Then suddenly rises before us the “Grand Sonata” (Op. 106). We recognise no longer the old well-known features. It has assumed the forms of the giant-world; it laughs in its greatness, in its childlikeness. Will it really permit itself to be played by human hands? We are at the mysterious limits of piano-music. Rhythms marked by sharp blows, modulations in thirds, enharmonics, narrow-cut successions of chords[117]—these are the very hand of Beethoven. The first movement works with its three themes—an Olympian poem—as far as the stretto. Its development rests on a fugal foundation. The scherzo is all rhythm; in the trio, it is all unrhythmical; mystical colours, sliding passages from B flat minor to D flat major, as in the Ninth Symphony from D minor to B flat major. The Adagio is so to speak the last possibility of the old form, wide as life itself, Michael Angelo-like in its strenuous longing for F sharp major. The transitional passage, the Largo, which introduces the last movement, like an old Toccata, tries this and that, prelude-wise, and striving after fixed forms. The three-voiced giant-fugue is the deliverance, in whose retardations the old storm, however, still conceals itself. But there is a joy in the mighty straining of these dissonances, which Bülow ought not to have tried to soften. Theme and counter-theme, “cancrizans” canon,[118] lyrical episodes, dainty counter-motives, inversions, new canonic motives, tied up again with the fugue, contrary motions, diminutions. This old lofty tone speech remained serious; it is the refuge of the anchorite who turns back to the powers of Nature, and finds rest in the wise observation of the stars. It is the utmost of art for art. Who is there whom it troubles?
Three flowers bloom in this late garden, three unique documents of a pure masterdom: the “playing” sonata, the “landscape” sonata, the “life” sonata. The first is on the heights of pure technique, the second is a clarified objective picture, the third is pure subjective inwardness.
Op. 109 opens with a graceful impromptu-like harp-play of broken chords, which twice thicken themselves in recitative songs. A somewhat hard sounding scherzo stands in the midst. It is closed by the variations on that never-to-be-forgotten melody in E major, which, through reflective romance, cheerful étude-like activity, sober fugues, bright trill-heights, lead back to the captivating simplicity of their theme. The freedom of the first movement and the confinement of the second are both made use of by the third.
We have a landscape in the A flat major (Op. 110). Over the sward rises the tender song. Butterflies and sun-glitter are the accompaniment. A wholesome strength mounts up and cheerfully wings its way. In a pause of meditation it comes to rest; and from the contemplation rises the old eternal lamentation of man. From its last breathed tones ascends the fugue, the great law of nature. Once again the lament, broken, helpless, dashing itself blindly against fate—and all the more dazzling is the fugue, embracing all, Truth with its disregard of the individual.[119] Thus does Beethoven express his pantheism.
But even this sonata seems feeble in comparison with the unheard-of intensity and greatness of Op. 111. The master sits at the piano, and his hands run preluding over the keys, in broad, piercing, dashing chords, which become closer and intenser round the node-point of the dominant. From the dominant grows a theme of savage grandeur, of Titanic power, all-embracing in its widening grasp, its Medusa-locks flying in the air, crushing out all sweetness and softness, till, as it came, it sinks terribly to earth, in those helpless diminuendo chords,[120] with no ritardando, such as Beethoven alone experienced. In the elemental song of the Adagio comes the release. In its variations it spreads itself out into a world-embracing grandeur, till its wisdom attains the two extremes of deep internal ardour and ethereal brightness, whose opposition is developed in the last pages in broad lines. The earth remains below; the minor conclusions are forgotten; the forms have become a twilight dream; only when our soul meets the Master-Soul does man attain to these realms.
At this time the inventive composer-publisher Diabelli had a good idea. He composed a childish waltz in C major, and invited fifty of the most distinguished composers and virtuosos of Vienna and the Austrian states to be kind enough to set variations to it. Beethoven sent him thirty-three variations, which appeared as Op. 120. Diabelli may well have been astonished. He had perhaps some dread of the “last” Beethoven who was then so full of youth. But he had not expected anything of this kind. Perhaps he did not quite know whether it was all done in earnest. Even the name of Beethoven did not aid the venture much. The world during many years troubled itself little about it, and let the strange colossus alone. It was reserved for Bülow, who had the keenest sense for the last efforts of Beethoven’s genius, to penetrate deeply into the great mass. He observed that the thirty-three variations are no co-ordinated series; they are an inner drama, like one of the later sonatas. They rise from the explanatory sections which lay out the theme, through a gentle minor group, by a double fugue, into calmer regions; a minuet concludes, which is no minuet, but one of those wonderful resurrections which were the old Master’s special love. The variations are a testament, as the Goldberg variations were those of Bach. From melody to canon, from gloom to parody, from archaism to anticipations of the future, from popularity to the philosophy of the hermit, from mysticism to dance, from technical glitter to the mystery of enharmonics, they lead us along three and thirty paths to different realms.
Beethoven’s last Grand Piano, by Graf, Vienna, with four strings to each note, on account of his deafness.
[110] Pigtail and Tuft, a combination of “Bigwig” and “High and Mighty,” with “Sir Oracle.”