"It could not bring him wholly under more
Than loud south-westerns, rolling ridge on ridge
The buoy that rides at sea, and dips and springs
For ever;"
and herein is our Beethoven—he, too, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Ach! Man is that, most—most intensely representative. This is the real reason why he so speaks to us, and shakes us; why he so influenced his contemporaries and followers. An age is represented by its greatest—that is, by the richest in goodness and insight, and these mutually represent each other; but you will not find them in temple or tabernacle—except, indeed, that not made by hands. You will find them where you find their heart—(where a man's treasure is, there is his heart also). Ask them what they think, and feel. You will find that they consider all our common isms and alities but as episodes—aye, and brief ones—if not, more or less, unconscious insanities. That, inevitably, as the world in its giant history proceeded from Nothingism (for how many ages?) to Fetishism—to Confuciusism—to Buddhism—to Jewism—to Paganism (or Greek and Romanism)—to Christianity; so common Christianity (the temporal, dogmatic, superstitious, local, parochial), must also proceed to something higher; which shall be at once outcome and all-compriser of the rest. Man has got to realise his identity with the Imperishable (caring little, if he must "soon be making head to go" from this—has soon "notice to quit" this lodging—in the cold ground); the absolute indestructibility of any one manifestation of force—or rather fact of force—for the manifestations change, and pass away. He has got to learn to love goodness for its own sake alone, and know that Conscience is God—realising with the most lyric and scientific conviction that every violation of right or law, moral even more inevitably than physical—let every one search his own life and conscience for the proof—is punished here without or within—frequently, and most sublimely, subtly, within. Finally, he has got to make this his faith that—while clinging to the truly blessed hope of everlasting life, which is the natural corollary of our consciousness, as our dearest sheet-anchor; as the sense that most makes us feel infinite; and as the soul of beauty, or beautifying soul of all—so, nevertheless, the practical immortality of right action (or of goodness) perpetuating itself in what we do and say, here and now—is our chief concern, the sole thing essential; which we may supplement and consummate by falling back on the tremendous realization before expressed. If we are not immortal, we are bubbles of the eternal sea of being, and that is——
Once again, then, let us repeat, such high belief, more or less, is the soul of Beethoven's music (aye, even in his masses), for the eternal speaks behind the temporary, the mask; hence its specific gravity (greatest of all), its infinite significance. He is the morning star of this reformation, the breast-inflaming dawn of a new heaven in a grander clime—new firmament over New Jerusalem. Powdered-wigged Haydn and Mozart—powdered-wigged genius even, including full-bottomed-wigged Handel—could not proclaim such a creed;—almost, as it were, with thunder of cannon. But Beethoven ushered in the nineteenth century; he was the Napoleon of its better half—higher life; and in due time and order followers and apostles will succeed—have already arisen. The symphony, especially the un-betitled be-programmed symphony, is the purest manifestation of music, whose eloquence is better than words—(space, too, is silent); and the talk of sundry German professors, &c., about music "no longer playing a single part," coolly assuming, almost, the symphony to be an exploded error, we are almost tempted to describe as crotchety maundering or wordy wind, if not blatant jargon. This superfluous pity for music standing alone, also reminds us of "Poor God! with nobody to help him!" No! the symphony will still be penned by the tone-poet—intensely feeling and thinking, lyrico-dramatic man. It will be broad as the world, and have a soul of the highest. It will be the grandest absolute expression of the best which we see and are. But it will also be counterparted and supplemented by the "Word-made-Flesh" in tone (the Word is never so beautifully made Flesh as in tone), as Thought is made Flesh in the Word. Religion is the Heart of Art, whence all pulses and flows; and composers will—at last—get sick of setting twaddle and dogma, however venerable; and will celebrate pure truth, old or new. In setting the Higher Utterance of the past, they will reject the husk and keep the kernel—that of eternal universal application; or they will transfigure by ideal interpretation. In setting the new, they will set lyrical expression of the profound poet—the earnest words of the intense thinker, and not the jingle of the song-writer, the farrago of the libretto-concocter. In a word, the higher oratorio (as well as the higher drama), will play its part; be the exponent—as the symphony will be the expression—of the new man. This will be the mightiest manifestation of music—universal truth, profound feeling, transcendency, and humanity; Shakespeare and Emerson (not Milton) in one; incarnate in tone, published and borne aloft by Music and the Human Voice; culminating in such apotheosis at last!—after so many ages of stuttering, singing will at length have reached to Highest Thought!
THE END.
Footnotes
[A] Strauss (not the dance composer), in rather a cavilling spirit, says this symphony describes the life of a hero. So it does, but not in the external sense he uses it in, but in the internal; life, means inner life. Or, again, the work celebrates heroism rather than a hero.
[ [B] Neither can we but regret the re-introduction of the "allegro" subject; that sublime idea had already done its true work (as we feel), and there only remained to break into one overwhelming burst of triumph, and then an end.