FIGURE XXVII.
The exploitation of the primary themes in the course of a long movement, however, the constant evocation from them of new meanings and interests, is of course the last and finest evidence of Beethoven’s genius in composition. It was in this logical drawing forth of the implications of his thought that he was unapproachable. He uses to admiration all those devices of development we have already enumerated—inversion, augmentation, diminution, shifted rhythm, and the rest—yet never descends to the mechanical, as his great successor, Brahms, who is perhaps the only modern composer who compares with him in this faculty of logical development of an idea, sometimes does. Beethoven always seems to be merely making explicit what was implied in the theme itself.
FIGURE XXVIII-a. SOME OF THE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE FIRST SUBJECT IN THE ‘EROICA’ SYMPHONY.
FIGURE XXVIII-b.