The Fourth Concerto in A minor is not less intimate with its Larghetto affettuoso, which ought to be played with the rubato, rallentando and short pauses—its allegro fugue, which spreads out and over-shadows all by its powerful tread—and after a Largo of antique graveness the allegro three-four which finishes is the veritable last movement of the Beethoven sonata, romantic, capricious, passionate, and more and more unrestrained as it approaches the end, accelerando nearly prestissimo,—inebriated.[418]
But one ought to know especially the Sixth Concerto in G minor, the most celebrated of all on account of its magnificent Musette. It opens with a beautiful Larghetto, full of that melancholy which is one of the dominant sentiments with Handel, and one of the least observed by most people: melancholy that is, in the sense of the Malinconia of Dürer, or of Beethoven—less agitated, but still profound. We have already encountered it in the Second, in the Third, and in the Fourth Concerto.[419] Here it is found in an elegiac monologue, punctuated by pedal points;
then in the dialogues of the Concertino and of the Tutti responding, like the groups of the ancient classical chorus. The allegro ma non troppo fugue which follows it, on a twisting chromatic theme, is of the same sombre colour. But it is the lusty march of the disciplined fugue which dispels the fantastic shadows.
