October 22, 1897.
The opening of the first movement forms the subject of a celebrated passage in Wagner's pamphlet on conducting, where he complains of the manner in which the pauses on E flat and D used to be scamped, and of many other defects which were usual in the performances of forty years ago. He represents Beethoven rising from his grave and apostrophising the conductor with a harangue that begins: "Hold thou my fermate [pauses] long and terribly." Wagner was a most exacting critic, but we venture to think that he would have been fairly satisfied with last night's rendering of the first movement. The contrast of the masculine and feminine elements which are inherent in the first and second subjects respectively was presented with all possible effect; the pauses were as long and terrible as Wagner could have desired, and were sustained with a perfectly equable tone-delivery; the beautiful unaccompanied phrase for oboe—which on the recurrence of the passage takes the place of the fermata, or pause, at the twenty-first measure—was given with all possible force of expression; and many other individual beauties of the rendering might be cited. The second movement is less taxing for the performers than the rest of the work; it was given in a manner well in keeping with the spirit of the symphony, which is like some vast work of sculpture in bronze, such as the gates of the Baptistery at Florence. Just such plastic force in the moulding of mighty tone-elements and just such nobility of the imagination did Beethoven possess as enabled Ghiberti to mould those wonderful gates, concerning which Michelangelo said that they were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. The scherzo, too, was an artistic triumph for the orchestra. Not a point was missed in that wonderful and uncanny tone-picture. A dance of demons it has been called; but it must be remembered that many great artists have treated grotesque and grisly subjects with an ineffably beautiful touch, such as we see, for example, in Alfred Rethel's marvellous drawing "Death the Friend." Not that the scherzo in Beethoven's C minor symphony breathes the spirit of that drawing, which is restful and serene, while the scherzo is full of weird mockery. The only point of the comparison is that in both works we find a grotesque subject ennobled and beautified by a great artistic imagination. Strange that the C minor symphony should often have been quoted as an irregular and anarchical composition. Sir George Grove has pointed out in his well-known analysis that the entire work conforms most strictly to structural principles, and that its chief irregularities are the linking together of the scherzo and finale and the reprise of the scherzo shortly before the concluding presto.
The Sixth Symphony.
February 24, 1899.
In dealing with this symphony, the conductor had occasion to show qualities different from those that have been called forth by the preceding works of the present Beethoven series. The third and fifth symphonies are of a strongly exciting character, the second is also distinctly exciting, at any rate in the finale, the fourth is a kind of mildly celestial or seraphic utterance, and the first does not truly represent the mature master in any of his moods. In previous performances of the series it was the successful rendering of some exciting element in the music, or the interpretation of a sublime emotion, upon which the conductor seemed to lay a kind of stress. Yesterday the case was quite different. The Pastoral Symphony is not exciting, or sublime, or mysterious, those qualities being alien to the genius of pastoral music or poetry. It is an expression of the emotion stirred by simple and homely delights; and for its interpretation it requires, in addition to the technical equipment, only a certain fresh and healthy energy. Even the religious note near the end is of a simple idyllic character. Once more the interpretation was, in our view, very admirable. The conductor seemed fully to grasp the poetic import of each section, and, under his guidance, the orchestra fully conveyed the breezy delights of the opening movement, the soothing murmur of the brook, the boisterous mirth of the ensuing allegro, the contrasting note of the storm, and the final hymn of thanksgiving. It has been said that Beethoven's music has an ethical bearing; and, as many persons have great difficulty in understanding how any music can have an ethical bearing, it may be worth while to suggest that the Pastoral Symphony, following the tremendous emotions of the preceding symphonies, teaches precisely the same lesson as the opening of Goethe's "Faustus and Helena," where the sylphs, typifying simple, untroubled natural influences, are busied about the person of the sleeping "Faust," pitying the "unhappy man whether good or wicked," and seeking to soothe his tormented spirit. According to the view of Goethe and Beethoven there is no other healing for the unhappy man's tormented spirit but in the simple, untroubled influences of nature. Such, in addition to its musical beauties, is the ethical lesson of the Pastoral Symphony.
The Seventh Symphony.
March 3, 1899.
One quality differentiating Beethoven's Seventh Symphony from the rest of the nine is well expressed by Sir George Grove in his famous book ("Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies") when he calls it the most rhythmical of them all. Beyond question the rhythm is on the whole more strongly marked in the seventh than in any of the others. The slow movement is not called a march; yet it has a far more definite tramping rhythm than the movement that is called a march in the Heroic Symphony. In the finale the rhythmical emphasis attains a degree of reckless violence that has never been surpassed by any composer except Tchaïkovsky. A scherzo is always strongly rhythmical; but in the scherzo of this symphony one finds a kind of frenzied rushing, whirling movement that is rare in Beethoven's works. Another differentiating quality of the symphony is grotesque expression, which is strong in the vivace, stronger in the scherzo, and goes all lengths in the finale. As with the later works of many other great artists, it is hard to divine the poetic intention of this symphony. One perceives a marvellous design, for the most part grotesque in character; one perceives the work of a gigantic imagination, smelting the stubborn tone-masses as in a furnace and moulding them to its purposes with a kind of superhuman plastic force. But what the mighty design illustrates is not, at present, obvious. The grotesqueness of the first, third, and last movements is all the more striking from the character of the slow movement, which is absolutely remote from the grotesque. The quality of the expression in that slow movement eludes all classification. It is not exactly a funeral march, and not exactly a dirge, though it is undoubtedly mournful in character. A kind of unearthly rhythmical chant one might imagine it to be, accompanying some mysterious function among the gods of the dead. There is perhaps no slow movement left by Beethoven the beauty of which is more penetrating or more imposing. After a fine and spirited rendering of the introduction and vivace, the slow movement—inscribed "allegretto" in the score, though the composer afterwards expressed a desire that the indication should be changed to "andante quasi allegretto"—was played with fine expression, though perhaps a trifle too quickly. The scherzo was entirely admirable. At the opening of the finale the rushing semiquavers in the violin part were, for some reason, not quite clear, though later in the movement, when the music had become more complex, the same figure sounded clear enough. On the whole, the rendering of the symphony well maintained the success that had previously attended the series.