It is a great instance of height towering out of depth, high because deep, a peak in music, yet not clad with eternal glacier, except for its purity of heart, but eternal sunbeams.
After an interesting passage of "harmonious breathing" interposed, and the still more interesting one of chromatic part-repetition, the shakes—which are ultimately to play a great part—first make their appearance. The taste for the shake can soon degenerate; and Beethoven himself sometimes used it incontinently. But, when properly introduced, as here, and especially at the last, it is an ornament that has a more or less magical charm.
The next noble bit reminds us a little of the "Funeral March" in the A flat Sonata. Thereupon Beethoven, in his unconscious or conscious unconscious progress, promulgates some of these characteristic utterances of his—those harmonious and melodic breathings, so profound and pregnant with we know not what. Who or what moved him to his wonderful "progressions?" Truly indescribable tone-poet! so deep with tenderness, so rich with glow—glow is where Beethoven exceeded all of them, especially the Saxon school; he added glow to height, breadth, and depth; or, rather, his glow and depth—as in the sun—are like cause and effect, one.
Now follow those warblings—
"Wild bird! whose warble liquid sweet
Rings Eden through the budded quicks,"
and "deep answering unto deep," which we mentally alluded to at the outset, hard to decipher, seraphically beautiful. In what a musical river, to employ another figure, or concourse of confluences, the inspired orchestra rolls on; for yes, verily, the river is inspired with utterance, big with its message. And this is no merely European river, but rather some tropical Zambesi or Amazon with its colossal origin and surroundings; or, again, the river that rolls from the throne of the Fountain of Life—which truth it seems to declare, in the magnificent emphatic passage (anticipating the choral symphony?) so originally grand, in D minor, in unison, mark that. It seems to say—"Hear that, and believe it. The rolling river which this universe is, does not flow from Chaos and Diabolus, but from Eternal Self-Justified Will—humanly named, in short, 'God'; as it were, takes its course through the bosom of God, as 'King John' wished the rivers of his realm to, through his." After this colossal passage, we seem to be invited to listen to the warblings and happy murmurs in the halls of heaven—the habitation of the blest, of just spirits made perfect. It is all delicately, crystallinely ineffable; and the language of imaginative sympathy itself can scarcely transcend the beauty and exceeding excellence of the whole movement—that profound inspiration—any more than it can transcend the beauty and exceeding excellence, amounting to divinity, of the universe, that "Midsummer Night's Dream!"
The Allegro.
I often doubt, war can never cease, for its element is so great and potent in art—especially music and her twin-sister, poetry. Carlyle specially speaks of the "great stroke, too, that was in Shakespeare, had it come to that;" and, indeed, makes this—together with the "so much unexpressed in him to the last"—in short, his infinitude, the very thing which Schubert's kindred eye saw in Beethoven, differentiating him, his two chief points of admiration and test in general of a man. Besides, in our great historian himself—in Milton, too—we feel that there was a great stroke, as of the sublime Ironside; before him, in Dante; before him, in Homer—perhaps, Virgil; but not Horace. In our own day, the noble ring of our poet-laureate's verse, to mention no more, is at once a voucher for the same fact, apart from his "Maud," and more than one indignant utterance. The poetic imagination and classic beauty of all such men is not only concomitant with, but inseparable from, a "good stroke in them" (Dante and Cervantes were actually on the battle-field)—from an heroic element, the best thing they have. The greatest utterance—inspiration—cannot possibly come from any other. The hero is dear to God; the coward perhaps most despised of all. And why? The reason is philosophical enough. Because the soul of the universe is power—and without courage there can be no goodness. The grand doctrine of evolution, penetrating everywhere, has brought home to us, and borne in upon us, that there is not a field or a grove which is not the theatre of perpetual struggle—not one manifestation exempt from it. Vae victis is the word of Nature herself, and the "struggle" is divinely ordained (competition is the salt of existence) for the elaboration of energies—the eventuation in higher life. What man would wish for the dolce far niente of the Fool's Paradise? The world hath been groaning and travailing until now, and must for a long, long time to come; only one-fourth of it is even now "civilized," and in that civilisation what dregs and dens of barbarism seem ineradicable. All sorts of wrong still tyrannise; therefore, spiritually and physically, the warrior must stand forth great to wage war against the bad everywhere, politically and intellectually—against social evils, and art-darkness—against lies, and for truth—against weakness, and for strength; for Might is Right in the universe—weakness is one with evil, strength with good. Only the good is strong; only the bad is weak.
We have been led into these remarks by dwelling on the fact, how frequently the warlike spirit manifests itself forth in our Beethoven—indeed, is irrepressible; nay, I am urged to say, cardinal. In spite of Beethoven's truly divine beauty, he is stamped and distinguished by power. When he issues young into the arena, we see "victorious success" gleaming on his brows. Handel is distinguished in the same way. Hence the secret of Beethoven's own hero-worship for him. Apollo is great, but Jupiter is greater—Jupiter Optimus Maximus. If Mozart, Weber, Schubert may, more or less, figure as the sun-god, they cannot figure as the god of the sun-god. We might almost say, the first notes of Beethoven proclaimed power. He had to go forth and do battle with things. Nor is his own struggle for existence (not mere being, but immortality—a life in immortality here; that is existence to your Beethoven) in his own life-element, so strong and chaotic, in his own soul progress, undepicted, or shadowed forth. With unconscious-consciousness did he do it—on, right on to the end, the bitter end; on the verge of blindness, insanity—we know not what. Rushing as he did, into the conflict, conscious only of power, Beethoven would have been struck had he seen what, through the long vista of "stifled splendour and gloom," that power boded and implied: he would have been awed, had it been revealed to him what that power represented—little short of the Nineteenth Century itself, with all its Hamlet doubts, and chaotic, yet germ-rich smouldering of transition, whereof more anon.
If the ineffable adagio—prelude of preludes (?), out, as Marx says, the last movement is the finale of finales—shows us the young God-disguised athlete, with the morning light on his brow, making ready to enter only the Olympian Games, the allegro con brio shows him to us rushing into battle! The "heroic symphony" is by no means the first or last symphony heroic—indeed, could not have been written but for the pre-existence and exercise of that full power in the inspired young composer. Here is a grand epic outburst and onrushing worthy of that immortal masterpiece, and essentially one with it. We could almost say, not only the same power, but the same sort of power, is indiscernible in Haydn and Mozart. The style (which is truly the man—that to the man what the bark is to the tree) is so different—the man's dialect, as well as message; the phraseology altogether. These modulations are not those of Haydn and Mozart! (beyond praise grand is the ff on the dominant of A minor—one of those glorious bursts and surprises of Beethoven's—we expect D minor); nor is the masculine fancy (god-like shall we say? and a Mozart's, goddess-like) theirs; and the great broad, quasi-Titanic strains and themes. This movement (Op. 36) is an advance on that of the symphony No. 1 (Op. 21), if in grade only, not kind. Here we see the young giant, not yet done growing, a little riper. There is no strain in it which we feel inclined to qualify, which "gives us pause," like the second motiv in its predecessor; all is homogeneous, epically great. But let us descend a little to details. At bars 1, 2, and 3, we imagine the firm tread of the warriors, singing (like the Ironsides before Dunbar—the 68th Psalm, "Let God arise,") on their way to victory, which they never doubt for a moment, not only because they are triumphant veterans, but on account (and more) of their cause. At bar 4 what a poetic rush (inrush) of fifes is suggested! then the great step is heard again; a great strain joins in; the chaunt of the warrior basses becomes more and more ominous; preliminary thunder is heard, and at last, with Olympian pæan and war-cry battle is joined;—great is the shock, and glorious is the struggle!