To sum up. The Choral Symphony seems, at the best, a grand but doubtful experiment. Its greatest, its only inspired movement, is the adagio; and that, heavenly as it is, interferes with the progress of the work—with the scheme of it—as depicting doubt, denial, and despair ("there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"), to be followed by oil upon the waters—by an uncontrollable outburst, sacred fury almost, of joy, at the perception by man that he is imperishable, part of the All; not only recipient of joy here, but justified demander and mortgagee of it hereafter; and joy of joy even at the high perception that even if we personally are not immortal, we are bubbles of the eternal sea, and that is immortal.
[ Summing Up.]
Finally, it is such thoughts as these, consciously or unconsciously expressed, which stamp and distinguish Beethoven's music as a whole, to which we now turn. In his jubilation is the "fulness of joy"; in his sadness the core of sorrow. He has "made the passage from heaven to hell"; he has sounded the gamut of sound. In his four great symphonies, the one in D (the rushing forth and soaring up of youth, Elterlein considers it); the Eroica, the C minor, and the A major; in these four symphonies, to which the soul's eye in predilection turns, which stand out from all the rest; and in many of his other works—whose soul is as great, but substance less—we see Beethoven, probably the most glorious emotional representative of man in history—not only in music, but art, almost literature. He is thus the greatest phenomenon perhaps of modern times after Shakespeare. Shakespeare over-tops him; but who else? Not Dante—too fierce, and crude, and narrow (see how blatant he is about Mahomet, and his annotator, Professor Bianchi, ten times worse—he has the most stupendously stupid note we ever read!) not Milton, less rich and influential; not his own contemporary and countryman, Goethe, whose Faust and Egmont are in Beethoven's music rather than in his own words, and who had not Beethoven's genial humanity, world-wide breadth, heaven's-heart depth, and titanic power. Only his Fatherland's philosophical giants, methinks, can rank with him; and their influence and effect are naturally limited. He thought in music—the most delicious volumes of philosophy! thought and feeling are presented to us in one—aye, and painting too. Apropos, so also do we rank him above the artists. The works of Apelles and Phidias are gone; the very Parthenon is going. But his works will last; and they mesmerise and master us with a power which theirs never could do—theirs, and Angelo's, and Raphael's; or Rubens, and Rembrandt, and Turner. For music is the highest of the arts, as being most the message of the Highest: and here is the music of the highest of her messengers. Yes! for only Handel (whom he so characteristically revered) can match with him, and that only in power. In originality, in richness, in depth (including intensity—glow), in humanity, eminently in influence think of Beethoven's sonatas spread over the world, besides his quartets and symphonies, pyramidal models; whereas Handel would hardly be known but for his "Messiah," (and that chiefly in England); in a word, in universality, and a certain mystical soul of meaning—sacred mystery of insight and sorrow—within him; in these he surpasses Handel—and all. Not that he has exhausted music. No. Music was considered exhausted before him; and even his music, symphonies and sonatas alike, are of unequal quality and merit individually as well as comparatively. And not that all great music does not, more or less, like his work—reveal (or shadow forth) what his does; and instrumentation has made advances since him; but he is the ne plus ultra as yet, though not, indeed, without companions. For this is a law as much morally or intellectually as physically. The highest peaks in the Himalayas, Andes, and Alps, are together; and here the appearances around me preach the same truth. One summit is the special manifestation of a general upheaval (we have already given particular instances), and these take place at periods. The musical upheaval (the tertiary deposit) has taken place late. Primevally was the architectural (least original, and slowest of all the arts—?), then the sculptural, pictorial, and poetic; groups and series, peaks and summits of masters, in all. With revived art and literature came the quasi seraph, Shakespeare; then science and music, contemporary with the greatest movement in philosophy, and this significantly—for nothing happens without import and relation. Beethoven, it is true, set masses; but he was essentially a Theist, if not Pantheist (unconscious pantheism, we take it, is the soul of his music). One worthy gentleman delivered himself of the following lucubration re Beethoven's "Mount of Olives":—"It is a fine work, but proves its author to have been a Deist, and—" Oh, that "but"! I cry you mercy, my fine particle; there is great virtue too in a "but." We could not help smiling, and thinking of "Poor God, with nobody to help him!"
A highly curious and most instructive fact about Beethoven is, that (as we before remarked, I think), it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find his analogue. In this individuality he is sublime. Hardly any comparison satisfies us; neither Aiskulos, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, or Shakespeare, is exactly his like. He has Dante's intensity, Milton's sublimity (more organ-like than Dante's), and Shakespeare's universality to a great extent—that is, his humanity and quasi superhuman lyrical beauty and dramatic power, but not his wonderful comic genius (as far as we can judge from music, though Beethoven's shows undoubted humour—which is part, indeed, of humanity); his characteristic, seraphic serenity, and infinity, wealth of creation, and inexhaustibility to the last. Beethoven is a unique (as Carlyle called Dickens) blending of these three (and allied to Shakespeare most), plus his own great indispensable self (for there is ever a new factor in every new man). Neither can we quite match him with any of the artists. He has the severity of Phidias—or Praxiteles—who was famous for bronze, the grandeur of Bruneleschi and Angelo, the grace and feeling of Raffael and Canova, the mystic splendour of Turner, and the unique originality, the powerful chiaroscuro of Rembrandt. Indeed, his relationship to the latter is curiously interesting. These words, applied to Rembrandt, might be applied to Beethoven:—"His advance from youth to age is marked, if not by inexperience or feebleness, at all events by successive and distinctive manners." "The product of his art is startling; it is singular for individuality of character, supreme in light, shade, and colour." Beethoven, however, was not an "artist who took what may be termed his daily constitutional walk through the lower types of nature;" rather he was a Jove's eagle, a Gannymede on his pinions, winging his unseen way through empyreans. Among the artists of his own vocation he is likewise unique. It is true, that as Guinicelli closely preceded Dante (and may even be called his master—Il Saggio Dante names him); as Tasso, and Ariosto, and Shakespeare, and Milton, were a grand cluster in the Elizabethan period, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire later, Schiller, Goethe, and Wieland, after; so Beethoven splendours in what we have called the Orion's Belt of music, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; but, to slightly vary, he is the red star in Orion, the Mont Blanc of the Alps; neither is Handel, the great sun in the "constellation Hercules" (to which our system is said to move), his superior—or quite his equal.
Our persuasion of Beethoven's religious impressions ("he could be seldom got to speak about religion") was derived rather from internal evidence: but here is an explicit passage on the matter. We read in his Tagebuch, 1816, underlined, and written out in his own hand:—"Aus der Indischen Literatur: God is immaterial, therefore unthinkable: (geht über jeden Begriff: since he is invisible, he can have no form). But, from what we can gather in his works, we may conclude that He is almighty, all-knowing, and omnipresent." The following (still more significant) he wrote out in a Quartblatt, in large letters, had framed, and kept before him on his writing-table. It was taken from the temple of the Egyptian goddess, Neith, at Sais:
1. I Am what Is.
2. I am all that is, was, will be. No mortal hath ever lifted my veil.
3. He is alone, self existent (Er ist allein von ihm selbst); and to this Unique all things owe their being.
In the last sentence, we may observe, there is (as usual) a contradiction with the first—a confusion between theism and pantheism; for, if the great I Am is all, all things cannot be said to owe their being to him, but are him—fragmentary manifestations of him.
A list of the books found in Beethoven's Handbibliothek, are also, in some sort, a key to the man (and his music). Ecco! Shakespeare; Goethe's Poems, "Wilhelm Meister," and "Faust"; Schiller; Tiedge's "Urania" (Beethoven's beautiful "An die Hoffnung," Op. 32, is a setting of a song in that); Seumes' and Matthison's Poems, and others; "Briefe an Natalie über Gesang," von Nina d'Aubigny-Engelbrunner (much esteemed, and recommended by Beethoven); Klopstock; Zach; Werner; Herder (Goethe's "Master"); Plato; Aristotle; Xenophon; Plutarch; Euripides; Horace; Pliny; Quintilian (these, I presume, translated—Dr. Nohl does not say); Thomson (whose nature-painting made him specially prized); and Ossian (Napoleon's favourite).
We read that against the words, often cited too, of Carlyle, "Two things strike me dumb; the moral law within us, and the starry heavens over us"; he wrote—"mit kräftigen Schriftzug"—Kant. In his celebrated will, we read—"I will seize Fate by the throat, quite bow me down it never shall." In his Journal, 1816, we read, "The grand mark of a great man; stedfastness in unhappy circumstances." One of his remarks was this:—"There is nothing higher than this—to get nearer to the Godhead than other men; and thence diffuse its beams over mankind." Another noteworthy observation was this:—"Celebrated artists are always prejudiced (or pre-occupied); therefore, their first works are the best, although they germinated in obscurity."—(Nohl's "Life of Beethoven," vol. 3, p. 238). One of his most pregnant remarks was the following:—"All real invention is moral progress" (Alle echte Erfindung ist moralisher Fortschritt).
Beethoven's music is so pregnant, that it is difficult to sum up what it contains. As before stated, it is a microcosm, both of man and the world: it especially unrolls before us man (how he thinks, and feels, and fights) as much as the powerful disquisitions of a Kant or Hegel. It is representative, because so intensely subjective; representative from himself outward—he being not a narrowly but comprehensively subjective soul; we find in it (very profoundly) his own unsatisfied heart—type of how much in the world! We find in it his unhappy life—type of still more. We find in it his intense character, full of sublime passion, and only more dear to us for its faults. We find in it his infirmities—especially a dark prophesy of mens insana in corpore insano; but we were spared that sad spectacle, by the "cruel-to-be-kind" messenger of Providence. We find in it the pure passionate love of Nature most concentrated in the Teutonic nature—coruscating with mystic sparks shooting from the heart on all sides outward. We find in it at once the most intense lyrical and dramatic power hitherto known. We find in it, alike, gracious fancy and grand imagination. We find in it humanity and humour. Moreover, we find in it the grandest objective power of painting—heroic battles, as well as with hope—on "our prison walls; far-reaching landscapes and aurora"; together with a subjective power and pre-eminence that is almost awful in its majesty. We find in it the subtle and the sublime—if it be not for sublime to be subtle. Last, and lowest, we find in it unsettled faith—distracting a soul of good, wearying and worrying his great good heart, but not overcoming it: