Beethoven's Symphonies Critically Discussed

by Alexander Teetgen

What Strikes us in this "household-word" work, especially in the first movement, is its significant simplicity. It is wonderful, as revealing to us how profoundly simple a great man can be, and is; sublime in that, as well as in his opulence and power; indeed, simplicity is an inevitable concomitant and sine quâ non of power; even in a Napoleon, let alone a Shakespeare, a Newton, and a Beethoven.

So simple is the allegro, that it almost seems studiously so—almost as though Beethoven thereby wished to convey a reproach, at least a monition, to the artificial, and said, "Thus I hold the mirror up to Nature!" Musically, the piece (as it has always seemed to us) rather suffers by this. The ideas are more than usually re-repeated; and, remarkably, reiterations (though perhaps there was a psychological reason for this in the soul of Beethoven, as instinctively expressive, over and over again, of the one great joy he felt, or as saying—"After all, the essence and compelling spirit of this great Nature is one"). Moreover, the ideas, though in themselves beautifully pure and characteristic, seem almost too simple, nay we had almost said languid, for they rather suggest to us the gratification of a convalescent than of a passionately profound (aye, and profoundly passionate) lover of nature, such as all Germans are, such as Schumann intensely was, and such as Beethoven must have exceptionally been. (Brendel says, Haydn's love of nature, as revealed in his music, was that of her very child, unconscious; Beethoven's, that of a town-dweller, conscious. But to this I would reply, town-dweller by compulsion). On the other hand, if Beethoven wished to enter a protest against Schwärmerei, for nature, none could be more effective than this movement. But nature ever was and remains mystic, and no celebration of her, above all by a Beethoven, can satisfy us which does not shadow forth, is not overpowered by, a sense of this—sense peculiar to this latter age; more so, even, than the similar companion-sense of love. Love without Schwärmerei were not love; no more is love of nature. For these profounder realizations of nature, "glances into the deepest deeps of beauty," (Carlyle, on the remark about "the lilies of the field") reflected adumbrations of her wizardry, a sense of her intoxicating aroma, the ecstasy in her bosom, that mesmerizing infinitude of hers, we must look to Beethoven's sonatas, or other portions of his symphonies; and to such music as Schumann's; hardly in his Pastoral Symphony (except somewhat in the andante); more in his Pastoral Sonata—that first movement is profound, as well as richer. There we see the poet-philosopher, nay, high-priest of nature; and the movement, four-square, almost perfect, is one of the masterpieces, and most precious legacies of Nature's Eldest Child. In the present movement we have peaceful pleasure, but not rapture, if even joy, or delight (in the Sonata Pastorale we have contemplative joy)—though Beethoven may possibly have expressly chastened the expression of feeling, as being, so, more "pastoral." Be that as it may, here we have sweetness rather than power (except, indeed, behind all); nay, rather the gratification of an habitual dweller in the country (and he no longer a young man), than the burst of rapture we might have expected from a lover of nature only just let loose from town. However, Beethoven has written over the movements—"Awakening of cheerful emotions on arrival in the country." He further said, the symphony was feeling rather than painting. This is a matter of course from a Beethoven; and note, it is a Beethoven's feelings that are depicted. What we have in the work is Nature plus Beethoven—nature photographed after passing through him, and so becoming idealised. We have, however, both scene-painting and soul-painting through the emotions here excited and described; we see also the landscape which to a great extent occasioned them; (thus, this, like Goethe's, is an occasional poem). It is a truly pastoral district; quiet, sunny scenery, with a scent of the earliest hay; but nature in her splendour, with, say, in the distance, the great sea; nature, a blaze of flowers embosomed in hills, as in our own beautiful England in May; let alone nature in spring, with her background of Alps and Appenines. Nature, whose greatest hint—the secret of whose greatest power is, Immortality; a promise of that is hardly here celebrated; or, rather, that hint is not, for it is in every landscape:—"I, too, have looked upon the hills in their hazy veil, but their greatest charm, to me, was their promise." Neither, in spite of Elterlein's charming allusion, have we the scenery where, or the time when (soust) as Goethe so truly, sublimely expresses it (in two of his most inspired lines)—

"Stürzte sich der Himmelsliebe Kuss
Auf mich herab in ernsber Sabbath stille."

When Beethoven wrote this music he had not in mind his revered Shakespeare's magnificent—

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heaving alchemy."

This, rather, the immortal Symphony in A suggests; or such lines as these:—

"My other mighty passion was for thee,
Thou glimmering, glamouring, manifestation of God!
Unspeakable Nature, with thy distant sea,
Wave-framing hills, dim woods, and flowery sod;
My haziest, sweetest memories, are of you,
Where inland-county beauty guards its stream;
Oh! 'violet' memory 'dim' with my tears' dew;
Oh! shadowy pausing, touch'd with earliest beam;
And sea-side recollections stir my heart,
The calm's majestic cheerfulness, the storm,
The bluff that through the vapours seem'd to start,
A thousand miracles of tint and form;
And ever as I yearn'd on wave and hill,
The unconscious secret was thy Promise still."

The "Scene by the Brook"—

"I draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river;
Men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever."