran prove,
Quando i giganti fer paura ai Dei."--