This fa, at first sight perplexing, turns out to be a stray note (as it seems) of the minor seventh chord on its way to the seventh, which, however, ultimately appears (with beautiful effect) as the 3rd of the dominant-seventh chord (to C minor). This powerfully, painfully expressive dissonance is likewise to be found in his "Lied Vom Tode" (Op. 48), amongst other instances; and the opening to Schubert's "Wanderer" owes its intense expression to the same. The raison d'être of such discords is perhaps to be found in the enhancement they give to the resolution. We could not bear them too long, or too frequent; but, as a passing reminder of the tragedy of life, they profoundly move and interest us; and, perhaps, discords in life (likewise instituted by no Dryasdust) have essentially the same raison d'être and explanation—life is agro-dolce, not dolce alone, and better so. Thereupon we have a new idea, surely as playfully felicitous and characteristic as the scherzo of the "Eroica" itself—like the warriors at sport after victory; or like a glimpse of the same by them, back in a pause in the battle, which soon recommences, with the shouts of the combatants and groans of the wounded and dying. A page farther on, we have a truly sublime episode; great is the chaunt on the earnest theatre (proclaiming Right must and shall win) made up of the sufficient chord of F sharp minor, and the basses moving in such a way as served as a model for Wagner; this is epic, heroic, indeed! and—even greater—Pelion upon Ossa, piled by this Titan fighting on the side of the gods, is the culmination. Semitone by semitone mount the basses; and over all the great clouds become richer in the setting sun, and pealing hosts of heaven (as it were) join in the shouts of the victors, crying—"Hosanna in excelsis! Alto trionfo del regno verace! Right is done!"
"Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
Paid with a voice flying by, to be lost on an endless sea.
Glory of virtue to fight! to struggle, to right the wrong,
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be."
The Larghetto.
At the moment we write, all round us we see nature emerged—
"Nobler and balmier for her bath of storm."
The grim tempests of early winter have passed over, and after a South-Italian night—a perfect blaze of constellations, with the Evening Star incredible in the west, large, lustrous, evanescent—and Orion sublime in the forehead of the Night over the mountain—with Jupiter passed over, Mars and Sirius not far off, and the eternal cluster of the Pleiades (those beautiful heralds) winging its flight towards the north-west, and the leading star of the Ursus Major plunging through the dusk (yet shining) over Naples; after such a night, lo! the great amphitheatre of the world is a spectacle indeed! The mountain-island sweeps like a garden at our feet to the sea; the sea itself like an unspeakable floor or carpet spread out for us, bearing the islands—the "great globe itself"—so proudly on its nourishing bosom; and all round, out of a tender dusk (as it were, like Compassion) rises the snow-peaked world (like virtue clothing beauty, reason crowning power), the magnificent spur of the Alps—showing what mountains can do at an effort—called the Apennines, stretching down and around from Gaeta to Alicote, towering over treasures, as it seems, of unearthly beauty; Monte St. Angelo, with his colossal foot in the sea and roots in the world, his wrinkles lined with snow, looms and towers before us; on the right sweeps and bares itself the grand Bay of Salerno, and on the left the proud Bay of Naples, with its eternal Watch-fire, like a sentinel over all. Stupendous scene of beauty and power! and all that—on this heavenly morning, when the world once more seems made again, and to overpower us with its reiteration of Immortality—all that comes before us as a grand subject set to music in this larghetto of Beethoven's; all that, too—if the fancy may be allowed—seems in the key of A natural. Before it, we should like to hear this exquisite masterpiece—this, I will not say, Song without Words, but rather Te Deum laudamus—adequately performed, say by the Künstler of his "Vaterland." Here we have a sweetness and a serenity the more touching, because they are not those of a Mozart, but a Beethoven; those of nature, "nobler and balmier for her bath of storm" (human as well as physical nature); whether Mozart do or do not represent the storm already fought out, this is the sweetness, not of sweetness, but depth—the serenity, not of serenity, but power. And, indeed, we must hold, and urge, that however the objective may be of value, and rank pre-eminent in poetry, the greatest music has come down to us from perhaps the greatest subjective soul; and essentially, much of contemporary, morbidly-conscious music seems in comparison not only objective but material, not only material but sensational; the delusively brilliant (phosphorescently brilliant) product of a decaying time—we had almost said the elaborate effeteness of a written-out age.
This larghetto is of Beethoven's first period, ripened of course (strive as refiners may, they will scarcely be able to alter the time-honoured division, so obviously founded in truth). Haydn and Mozart are distinctly discerned glimmering through it, but not very much more; it is Haydn and Mozart plus Beethoven, which makes all the difference. We repeat, it is his serenity and sweetness, his youth (so full and rich—of such infinite promise), not theirs. Theirs be the grace, but his the grandeur; theirs the amiability, but his the milk of human kindness—so broad and deep (as of a yet unsoured Hamlet, an Othello, a King Lear; for there are great characters in Shakespeare which we can blend Beethoven with, but not the others). The details of the larghetto must be studied (say, at the organ). I will here only advert to its reminiscence of the andante (the exquisite episode) in the pastoral sonata, written about the same period, truly worthy of symphonic treatment, with the deliciously-delicate passage, as it were like a shower of sunbeams, of gold sparkles—
"In the æther of Deity"
(as the manifestations named men have been called). The movement is rich both in the great strokes and tender touches of genius—of genius which is power; and what we call the phraseology of the man as a whole, and in its parts, is again beautifully Beethovenian. Here is a lovely bit:—