“Le Départ” is a no less powerful production. It is not a little surprising to read, as the title of a song by the melancholy Schubert: “Le Départ: Chant de Joie.” It is, in fact, the song of one carried away by a love of change and a thirst for new pleasures—one who can say with Byron that
“I, who am of lighter mood,
Will laugh to flee away.”[167]
This song is remarkable for the proud loftiness of its melodious march, and for the ardor which impregnates its rhythm. It is a wonderful intermingling of carelessness and eagerness, the more observable because it was so rarely that Schubert was called upon to express feelings too exterior and noisy for his timid and concentrated nature.
Beethoven, who had made deep acquaintance with human suffering, and in whose wondrous pages it is expressed with so much power, would nevertheless at times sing also his notes of gladness. He built the immensely grand finale of the “Symphony and Chorus” upon Schiller’s “Hymn of Joy.”
It is a wondrous hymn! After a splendid opening by the orchestra alone follows the phrase in D major, of antique nobleness and simplicity; but, alas! this moment of interior calm is cruelly expiated. The grand phrase is made to undergo successive tortures; after changing into a plaint of sorrow, it becomes a cry of despair, almost of madness.
Elsewhere again, in the incomparable finale of the Symphony in A, Beethoven has sung of joy—joy carried to its utmost limits of enthusiasm and ecstasy. To follow Beethoven in his impetuous course produces an indescribable emotion, less akin to pleasure than to pain, since violent feeling, from whatever cause it may arise, is invariably attended by suffering. Excess, whether of joy or love, is pain, very pure but very penetrating; for it is one of the conditions of our human nature to be unable to rise on high without suffering here below.
“Jamais entière allégresse:
L’âme y souffre de ses plaisirs,
Les cris de joie ont leur tristesse,