Beethoven's Symphonies Critically Discussed

by Alexander Teetgen

But, to recur to Elterlein, ueber Haydn:—"When we look into Haydn's symphonies a little closer, with a glance at the same time at Haydn's followers, we find them stamped by greater simplicity in the expression of feeling, and by a limitation to certain well-defined spheres of mood and humour. This characteristic we may express in the definition, pure child-like ideality. Of course, we do not mean literal childhood, but rather abstract childhood in the soul and constitution, whose representation is worthy of the greatest of artists, e.g., of a Schumann in his charming 'Kinderscenen.' Naïve child humour plays a leading part in Haydn's symphonies; wherefore Brendel rightly names him the greatest master of sport and mood. Of inner necessity, the pangs and earnest of life, in their entirety, are excluded from these works. They do now and then appear, but only as light clouds skimming over. Haydn's restrictedness is, however, far from limiting his invention; on the contrary, we are astounded at it; he is veritably inexhaustible in his mode of expressing himself. The minuets are generally playgrounds for the most delicious sportive humour. (In Haydn himself we discover the germs of the so-called programme music:—e.g., symphonies entitled 'The Bear,' 'Maria Theresa,' 'The Schoolmaster'). We now turn to Mozart.

Mozart was a world's-wonder in his boyhood, and neglected—especially at Vienna, and by the court—in his manhood. He has been denominated the most abstract musician that ever lived—a term which is more or less suggestive, if not precise. But, in so far as it points to his being wholly and solely a musician, it points to a defect and hindrance in him. (It has been said, however, that he had a great aptitude also for figures, and would have made no contemptible mathematician. His parents were one of the handsomest couples of their day.) Robert Schumann's wonderful music, so rich in contents (inhaltreich), sprang from a cultivated poet, equally practised with the heart, and soul, and brain, and hand. Wagner's marvellous art is the birth of a similar genius. In short, the age we live in has certainly this advantage: an artist now must be an educated man (in many senses). Haydn and Mozart—who never found time for study—were ill-informed, nay, ignorant men. They knew nothing of the past, little of the present, and less than nothing of the future. Beethoven, I think, certainly did know more—if only a little—and compensated for his deficiency by what alone can compensate—overpowering genius, universally colossal. I do not undertake to affirm that greater culture would have improved Haydn and Mozart, but I throw out the suggestion. Possibly, by expanding their minds, and strengthening their faculties, it might have done so. By reading (not only musical) they might have got new lights—loam and enrichment to their own fertile soil; they might have, at least, widened that channel of inspiration which they were. A man's utterance, whether it be musical or other, is, at bottom, the outcome of the whole man. I know, that, in literature, such "education" as I have glanced at—a discipline and growth all ways, through communion with deeper and higher spirits, and thoughts, and truths, has the effect I speak of. Natural genius is deepened, and enriched, and expanded, and sent up higher; roots and leaves, with increased fruit-capacity, grow together. It may be, therefore, that Haydn and Mozart, minus a Shakespeare's genius (which seems an utter self-justified exception), owe their deficiency in music to their deficiency in culture—in a scientifically comprehensive sense. They were too much musicians. It may be, that the fact of their lack was partly also due to an original inherent non-proclivity to culture. If so, here we have a deeper explanation; the bare fact is seen to be the symptom of a radical cause. But Beethoven was a born thinker: remember his flashes of remark:—"Read Shakespeare's 'Tempest.' 'So knocketh Fate at the portals.' 'I have another law for myself than Kant's "Categorical Imperative."' 'Better water from my body than from my pen.'" He was a born thinker; and in this fact we have the deeper explanation of his mighty music. Do we not see the fact stamped on his very brows! the very thrones of concentrated thought,—as the deep-set eyes full of dusky fire in the lion-like head are the homes of intense feeling, such as, possibly, no man equalled. The comparison, let alone the coupling, of Mozart with Shakespeare, I, for one, cannot for a moment away with; in fact, am inclined to cry with that author who could not tolerate a similar bracketing of Turner with Shakespeare, "Bah!" There is a power, a depth, a seraphic wisdom of inspiration and universal view, an oracular utterance and constructive power from within (the nearest approach to the Divine modus operandi itself) in Shakespeare which Mozart can lay no proper claim to. The theory which would make his "Don Juan" characters (forsooth!) display this similar power—in the organic dramatic verisimilitude of the music—I cannot endorse. Only a very long way off is your Mozart like Shakespeare, with whom, properly, no one can measure, or be likened. He stands alone, a phenomenal unique. Such divine propriety he had! the intellect of an archangel; and a prolonged moulding-from-within power from Nature. Mozart had a lovely, sometimes heavenly, profuse—not incontinent—gift of melody, which is wont, however, to tire (unlike Beethoven's), by being too Mozartish; a marvellous genius for counterpoint; and a beautiful instinct for harmony and form. He was, par excellence, amiable; his music is loveable. He shines like the sun on a mild spring day. That he has serenity, as Shakespeare had, of course is patent and cardinal; but that it is Shakespeare's serenity I must beg to dispute. Shakespeare's is profound as the centre of the sun; Mozart's is rather diffusive than profound or moonlike. Shakespeare's is that of a god-like man; Mozart's that of an "eternal child." Mozart's is that of the Mediterranean; Shakespeare's of the whole ocean. And of Shakespeare—not of Mozart (according to our instinct)—may it be so eloquently asserted, "his serenity is that of one" (a Potente, as Dante says) "who had unconsciously fought out beforehand all the doubts and difficulties, and put them to flight." Mozart is supposed to have been "light o' love," if not fond of wine too. To be "light o' love" goes very well with the composer of "Don Juan," but I do not think anybody ever charged it on the inspirer of the passionate grandeur of the Countess Guicciardi sonata; of the heroic, C minor and other symphonies. Had he been so, we should have had such strains of remorse wailing up. Do we find them in Mozart? I trow not!—"Thy terrible beauty, Remorse, shining up from the depths of pain!" Mozart is cheerful, beautiful, at times vigorous; but surely somewhat light—a mountain lake with fleecy clouds, not the sea, with its sunsets and thunders. Not his serenity, but Beethoven's rather, presupposes, like the sun of summer, and calm heart of nature, all the storms fought out(?) Was there, as in Beethoven, a soul of earnestness in him? Had he aim, consciously, or unconsciously? Does he speak from inspired depths, almost painful? Had he a glimmering of atheism? Did he ever clutch at the vanishing skirts of the Almighty? Could he kill himself almost, to be sure of immortality? So far from thinking he had thought and fought all these things out, consciously or unconsciously, we feel that he had no experience of them—could not have—and so was for ever an incomplete man. "He knew not ye, ye mighty powers." Sunshine he can give us; yes, but sunshine and thunderglooms (say, tropical)—roar of ocean, and spasm of lightning—no. His best symphonies will not strictly compare with Beethoven's best; his sonatas still less. And it is no very adventurous prediction (however horrifying to sundry), that his "Don Juan"—"the first opera in the world"(!), with its contemptible trash for libretto, and meagre musical constituents, will hide its diminished head more and more, till it disappear. Mozart, says the German essayist, means operas rather than symphonies: well, and what did he make of them? At this time of day, it is simply inconceivable how any intelligent man—let alone a tone-poet—could set trash by the hour or week together. It has become almost a trite idea now, that poetry is the soul of music: caeteris paribus, in proportion as the word is divine, so will the flesh be, which it takes unto itself and moulds from within, in which it eventuates. How great by comparison is Handel here! We have but to think of his words—"Hallelujah! Lord God Omnipotent! He shall reign for ever and ever, Amen!" to explain why we may search Mozart in vain for a Hallelujah Chorus, that temple of immortality! Beethoven, indefinitely higher and greater than Mozart, did have a notion of the exigency of the word—he spent hours and hours looking through some hundred libretti for an opera, and rejected them all. In setting trash, poor dear Mozart, the gifted, the easy-going nature, conscious of little but his fluent genius, and thinking of little but winning his painful bread for the day passing over, did not reflect that he was guilty of sacreligious high treason; as it were, of violation of Pallas Athene herself. "Music!" another of those infinite words! When will her servants be worthy of her? When will she suffer the veil to be completely drawn away, and reveal herself in her full beauty? Not by the hands of a Mozart, with his deplorable "Don Juans" and chaotic nonsense of magic flutes. In his better sacred music he is better. But even in that I detect neither real belief—which can alone justify sacred music, and ensure its highest excellence—nor a great soul. Mozart was an inspired child; when grown up, a child-man—as Hadyn was a man-child. Nature selected him to speak out this element in her, as she selected Beethoven to speak out her passion and paradox, her divine and her terrible beauty—her world-wide grandeur—the infinitude of her universe; as she selected Schumann to speak out her romance, and twilight beauty; and Wagner her supernatural, demoniac, wizardlike. We must recollect, too, that Mozart was the child of his time. Every man is this, more or less, plus his individuality. Now, in truth, Mozart seems rather "more," not "less." Beethoven approaches Shakespeare, in being for all time; but not Mozart. His individuality was not strong enough. I cannot agree with Elterlein, that Mozart represents "fair, free, humanity," if we are to give a higher, a Shakesperian meaning to these words. Shakespeare was truly representative of the Wisdom, viz., that covers the whole world, and every age; and belongs neither to the past, present, nor future, but to all time—to all three together; and so is the unique shadow afar off in the history of man, of the eternal I Am and Now. But such high language we can by no manner of means apply to Mozart, who hadn't a tithe of Shakespeare's insight and power; nor a third part of Goethe's—with whom Elterlein and others also put him. The "fair, free, humanity," which, in its unfettered action and thought towers towards the divine, which has long ago sloughed away, or stepped out of old crusts and rags of prejudice, superstition, and the things whose name is legion—but which remains equally free from shallow sin and selfish action; from the paralysis of indifferentism, and the laziness of no-thought; from mere bread-winning, and waste of genius (which waste is always rapidly hurried into oblivion)—this "fair, free, humanity," Mozart does not, can not, as it seems to us, represent. Shakespeare and Goethe truly do. And Beethoven, in his happier, victorious moods—in his darker moods he shadows forth rather man on the way to it; or, indeed, on the way from it. Elterlein couples Mozart with Raphael, as well as Goethe; that may pass; but who can imagine either of the two former being capable of a "Werther" and "Faust"? Mozart may "stand alone" for "amiability," and may truly enjoy the reputation of giving us, more or less, organic form; but he was a limited, local nature, neither based on the lowest deeps nor towering into the highest heights. He was no reformer—did not revolutionize music (his operas are but German-Italian by an Italian-German, to that extent), no one can call him colossal. He was a palm, rather than an oak. Handel, to me, is a name far grander. Like Beethoven, I would bare my head at his tomb. And now let us turn to the shadowy colossus himself—towering aloft

"In stifled splendour and gloom."

If there are some nouns that affect us, there are some proper nouns that equally do so. One of the most potent of these is "Beethoven." At the mere mention of that name, we experience a "shock of joy" and reverence at once vaguely and vastly filling us with the sublime and beautiful—the grand and tender; in short, with all those attributes, in a degree, of Nature, for this seems to be the special and peculiar function and privilege of genius—of great human nature—to reflect and reproduce, with, as before noted, the force and charm peculiar to itself, nature, divinity. Great men are distinguished by the height to which they tower in doing this; they are but further manifestations of God—revelations of arcana. Up to our time, no man in any art has so towered aloft more than Beethoven. Armed with the most mystical of prophecies and utterance—music, he strewed abroad upon the winds and world such pregnant messages as stirred men to depths they were before unconscious of, and live and operate with the force of immortality. Let us approach these wonderful works and glance more or less into their truly divine depths. We shall not, however, by any means be indiscriminate—in the sympathy of the hero-worshipper forget the justice of the judge. We shall not forget that the best of men are but men at best; and that, for our comfort and ensample, as ever, the great Beethoven was also a child, a beginner, a student, an acolyte, as well as imperial master; and, alas! mortal man—with his sad liability to madness and decay; with his basis on the infernal, as well as heights in the divine.

In the first place, what shall we say about the peculiarly original Beethoven's reflection at the outset of Hadyn and Mozart? At first sight, it rather jars. But shall we he correct if after consideration we pronounce that this is rather a merit, and to be expected, than otherwise; for it is characteristic of hero-worship, which is most passionate in genius truly original. Shakespeare, perhaps, is the great or even sole exception; but, as it is borne in on us, Shakespeare seems to be unique—a semi-god, or "seraph," rather than mere man; and I, for one, have no disinclination or repugnance to own that Beethoven, like the rest, does not equal Shakespeare. In parts he does—perhaps even gives us more terribly grand glances into depths than Macbeth and Lear—but not as a whole. It the whole of Shakespeare that is so unique and overpowering. Beethoven often suggests rather Dante and Milton; though it is his peculiar praise, too, that he suggests all three, and yet is like none.

And now to work:

[Symphony No. 1, OP. 21.]

"Opus 21."—So, when Beethoven came of age, musically speaking, he wrote his first symphony. Ah! who can realize the feelings of a Beethoven sitting down to write his first symphony; fuller feelings probably were not, and could not, be in the world, among all the manifestations of human existence. What flush of hope! what throbs of pleasure! what high-beating plethora of imaginative blood! what almost painful fulness!—necessity to rush forth in poetic utterance, and fling all together what of latent as well as patent was within him! what struggling consciousness—what waking sense of giant powers—what secret assurance in the end of immortal victory, nay, perhaps, of an empire in music towering aloft above that of Hadyn and Mozart and predecessors and successors of all nations and individualities. I envy neither the powers nor immortality of that contemporary, Napoleon, compared with those of Beethoven:—Meteoric Corsican adventurer—eternal eldest son of genius! Dazzling egotist and semi-quack—concentrated sun of nature and the imperishable heavens!—I wonder what Beethoven had been reading previous to undertaking his first symphony—what he had been doing, talking, thinking! I like to picture imaginary scenes where he sat down to the intoxicating enterprise. Was it in the country, of an early morning, all dripping in the sunshine like the orange-bowers here, with the sun welcoming with his sweetest smile the fleecy clouds wandering up the heaven? Or was it (probably it was, for reality is painfully prosaic,) in some back attic—such as where Shakespeare perhaps wrote his symphonies? The sublimely interesting young Beethoven! There he sits for a moment with his two hands pressed on those concentrated brows of the lion-like head, previously to penning the first chord! There he sits—look at him well—the fullest incarnation of music, till now the greatest home, emporium, and royal residence of musical power, with all which that implies—including, lowest down, the ineffable; for, always, a man is tender in proportion as he is strong, great in proportion as he is good—Ludwig van Beethoven, in his divine genius and terrible infliction (one of the most painful ironies of human history—like a fate out of high Greek story), one of the most intensely interesting of the race of men!

And now for our criticism; or, rather, for our impressions—for every one of us is dominated by unknown moods and biasses. And the wise spirit which made Goethe call his autobiography "Fact and Fancy," should rule every critic—often the victim and slave of himself, the child of circumstance and time.