Beethoven's Symphonies Critically Discussed

London:
W. REEVES, 83 Charing Cross Road, W.C.

Who taught me, when a happy schoolboy—in the house of my beloved and venerated master, the Rev. Alfred Whitehead, M.A., and his dear wife—to sing at sight, who first fostered my passion for music; to that genial and highly accomplished man, who has vanished from my view for years, but not from my memory, where he resides ever, as a kind of Apollo Belvedere of those far-off days—that New World to which the Columbus Man, may never return.


These essays originally appeared in The Musical Standard , for which paper they were written.
While admitting that the author has at times been carried away by his exuberant fancy, it is impossible to deny that he possesses in a very high degree those powers of analysis without which it is impossible to do justice to, or even approximately to understand, Beethoven. Music is verily the language of the soul—higher, finer, more delicate in its methods, and more ethereal in its results, than anything to which the tongue can give utterance; expressing what speech cannot speak, and affecting, as no mere talking can, the invisible player who manipulates the keyboard of the human intellect, and whom we call The Soul . Music is truly of such a nature, and appeals so powerfully and mysteriously to that soul, that the words of Jean Paul seem quite justified,—
Ich glaube, nur Gott versteht unser Musik.
Beethoven wrote such music as few even among those calling themselves musicians can understand, as the word is generally used; and which, in Jean Paul's sense of the word, is understood not at all. Like the ocean, or Mont Blanc, we can feel its power, while at the same time we are conscious that explanation would be almost desecration. We do not want Beethoven's music explained, but would rather be left alone with that which we can only feel, but cannot understand while hampered with this mortal coil. Under the spell of such music, we can only explain the emotions it produces in us, and we can only do this in a fashion far from complete. Mr. Teetgen has only attempted an explanation of Beethoven's symphonies in this latter sense; and so far from feeling his little book as an impertinence—which any attempt to explain Beethoven's music (his soul, id est ) would be—we feel helped in our endeavours to understand something of the means by which the greatest tone-poet worked his incantations and wove his spells.