The second subject in A is ushered in by those grand third-less chords (long before our modern writers):—
the chromatic passage being doubled two octaves below by the basses. The new subject, more absolutely melodious, still keeps up the same theme—(for, apropos, we may also look upon this allegro as some Homeric or Shakespearian recital of a great victory—recall the superb opening lines of "Richard the Third," the "warriors' wreathed brows, and their bruised arms hung up for monuments"). At first it is heard softly—like a reinforcement in the distance (we think of the Prussians at Waterloo, in the westering summer sun)—then as it were in a blaze of music bursts in. Immediately after, where its exquisite first half (so simple—mark that—but so eloquent and picturesque) reappears in the basses (high), we are rather reminded of Mendelssohn's "Huntsman's Song without Words," in A (the same key), Book 1; but—we need not say—Mendelssohn has not gilded gold, or improved the lily; for his fancy was distinctly lighter and smaller than Beethoven's—or, let us say, he had fancy, Beethoven imagination. And now a happy spirit of triumph sings in the basses; and then burst out some crashing Beethoven-chords, of which I will but point to the one ff (5th bar of them); it is characteristically the 6—4 of D—not, as anticipated, the 5—3 of F sharp minor.
Then, after a foreboding crescendo—characteristic growth out of an initial fragment—and these two emphatic notes:—
—Beethoven all over—the first part closes, so to say, in a breadth of thunder-peals and fiery rain. Technically, note the grand entry of D minor, and mi—do—si—la—mi in unison, with the 3rd omitted; and the minor-seventh chords, resolving into the tonic dominant of the minor (D1), so exquisitely expressive—alike of the pangs of victory and the heroic resolution to endure them.
In the 2nd Part, on the way to G minor (Beethoven himself often never knew whither he was taking us, or at least the precise route—and so much the better!), we soon meet with a remarkable juncture of notes, viz., do and mi of the chord (G minor), with fa superadded:—
