Again, Beethoven ignored the well-established convention of separating different sections from one another by well-defined breaks. It was the custom with earlier masters to stop at the end of a passage, ‘to present arms, as it were,’ with a series of chords or other conventional stop; with Beethoven this gives place to a method of subtly connecting, instead of separating, the different sections, for which he used parts of the main theme or phrases akin to it, thus making the connecting link an inherent part of the piece. He also makes use of episodes in the working-out section, introduces even new themes, and expands both the coda and the introduction. These modifications are of the nature of enlargements or developments of a plan already accepted, and seem, as Grove points out, ‘to have sprung from the fact of his regarding his music less as a piece of technical performance than his predecessors had perhaps done, and more as the expression of the ideas with which his mind was charged.’ These ideas were too wide and too various to be contained within the usual limits, and, therefore, the limits had to be enlarged. The thing of first importance to him was the idea, to be expressed exactly as he wished, without regard to theoretical formulæ, which too often had become dry and meaningless. Therefore he allows himself liberties—such as the use of consecutive fifths—if they convey the exact impression he wishes to convey. Other musicians had also allowed themselves such liberties, but not with the same high-handed individualistic confidence that Beethoven betrays. ‘In Beethoven the fact was connected with the peculiar position he had taken in society, and with the new ideas which the general movement of freedom at the end of the eighteenth century, and the French Revolution in particular, had forced even into such strongholds as the Austrian courts.... What he felt he said, both in society and in his music.... The great difference is that, whereas in his ordinary intercourse he was extremely abrupt and careless of effect, in his music he was exactly the reverse—painstaking, laborious, and never satisfied till he had conveyed his ideas in unmistakable language.’[62]
In other words, conventional rules and regulations of composition which had formerly been the dominating factor were made subservient to what he considered the essentials—consistency of mood and the development of the poetic idea. He becomes the tone poet whose versatility and beauty of expression increase with the increasing power of his thought. Technical accessories of art were elevated to their highest importance, not for the sake of mere ornamentation, but because they were of use in enlarging and developing the idea.
During these years of rich achievement the staunch qualities of his genius, his delicacy and accuracy of sensation, his sound common sense and wisdom, his breadth of imagination, joy, humor, sanity, and moral earnestness—these qualities radiate from his work as if it were illuminated by an inward phosphorescent glow. He creates or translates for the listener a whole world of truth which cannot be expressed by speech, canvas, or marble, but is only capable of being revealed in the realm of sound. The gaiety of his music is large and beneficent; its humor is that of the gods at play; its sorrow is never whimpering; its cry of passion is never that of earthly desire. ‘It is the gaiety which cries in the bird, rustles in the reeds, shines in spray; it is a voice as immediate as sunlight. Some new epithet must be invented for this music which narrates nothing, yet is epic; sings no articulate message, yet is lyric; moves to no distinguishable action, yet is already awake in the wide waters out of which a world is to awaken.’[63]
The transition to the third period is even more definitely marked than that to the second. To it belong the pianoforte sonatas opus 101 to 111, the quartets opus 127 to 135, the Ninth Symphony, composed nearly eleven years after the eighth, and the mass in D—works built on even a grander scale than those of the second epoch. It would almost seem as if the form, enlarged and extended, ceased to exist as such and became a principle of growth, comparable only to the roots and fibres of a tree. The polyphony, quite unlike the old type of counterpoint, yet like that in that it is made up of distinct strands, is free and varied. Like the other artifices of technique, it serves only to repeat, intensify, or contrast the poetic idea. The usual medium of the orchestra is now insufficient to express his thought, therefore he adds a choral part for the full completion of the idea which had been germinating in his consciousness for more than twenty years. Moreover, these later works are touched with a mysticism almost beyond any words to define, as if the musician had ceased to speak in order to let the prophet have utterance. ‘He passes beyond the horizon of a mere singer and poet and touches upon the domain of the seer and the prophet; where, in unison with all genuine mystics and ethical teachers, he delivers a message of religious love and resignation, identification with the sufferings of all living creatures, depreciation of self, negation of personality, release from the world.’[64]
More radical than the modifications mentioned above were the substitution of the scherzo for the minuet, and the introduction of a chorus into the symphony. It will be remembered that the third symphonic movement, the minuet, originally a slow, stately dance, had already been modified in spirit and tempo by Mozart and Haydn for the purpose of contrast. In his symphonies, however, Beethoven abandoned the dance tune almost entirely, using it only in the Eighth. Even in the First, where the third movement is entitled ‘menuetto,’ it is in fact not a dance but a scherzo, and offers almost a miniature model of the longer and grander scherzos in such works as the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, where, as elsewhere, he made the form subservient to his mood.
Of the second innovation mentioned, the finale of the Ninth Symphony remains as the sole, but lasting and stupendous, monument. This whole work, the only symphony of his last period, deserves to be studied not only as the crowning achievement of a remarkable career and the logical outcome of the eight earlier symphonies with their steadily increasing breadth and power, but also as in itself voicing the last and best message of the master. Its arrangement, consisting of five parts, is rather irregular. The allegro is followed by the scherzo, which in turn is followed by a slow movement. The finale consists of a theme with variations and a choral movement to the setting of Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy.’ The thought of composing a work which should express his ideals of universal peace and love had been in his mind since the year 1792. It seems as if he conceived the use of the chorus as an enlargement and enrichment of the forces of the orchestra, rather than as an extraneous addition—as if human voices were but another group of instruments swelling that great orchestral hymn which forms the poetic and dramatic climax to the work, ‘carrying sentiment to the extremest pitch of exaltation.’ The melody itself is far above the merely æsthetic or beautiful, it reaches the highest possible simplicity and nobility. ‘Beethoven has emancipated this melody from all influences of fashion and fluctuating taste, and elevated it to an eternally valid type of pure humanity.’[65]
The changes in technical features inaugurated by Beethoven are of far less importance, comparatively, than the increase in æsthetic content, individuality, and expression. As has been noted, he was no iconoclast; seeking new effects in a striving for mere originality or altering forms for the mere sake of trying something new. On the contrary, his innovations were always undertaken with extreme discretion and only as necessity required; and even to the last the sonata form, ‘that triune symmetry of exposition, illustration, and repetition,’ can be discerned as the basis upon which his most extensive work was built. Even when this basis is not at first clearly apparent, the details which seemed to obscure it are found, upon study, to be the organic and logical amplification of the structure itself, never mere additions. It should be pointed out, however, that the last works, especially those for the piano, are of so transcendental or mystic a nature as to make it impossible for the average listener to appreciate them to their fullest extent; indeed, they provide a severe test even for a mature interpreter and for that reason they will hardly ever become popular.