With the attainment of his majority the second period in the life of this great genius began. Unable to obtain permission from the shabby prelate for father and son to go together upon an artistic tour, the father at length decided to send the young man out with his mother, and in September, 1777, the two started for Paris, traveling in their own carriage with post horses. Their plan was to give a concert at every promising town, taking whatever time might be necessary for working it up in due form. In this way their journey was considerably prolonged by delays at Munich, Mannheim and Augsburg. At Mannheim, especially, the incidents of the tour were varied by Mozart"s falling in love with the charming daughter of the theatrical prompter and copyist, a promising singer, who afterward married happily in quite a different quarter. At Paris things did not turn out quite so favorably as the father had antic.i.p.ated. Most afflicting of all, the mother fell sick there, and died, so that the son left Paris in September for home with a far heavier heart than when he entered it. During the most of 1779 and 1780 he remained at Salzburg, fulfilling his duties as a.s.sistant conductor. Then came his first opera in Germany, "_Idomeneo, Re di Creta_," produced at Munich January 29, 1781. The success of this work was so decided that it determined Mozart"s career as an operatic composer. A few months later he quarreled with the archbishop, and the unpleasant connection came to an end. His second opera, "_Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail_" ("The Elopement from the Seraglio"), was produced at Vienna July 16, 1782. This was his first opera in German. In August of this year he was married to Constance Weber, younger sister of her who had first enchanted him. The marriage was congenial in many ways, but as the wife was incapable in money matters and administration, and Mozart himself careless as a business man, and in receipt of a small and irregular income, they soon found themselves in a sea of little troubles, from which the struggling artist was nevermore free. Only at the last moment, when indeed his life was all but extinct, did the clouds disappear, and a prospect open before him, which if he had lived to enjoy it, would have placed his remaining days in easy circ.u.mstances. In 1785 the father visited his son in Vienna, and upon one of the first days of his stay, there was a little dinner party at Mozart"s house, with Haydn and the two Barons Todi. In his letter home, Leopold Mozart says that Haydn said to him: "I declare to you, before G.o.d, as a man of honor, that your son is the greatest composer that I know, either personally or by reputation; he has taste, and beyond that the most consummate knowledge of composition." In return for this compliment Mozart dedicated to Haydn six string quartettes, with a laudatory preface, in which he says that it was "but his due, for from Haydn I first learned to compose a quartette." Mozart was an enthusiastic Freemason, and through his influence his father, who had always previously opposed the order, became a member, during this visit at Vienna. Soon afterward the father died. For the lodge Mozart wrote much music, both of a liturgical character and for concerts, and special entertainments, and in the "Magic Flute" there are many reminiscences of the order.
A year later he made the acquaintance of the celebrated librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, who proposed to adapt Beaumarchais" comedy, "The Marriage of Figaro," which after some difficulty in obtaining the consent of the emperor, on account of the objectionable character of the story, was done, and the work produced at Vienna, May 1, 1786. The theater was crowded, and many airs were repeated, until at later performances the emperor prohibited encores. A pleasing scene took place at the last dress rehearsal. Kelly, who took the parts of Don Basilio and of Don Curzio, writes: "Never was anything more complete than the triumph of Mozart and his "Marriage of Figaro," to which numerous overflowing audiences bore witness. Even at the first full band rehearsal, all present were roused to enthusiasm, and when Benucci came to the fine pa.s.sage "_Cherubino Alla Vittoria, Alla Gloria Militar_," which he gave with stentorian lungs, the effect was electric, for the whole of the performers on the stage, and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated "_Bravo, Bravo, Maestro. Viva, Viva, grande Mozart_." Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the bows of their violins against their music desks. And Mozart, I never shall forget his little animated countenance. When lighted up with the glowing rays of genius, it is as impossible to describe it as it would be to paint sunbeams." Yet the success did not improve his position in money affairs. Soon afterward, however, he was invited to Prague, to see the success his beautiful work was making there. He was entertained handsomely, and found the town wild with delight, at the novelty, the spontaneity and charming quality of his music. He also gave two concerts there, which were brilliantly successful, and having been many times recalled he sat down at the piano and improvised for half an hour, the audience resisting every effort he made to stop.
After returning to Vienna he obtained another libretto from Da Ponte, that of "_Don Giovanni_," which was produced at Prague, October 29, 1787. It is told, as a characteristic incident of Mozart"s method of working, that the overture of this opera had not been written until the night before the performance. At every suggestion Mozart answered, tapping his forehead, "I have it all here." But not a line had been written. Late at night he set about writing it. His wife made him some punch, of which he was very fond, and sat with him telling him fairy stories, in order to keep him awake. Early in the morning the overture was finished, and after being copied it was played _prima vista_ at night, with grand success. In response to repeated appeals for court recognition, Mozart was made chamber composer, with a salary of about $400, which he p.r.o.nounced, "Too much for what I produce; too little for what I might produce." "_Don Giovanni_" was not given in Vienna until May, 1788.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 55.
MOZART, AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-THREE.
(From a drawing by Dora Stock, a friend of Schiller, 1789. [Grove.])]
His pecuniary circ.u.mstances continued desperate but there were certain incidents of an artistic kind which afforded the struggling genius a meager consolation. One Van Swieten, director of the royal library, who was a great amateur of cla.s.sical chamber music, held meetings every Sunday for the rehearsal of works of this cla.s.s. Mozart sat at the piano. For these occasions he arranged several of the fugues of Bach"s "Well Tempered Clavier," for string quartette. The year following the practices took on larger proportions, a subscription having been made to provide for giving oratorios with chorus and orchestra. Mozart conducted, and Weigl took the pianoforte.
It was for performances of this club, that Mozart added the wind parts to certain works of Handel. They gave "Acis and Galatea" (November, 1778), the "Messiah" (March, 1779), "Ode to St. Caecilia"s Day" and "Alexander"s Feast" (July, 1790). s.p.a.ce forbids our following his later career beyond mentioning the chief incidents in a life where sadness had larger and larger place, when nevertheless the great master was pouring out his most n.o.ble and beautiful strains of melody and tonal delight. A visit to Berlin resulted in receptions at court, at Potsdam, where the truthful composer replied to the king"s question, how he liked his band, that: "It contains great virtuosi, but if the gentlemen would play together they would make a better effect"--a remark which has been appropriate to many later orchestras.
The king apparently laid the remark to heart, and offered Mozart the post of director, with a salary of 3,000 thalers, almost equal to the same number of our dollars. It would have been well for Mozart if he had accepted this liberal offer; but his answer was, "How can I abandon my good emperor?"--certainly an affection most misplaced.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 56.
MOZART.
(From the Lange painting.)]
The list of the Mozart operas was closed with the "Magic Flute,"
produced September 30, 1783, which at first was not so successful as most of his previous works, but which continued to improve upon hearing, until at length it reached the estimation which it has ever since held, as one of the most characteristic and interesting of all his works. He had already begun upon his "Requiem," which had been mysteriously ordered of him by a messenger, who declined to state the object for which the work was intended. It is now ascertained that the unknown patron was a Count Walsegg, an amateur desirous of being thought a great composer. It was his intention to have performed the work as his own. Mozart was now in low spirits, worn out with work, late hours and financial worry. The mystery of the "Requiem" preyed on his imagination none the less that he felt that in it he was writing some of his n.o.blest and best thoughts. He said: "I am sure that this will be my own requiem." Nothing could dissuade him from the idea. It returned again and again. At length he fell ill, poisoned, as he thought, by some envious rival. No one knows whether there was anything in the notion that actual poison had been administered, although there were rivals who had been heard to wish that he were out of the way. Without having quite finished the "Requiem" he breathed his last December 5, 1791. His premonition proved correct. The "Requiem" was given at his own funeral.
This account of the life of Mozart has hardly the merit of an outline, for within the short thirty-five years of his earthly existence this great master produced a variety of works in every province of music, greater than that produced by any other of the great masters, scarcely excepting the indefatigable and long-lived Handel.
It is extremely difficult to a.s.sign Mozart a definite place in the musical Pantheon without praising him too highly on the one hand, or going to the other extreme and belittling his genius by pointing out the evident fact that n.o.ble, beautiful, sprightly, sweet and charming as were his compositions, he has not left so large an influence upon the later course of music as quite a number of artists apparently his inferiors. His influence in music was largely temporary, but none the less indispensable to musical progress. To the neat and symmetrical periods of the Haydn symphony and sonata, with their fresh, thematic treatment, Mozart added a tender grace and sweetness like the conceptions of a Raphael in painting. He was the apostle of melody. If he had never written, the art of music would have remained something quite different from what we know it. And wherever there are lovers of refined, n.o.ble melody, there will the music of Mozart be loved.
Moreover, in his best symphonies, such as the one in G minor, and the "Jupiter" in C, there is a boldness and freedom of flight which Beethoven scarcely surpa.s.sed. He was at his best as a composer of operas. He was one of the fathers of the artistic song, with music for every stanza differing according to the sentiment of the words; and while the dramatic coloration is not forgotten in his operas, they are a constant flow of charming, inexhaustible melody, which sings most divinely. In short, taking his works through and through, Mozart was what, in the words of Mr. Matthew Arnold, we might call the composer of "sweetness and light." His music glows with the radiance of immortal beauty.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XXVII.
BEETHOVEN AND HIS WORKS.
The labors of Haydn and Mozart in the rich field of instrumental music were followed immediately by those of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born at the little town of Bonn, on the Rhine, about twenty miles above Cologne, in 1770. He died at Vienna, 1827. The years between these dates were filled with labor and inspiration, beyond those of any other master. Beethoven"s place in music is at the head. Whether he or Bach ought to be reckoned the very greatest of all the great geniuses who have appeared in music, is a question which might be discussed eternally without ever being settled. Considered merely as an artist capable of transforming musical material in an endless variety of ways, he would perhaps be placed somewhat lower than Bach; but considered as a tone poet gifted with the faculty of making hearers feel as he felt, and see as he saw (with the inner eyes of tonal sense), no master ought to be placed above him. This is the general opinion now, of all the world. Taine, the French critic, in his work on art, names four great souls belonging to the highest order of genius--Dante, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo and Beethoven. The company is a good one, and Beethoven rightfully belongs in it. His early life was wholly different from that of the gifted Mozart. He was the son of a dissipated tenor singer, and his mother was rather an incapable person. When the boy was about eleven years old he began to play the viola in the orchestra. He was already a good pianist, and it was said of him that he was able to play nearly the whole of the "Well Tempered Clavier" by heart, and at the age of eleven and a half he was left in charge during Neefe"s absence, as deputy organist. His improvisations had already attracted attention, and when he was a little past twelve he was made a.s.sistant musical conductor (cembalist), having to prepare the operas, adapt them to the orchestra and the players of the theater, and sometimes to train the whole company for several months together, while Neefe, the director, was away. All this without salary. In this practical school of adversity the boy grew up, arranging continually, training the orchestra, adapting music and composing--for he began this very soon; in fact, we have certain sonatinas of his, composed while he was but ten years old.
He was direct in his speech, almost to rudeness, not, like Mozart, attractive in his personal appearance, and rather awkward in society, where he was continually breaking things, upsetting the water, the ink, or whatever liquid was in his way. Nevertheless, there must have been something attractive about this young man of independent manners, for very early in life, and all the way through it, he made friends with the aristocracy. Count Waldstein, a few years his senior, to whom he afterward dedicated the so-called "Waldstein" sonata, Opus 53, in C, early became interested in him, hired a piano for him and sent it to his room, that he might have opportunity to practice. There was a family of Von Breunings in Bonn, consisting of the mother, three boys and a daughter, where the young Beethoven often stayed for several days together. This was one of the most refined families in town, and it was here that the unfortunate young Beethoven got his first glimpses of a true home life, and his first realization of the refining influence of woman"s society. He learned English in order that he might be able to read Shakespeare in the original. He also learned a little Italian and French. In short, the boy appears at good advantage from every point of view, except from that of mere appearance. This life of labor and responsibility was broken in upon when he was about seventeen (in 1787). He was sent to Vienna, and there is a tradition that he played there before Mozart, who is reported to have prophesied favorably concerning him. There is very little left us concerning his first visit to the great Austrian capital, then, as ever since, the home of music. He was soon back again in Bonn, and there for yet another year and a half he went on with his work. His mother dying, he had no longer any responsibility to retain him there, so when he was about twenty-one he set out again for Vienna, where all the remainder of his life was spent. At Vienna he immediately began to give concerts, in which his piano playing was the main feature, and his improvising upon themes presented by the audience. This art always remained one of his great distinctions--the surest proof of genius, the possession of musical fantasy, in which every thought immediately suggests something else. He devoted himself to serious study of counterpoint and composition under the instruction of Haydn at first, but later with Albrechtsberger. His two great elements of power at this period were his playing and his improvising.
Czerny says: "His improvisation was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs; for there was something wonderful about his expression, in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas, and his spirited manner of rendering them."
The limits of the present work do not admit of following the career of this great master in the detail which would otherwise be desirable. It must suffice to mention the more salient features. Contrary to the precedent established by Mozart, Beethoven was in no hurry to appear as a composer of ambitious pieces. After the early practical experiences above described, and the further advantage of studies in Vienna under the best teachers at that time living, it was not until 1795 that he appeared as composer of his first concerto for pianoforte and orchestra, a Mozart-like work, but with an _Adagio_ of true Beethovenish flavor. A year later he published his first three sonatas for pianoforte, dedicated to Haydn. These three works are in styles totally unlike each other, and there is little or no doubt that each one of them was modeled after some existing work, which at that time was highly esteemed in Vienna. The first in F minor, is plainly after one by Emanuel Bach in the same key. The _Adagio_ of this is especially interesting, not only because it shows a freedom and a pure lyric quality totally foreign to Emanuel Bach, and beyond Mozart even, but because it was taken out of a quartette which he had written when he was fifteen years old. This shows that even at that early age Beethoven had arrived at the conception of his peculiar style of slow movements, which differed from those of Mozart in having a more song-like quality, and a deeper and more serious expression. The impression of a deep soul is very marked in the _Largo_ of the first concerto, and there are few of his later works which carry it more plainly. In all, some sixty works precede this Opus 2, which is the modest mark affixed to these three sonatas. The third, in C, is still different from the other two, and was fashioned apparently after some composition of Clementi or Dussek. The _Adagio_ takes a direction which must have been regarded as not entirely successful, for nowhere else does the composer follow it out. Then followed a succession of pieces of every sort, not rapidly, like Mozart"s compositions, as if they represented the overflowing of an inexhaustible spring, but deliberately, as if the world were not ready for them too rapidly, one after another, each in succession carrying the treatment of the pianoforte to a finer point, and each different from its predecessor, whether of contemporaneous publication or of a former year, until by the end of the century he had reached the "_Sonata Pathetique_," a work which marked a prodigious advance in expression and boldness over anything that can be shown from any other master of the period.
Mention having been made of the slow movements in these works, in which point they were perhaps more strikingly differentiated from those of the composers previous--the _Largo_ of the sonata in D major, Opus 10, may be mentioned as an example of a peculiarly broad and dramatic, almost _speaking_ rhapsody, or reverie, for piano, which not only calls for true feeling in the interpreter, but also for technical qualities of touch and breadth of tone, such as must have been distinctly in advance of the instruments of the day. Meanwhile a variety of chamber pieces had been composed, many of them of decided merit. This was a great period of activity with the young composer.
He had found his voice. Within two years from the "_Sonata Pathetique_," he had composed all the sonatas up to the two numbered Opus 27, in which the so-called "Moonlight" stands second, and between these a variety of variations, and several important chamber pieces, not forgetting the oratorio, "Christ on the Mount of Olives"--a work which although not fully successful, nevertheless contained many beautiful ideas, and one chorus which must be ranked among the best which the repertory of oratorio can show--"Hallelujah to the Father."
The year 1800 also saw the first performance of the beautiful and romantic third concerto for pianoforte and orchestra. The first symphony had been performed in 1800, and by 1804 we have the great heroic symphony, the "_Kreutzer Sonata_," and the "_Appa.s.sionata_"
with all that lie between. Never did tone poet give out great inspirations like these so freely. Each is an advance upon the previous, distancing all works of similar composers, and each one surpa.s.sing his own previous efforts. This activity continued with little or no interruption until 1812, after which there is quite a break, Beethoven occupying himself with pot-boilers for the English market, in the way of arrangements of songs for instrumental accompaniment. Of these there are many, Scotch and other, besides ma.s.ses, canons for voices and the like. In 1814 we have the lovely sonata in E minor for piano, Opus 90, and in 1818 the great sonata for hammer klavier, Opus 106. Then in 1821 and 1822 the last of the sonatas, which carry this form of pianoforte writing to a point which it had never previously reached, if since; and then the "_Messe Solennelle_," and the ninth symphony, the latter having been composed in 1822-1823. After this came the last quartettes for strings, compositions which have been much written about, but which time has shown to be among the most beautiful and understandable of all that great master produced.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 57.
BEETHOVEN.]
Meanwhile, as a man Beethoven had been subject to his vicissitudes, but upon the whole, while no longer the popular composer of the day (his seriousness prevented that) he was in comfortable circ.u.mstances, but annoyed by the care of a nephew of irregular habits and reprehensible character. For many years now Beethoven had been getting deaf, and for the past ten or twelve he had been unable to hear ordinary conversation, so that communication had to be carried on with him by writing. Superficial observers inferred from this fact that the inability to hear his compositions must have reacted unfavorably upon them, and probably accounted for many pa.s.sages which were unlike his early works, and unintelligible or unlovely to the critics aforesaid. It is true that between the early and the latest compositions of Beethoven there is a greater difference in intelligibility than between the early and the late compositions of any other master. But the difference is not one of judgment on his part, but purely one of different conception, different melodic structure and deeper effect. The ninth symphony, which the first players called impossible, has lived to be counted not simply the greatest of all of Beethoven"s works, but the greatest of _all_ instrumental music. It has been named as an impa.s.sable barrier beyond which no later composer might pa.s.s and compose an instrumental symphony. Nothing could be more unjust or mistaken. Every composition of Beethoven is a fantasia, which in his earlier work indeed has the form of the sonata, the accepted serious form of the day; but in the works of the middle period, the limits of the sonata form were crossed in many directions, and in the latest the sonata is forsaken entirely.
But this is not to say that Beethoven had gone beyond the sonata form.
Beethoven was an improviser in music, quite as surely as his wildest successor, Schumann, and he wrote as he felt at the time. He lost nothing in being deaf. His inner tonal sense was as acute as ever, and had been trained as the tonal sense of few composers ever was. In point of fact the compositions of the later period are as sweet as those of any former period whatever. The last sonata for the pianoforte is one of the most advanced compositions that exist for the instrument. It is a tone poem which will outlast most other things that Beethoven wrote for this instrument. In fact, the accuracy with which the capacity of the instrument is gauged is one of the most striking peculiarities of the last sonatas and other late works of this master. Meanwhile, piano technique has advanced to a point where these great works no longer present the insurmountable difficulties that they did when first composed. Their general acceptance has been delayed by the foolish notion that there was about them something sacred and secluded from the apprehension of ordinary readers. This is not the case. They are within reach, and repay study.
Beethoven"s last days were not pleasant. He lived the life of a bachelor, and his nephew was a source of trouble. It is thought by many that the neglect of his nephew to order a physician in time, when requested to do so by his uncle, was the immediate occasion of the death of the great man. Beethoven died March 27, 1827, after a serious illness, in which dropsical symptoms were among the most troublesome.
There was a grand funeral, in which impressive exercises were held, and the body was deposited in consecrated ground in the cemetery at Wahring, near Vienna.
The allusions to the compositions of this composer in the preceding pages are very fragmentary, and, in fact, are expected merely to direct attention to those mentioned. There are many others almost equally worthy of attention. But upon the whole, the reputation of Beethoven as a tone poet must rest first upon the nine symphonies; then upon the string quartettes and other chamber music; next upon the concertos, of which the third and fourth for pleasing beauty, and the fifth for deep poetical meaning, have never been equaled by those of any other composer. There remain the sonatas for pianoforte and for piano and violin, three large volumes, containing a mult.i.tude of exquisite strains, which the world would be poor indeed to lose.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 58.
BEETHOVEN AS HE APPEARED ON THE STREETS OF VIENNA.
(From a sketch by Lyser, to the accuracy of which Breuning testifies, excepting that the hat should be straight on the head, and not inclined to one side.)]
In personal appearance Beethoven was rugged rather than pleasing. He was rather short, five feet five inches, but very wide across the shoulders, and strong. His ruddy face had high cheek bones, and was crowned by very thick hair, which originally was brown, but in later life perfectly white. His eyes were black and rather small, but very bright and piercing. His natural expression was grave, almost severe, but his smile was extremely winning, and he was jovial in humor. He was very fond of the country, walking in the fields, where under a tree he would lie for a half day together, humming the melodies which occurred to him, and making notes in the bits of blank paper which he always carried. These pocket note books have been preserved, and we find in them themes in crude form which he used for some important movement or other, often several years later. Among the works produced while this habit was strongest were the sixth and seventh symphonies, than which no works in music are more charming.
[Ill.u.s.tration: [autograph] Louis Van Beethoven]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HAYDN, MOZART AND BEETHOVEN COMPARED.
The 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 surpa.s.sed by any composer. Beethoven is often more impa.s.sioned; 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 ill.u.s.trated in the feminine-looking faces of the Greek Apollos, and the St. Michaels and archangels of Guido Reni and Raphael. It is free from pa.s.sion 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 59.
REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE t.i.tLE 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 pa.s.sionate 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 n.o.ble and the lovely, but also the ign.o.ble, 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.