Finally, it is such thoughts as these, consciously or unconsciously
expressed, which stamp and distinguish Beethoven's music as a whole,
to which we now turn. In his jubilation is the "fulness of joy"; in
his sadness the core of sorrow. He has "made the passage from heaven
to hell"; he has sounded the gamut of sound. In his four great
symphonies, the one in D (the rushing forth and soaring up of youth,
Elterlein considers it); the Eroica, the C minor, and the A major; in
these four symphonies, to which the soul's eye in predilection turns,
which stand out from all the rest; and in many of his other
works--whose soul is as great, but substance less--we see Beethoven,
probably the most glorious emotional representative of man in
history--not only in music, but art, almost literature. He is thus the
greatest phenomenon perhaps of modern times after Shakespeare.
Shakespeare over-tops him; but who else? Not Dante--too fierce, and
crude, and narrow (see how blatant he is about Mahomet, and his
annotator, Professor Bianchi, ten times worse--he has the most
stupendously stupid note we ever read!) not Milton, less rich and
influential; not his own contemporary and countryman, Goethe, whose
Faust and Egmont are in Beethoven's music rather than in his own
words, and who had not Beethoven's genial humanity, world-wide
breadth, heaven's-heart depth, and titanic power. Only his
Fatherland's philosophical giants, methinks, can rank with him; and
their influence and effect are naturally limited. He thought in
music--the most delicious volumes of philosophy! thought and feeling
are presented to us in one--aye, and painting too. _Apropos_, so also
do we rank him above the artists. The works of Apelles and Phidias are
gone; the very Parthenon is going. But his works will last; and they
mesmerise and master us with a power which theirs never could
do--theirs, and Angelo's, and Raphael's; or Rubens, and Rembrandt, and
Turner. For music is the highest of the arts, as being most the
message of the Highest: and here is the music of the highest of her
messengers. Yes! for only Handel (whom he so characteristically
revered) can match with him, and that only in power. In originality,
in richness, in depth (including intensity--glow), in humanity,
eminently in influence think of Beethoven's sonatas spread over the
world, besides his quartets and symphonies, pyramidal models; whereas
Handel would hardly be known but for his "Messiah," (and that chiefly
in England); in a word, in universality, and a certain mystical soul
of meaning--sacred mystery of insight and sorrow--within him; in these
he surpasses Handel--and all. Not that he has exhausted music. No.
Music was considered exhausted before him; and even his music,
symphonies and sonatas alike, are of unequal quality and merit
individually as well as comparatively. And not that all great music
does not, more or less, like his work--reveal (or shadow forth) what
his does; and instrumentation has made advances since him; but he is
the _ne plus ultra_ as yet, though not, indeed, without companions.
For this is a law as much morally or intellectually as physically. The
highest peaks in the Himalayas, Andes, and Alps, are together; and
here the appearances around me preach the same truth. One summit is
the special manifestation of a general upheaval (we have already given
particular instances), and these take place at periods. The musical
upheaval (the tertiary deposit) has taken place late. Primevally was
the architectural (least original, and slowest of all the arts--?),
then the sculptural, pictorial, and poetic; groups and series, peaks
and summits of masters, in all. With revived art and literature came
the quasi seraph, Shakespeare; then science and music, contemporary
with the greatest movement in philosophy, and this significantly--for
nothing happens without import and relation. Beethoven, it is true,
set masses; but he was essentially a Theist, if not Pantheist
(unconscious pantheism, we take it, is the soul of his music). One
worthy gentleman delivered himself of the following lucubration _re_
Beethoven's "Mount of Olives":--"It is a fine work, _but_ proves its
author to have been a Deist, and--" Oh, that "but"! I cry you mercy,
my fine particle; there is great virtue too in a "but." We could not
help smiling, and thinking of "Poor God, with nobody to help him!" A
highly curious and most instructive fact about Beethoven is, that (as
we before remarked, I think), it is very difficult, if not impossible,
to find his analogue. In this individuality he is sublime. Hardly any
comparison satisfies us; neither Aiskulos, Homer, Virgil, Dante,
Milton, or Shakespeare, is exactly his like. He has Dante's intensity,
Milton's sublimity (more organ-like than Dante's), and Shakespeare's
universality to a great extent--that is, his humanity and quasi
superhuman lyrical beauty and dramatic power, but not his wonderful
comic genius (as far as we can judge from music, though Beethoven's
shows undoubted humour--which is part, indeed, of humanity); his
_characteristic_, seraphic serenity, and infinity, wealth of creation,
and inexhaustibility to the last. Beethoven is a unique (as Carlyle
called Dickens) blending of these three (and allied to Shakespeare
most), _plus_ his own great indispensable self (for there is ever a
new factor in every new man). Neither can we quite match him with any
of the artists. He has the severity of Phidias--or Praxiteles--who was
famous for bronze, the grandeur of Bruneleschi and Angelo, the grace
and feeling of Raffael and Canova, the mystic splendour of Turner, and
the unique originality, the powerful chiaroscuro of Rembrandt. Indeed,
his relationship to the latter is curiously interesting. These words,
applied to Rembrandt, might be applied to Beethoven:--"His advance
from youth to age is marked, if not by inexperience or feebleness, at
all events by successive and distinctive manners." "The product of his
art is startling; it is singular for individuality of character,
supreme in light, shade, and colour." Beethoven, however, was not an
"artist who took what may be termed his daily constitutional walk
through the lower types of nature;" rather he was a Jove's eagle, a
Gannymede on his pinions, winging his unseen way through empyreans.
Among the artists of his own vocation he is likewise unique. It is
true, that as Guinicelli closely preceded Dante (and may even be
called his master--_Il Saggio_ Dante names him); as Tasso, and
Ariosto, and Shakespeare, and Milton, were a grand cluster in the
Elizabethan period, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire later, Schiller,
Goethe, and Wieland, after; so Beethoven splendours in what we have
called the Orion's Belt of music, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; but,
to slightly vary, he is the red star in Orion, the Mont Blanc of the
Alps; neither is Handel, the great sun in the "constellation Hercules"
(to which our system is said to move), his superior--or quite his
equal.
Our persuasion of Beethoven's religious impressions ("he could be
seldom got to speak about religion") was derived rather from internal
evidence: but here is an explicit passage on the matter. We read in
his _Tagebuch_, 1816, underlined, and written out in his own
hand:--"_Aus der Indischen Literatur_: God is immaterial, therefore
unthinkable: (_geht über jeden Begriff_: since he is invisible, he can
have no form). But, from what we can gather in his works, we may
conclude that He is almighty, all-knowing, and omnipresent." The
following (still more significant) he wrote out in a _Quartblatt_, in
large letters, had framed, and kept before him on his writing-table.
It was taken from the temple of the Egyptian goddess, Neith, at Sais:
1. I Am what Is.
2. I am all that is, was, will be. No mortal hath ever lifted my veil.
3. He is alone, self existent (_Er ist allein von ihm selbst_);
and to this Unique all things owe their being.
In the last sentence, we may observe, there is (as usual) a
contradiction with the first--a confusion between theism and
pantheism; for, if the great I Am is all, all things cannot be said to
owe their being to him, but _are_ him--fragmentary manifestations of
him.
A list of the books found in Beethoven's _Handbibliothek_, are also,
in some sort, a key to the man (and his music). _Ecco!_ Shakespeare;
Goethe's Poems, "Wilhelm Meister," and "Faust"; Schiller; Tiedge's
"Urania" (Beethoven's beautiful "An die Hoffnung," Op. 32, is a
setting of a song in that); Seumes' and Matthison's Poems, and others;
"Briefe an Natalie über Gesang," von Nina d'Aubigny-Engelbrunner (much
esteemed, and recommended by Beethoven); Klopstock; Zach; Werner;
Herder (Goethe's "Master"); Plato; Aristotle; Xenophon; Plutarch;
Euripides; Horace; Pliny; Quintilian (these, I presume,
translated--Dr. Nohl does not say); Thomson (whose nature-painting
made him specially prized); and Ossian (Napoleon's favourite).
We read that against the words, often cited too, of Carlyle, "Two
things strike me dumb; the moral law within us, and the starry heavens
over us"; he wrote--"_mit kräftigen Schriftzug_"--KANT. In his
celebrated will, we read--"I will seize Fate by the throat, quite bow
me down it never shall." In his Journal, 1816, we read, "The grand
mark of a great man; stedfastness in unhappy circumstances." One of
his remarks was this:--"There is nothing higher than this--to get
nearer to the Godhead than other men; and thence diffuse its beams
over mankind." Another noteworthy observation was this:--"Celebrated
artists are always prejudiced (or pre-occupied); therefore,
their first works are the best, although they germinated in
obscurity."--(Nohl's "Life of Beethoven," vol. 3, p. 238). One of his
most pregnant remarks was the following:--"All real invention is moral
progress" (_Alle echte Erfindung ist moralisher Fortschritt_).
Beethoven's music is so pregnant, that it is difficult to sum up what
it contains. As before stated, it is a microcosm, both of man and the
world: it especially unrolls before us man (how he thinks, and feels,
and fights) as much as the powerful disquisitions of a Kant or Hegel.
It is representative, because so intensely subjective; representative
from himself outward--he being not a narrowly but comprehensively
subjective soul; we find in it (very profoundly) his own unsatisfied
heart--type of how much in the world! We find in it his unhappy
life--type of still more. We find in it his intense character, full of
sublime passion, and only more dear to us for its faults. We find in
it his infirmities--especially a dark prophesy of _mens_ IN_sana in
corpore insano_; but we were spared that sad spectacle, by the
"cruel-to-be-kind" messenger of Providence. We find in it the pure
passionate love of Nature most concentrated in the Teutonic
nature--coruscating with mystic sparks shooting from the heart on all
sides outward. We find in it at once the most intense lyrical and
dramatic power hitherto known. We find in it, alike, gracious fancy
and grand imagination. We find in it humanity and humour. Moreover, we
find in it the grandest _objective_ power of painting--heroic battles,
as well as with hope--on "our prison walls; far-reaching landscapes
and aurora"; together with a subjective power and pre-eminence that is
almost awful in its majesty. We find in it the subtle and the
sublime--if it be not for sublime to be subtle. Last, and lowest, we
find in it unsettled faith--distracting a soul of good, wearying and
worrying his great good heart, but not overcoming it:
"It could not 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;"
and herein is our Beethoven--he, too, a man of sorrows, and acquainted
with grief. _Ach!_ Man is that, most--most intensely representative.
This is the real reason why he so speaks to us, and shakes us; why he
so influenced his contemporaries and followers. An age is represented
by its greatest--that is, by the richest in goodness and insight, and
these mutually represent each other; but you will not find them in
temple or tabernacle--except, indeed, that not made by hands. You will
find them where you find their heart--(where a man's treasure is,
there is his heart also). Ask them what they think, and feel. You will
find that they consider all our common _isms_ and _alities_ but as
episodes--aye, and brief ones--if not, more or less, unconscious
insanities. That, inevitably, as the world in its giant history
proceeded from Nothingism (for how many ages?) to Fetishism--to
Confuciusism--to Buddhism--to Jewism--to Paganism (or Greek and
Romanism)--to Christianity; so common Christianity (the temporal,
dogmatic, superstitious, local, parochial), must also proceed to
something higher; which shall be at once outcome and all-compriser of
the rest. Man has got to realise his identity with the Imperishable
(caring little, if he must "soon be making head to go" from this--has
soon "notice to quit" this lodging--in the cold ground); the absolute
indestructibility of any one manifestation of force--or rather fact of
force--for the manifestations change, and pass away. He has got to
learn to love goodness for its own sake alone, and know that
Conscience is God--_realising_ with the most lyric and scientific
conviction that _every_ violation of right or law, moral even more
inevitably than physical--let every one search his own life and
conscience for the proof--is punished here without or
within--frequently, and most sublimely, subtly, within. Finally, he
has got to make this his faith that--while clinging to the truly
blessed hope of everlasting life, which is the natural corollary of
our consciousness, as our dearest sheet-anchor; as the sense that most
makes us feel infinite; and as the soul of beauty, or beautifying soul
of all--so, nevertheless, the practical immortality of right action
(or of goodness) perpetuating itself in what we do and say, here and
now--is our chief concern, the sole thing essential; which we may
supplement and consummate by falling back on the tremendous
realization before expressed. If _we_ are not immortal, we are bubbles
of the eternal sea of being, and _that_ is----
Once again, then, let us repeat, such high belief, more or less, is
the _soul_ of Beethoven's music (aye, even in his masses), for the
eternal speaks behind the temporary, the mask; hence its specific
gravity (greatest of all), its infinite significance. He is the
morning star of this reformation, the breast-inflaming dawn of a new
heaven in a grander clime--new firmament over New Jerusalem.
Powdered-wigged Haydn and Mozart--powdered-wigged genius even,
including full-bottomed-wigged Handel--could not proclaim such a
creed;--almost, as it were, with thunder of cannon. But Beethoven
ushered in the nineteenth century; he was the Napoleon of its better
half--higher life; and in due time and order followers and apostles
will succeed--have already arisen. The symphony, especially the
un-betitled be-programmed symphony, is the purest manifestation of
music, whose eloquence is better than words--(space, too, is silent);
and the talk of sundry German professors, &c., about music "no longer
playing a single part," coolly assuming, almost, the symphony to be an
exploded error, we are almost tempted to describe as crotchety
maundering or wordy wind, if not blatant jargon. This superfluous pity
for music standing alone, also reminds us of "Poor God! with nobody to
help him!" No! the symphony will still be penned by the
tone-poet--intensely feeling and thinking, lyrico-dramatic man. It
will be broad as the world, and have a soul of the highest. It will be
the grandest absolute expression of the best which we see and are. But
it will also be counterparted and supplemented by the
"Word-made-Flesh" in tone (the Word is never so beautifully made Flesh
as in tone), as Thought is made Flesh in the Word. Religion is the
Heart of Art, whence all pulses and flows; and composers will--at
last--get sick of setting twaddle and dogma, however venerable; and
will celebrate pure truth, old or new. In setting the Higher Utterance
of the past, they will reject the husk and keep the kernel--that of
eternal universal application; or they will transfigure by ideal
interpretation. In setting the new, they will set lyrical expression
of the profound poet--the earnest words of the intense thinker, and
not the jingle of the song-writer, the farrago of the
libretto-concocter. In a word, the higher oratorio (as well as the
higher drama), will play its part; be the exponent--as the symphony
will be the expression--of the new man. This will be the mightiest
manifestation of music--universal truth, profound feeling,
transcendency, and humanity; Shakespeare and Emerson (not Milton) in
one; incarnate in tone, published and borne aloft by Music and the
Human Voice; culminating in such apotheosis at last!--after so many
ages of stuttering, _singing_ will at length have reached to Highest
Thought!