HE three masters, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, in relation to the symphony stand upon a plane of substantial equality, whether we estimate their merits according to the absolute worth of the compositions they produced in this form, or in the value of the additions which each in turn made to the ideal of his predecessor. Naturally, as the latest of the three, though so far contemporaneous with them as to form part of a single moment in the progress of art, the symphonies of Beethoven are greater in certain respects, and, as also was to have been expected from his general depth of mind and seriousness of purpose, they are perhaps somewhat more severe—or elevated—in style and sentiment. Nevertheless, the ideal of the three writers was but slightly different. All alike sought to weave tones into a succession of agreeable and beautiful combinations, related as representing a continued flight of spirit—a reverie of the beautiful. Haydn has the honor of having created the form. His fortunate innovation upon the traditions of his predecessors, by adding the second and contrasting theme, and his happy faculty of working out the middle part of the first movement thematically in a style of free fantasy based upon the various devices of counterpoint and canonic imitation, not only suggested to the later composers a way in which an endless variety of pleasing tone pictures might be created—but established, and demonstrated by the clearness with which he did it, and the ever fresh variety and charm of his works, that this was the way in which symphonic material must be put together. For further particulars relating to the sonata form, as such, the student is referred to my "Primer of Musical Forms" (Arthur P. Schmidt, Boston, 1891).
The form thus established by Haydn, Mozart accepted, and followed in all his symphonies, with few and unimportant variations. His additions to the general ideal of orchestral effect were in the direction of a sweeter cantilena, a vocal and song-like quality, which pervades every movement, and which in the slow movement rises to a height of refined and exquisite song never surpassed by any composer. Beethoven is often more impassioned; at times more forcible. But it is never possible to say of the pure spirit of Mozart, that this refined and gentle soul might not have broken mountains and shaken the hills if he had chosen to do so. His refinement is like that of a seraph, as we see it illustrated in the feminine-looking faces of the Greek Apollos, and the St. Michaels and archangels of Guido Reni and Raphael. It is free from passion and toil; but no man dares set a limit to the strength therein concealed. In the slow movements of the pianoforte sonatas of Mozart we do not find this quality so plainly manifested. The instrument was still too imperfect, and did not invite it. Moreover, the greater portion of these compositions bear the appearance of having been written for the use of amateurs. But in the string quartette and the symphonies it is different. Here the spirit of Mozart has free course, and he goes from one beauty to another, with the sure instinct of a master before whom all tonal kingdoms are wide open. This can be seen even in the pianoforte arrangements of the greater symphonies. The melodies, apparently so simple and diatonic, are susceptible of being sung with heartfelt fervor under the fingers of the violinist, or by the voice of the great singer, and when so sung they become transfigured with beauty—luminous from within, like lovely angel faces, glowing with radiance from the higher realms of bliss. Without this idea of singing, and more than this, of a pure spirit singing, the Mozart adagios are open to the charge often made against them in these later days by the unthinking, who find in them only the external peculiarities of simplicity and diatonic quality, with the unsensationalism which technical reserve implies.
Fig. 59.
REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE PAGE OF BEETHOVEN'S SONATA, OPUS 26, CONTAINING THE CELEBRATED FUNERAL MARCH.
Nor is it true that Beethoven is incapable of this elevated soaring in the higher realms of the merely beautiful in song. There is generally an undercurrent of deeper pathos in all his sustained slow movements, but in the earlier symphonies, especially in the second, there is a long slow movement of heavenly depth and quality. Indeed, without pausing to individualize we may say once for all that the slow movements of Beethoven are nearly as sweet and as forgetful, as rapturous, as those of Mozart. Even when he takes the lower key of the minor, with its implication of suffering and pain, there is still a sweetness, which once heard can never be forgotten. Think of the lovely allegretto of the seventh symphony, with its persistent motive of a quarter and two-eighths. Even in an arrangement for the pianoforte this is still impressive; upon the organ yet more so; but how much more so when given by the orchestra, with the lovely changing colors of Beethoven's instrumentation! The progress from Haydn's slow movement to that of Beethoven is in the direction of depth, self-forgetfulness, and elevated reverie, having in it a quality distinctly church-like, devotional, worshipful and reposeful in the heavenly sense. The finest example of this is in the slow movement of the ninth symphony of Beethoven, where the composer has one of those lofty moods, which even in his younger times Mrs. Von Breuning used to call his "raptus"—rapture of song.
In a technical point of view the handling of the themes becomes more masterly in Beethoven than even in Mozart—mainly perhaps because the symphonies of Beethoven represent a more mature point in his mental and artistic career than do those of Mozart. The third symphony of Beethoven was written in 1803, the composer being thirty-three years old; the fourth waited until he was thirty-five or six. Mozart died at the age of thirty-five, and whatever we have from his lofty pen came to the young Mozart, not yet having reached middle life. Observe also the rapidity with which these great works followed one another from the pen of Beethoven, when once he had found his voice. The fifth symphony was written in 1808. In the same year he wrote also the sixth; four years later, in 1812, the next two symphonies, the seventh and eight. Then a long pause, filled up with other works, and at length when the composer was fifty-three years of age, in 1823, the mighty ninth. If Mozart's life had been spared to enter into the more comfortable and dignified openings which his death prevented, what might we not have had from him!
In one sense there is a distinct difference between the symphonies of Mozart and those of Beethoven. The passionate ideal, the picture of a deep soul, tossed yet triumphant, is nearer to the latter. Whatever Mozart may have experienced in the way of "contradiction of sinners" (as St. Paul calls it), he never allows the fact to find entrance into his music, and especially into his symphonies. Whether he felt that these moments did not belong to a high ideal of orchestral pieces, or whether he was glad to find in the tone world forgetfulness of sorrows and troubles, we do not know. But Beethoven came nearer to the great time of the romantic. The inherent interest of whatever belongs to the human soul was an idea of his time, and unconsciously to himself, perhaps, it entered into and colored his work. The ninth symphony belongs to the period when Hegel was delivering his lectures upon the deepest questions of philosophy, and laying it down as a fundamental principle that it is the place of art to represent everything whatever, which sinks or swells in the human spirit; not alone all the noble and the lovely, but also the ignoble, the vicious, the unworthy, and particularly the tragic—to the end that the soul may learn to know itself, and awaken to a deeper and better self-consciousness. Beethoven felt the mental movement of his day. While his acquaintance with other prominent literary men of his time made little headway, owing in part to his deafness, and in part to his very strong self-consciousness, he read and thought, and felt himself akin with the whole human race. He was a socialist and a republican by instinct. "Man stands upon that which he really is," was a form of self-assertiveness, which, if not actually enunciated by him, at least represents his attitude toward the conventionalities and superficialities of the courts, the social orders, and the general movement of mind into which he entered. Moreover this was the time when the romantic poets of Germany had already set the world thinking their new ideas. Close by the great composer, in the same city in fact, worked a young man, worshiping almost the very ground upon which Beethoven walked, but for the most part unknown to him—Franz Schubert, who in the symphony was classic to the very highest degree, and a tone poet gifted lyrically not less than Mozart himself, a composer whose ideas have equal refinement and grace with those of Mozart, together with a certain charm peculiarly their own, and an instinct for musical coloration, which has never found its superior. This obscure young man, whose lofty genius was recognized only after his soul had taken its flight from earth, was the founder of the modern romantic school of music—the musical commentator upon the productions of all the best of German poets; a composer of such inexhaustible fertility and melodic inspiration that Schumann said of him, that if he had lived he would have set to music the whole German literature. Thus by the combined efforts of all these composers, of Schubert no less than of the three great masters of whom we are more particularly speaking, the symphony came to its full expression.