(b)

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FIGURE LVI.

It will be observed that the original idea was somewhat mechanical in its rhythm, and lacked that variety imparted to the completed theme by the tied note at the beginning of measure 3 and at the middle of measure 5. Beethoven's original intention must have been quite at variance in other ways with what he finally evolved, for he marks his first sketch, "Andante quasi Minuetto," i. e. "in the style of the minuet," and of this there is left no evidence whatever.

Each variation of this theme is quite distinct from the original, particularly in its mood. While the original theme has a calm and even pensive beauty, full of sentiment, the two variations of it are less serious and, at times, verge on the humorous and playful (as at measure 108), or on the grotesque (as at measure 115). But in the episodes that occur between the variations—in the transitions or links between the different parts—Beethoven's fancy has fullest play. He ranges all the way from comedy to tragedy, from delicate gaiety to lumbering, Brobdingnagian heaviness. Simple raillery seizes him when, at measure 160, he allows the violin to take up the familiar motive and toss it to the basses and take it back again, or when he amuses himself with weaving thirds up and down (134), crossing and recrossing, spinning out the little three-note motive into a fine web, which is finally torn apart as the whole orchestra thunders out the secondary theme (148).

These two passages (portions of which are shown in Figure LVII) in their freedom from restraint and their expression of the composer's idiosyncrasies, are quite beyond what had ever been attempted before. We see working here a mind full of resource and capable of sounding the greatest depths of the subject.

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