Lithograph by C. Fischer, after the original portrait of 1817, by A. Kloeber (1793-1864).
If we would understand Beethoven’s language we must study the way in which he works out his motives. His peculiarities are the peculiarities of the naturalistic school. The melody mounts or falls as his emotion mounts or falls. He takes a motive and narrows it until its parts curve upon each other, and then again makes it greater and broader, until it lies open before us. This is a deep and mysterious language, which deals with the tones as a word, an expression; which looks on us, shall I say? like the eye of certain animals—we understand them through and through, and yet their speech is not ours. But the most powerful agent in stirring our emotion is the rhythm, that soul of all expression. It is the absolute pulse of things, which only the finer ears can hear in the outer world; it lies here before us in its artistic purity. The pauses, the leaps, the syncopations, the gigantic parallelisms of structure, the dynamic surprises, leave but a thin wall of partition between the phenomenal and the transcendental of music. There is no longer any reserve in the language. There are some movements in which Beethoven’s music stands at the very doors of verbal speech: such, for example, as the allegretto in Op. 14, 1 and the first movement of Op. 90. The words appear to tremble on the lips; but it would be the disappearance of the apparition were we to utter them.
Over Beethoven’s realm broods a deep tragedy. A constraining seriousness speaks to us—the dark abyss of passionate emotion: a total pitilessness, a gloomy brooding, accents of misery, a unison of terror. Beethoven began his piano publications with the three sonatas (Op. 2.) dedicated to Haydn; works full of inexhaustible inspirations, of the ravishing freshness of youth. The second is introduced by sharp accents and those broad extensions of chords by means of octaves, which remained to the end characteristic of the author. Another man would have begun the piece after this tragic cry, with the contrapuntally-rocking motive. But the first of his greater tragic outbreaks was the mighty Sonata in C minor, the so-called Pathétique, which he dedicated to his patron Lichnowsky. Upon the heavy, slow introductory passage follows the stormy First Movement, whose themes are, first, a tempest of rage, secondly, an utter despair; and the Grave intrudes its monitory remembrances in the midst. Unity of colouring is preserved. Over the second singing movement, and the third with its rondo-like passages, lies the same sombre tone; and the conclusion is sharply cut short.
Beethoven revels in the gloomy. He buries himself in deep tones, as in the Andante of the Pathétique or in Op. 22, its cheerfulness notwithstanding. Later, on the magnificent Broadwood, which he received from England as a present, he goes with delight into the regions of the deep. A mystic tremolo attracts him; and the “trios” of his scherzi are full of the sonorous murmuring of billowy chords.[113]
A new and grand expression of pain is the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata (Op. 27, 2), which is as full of hopelessness as the last movement of the other Sonata of this great pair (Op. 27, 1) is full of invigoration. The threatening strokes of the quaver chords which sharply define each repetition of the stormy motive-passages, the quivering secondary theme, the unrestful rests, the melodies, which seek to calm down the seething bass; all this was a world of seriousness which the clavier had not yet learned to know.
But this was still a composition, compared with the naturalistic chaos of the Recitative Sonata (Op. 31, 2). This first movement is a remarkable embodiment of gloomy brooding, which is continually being disturbed by despairing cries, until it finally loses itself in that resignation of utter indifference, which is a typical form of Beethoven’s tragic finales.
It seems to me beyond question that the impulse which drove Beethoven to compose great piano-pieces was supplied by the concerto-form. The concerto, in its secular character, had not remained without its advantages; it was broader and freer than the regular sonata. It avoids reprises in the first movement, and arranges the divisions with more circumspection. In order to give the clavier-player a chance to rest, the orchestra must take over some independent parts. It begins with a broadly planned section, which so to say arouses curiosity, in which various themes are treated; and portions of this introduction are then inserted between the successive entries of the pianoforte, or even simultaneously with them. The piano itself appears usually three times. In the first and last of these the music is to some extent repetition, the intermediate section is a kind of free fantasia. Even in Mozart a strict unity of theme between the orchestral and the solo sections is not always to be observed; it was Beethoven who first carried it thoroughly out. He it was who with visible affection fashioned the concerto form. It is no accident that the two last of his pianoforte concertos, the G major and E flat major, to-day enjoy an exuberant popularity. What Mozart had promised in his C minor concerto, these perform to admiration. They are built entirely on that plastic sensuousness which is the essence and the aim of the concerto. Their themes are remarkably adapted for a polyphonous orchestral development, for a delicate imitation on the piano, or for the storm of the fullest harmonies.
The technique, whether of the piano or of the orchestral colouring, though joyous, is yet severe. Far from all coquetry and all mere show—the technique stands, especially in the cheerful E flat major, on a height of extraordinary purity. The form is clear, but not so precise as not to admit of modifications in single sections, especially those devoted to the solo instrument. The intellectual G major, the technical E flat major, represented an extreme of happy sympathetic innovation.
We only need to compare the great Waldstein Sonata in C major (Op. 53) with the Concertos, in order at once to see that the latter have stood godfather to the former. There are not merely external likenesses, as when the piano figures a theme which might have been played already on the orchestra, or when more important divisions close with a long shake, as in all concertos the piano sections usually do on the re-entrance of the tutti; or when with passages played pianissimo, and hurrying ghostlike, or in octaves, an effect is introduced which in Beethoven’s concertos the delicate piano is generally used to play out in contrast with the orchestra. Rather the important likeness lies in the whole broad outline. The themes appear as a rule twice, as is naturally the case in the concerto; the exposition is done leisurely and cheerfully; a cadenza, such as Beethoven had already used (e.g., in Opp. 2, 3, and 27, 2), gives to the conclusion of the first movement a specially concerto-like quality. The second slow movement is a short emotional transition, such as Beethoven has written so exquisitely in the G major and E flat major concertos; and the last movement, far from being a “concession” to the “light-robed” muse, is a spirited rondo, in brilliant style it is true, but in its augmentations and diminutions, its stretto and the trill-conclusion, a genuine Beethoven—as no other could be.
As thus the dependence on the broad effects to which the concerto style had accustomed the hearer, gave to the first movement of the sonata a new form and extent which it had hitherto not known, it was possible for Beethoven to infuse into it a tragic content which soars far above the general coloration of the “Pathétique” and the brooding naturalism of the “Recitative” Sonata. Here for the first time we hear those trumpet-calls to the battle with Fate, those heavy rolling waves at the return to the first theme, which later in Op. 111 found so concentrated an expression. A monumental epic develops itself about the conflict, which usually forms the content of first movements. This mighty form represents a mighty picture.