In company such as this Beethoven stands absolutely alone. It is true he has not yet wholly cast off the garment of his time. In many a harmonic phrase, in many a formal turn, he is a child of the period; above all in many a naiveté. And he not seldom exerts himself about passages which are utterly unworthy of him. He, the composer of the A major symphony, wrote at the same time the incredible “Battle of Vittoria.” Conscious advance, such as Wagner set before himself, is to him unknown; and we find among his later works various things that remind us of an earlier period, as, for example, the wonderfully Mozart-like C major Rondo for the pianoforte. But his naiveté was strangely warped; and thus arose noteworthy mixtures of style, such as we so often observe in men who stand on the borders of two ages. His character was the most complicated that ever musician had; and only investigators who know not the demon of the great soul, can seriously ascribe the paltry avarice of the master to humane goodwill for the notorious nephew whom he supported. A soul like Beethoven’s is a mystery into which we can only penetrate slowly and with difficulty; and who knows—even if perhaps the deepest secrets of his “last style” should become common and familiar, whether even then the last word would have been said on this strangely complicated and distorted character? But Beethoven composed from the soul outward. This was the great novelty. And we must penetrate into his soul if we will rightly apprehend him.
The enthusiastic compiler, Thayer, who died while writing Beethoven’s biography—musical history has often been the death of its authors!—remarks very excellently how differently from others Beethoven already sketches out his work. The motives stand there in hasty cursive—applications of motives—tone-ideas in words—as a painter sketches or a poet notes down his observations or inspirations. It bubbles up not like Bach’s steady stream of self-restraint, but in a torrent of unmeasured passion, which regards self-restraint as a weak concession and the correctness of the “galants” as a lie. In this man music spoke in words, not in pictures. He had the unparalleled boldness to tear out his secret feelings, all bleeding as they were, and hold them up before his own gaze. It was the boldness of a Zarathustra-nature. He belonged to those who worship Bacchus, not to those who follow Buddha. In Thayer’s possession was a note from Beethoven to his friend Zmeskall of Domanovecz. “For the future I bid farewell to the cheerfulness which I sometimes enjoy; for yesterday, through your Zmeskallic chatter, I became quite gloomy. The devil take them—I don’t want to know anything of their universal morality. Might is the morality of men who distinguish themselves above others. It is my morality, anyhow. If you start on me again, I shall pester you until you find everything I do noble and praiseworthy.”
We shall then only understand Beethoven thoroughly when we leave form on one side and take music as a speech. It is no feeble paradox to say that the reason why Beethoven, in his operas and songs, paid so little attention to the words, was because the music was to him words enough. To this greatest of instrumental geniuses was revealed the great secret of pure music, which, precisely because it has no speech or language, speaks infinitely the more profoundly. Words obstruct it. When Beethoven, at the end of the Ninth Symphony, has recourse to the human voice, everyone feels that it was to him only the highest of all instruments, with which he can do yet more than with trombone or contrabass. It is the utmost triumph of the pure musician who can draw even the voice under his sway.
Cast of Beethoven’s living face, 1812.
Music is to him a speech, because it is full of associations of ideas, which bring tones into relation with the outer world, and make them reverberate with a thousand inner meanings. In his orchestra we hear nature, as in his pianoforte we hear the orchestra. Not without reason has Bülow, in his edition of Beethoven, in more than one place translated the piano-piece for the reader into score, in order to make its content clearer. These are things which did not exist in Bach. The world of tone has sacrificed her great unity for the great fragmentariness of unveiled speech, and a never dreamt-of height was thus reached in that absolute tone speech, which formerly in Venice and in England had taken the place of the mediæval vocal music.
What a Gabrieli, a Bull, a Bird, a Couperin, each in his own way, had begun, was by Beethoven brought to full completion. Here was the perfect opposition to the Middle Ages. Here was the Michael Angelo who could stand alone against the ancients. The abstractions were perfected, the relations more general, the language more intelligible. If Beethoven began his first Symphony with a chord of the seventh, it was possible to understand what he meant by it. To this man, who completed one epoch in beginning another; to this symphonist and chamber-musician, the clavier must become a daily necessity. His life has been written in his works. Words, which could only fetter him, are kept at a distance; the notes tell the story by themselves.
