I. BEETHOVEN'S HUMOR.

One of Beethoven's most prominent characteristics, without a special consideration of which no account of him would be at all complete, was his humor. In the three foregoing chapters we have had passing glimpses of it: we have noted his distaste for the obvious, the trite, the conventional, and his fondness for breaking in on the tranquillity of his audience, sometimes in danger of lapsing into inattentive dullness, with all manner of shocks and surprises—clashing chords in the midst of soft passages, unexpected modulations to distant keys, piquant interruptions of rhythm, long holds, sudden spasms of wild speed. All such tricks were dear to him as means of avoiding the monotony which is the one unpardonable sin of an artist, and of attaining constant novelty and a kaleidoscopic diversity of effect. None of his predecessors, and perhaps none of his successors, carried to such lengths as he did this peculiar kind of musical humor. It is one of the most essentially "Beethovenish" of all his qualities.

The particular form of movement in which his humor attained its freest scope (though it is hardly ever entirely absent in anything that he wrote) was the minuet of his earlier, and the scherzo of his later sonatas and symphonies. The minuet of Haydn and Mozart, which we have discussed in Chapter VII, though not entirely lacking in the element of whim and perversity which gives rise to humor, was primarily stately, formal, and suave. When we listen to a minuet of this old school, our mind's eye conjures up the picture of a group of eighteenth century dames and cavaliers, hoop-skirted and bewigged, gravely going through the set evolutions of their dance with unfailing dignity and courtly grace. From such a scene a Beethoven scherzo whisks us in a moment to some merry gathering of peasants, where all is wild conviviality, boisterous rejoicing, and unrestrained high spirits.

Doubtless this contrast was in some measure due, as Sir George Grove points out in an interesting passage, to the differences of the social conditions under which the composers lived. "The musicians of the eighteenth century," he says, "were too commonly the domestic servants of archbishops and princes, wore powder and pigtails, and swords, and court dresses, and gold lace, dined at the servants' table, and could be discharged at a moment's notice like ordinary lackeys. Being thus forced to regulate their conduct by etiquette, they could not suddenly change all their habits when they came to make their music, or give their thoughts and feelings the free and natural vent which they would have had, but for the habits engendered by the perpetual curb and restraint of their social position. But Beethoven had set such social rules and restrictions at naught. It was his nature, one of the most characteristic things in him, to be free and unrestrained. Almost with his first appearance in Vienna he behaved as the equal of everyone he met, and after he had begun to feel his own way his music is constantly showing the independence of his mind."[48]

Whatever the causes of this mental independence of Beethoven, whatever part of it was due to changed social conditions, and what to his purely personal character, there is ample testimony to its existence in his biography. The man who could throw a badly cooked stew at the head of the waiter, who could in a fit of temper publicly shake his fist under the window of one of his best friends and patrons, who could haughtily refuse to make the ordinary salutations to his emperor and empress on a chance meeting, lest he appear servile, and who when he was asked whether he were of noble blood answered proudly that his nobility lay in his head and in his heart, was not likely to pay exaggerated respect to traditions, whether in life or in art. Indeed, perhaps the deepest secret of his greatness was that while, as his sketch-books signally prove, he spared no pains or labor to conform his work to those great natural laws which are above all individual wills, he paid not the slightest respect to mere rules and conventions, and held especially in contempt the arbitrary codes of pedants and pedagogues. "It is not allowed?" he inquired quizzically, when some such dogmatist objected to a passage he had written: "Very well, then, I allow it."

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(b)

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FIGURE LVIII.

Little wonder is it, then, that such a daring spirit, such a hater of the timid and the droning, such a passionate lover of the individual, the striking, the bizarre, and even the grotesque, found a congenial task in infusing humor and irresponsibility into the classic minuet. This form, already the lightest part of the sonata and symphony, already consecrated to the expression of the composer's gayest and most graceful thoughts, needed only to be made plastic enough to include fantasy and banter in order to give free scope to Beethoven's most frolicsome moods. To the task of thus aerating the symphonic minuet he applied himself very early. Take, as an instance, the minuet of the very first piano sonata, opus 2, number 1. As a whole it breathes the polite graciousness of Mozart. The first cadence, especially, recalls the sweetly formal manner of the old school. (See Figure LVIII(a).) Yet a moment later Beethoven begins to play with this very cadence in true scherzo fashion, like a cat with a mouse, twice pawing it gently, so to speak, and then pouncing on it with fury: ((b) in the same figure.)

In the other two sonatas bearing the same opus number he adopts the name scherzo—which is an Italian word meaning "joke" or "jest"—and with it introduces still more of the playful spirit; and as the sonatas progress we find this tendency growing, until in opus 26 and opus 28 we have full-fledged, though rather brief, examples of the real Beethoven scherzo. Let us look at these more carefully.

II. SCHERZOS FROM BEETHOVEN'S SONATAS.
EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 22.[1]

Beethoven: Scherzo[49] from the Twelfth Sonata, opus 26.

We note first of all that though the time-signature is three-four, as in the old minuet, the pace is much more rapid—"allegro molto"—so that a sense of bustle and restless activity is substituted for the well-bred deliberateness of the minuet. This acceleration of time is observable in most of the scherzos.

Again, the theme (measures 1-17) is of most energetic character, which is even further intensified, on its re-entrance in the bass at measure 46, by a rushing accompaniment in eighth-notes.

A characteristic passage precedes this return of the theme. To make the excitement more welcome when it comes Beethoven has one of his "lulls" for sixteen measures (31-46), during which the motion dies out and all seems to stagnate for a moment. This sort of quiescence, in which one takes breath for a new access of energy, is always consummately managed by Beethoven, who has made the "lull" a famous device.

The trio calls for no particular comment. It is in binary form, while the scherzo itself is ternary.