It is impossible to overstate the bright, the exhilarating impression of these tones. Here we at once revel in the outer world, in all the
April of its prime,
and feel ourselves magically strung up to virile deeds, to face the "rugged Hyrcanian boar"—"to do or die." Here the ringing woodland of feudal times is around us, and all the panoply, pride, pomp, and circumstance of a royal chase. The motto of Stephen Heller's admirable "Chasse" was very apt, which records how the French monarch, plunged in gloom by the death of his beloved, seeks distraction in the chase. Sir Walter—of our erst beloved "Ivanhoe"—comes sweeping through the mind; a rush of joy almost to tears. We see Garth, born thrall of Cedric, and the Jester in the gladed woodland; and there, at the glittering jousts (even more so) the heavenly Rebecca, Rowena, the Hero, and the Knight Templar; Jew and Christian; plumèd knight and lovely dame. This music is Ivanhoe, not forgetting the glamour of the Crusades, with knight and Saracen, and the breath of the Holy Land through it. Here is the chivalry of warriors, who fought for the Cross; in an age—so different from ours—when there was a frenzy of belief (thus we be-soul our objective); here is a phalanx of Bayards sans peur et sans reproche, inflamed with passion of hatred and love, en route to storm their way to Calvary. This is the picture to fill our mind with; though we may also think of this glorious music as painting forth the Conqueror William, breaking up the chase to invade Harold's England, as being rock'd over thither on crisp seas in knight-throng'd vessels, gallant with streaming pennon; though we may also think of Ferdinand going out to welcome Columbus (in our copy, at the passage in G minor we have ejaculated, "Our Columbus"—Beethoven!—"has found a New World"), of Cortes and Pizarro invading Mexico (copper-coloured men and tropical scenery we may also conjure up); or, again, of Philip and his pompous Armada—of Elizabeth and English chivalry preparing to greet him. But that picture of the Crusades best suits us. So our nothing-if-not-religious Beethoven, the glorious genius, in the name of music, whose High Priest he was (and whom other great spirits serve), concerned only to pour forth what streamed into him; or rather, concerned only to let it stream through him (for it is certain he did not intentionally celebrate and pourtray all that his mighty music suggests, however the Germans may stamp it as Intellectual Music, die Musik des Geistes), so our hardly-entreated, much-bound, but triumphant immortal shadowed forth, on canvas made of air, pictures surpassing Angelo and Raphael—pictures that only a painter-Shakespeare could surpass or rival—pictures that have the material splendour and éclat of a Rubens, the intense originality of a Rembrandt, plus a soul behind and within them, which only higher spirits than they can glimmeringly reveal. We have but to repeat, that these tone-pictures have always a charm plus (or even apart from), viz., that of the tones themselves. Our interpretation of this master-movement is the same as that of Marx Nohl and Elterlein (whom we should like to quote at length). Wagner's idea, genially understood, is also acceptable. That gifted despot "finds in the Symphony the apotheosis of the Dance der in Tönen idealisch verkörperten Leibesbewegung." Yes, it is a dance that sings; high dance and song together, as at some Pindar-celebrated Festival of Apollo; nay, of some ideal, some skylark soul of joy, not so much convinced of, as absolute lyrical part of, and one with the All; and threatening to melt for very rapture in its bosom. The Dance!—that is applicable enough, too! What a majestic pas de deux is this ever advancing and retiring Day and Night! What a stately minuet the Four Seasons! The river dances to the sea; the blood (of the lover-poet) dances in the veins; what a wild waltz of elements we have!—galop of the north wind; the very sea as it were dances in prolonged rhythmic sway, "molto maestoso," to the all-compelling moon; nay, the moon and stars themselves, with stupendous majesty "keep time" to their "music of the spheres" through space; and the great rhythm of obedience—action and re-action, attraction and repulsion—is the grand universal law.
Such are some of the lessons and suggestions of this curiously happy, magnificently pregnant rhythmic movement of Beethoven's; his first great performance in his new lease of originality—great step on the new road to immortality. The motive itself, truly a motive, is as exquisitely tuneful and simple (how great was Beethoven in not straining after effect!) as grossartig; and, en passant, it has only to be compared for our instruction for one moment with Mendelssohn's "Song without words." "The Chase," in the same key and time, Book I, to show the striking superiority of Beethoven; nay, their generic difference—Mendelssohn was talent, and Beethoven genius. The grandiose breadth, the unstudied inspiration (cause of the former) is essentially, fatally absent in Mendelssohn, say what his fascinated devotees may! It is with him almost all talent and fancy, not oracle and prophecy. He is only a nephew of Beethoven's, Schumann his "well-beloved" son (as Wagner is of Schumann).
I should be wrong not to give some of Herr Elterlein's ideas. After citing Wagner's notion, and repudiating it (naturally enough, unless one gives due weight to the word apotheosis, and due interpretation to the word dance), he alludes to (and also rejects as premature) the notion of Alberti, and others, that the symphony is an "announcement of German triumph and enthusiasm at their freedom at length from the French yoke." He then says, "Marx and Nohl seem to us to come nearer the truth, when the former finds embodied in the symphony the life of a southern people, especially of the Moorish race in ancient Spain,"—(picturesquely suggestive this; only does not the key-colouring seem rather too cool? have we not Teutonic brilliance rather than Oriental?)—"and the latter" (Herr Dr. Nohl), "ritterliche Festpracht" in general (the festival splendour of chivalry). He continues:—"We also, the more and more profoundly we have entered into this creation, have become clearer convinced, that, as in the "Eroica," we have displayed political heroism, battling and victorious; in the C minor symphony, the moral conflicts and triumphs of man; so in the A major symphony, we behold the manifold life and phenomena (Lebensströmungen) of a chivalrous, imaginative, hot-blooded people, in the full enjoyment of their health and power. We fancy one might prefix Goethe's words—
"Im vollgewühl, im lebensregen Drange
Vermischte sich die thätige Völkerschaar."
("In lusty swarms, crowds full of life,
The deedful peoples intermixed.")
"To arms! is now the word—arms and harness; and forwards to the peaceful jousts in the fair land. And now, how all hearts at first lightly thrill! then pulses beat ever higher; the crowds muster; the warrior horsemen curvet and gambol on slender steeds; pennons glitter, armour dazzles, swords flash in the sun; and the motley swarms stream forth pell-mell, not to bloody battle, like the hero-spirits of the "Eroica,"—no, but the peaceful tournament!"
The scherzo and finale ("a sort of Bacchus triumph"—?) we shall abstain from discussing (they are of much less intrinsic import than the first two movements); but conclude with a glance at the greatest movement of all (with creditable and instinctive instinct almost always redemanded) the allegretto; first, however, citing two remarkable passages from the finale, worthy the attention of those correspondents of the Musical Standard on "False Notation," especially of that one "whose memory could not serve him whether such a passage occurred in the masters":—
