THE ADAGIO.
The worn-out despot offered a premium for a new pleasure; the critic would often do so for a new epithet. How shall I characterize this exquisite prelude? It is as the portico to the Walhalla of the gods. Here we have the real Beethoven in his divine profundity—profound, because beautiful; its very beauty constituting the depth, as it were, thickening into it, like the ocean and heaven. This beauty, the true Proteus, is evasive; its import was not clear to the utterer himself, no message of the Divine is, to the human vehicle—
"A coral conduit ivory cisterns filling."
We cannot exactly translate or interpret it, only we feel that were it translated, we should have a divine poem in a divine language. One could spend hours going into the details of it—for every note demands a word; those two opening ones namely. How characteristic! There is the Emperor Tone-Poet, Napoleon of music, commanding "Attention!" and not—God forbid!—for himself, but for his message. It is the "Thus saith the Lord" of the prophet (some Elijah) of old. Utterance so simple—so all-compelling! Those two notes, merely, are, as it were, like the slightest scratch of an apostle. Then the next three bars! They at once usher us into that ineffability of Beethoven's which we spoke of. We have no reluctance to admitting that originality is not particularly studied here. Nay, we are inclined to say something higher—the modesty and moral courage to reject originality is displayed. Beethoven had to deliver that "Thus saith the Lord!" and he did it. First feel, and then study, the unstudied eloquence of it. It is one of the beautiful instances whose name is legion in Beethoven, of simplicity—
"In its simplicity sublime."
To me it says—"There! the storms are all fought out. Peace, after all, is at the bottom, and in the heart." Or it is like a high man—say Beethoven himself—after the despicable petty disgusts, as well as chaotic horrors of life, falling back upon nature, the eternal star-glimmering universe—"they will not repel and deceive me, they are everlasting and sublime!" The phrase—like every great message—is really indescribable except by itself; the profound peace, or rather peaceful profundity of it, are unutterable—
"O that my tongue could utter"—
It is a great instance of height towering out of depth, high because deep, a peak in music, yet not clad with eternal glacier, except for its purity of heart, but eternal sunbeams.
After an interesting passage of "harmonious breathing" interposed, and the still more interesting one of chromatic part-repetition, the shakes—which are ultimately to play a great part—first make their appearance. The taste for the shake can soon degenerate; and Beethoven himself sometimes used it incontinently. But, when properly introduced, as here, and especially at the last, it is an ornament that has a more or less magical charm.
The next noble bit reminds us a little of the "Funeral March" in the A flat Sonata. Thereupon Beethoven, in his unconscious or conscious unconscious progress, promulgates some of these characteristic utterances of his—those harmonious and melodic breathings, so profound and pregnant with we know not what. Who or what moved him to his wonderful "progressions?" Truly indescribable tone-poet! so deep with tenderness, so rich with glow—glow is where Beethoven exceeded all of them, especially the Saxon school; he added glow to height, breadth, and depth; or, rather, his glow and depth—as in the sun—are like cause and effect, one.
Now follow those warblings—
"Wild bird! whose warble liquid sweet
Rings Eden through the budded quicks,"
and "deep answering unto deep," which we mentally alluded to at the outset, hard to decipher, seraphically beautiful. In what a musical river, to employ another figure, or concourse of confluences, the inspired orchestra rolls on; for yes, verily, the river is inspired with utterance, big with its message. And this is no merely European river, but rather some tropical Zambesi or Amazon with its colossal origin and surroundings; or, again, the river that rolls from the throne of the Fountain of Life—which truth it seems to declare, in the magnificent emphatic passage (anticipating the choral symphony?) so originally grand, in D minor, in unison, mark that. It seems to say—"Hear that, and believe it. The rolling river which this universe is, does not flow from Chaos and Diabolus, but from Eternal Self-Justified Will—humanly named, in short, 'God'; as it were, takes its course through the bosom of God, as 'King John' wished the rivers of his realm to, through his." After this colossal passage, we seem to be invited to listen to the warblings and happy murmurs in the halls of heaven—the habitation of the blest, of just spirits made perfect. It is all delicately, crystallinely ineffable; and the language of imaginative sympathy itself can scarcely transcend the beauty and exceeding excellence of the whole movement—that profound inspiration—any more than it can transcend the beauty and exceeding excellence, amounting to divinity, of the universe, that "Midsummer Night's Dream!"