CONTENTS

 Page
[Preface.]v
[Beethoven's Harbingers.]1
[Symphony, No. 1, Op. 21.]16
[Symphony, No. 2. Op. 36.]23
  — [The Adagio]23
  — [The Allegro]27
  — [The Larghetto]33
[Symphony, No. 3. Op. 55.]37
  — [Funeral March]46
  — [The Scherzo]49
[Symphony, No. 4, Op. 60.]51
  — [The Adagio]56
[Symphony, No. 5, Op. 67.]59
  — [The Andante]66
  — [The Allegro]69
  — [The Finale]72
[The Pastoral Symphony, No. 6, Op. 68.]76
[Symphony, No. 7, Op. 92.]86
  — [The Vivace]88
  — [The Allegretto]94
[Symphony No. 8. Op. 93.]96
[The Choral Symphony, Op. 125.]98
[Summing Up.]
108
[Index.]119

[PREFACE.]

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.