Great pictures--pictures of great action (like the actions
themselves)--represent the moral qualities behind. Hence, many a page
of music, eminently of Beethoven, may be objectively or subjectively
interpreted, or both. It is the usual practice, and a natural one, to
regard the "Eroica" symphony as objective, and the C minor as
subjective--both illustrating the grand abstract fact, Conflict. The
_vivace_ of the A major symphony _strikes_, no less, as objective.
There is a ringing cheerfulness about it that suggests no spiritual
struggles, psychological battle, but the open air and its beloved
objects--by no means excluding the world's great foreground feature,
man; rather, pre-eminently presenting and illustrating him, and this
from your Beethoven, the intensely subjective soul. Intensely
subjective, yes! far more so,--more grandly so,--than your Byron; more
_characteristically_ so than Shakespeare; but, nevertheless--nay,
therefore--also more truly, nobly objective than the former, kin with
the latter (Turner is greater than Rosa).
It is impossible to overstate the bright, the exhilarating impression
of these tones. Here we at once revel in the outer world, in all the
April of its prime,
and feel ourselves magically strung up to virile deeds, to face the
"rugged Hyrcanian boar"--"to do or die." Here the ringing woodland of
feudal times is around us, and all the panoply, pride, pomp, and
circumstance of a royal chase. The motto of Stephen Heller's admirable
"Chasse" was very apt, which records how the French monarch, plunged
in gloom by the death of his beloved, seeks distraction in the chase.
Sir Walter--of our erst beloved "Ivanhoe"--comes sweeping through the
mind; a rush of joy almost to tears. We see Garth, born thrall of
Cedric, and the Jester in the gladed woodland; and there, at the
glittering jousts (even more so) the heavenly Rebecca, Rowena, the
Hero, and the Knight Templar; Jew and Christian; plumèd knight and
lovely dame. This music is Ivanhoe, not forgetting the glamour of the
Crusades, with knight and Saracen, and the breath of the Holy Land
through it. Here is the chivalry of warriors, who fought for the
Cross; in an age--so different from ours--when there was a frenzy of
belief (thus we be-soul our objective); here is a phalanx of Bayards
_sans peur et sans reproche_, inflamed with passion of hatred and
love, _en route_ to storm their way to Calvary. This is the picture to
fill our mind with; though we may also think of this glorious music as
painting forth the Conqueror William, breaking up the chase to invade
Harold's England, as being rock'd over thither on crisp seas in
knight-throng'd vessels, gallant with streaming pennon; though we may
also think of Ferdinand going out to welcome Columbus (in our copy, at
the passage in G minor we have ejaculated, "Our
Columbus"--Beethoven!--"has found a New World"), of Cortes and Pizarro
invading Mexico (copper-coloured men and tropical scenery we may also
conjure up); or, again, of Philip and his pompous Armada--of Elizabeth
and English chivalry preparing to greet him. But that picture of the
Crusades best suits us. So our nothing-if-not-religious Beethoven, the
glorious genius, in the name of music, whose High Priest he was (and
whom other great spirits serve), concerned only to pour forth what
streamed into him; or rather, concerned only to let it stream through
him (for it is certain he did not intentionally celebrate and pourtray
all that his mighty music suggests, however the Germans may stamp it
as Intellectual Music, _die Musik des Geistes_), so our
hardly-entreated, much-bound, but triumphant immortal shadowed forth,
on canvas made of air, pictures surpassing Angelo and
Raphael--pictures that only a painter-Shakespeare could surpass or
rival--pictures that have the material splendour and _éclat_ of a
Rubens, the intense originality of a Rembrandt, _plus_ a _soul_ behind
and within them, which only higher spirits than they can glimmeringly
reveal. We have but to repeat, that these tone-pictures have always a
charm _plus_ (or even apart from), viz., that of the tones themselves.
Our interpretation of this master-movement is the same as that of Marx
Nohl and Elterlein (whom we should _like_ to quote at length).
Wagner's idea, genially understood, is also acceptable. That gifted
despot "finds in the Symphony the apotheosis of the Dance _der in
Tönen idealisch verkörperten Leibesbewegung_." Yes, it is a dance that
sings; high dance and song together, as at some Pindar-celebrated
Festival of Apollo; nay, of some ideal, some skylark soul of joy, not
so much convinced of, as absolute lyrical part of, and one with the
All; and threatening to melt for very rapture in its bosom. The
Dance!--that is applicable enough, too! What a majestic _pas de deux_
is this ever advancing and retiring Day and Night! What a stately
minuet the Four Seasons! The river dances to the sea; the blood (of
the lover-poet) dances in the veins; what a wild waltz of elements we
have!--galop of the north wind; the very sea as it were dances in
prolonged rhythmic sway, "_molto maestoso_," to the all-compelling
moon; nay, the moon and stars themselves, with stupendous majesty
"keep time" to their "music of the spheres" through space; and the
great rhythm of obedience--action and re-action, attraction and
repulsion--is the grand universal law.
Such are some of the lessons and suggestions of this curiously happy,
magnificently pregnant rhythmic movement of Beethoven's; his first
great performance in his new lease of originality--great step on the
new road to immortality. The motive itself, truly a motive, is as
exquisitely tuneful and simple (how great was Beethoven in not
straining after effect!) as _grossartig_; and, _en passant_, it has
only to be compared for our instruction for one moment with
Mendelssohn's "Song without words." "The Chase," in the same key and
time, Book I, to show the _striking_ superiority of Beethoven; nay,
their generic difference--Mendelssohn was talent, and Beethoven
genius. The grandiose breadth, the unstudied inspiration (cause of the
former) is essentially, fatally absent in Mendelssohn, say what his
fascinated devotees may! It is with him almost all talent and fancy,
not oracle and prophecy. He is only a nephew of Beethoven's, Schumann
his "well-beloved" son (as Wagner is of Schumann).
I should be wrong not to give some of Herr Elterlein's ideas. After
citing Wagner's notion, and repudiating it (naturally enough, unless
one gives due weight to the word apotheosis, and due interpretation to
the word dance), he alludes to (and also rejects as premature) the
notion of Alberti, and others, that the symphony is an "announcement
of German triumph and enthusiasm at their freedom at length from the
French yoke." He then says, "Marx and Nohl seem to us to come nearer
the truth, when the former finds embodied in the symphony the life of
a southern people, especially of the Moorish race in ancient
Spain,"--(picturesquely suggestive this; only does not the
key-colouring seem rather too cool? have we not Teutonic brilliance
rather than Oriental?)--"and the latter" (Herr Dr. Nohl),
"_ritterliche Festpracht_" in general (the festival splendour of
chivalry). He continues:--"We also, the more and more profoundly we
have entered into this creation, have become clearer convinced, that,
as in the "Eroica," we have displayed political heroism, battling and
victorious; in the C minor symphony, the moral conflicts and triumphs
of man; so in the A major symphony, we behold the manifold life and
phenomena (_Lebensströmungen_) of a chivalrous, imaginative,
hot-blooded people, in the full enjoyment of their health and power."
We fancy one might prefix Goethe's words--
"_Im_ vollgewühl, im lebensregen Drange
Vermischte sich die thätige Völkerschaar."
("In lusty swarms, crowds full of life,
The deedful peoples intermixed.")
"To arms! is now the word--arms and harness; and forwards to the
peaceful jousts in the fair land. And now, how all hearts at first
lightly thrill! then pulses beat ever higher; the crowds muster; the
warrior horsemen curvet and gambol on slender steeds; pennons glitter,
armour dazzles, swords flash in the sun; and the motley swarms stream
forth pell-mell, not to bloody battle, like the hero-spirits of the
"Eroica,"--no, but the peaceful tournament!"
The scherzo and finale ("a sort of Bacchus triumph"--?) we shall
abstain from discussing (they are of much less intrinsic import than
the first two movements); but conclude with a glance at the greatest
movement of all (with creditable and instinctive instinct almost
always redemanded) the allegretto; first, however, citing two
remarkable passages from the finale, worthy the attention of those
correspondents of the _Musical Standard_ on "False Notation,"
especially of that one "whose memory could not serve him whether such
a passage occurred in the masters":--
[Music] This repeatedly and persistently occurs; and it would have
been gratifying had Beethoven indicated what he meant by
it:--"Bacchusfest?"--or something deeper? The other passage is
curiously like the one ventured by Dr. Macfarren's criticiser. The
venture was no doubt perfectly justifiable--almost everything is
allowable in music, for deliberate poetic effect.
[Music]
Beethoven no doubt did it for the sake of intensity.
[P.S.--Since writing the above we have come across a chance remark of
Goethe's, which struck us as singularly applicable to this great
picturesque symphony. During the campaign in France, he noticed in one
of the old German towns, the living contrast of knighthood and
monkhood (or chivalry and the cloister, we might say). The suggestive
words set us thinking if they might not prompt a symphony; and soon
after, we saw that they may be applied, perhaps with curious felicity,
to Beethoven's A major. Have we not here, indeed, an epitome of the
olden time, with its knights, monks, revels, and all?]