Man divides his time chiefly between love (of all sorts) and action. One of his most passionate, as well as purest, loves, is of nature. When the two blend—when at once the lover, and lover of nature, roams in nature, besouling and transfiguring her by love, then is passion at its sweetest, life at its highest. In this opening gush, or burst, of the 8th Symphony (allegro vivace e con brio) we seem to have such love. Here is that rapture we missed in the expressly culled Pastoral Symphony—rapture of emancipation, thrill and burst of joy! The great action of the Eroica, and C minor—aye, and of the A major symphonies—here gives place to the pure ecstatic emotion.
Here we have indeed the broad breath of the fields; we perfectly revel in the flowery gold; the sweet streams winding there enchant us; the blue mountains sublime us with their great tender reminders; in the divine whole—this "transcenden Tempel des Frühlings"—we are ready to fall on our knees for joy. Rural, without doubt, are these opening strains; "escaped into the country"—"love in the country," seems written over them. Later, Alberti's and Elterlein's notion (independent) more obtains; "the symphony represents humour," (chiefly caprice, mood); "the base and character of the work is throughout humouristic." This, however, may well be, and the scene of these caprices still remains the divine country; the lights and shadows and fleecy clouds of the soul amid those of nature. Here we may fancy the scene of a superior Watteau. By running brook and swaying bough, gracious nymph and gallant swain exchange fancies and glances, and sport, and make love. Nay it is indeed like a back-glance of our Beethoven himself into his early years—when the days were bluer, the world broader, by the celestial Rhine yonder, and when he too, in his sweet and awful heart, felt shy unutterable emotions; thrill'd, as though fire had flashed in waves through his veins when she touched his hand—that hand to be so creative. This may be a glance at those days, as the Countess Guicciardini Sonata (most lyric of all, like the passion of an Oriental night) is a burning record of others.
In a word, and finally, Beethoven, who was essentially imaginative, has in this pendent to the Fourth Symphony, given himself up to, and given us, fancy; and a gracious present it is, like a handful of pearls, from the master. Not less precious, but more precious, are the smiles and sportive caresses of Hercules—the pleasantries of Jove. Ah! He who challenged the terrors of the cross, and threatened Dies Irae, (we must ever recur to Him as our highest type), spoke of the lilies of the field, and gathered to him little children; and more precious, if possible, than his words, or very deeds, were—if He ever had them—his smiles.
The query is suggested by this youth-fresh work—did Beethoven write this Opus 93 out of his heart at that age (if so, what a heart!—with styles one and three close together), or did he draw upon fancies of his early years—tone-lyrics of that time?
The Allegretto Scherzando, that Ariel-gush ("On a bat's back I do fly") is thus described by the German critic:—"In the second movement we have, especially, naïve joy; nay, at once the child-like innocence and mischievous sport of humour. The first motiv (as is well known) had its origin in a playful canon improvised by Beethoven for the metronome-maker, Maelzel; the whole piece has been praised by many, as the most charming morçeaux of Beethoven's." The Minuet he speaks of as dry humour, the Trio as revealing an inner Liebesdrange (urgent need of and for love)—"such as is ever innate in the true humourist."
The Finale seems another piece of "Tempest" music; now grateful as chased or filagree silver, now inly tender, as the soul of Ferdinand and Miranda of course is; now, even with a glance at the "dæmonish." These extraordinary "Schreckennoten," now as C sharp, now as D flat—which we were tempted to substitute on the first appearance of the note as C sharp—may furnish another pretty quarrel between the wranglers over "False Notation." They form one of the most original flashes of Beethoven (if not a hint of aberration), and strike us as properly belonging to a profoundly tragic movement, and not to such a one as this; where, indeed, their value seems hardly utilised. Such notes might have been blown as the "Blast of the breath of His displeasure"—before the Hand-writing on the Wall; at the Rending of the Veil 'fore the Holy of Holies; at the dawn of the Day of Doom; though, indeed, this latter also would break upon fairy revels, foambells, and butterflies, as well as wars, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
In conclusion, we regret the absence of an Adagio in this genial work. We now turn to the portentous Choral Symphony.
[ The Choral Symphony, Op. 125.]
A noble poet, on reading certain strophes in a long poem to a friend, remarked that they were experiments. The remark rather jarred, at the time, on the friend's ear, and sunk into his mind. Apropos, say what one will about the Choral Symphony, it strikes us as an experiment. The very title seems empiric. What we should understand by a choral symphony would be a symphonically grand chorus blended with a symphony; but this is rather a chorus preceded by a symphony—its opposite, too (though intentionally), in character; in part independent of, in part made up of the themes of the chorus. Now, a similar work—Mendelssohn's "Lobgesang,"—struck us as being likewise an experiment, and not a happy one; the prevailing and overpowering impression was—"Oh! when will the singers begin?" This gigantic preluding of the essential is a distracting postponement, a colossal interruption—difficult to be done justice to by the impatient hearer, even if perfect in itself. But, if perfect in itself, it would be more perfect by itself—(?)—for, as a prelude, it remains subordinate; and this to the symphony is fatally derogatory. Most "experiments" are mistakes in judgment, and these in art. This symphony strikes us as disproportionate as well as incongruous—no less serious musical than statuesque and architectural faults. We feel that it is indeed bound up with, but not one of the others; that it is an appendix. Beethoven himself began, after it, another symphony, whole in itself, like the others. No doubt he was impressed (and rightly) with the feeling that an Ode to Joy demanded a grandiose introduction; but he made an elementary mistake (?) in making that introduction too long and heterogeneous—in short, by giving us a symphony instead of an overture. With respect to its character, let us draw a little nearer—it is, no doubt, of the greatest importance. In this symphony, Beethoven summoned up all his then powers to pour forth and portray in one tremendous focus the conflict which his symphonies and deeper music more or less generally depict, viz., that of Pessimism and Optimism—of good and evil. And in this he was herald-representative of the nineteenth century. Bach, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, did not depict this struggle; at least we are not struck by it. Pathos, and even tragedy, in general they too of course reveal—for joy and sadness make up music; nay, sadness is perhaps the soul of music, at least Beethoven makes us think so; but the characteristic Hamletism of the nineteenth century (which is Hamlet—as, according to Freiligrath, Germany is, or was before 1870),—it was reserved for Beethoven to manifest forth; Beethoven, the greatest Hamlet (not Faust he was too good) of all. The other centuries were centuries of belief or unbelief; this is one of doubt, with a soul—belief, groping after a new one. It will be new, and not local—let alone parochial. Fearful doubts must have seized thinking, feeling men, at all times, after looking abroad and pondering what we have called this tremendous paradox and discrepancy, the universe. St. Paul himself said, with poignant realization, "The world groaneth and travaileth until 'now';" and it is difficult to overstate the wide-spread and individual imperfection and unhappiness. This sense, of old, drove men into what we called a frenzy of belief—in something exterior. That they clutched, and to that they clung, nailing their gaze, as it were, to happiness promised for faith bestowed; and full of such a fearful sense of the wretchedness below, that they laughed to scorn even torture and the stake; and warped away from this world, to bide wholly in the contemplation of another. As might have been predicted, however, this, too, could only be a phase and period of transition (and that not a long one in the history of man; we must revolutionise our ideas of time and greatness); and, inevitably, when science, beginning greatly with Copernicus, set in, Luther, the first Freethinker (modern), would soon follow, and in due course a Hume, a Spinoza, a Schopenhauer, and a Kant. Our Beethoven, who had his own "categorical inspiration," no doubt derived terrible arguments for Pessimism from few things more emphatic than his own life—so mysteriously gifted and afflicted, stinted and endowed. Hence, then, the Titanic character of his music; the tremendous temptation in the wilderness (of his own heart, of a feared to be God abandoned world), of a soul inclining to good, to go over to evil—but the good in the end is triumphant, and we see it ever struggling through:—
In pits of passion and dens of woe
We see strong Eros struggling through.