The Allegro.
I often doubt, war can never cease, for its element is so great and potent in art—especially music and her twin-sister, poetry. Carlyle specially speaks of the "great stroke, too, that was in Shakespeare, had it come to that;" and, indeed, makes this—together with the "so much unexpressed in him to the last"—in short, his infinitude, the very thing which Schubert's kindred eye saw in Beethoven, differentiating him, his two chief points of admiration and test in general of a man. Besides, in our great historian himself—in Milton, too—we feel that there was a great stroke, as of the sublime Ironside; before him, in Dante; before him, in Homer—perhaps, Virgil; but not Horace. In our own day, the noble ring of our poet-laureate's verse, to mention no more, is at once a voucher for the same fact, apart from his "Maud," and more than one indignant utterance. The poetic imagination and classic beauty of all such men is not only concomitant with, but inseparable from, a "good stroke in them" (Dante and Cervantes were actually on the battle-field)—from an heroic element, the best thing they have. The greatest utterance—inspiration—cannot possibly come from any other. The hero is dear to God; the coward perhaps most despised of all. And why? The reason is philosophical enough. Because the soul of the universe is power—and without courage there can be no goodness. The grand doctrine of evolution, penetrating everywhere, has brought home to us, and borne in upon us, that there is not a field or a grove which is not the theatre of perpetual struggle—not one manifestation exempt from it. Vae victis is the word of Nature herself, and the "struggle" is divinely ordained (competition is the salt of existence) for the elaboration of energies—the eventuation in higher life. What man would wish for the dolce far niente of the Fool's Paradise? The world hath been groaning and travailing until now, and must for a long, long time to come; only one-fourth of it is even now "civilized," and in that civilisation what dregs and dens of barbarism seem ineradicable. All sorts of wrong still tyrannise; therefore, spiritually and physically, the warrior must stand forth great to wage war against the bad everywhere, politically and intellectually—against social evils, and art-darkness—against lies, and for truth—against weakness, and for strength; for Might is Right in the universe—weakness is one with evil, strength with good. Only the good is strong; only the bad is weak.
We have been led into these remarks by dwelling on the fact, how frequently the warlike spirit manifests itself forth in our Beethoven—indeed, is irrepressible; nay, I am urged to say, cardinal. In spite of Beethoven's truly divine beauty, he is stamped and distinguished by power. When he issues young into the arena, we see "victorious success" gleaming on his brows. Handel is distinguished in the same way. Hence the secret of Beethoven's own hero-worship for him. Apollo is great, but Jupiter is greater—Jupiter Optimus Maximus. If Mozart, Weber, Schubert may, more or less, figure as the sun-god, they cannot figure as the god of the sun-god. We might almost say, the first notes of Beethoven proclaimed power. He had to go forth and do battle with things. Nor is his own struggle for existence (not mere being, but immortality—a life in immortality here; that is existence to your Beethoven) in his own life-element, so strong and chaotic, in his own soul progress, undepicted, or shadowed forth. With unconscious-consciousness did he do it—on, right on to the end, the bitter end; on the verge of blindness, insanity—we know not what. Rushing as he did, into the conflict, conscious only of power, Beethoven would have been struck had he seen what, through the long vista of "stifled splendour and gloom," that power boded and implied: he would have been awed, had it been revealed to him what that power represented—little short of the Nineteenth Century itself, with all its Hamlet doubts, and chaotic, yet germ-rich smouldering of transition, whereof more anon.
If the ineffable adagio—prelude of preludes (?), out, as Marx says, the last movement is the finale of finales—shows us the young God-disguised athlete, with the morning light on his brow, making ready to enter only the Olympian Games, the allegro con brio shows him to us rushing into battle! The "heroic symphony" is by no means the first or last symphony heroic—indeed, could not have been written but for the pre-existence and exercise of that full power in the inspired young composer. Here is a grand epic outburst and onrushing worthy of that immortal masterpiece, and essentially one with it. We could almost say, not only the same power, but the same sort of power, is indiscernible in Haydn and Mozart. The style (which is truly the man—that to the man what the bark is to the tree) is so different—the man's dialect, as well as message; the phraseology altogether. These modulations are not those of Haydn and Mozart! (beyond praise grand is the ff on the dominant of A minor—one of those glorious bursts and surprises of Beethoven's—we expect D minor); nor is the masculine fancy (god-like shall we say? and a Mozart's, goddess-like) theirs; and the great broad, quasi-Titanic strains and themes. This movement (Op. 36) is an advance on that of the symphony No. 1 (Op. 21), if in grade only, not kind. Here we see the young giant, not yet done growing, a little riper. There is no strain in it which we feel inclined to qualify, which "gives us pause," like the second motiv in its predecessor; all is homogeneous, epically great. But let us descend a little to details. At bars 1, 2, and 3, we imagine the firm tread of the warriors, singing (like the Ironsides before Dunbar—the 68th Psalm, "Let God arise,") on their way to victory, which they never doubt for a moment, not only because they are triumphant veterans, but on account (and more) of their cause. At bar 4 what a poetic rush (inrush) of fifes is suggested! then the great step is heard again; a great strain joins in; the chaunt of the warrior basses becomes more and more ominous; preliminary thunder is heard, and at last, with Olympian pæan and war-cry battle is joined;—great is the shock, and glorious is the struggle!
The second subject in A is ushered in by those grand third-less chords (long before our modern writers):—
the chromatic passage being doubled two octaves below by the basses. The new subject, more absolutely melodious, still keeps up the same theme—(for, apropos, we may also look upon this allegro as some Homeric or Shakespearian recital of a great victory—recall the superb opening lines of "Richard the Third," the "warriors' wreathed brows, and their bruised arms hung up for monuments"). At first it is heard softly—like a reinforcement in the distance (we think of the Prussians at Waterloo, in the westering summer sun)—then as it were in a blaze of music bursts in. Immediately after, where its exquisite first half (so simple—mark that—but so eloquent and picturesque) reappears in the basses (high), we are rather reminded of Mendelssohn's "Huntsman's Song without Words," in A (the same key), Book 1; but—we need not say—Mendelssohn has not gilded gold, or improved the lily; for his fancy was distinctly lighter and smaller than Beethoven's—or, let us say, he had fancy, Beethoven imagination. And now a happy spirit of triumph sings in the basses; and then burst out some crashing Beethoven-chords, of which I will but point to the one ff (5th bar of them); it is characteristically the 6—4 of D—not, as anticipated, the 5—3 of F sharp minor.
Then, after a foreboding crescendo—characteristic growth out of an initial fragment—and these two emphatic notes:—
—Beethoven all over—the first part closes, so to say, in a breadth of thunder-peals and fiery rain. Technically, note the grand entry of D minor, and mi—do—si—la—mi in unison, with the 3rd omitted; and the minor-seventh chords, resolving into the tonic dominant of the minor (D1), so exquisitely expressive—alike of the pangs of victory and the heroic resolution to endure them.
In the 2nd Part, on the way to G minor (Beethoven himself often never knew whither he was taking us, or at least the precise route—and so much the better!), we soon meet with a remarkable juncture of notes, viz., do and mi of the chord (G minor), with fa superadded:—
This fa, at first sight perplexing, turns out to be a stray note (as it seems) of the minor seventh chord on its way to the seventh, which, however, ultimately appears (with beautiful effect) as the 3rd of the dominant-seventh chord (to C minor). This powerfully, painfully expressive dissonance is likewise to be found in his "Lied Vom Tode" (Op. 48), amongst other instances; and the opening to Schubert's "Wanderer" owes its intense expression to the same. The raison d'être of such discords is perhaps to be found in the enhancement they give to the resolution. We could not bear them too long, or too frequent; but, as a passing reminder of the tragedy of life, they profoundly move and interest us; and, perhaps, discords in life (likewise instituted by no Dryasdust) have essentially the same raison d'être and explanation—life is agro-dolce, not dolce alone, and better so. Thereupon we have a new idea, surely as playfully felicitous and characteristic as the scherzo of the "Eroica" itself—like the warriors at sport after victory; or like a glimpse of the same by them, back in a pause in the battle, which soon recommences, with the shouts of the combatants and groans of the wounded and dying. A page farther on, we have a truly sublime episode; great is the chaunt on the earnest theatre (proclaiming Right must and shall win) made up of the sufficient chord of F sharp minor, and the basses moving in such a way as served as a model for Wagner; this is epic, heroic, indeed! and—even greater—Pelion upon Ossa, piled by this Titan fighting on the side of the gods, is the culmination. Semitone by semitone mount the basses; and over all the great clouds become richer in the setting sun, and pealing hosts of heaven (as it were) join in the shouts of the victors, crying—"Hosanna in excelsis! Alto trionfo del regno verace! Right is done!"
"Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
Paid with a voice flying by, to be lost on an endless sea.
Glory of virtue to fight! to struggle, to right the wrong,
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be."