Ludwig Van Beethoven

BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN German musical composer, was baptized (probably, as was usual, the day after birth) on Dec. 17, 1770, at Bonn.

Parentage and Childhood.

His family is traceable to a village near Louvain, in Belgium, in the 17th century. In 165o a lineal ancestor of the composer settled in Antwerp. Beethoven's grandfather, who came to Bonn in 1732, and became one of the court musicians of the archbishop-elector of Cologne, was an amiable man whom Ludwig van Beethoven, though only four years old when his grandfather died, remembered with affection to the end of his life. Beethoven's father, a tenor singer at the archbishop-elector's court, was a bad-tempered man whose wage earning capacity declined with his ability to keep sober. His wife, Magdalena Leym, or Laym—nee Keverich, for this was her second marriage—was, like the court musicians, a domestic in electoral palaces. The example of Mozart suggested to Beethoven's father that his son might be profitable as a Wunderkind. He accordingly began to give him a severe musical training, especially on the violin, when he was only five years old, at about which time they left the house in which he was born ( 515 Bonngasse, now pre served as a Beethoven museum).

At nine years of age Beethoven entered upon a course of clavier lessons under a singer named Pfeiffer, and obtained a little gen eral education from a certain Zambona. Van den Eeden, the court organist, and an old friend of his grandfather, taught him the organ and the pianoforte, with the result that in 1781 Van Eeden's successor, C. G. Neefe, was able to allow the boy to act occasionally as his deputy. With his permission Beethoven pub lished in 1783 his earliest extant composition, a set of variations on a march by Dressler. The title-page states that they were written in 1780 "par un jeune amateur Louis van Beethoven dge de dix ans." Beethoven's father could not make up his mind whether thus to antedate the compositions of his infant prodigy, or, as in the case of the three sonatas also written in 1783, to postdate his birth. Accordingly Beethoven for a long time believed that he was born in 1772, and the certificate of his baptism hardly convinced him, because he knew that he had an elder brother named Ludwig who died in infancy.

In the year of these first compositions, 1783, Beethoven was given the post of cembalist in the Bonn theatre, and in 1784 his position of assistant to Neefe became official. In a catalogue raisonne of the archbishop-elector's court musicians we rind "No. 14, Ludwig Beethoven" described as "of good capacity, still young, of good, quiet behaviour and poor," while his father (No. 8) "has a completely worn-out voice, has long been in service, is very poor, of fairly good behaviour, and married." First Visit to Vienna.—In the spring of 1787 Beethoven paid a short visit to Vienna, where he astonished Mozart by his extem porizations and had a few lessons from him. How he was enabled to afford this visit is not clear. After three months the illness of his mother, to whom he was devoted, brought him back. She died in July, leaving a baby girl, one year old, who died in November. For five more years Beethoven remained at Bonn supporting his family, of which he had been since the age of 15 practically the head, as his father's bad habits steadily increased until in 1789 Ludwig was officially entrusted with his father's salary. He had already made several lifelong friends at Bonn, of whom the chief were Count Waldstein and Stephan Breuning; and his pros pects brightened as the archbishop-elector, in imitation of his brother the Emperor Joseph II., enlarged the scale of his artistic munificence.

By 1792 the archbishop-elector's attention was thoroughly aroused to Beethoven's power, and he provided for Beethoven's second visit to Vienna. The introductions which he and Count Waldstein gave to Beethoven, the prefix "van" in Beethoven's name (which looked well though it was not really a title of no bility), and, above all, his astonishing playing and extemporiza tion, quickly secured his footing with the exceptionally intelligent and musical aristocracy of Vienna, who to the end of his life treated him with genuine affection and respect, bearing with his rudeness and irascibility, not as with the eccentricities of a fashionable genius, but as with the agonies of a passionate and noble nature.

Biographical Sources.

Beethoven's life, though outwardly uneventful, was one of the most pathetic of tragedies. His char acter has had the same fascination for his biographers as it had for his friends, and there is probably hardly any great man in history of whom more is known and of whom so much of what is known is interesting. The interest which it arouses has led to voluminous controversy on various points ; and on the identity of Beethoven's Unsterbliche Geliebte, Dr. Kalischer abuses Thayer in terms that rival the breeding of Bentley as his musical scholarship recalls the erudition of Boyle. On such dangerous ground encyclopaedists may excusably fear to tread.

The general lines of Beethoven's life are graphically traced, for English readers, in Grove's article thereon in the Dictionary of Music and Musicians; while the monumental biography of Thayer, who devoted his whole life to collecting materials, furnishes fuller information and deserves, it may be added, more mannerly treat ment than it has received from those who find occasion to correct it. Thayer, rescuing Beethoven's character from the sentimental legends which had substituted melodrama for life, dealt unflinch ingly with the facts, until the mass of grotesque and sometimes sordid detail only threw into clearer light the noble character and passionate zeal for the highest moral ideals throughout every distress and temptation to which a hasty and unpractical temper and the growing shadow of a terrible misfortune could expose a man.

Relations with Haydn.

The man is surpassed only by his works, for in them he had that mastery which was denied to him in what he himself calls his attempt to "grapple with fate." Dur ing his studies with Haydn some of the special difficulties that lay in his own character already showed themselves. Haydn, who seems to have heard of Beethoven on the latter's first visit to Vienna in 1787, passed through Bonn in July 1792, and was greatly impressed by his powers. It was probably at his instiga tion indeed that the archbishop sent Beethoven to Vienna to study under him. But Beethoven did not get on well with him, and found him perfunctory in correcting his exercises. Haydn appre ciated neither his manners nor the audacity of his compositions, and abandoned whatever intentions he may have had of taking Beethoven with him to England in 1794.

Beethoven could do without sympathy, but a grounding in strict counterpoint he felt to be a dire necessity ; so he continued his studies with Albrechtsberger, a mere grammarian who had the poorest opinion of him, but who could, at all events, be de pended on to attend to his work. The key to the situation is that Mozart had died at the age of 36, just at the time that Beethoven came to Vienna, and that Haydn was profoundly shocked by the untimely loss of the greatest musician he had ever known. At such a time Beethoven's tactlessness doubtless combined with his clumsy efforts at academic exercises to confirm Haydn in the belief that the sun had set for ever in the musical world, and prejudiced him against those bold features of style and form which the whole of his own artistic development had gone far to justify.

It is at least significant that those early works of Beethoven in which Mozart's influence is most evident, such as the septet, aroused Haydn's open admiration, whereas he hardly approved of compositions like the sonatas, op. 2 (dedicated to him), in which his own influence is stronger. Neither he nor Beethoven was articulate except in music, and it is impossible to tell what Haydn meant, or what Beethoven thought he meant, in advising him not to publish the last and finest of the three trios, op. 1. But whatever Haydn meant, he cannot have failed to contrast the achievements of Mozart, who after a miraculous boyhood had produced at the age of 25 some of the greatest music Haydn had ever seen, with the slow and painful development of his uncouth pupil, who at the same age had hardly a dozen presentable works to his credit. There is no evidence that Haydn ever came to understand Beethoven; and many years passed before Beethoven realized the greatness of the master whose teaching had so dis appointed him.

Rising Fame and Popularity.

From the time Beethoven settled permanently in Vienna, which he was soon induced to do by the kindness of his aristocratic friends, the only noteworthy external features of his career are the productions of his compo sitions. In spite of the usual hostile criticisms of his music in respect of its obscurity, exaggeration and so forth, his reputation became world-wide and by degrees actually popular; nor did it ever decline, for as his later works became notorious for their supposed extravagance and unintelligibility his earlier works be came better understood. He was no man of business, but he was incalculably suspicious and exacting in money matters, which in his later years frequently turned up in his conversation as a grievance, and at times, especially during the depreciation of the Austrian currency between 18o8 and 1815, were a real anxiety to him. Nevertheless, under good management his external pros perity would have been great. He was always a personage of importance, as is testified by every anecdote, including the poorly attested tale of his cramming his hat tighter on his head to show Goethe how to put royalty in its place.

In 1814 it seemed as if the summit of his fame was reached when his 7th symphony was performed, together with a hastily written cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick and the absurd fire work entitled Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria, once popular in England as the "Battle Symphony." The occa sion for this performance was the Congress of Vienna; and the Government placed the two halls of the Redouten-Saal at his disposal for two nights, while he himself was allowed to invite all the sovereigns of Europe. In the same year he received the free dom of the city, an honour much valued by him. After that time his immediate popularity, as far as new works were concerned, became less pronounced, as that of his easy-going contemporaries began to increase. Yet there was, not only in the emotional power of his earlier works, but also in the known cause of his increasing inability to appear in public, something that awakened the best popular sensibilities ; and when his two greatest and most difficult works, the ninth symphony and parts of the Missa Solennis, were produced at a memorable concert in 1824, the storm of applause was overwhelming, and the composer, who was on the platform in order to give the time to the conductor, had to be turned round by one of the singers in order to see it.

Deafness.

Signs of deafness had given Beethoven grave anxi ety as early as 1798. For a long time it is known, he had success fully concealed it from all but his most intimate friends, while he consulted physicians and quacks with eagerness; but neither quackery nor the best skill of his time availed him, and it has been pointed out that the root of the evil lay deeper than could have been supposed during his lifetime. Although his constitution was magnificently strong and his health was preserved by his passion for outdoor life, a post-mortem examination revealed a very complicated state of disorder, evidently dating from youth (if not inherited) and aggravated by bad food and neglect.

The touching document addressed to his brothers in 1802, and known as his "will," should be read in its entirety, as given by Thayer (iv. 4). No verbal quotation short of the whole will do it justice. It runs almost as one long unbroken sentence through the whole tragedy of Beethoven's life as he knew it then and fore saw its future. It dwells upon his natural love of society and his dread of it in his present and future condition. It reproaches men for judging him to be pugnacious and obstinate without suspecting that he may be incurably ill, and terrified lest the cause should appear. Beethoven declared that when those near him had heard a flute or a singing shepherd while he heard nothing, he was only prevented from taking his life by the thought of his art, for it seemed impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought out all that of which he felt himself to be capable. He requests that after his death his doctor shall be asked to describe his illness and to append it to this document in order that at least then the world may be as far as possible reconciled with him. He leaves his brothers his property, such as it is, and declares that only force of character has preserved his life and his courage through all his misery.

And, indeed, his art and his courage rose far above any level attainable by those artists who are slaves to the "personal note," for his chief occupation at the time of this document was his end symphony, the most brilliant and triumphant piece that had ever been written up to that time. On a smaller scale, in which mastery was the more easily attainable as experiment was more readily tested, Beethoven was sooner able to strike a tragic note, and hence the process of growth in his style is more readily traceable in the pianoforte works than in the larger compositions which naturally represent a series of crowning results. Only in his last period does the pianoforte cease to be Beethoven's normal means of expression. Accordingly, the sonatas may conveniently be given a more prominent place than the greater works in our dis cussion of Beethoven's art. They are a key to all the rest.

Anxieties.

Deafness is a cause of much inconvenience in con versation long before it is noticeable in music, and in 1806 Bee thoven could still conduct his opera Fidelio and be much annoyed by inattention to his nuances; and his last appearance as a player was not until 1814, when he made a great impression with his B flat trio, op. 97. At the end of Nov. 1822 an attempt to conduct proved disastrous. The touching incident in 1824 has been described ; but up to the last Beethoven seems to have found or imagined that ear-trumpets (of which a collection is now pre served at Bonn) were of use to him in playing to himself, though his friends were often pained when the pianoforte was badly out of tune, and were overcome when Beethoven in soft passages did not make the notes sound at all. The instrument sent to him by Broadwood in 1817-18 gave him great pleasure and he answered it with a characteristically cordial and quaint letter in the best of bad French. His fame in England was often a source of great comfort to him, especially in his last illness, when the London Philharmonic Society, for which the 9th symphony was written and a loth symphony projected, sent him f ioo in advance of the proceeds of a benefit concert which he had begged them to give—being in very straitened circumstances, as he would make no use of the money which he had deposited in the bank for his nephew.

This nephew was the cause of most of his anxiety and distress in the last 12 years of his life. His brother, Kaspar Karl, had often given him trouble ; for example, by obtaining and publish ing juvenilia, such as the trio-variations, op. 44, the sonatas, op. 49, and other trifles, of which the late opus number is thus ex plained. In 1815, after Beethoven had quarrelled with his oldest friend, Stephan Breuning, for warning him against trusting his brother in money matters, Kaspar died, leaving a widow of whom Beethoven strongly disapproved, and a son, nine years old, for the guardianship of whom Beethoven fought the widow through all the law courts.

The boy turned out unworthy of his uncle's persistent devotion, and gave him every cause for anxiety. He failed in all his ex aminations, including an attempt to learn some trade in the polytechnic school, whereupon he fell into the hands of the police for attempting suicide, and, after being expelled from Vienna, joined the army. Beethoven's passionately affectionate nature could neither educate nor understand a human being whose im pulses were not strenuous. The boy had really a not much better chance in his uncle's hands than in his mother's. A judicial de cision most unfortunately stopped his being sent to a good school in Russia. But Thayer, a faithful judge in matters of humanity, points out that long after the sentimental biographers of Bee thoven had done their worst for the nephew, that person pulled himself together and married respectably. He did nothing so mean in requital of Beethoven's inexhaustible affection as the spirit shown by writers who omit to record this.

Character.—Beethoven suffered throughout his whole life for lack of outlet for his affections. He was often deeply in love and made no secret of it ; but, after some vaguely rumoured sowings of wild oats he became as fierce as Browning in his resentment of the "artistic temperament" in morals; and his attachments, though mostly to persons unattainably above him in rank, never gave rise to scandal or ridicule. Penitence is not a fashionable virtue in this loth century; but Joachim has finely described Beethoven as a penitent; and this characteristic does not narrow, but enhances, the unorthodoxy, the humour and tragedy which in his art are blended as inextricably as in Shakespeare and in life. Beethoven's orthodoxy in morals amuses the Philistine when it shows itself in his objections to Mozart's Don Giovanni, and in his reasons for selecting the subject of Fidelio for his own opera. But genius is far too independent of convention to abuse it ; and Beethoven's character, with its masterfulness, its saeva indignatio and its peni tence, is as far beyond the shafts of Philistine wit as his art.

At the beginning of 1827 Beethoven had projects for a loth symphony, music to Goethe's Faust, and (under the stimulus of his newly acquired collection of Handel's works) any amount of choral music, compared to which all his previous compositions would have seemed but a prelude. But he was in bad health; the hospitality of his brother Johann, did not include bedroom fires and closed carriages ; and it resulted in a chill which ended in a fatal illness. A week before his death Beethoven was still full of his projects. Three days before the end he added a codicil to his will, and saw Schubert, whose music had aroused his keen interest. But Beethoven was not able to speak to him, though he afterwards spoke of the Philharmonic Society and the English; almost his last words being "God bless them." On March 26, 1827, during a fierce thunderstorm, he died, in the light of a pioneer, while the art with which he started was nevertheless already a perfectly mature and highly organized thing. And he is also extraordinary in this, that his power of constructing perfect works of art never deserted him while he revolutionized his means of expression. This may be true, though less obviously, of other great artists. But in mature art vital differences in works of similar form are generally more likely to be overlooked than to force themselves on the critic's attention. And when they become so great as to make a new epoch, it is generally at the cost of a period of experiment with perishable results. Nevertheless Beethoven's art moves farther from Mozart's than Mozart's moves from Handel's; and this in a process of development so smooth that its true "periods" should be marked as special stages for each particular work.

Evidence of the Sketch-books.—No artist has ever left more authoritative documentary evidence as to the steps of his develop ment than Beethoven. In boyhood he seems to have acquired the habit of noting down all his musical ideas exactly as they first struck him. It is easy to see why in later years he referred to this as a "bad habit," for it must often take longer to jot down a crude idea than to reject it. But Beethoven had acquired that habit ; and thereby he has, perhaps, misled some critics into over-emphasizing the contrast between his "tentative" self-critical methods and the quasi-extempore outpourings of Mozart. But it is probable that in every thoughtful mind every apparently sudden inspiration is preceded by some anticipatory mood in which the idea was sought and its first faint indications tested and rejected so instantaneously as to leave no impression on the memory.

The number and triviality of Beethoven's preliminary sketches should not, then, be taken as evidence of a timid or vacillating spirit. But if we regard his sketches as his diary their significance becomes inestimable. They cover every period of Beethoven's career, and represent every stage of nearly all his important works, as well as of innumerable trifles, including ideas that did not sur vive to be worked out. And the type of self-criticism is the same from beginning to end. The sketches of the first period show no lack of attention to elements that seem more prominent in the third. The difference between Beethoven's three styles appears first in its full proportions when we realize this complete con tinuity of his method and art.

First Period Works.—While he was handling a range of ideas not, to modern ears, glaringly different from Mozart's, he had no reason to use a glaringly different language. His contemporaries, however, found it more difficult to see the resemblance ; and, though their criticism was often violently hostile, they saw with prejudice a daring originality which we may as well learn to appre ciate with study.

Beethoven himself in later years partly affected and partly felt a lack of sympathy with his own early style. But he had other things to do than to criticize it. Modern prejudice has not his excuse, and the neglect of Beethoven's early works is no less than the neglect of the key to the understanding of his later. It is also the neglect of a mass of mature art that already places Beethoven on the same plane as Mozart, and contains perhaps the only traces in all his work of a real struggle between the forces of progress and those of construction. The truth is that there are several styles in Beethoven's first period, in the centre of which, "proving all things," is the true and mature Beethoven, whose scope is destined to expand beyond recognition.

The promise appears in the very earliest works. The pianoforte quartets which he wrote at the age of 15 are, no doubt, clumsy and childish in execution to a degree that contrasts remarkably with the works of Mozart's, Mendelssohn's or Schubert's boyhood; yet they contain material actually used in the sonatas, op. 2, Nos. I and 3. And the passage in op. 2, No. 3, is that immediately after the transition (bar 27 et seq.) where, as Beethoven then states it, it embodies one of his most epoch-making discoveries, namely, the art of organizing a long series of apparently free modulations by means of a systematic progression in the bass. In the childish quartet the principle is only dimly felt, but it is indisputably present ; and it afterwards gives inevitable dramatic truth to such passages as the climax of the development in the sonata, op. 57 (commonly called Appassionata), and, throughout the chaos of the mysterious introduction to the C major string-quartet, op. 59, No. 3, prepares us for the world of loveliness that arises from it.

The First Sonatas.

The first three pianoforte sonatas, op. 2, show the different elements in Beethoven's early style as clearly as possible. Sir Hubert Parry has aptly compared the opening of the sonata, op. 2, No. i, with that of the finale of Mozart's G minor symphony, to show how much closer Beethoven's texture is. The slow movement (also adapted from a juvenile quartet) well illus trates the rare cases in which Beethoven imitates Mozart to the detriment of his own proper richness of tone and thought, while the finale in its central episode brings a misapplied and somewhat diffuse structure in Mozart's style into direct conflict with themes as Beethovenish in their terseness as in their sombre passion.

The second sonata is flawless in execution, and entirely beyond the range of Haydn and Mozart in harmonic and dramatic thought, except in the finale. And it is just in the adoption of the luxurious Mozartian rondo form as the crown of this work that Beethoven shows his true independence. He adopts the form, not because it is Mozart's but because it is right and because he can master it. The opening of the second subject in the first movement (bar 58 et seq.) is a wonderful application of the harmonic principle already mentioned in connection with the early piano quartets. In all music nothing equally dramatic can be found before the D minor sonata, op. 31, No. 2, which is rightly regarded as marking the beginning of Beethoven's second period. The slow movement, like those of op. 7 and a few other early works, shows a thrilling solemnity that immediately proves the identity of the pupil of Haydn with the creator of the 9th symphony.

The little scherzo no less clearly foreshadows the new era in music by the fact that in so small and light a movement a modu lation from A to G sharp minor can occur too naturally to excite surprise. If the later work of Beethoven were unknown there would be very little evidence that this sonata was by a young man, except, perhaps, in the abruptness of style in the first movement, an abruptness which is characteristic, not of immaturity, but of art in which problems are successfully solved for the first time. This abruptness is, however, in a few of Beethoven's early works carried appreciably too far. In the sonata in C minor, op. i o, No. I, for example, the more vigorous parts of the first movement lose in breadth from it, while the finale is almost stunted.

Boldness and Breadth.

But Beethoven was not content to express his individuality only in an abrupt or epigrammatic style. From the outset breadth was also his aim, and while he occasion ally attempted to attain a greater breadth than his resources would properly allow (as in the first movement of the sonata, op. 2, No. 3, and that of the violoncello sonata, op. 5, No. I, in both of which cases a kind of extempore outburst in the coda conceals the col lapse of his peroration), there are many early works in which he shows neither abruptness of style nor any tendency to confine himself within the limits of previous art.

The C minor trio, op. I, No. 3, is not more remarkable for the boldness of thought that made Haydn doubtful as to the advis ability of publishing it, than for the perfect smoothness and spaciousness of its style. These qualities Beethoven at first natu rally found easier to retain with less dramatic material, as in the other trios in the same opus, but the C minor trio does not stand alone. It represents, perhaps, the most numerous, as certainly the noblest, class of Beethoven's early works. Certainly the smallest class is that in which there is unmistakable imitation of Mozart, and it is significant that almost all the examples of this class are works for wind instruments, where the technical limitations nar rowly determine the style and discourage the composer from taking things seriously. Such works are the beautiful and popular septet, the quintet for pianoforte and wind instruments (modelled super ficially, yet closely and with a kind of modest ambition, on Mozart's wonderful work for the same combination) and, in a more free, but not more weighty style, the trio for pianoforte, clarinet and violoncello, op. i i, and the horn sonata, op. 17.

The Second Period.

It is futile to discuss the point at which Beethoven's second manner may be said to begin, but he has him self given us excellent evidence as to when and bow his first man ner (as far as that is a single thing) became impossible to him. Through quite a large number of works, beginning perhaps with the great string quintet, op. 29, new types of harmonic and emo tional expression had been assimilated into a style at least intel ligible from Mozart's point of view. Indeed, Beethoven's favour ite way of enlarging his range of expression often seems to consist in allowing the Titanic force of his new inventions and the formal beauty of the old art to indicate by their contrast a new world grander and lovelier than either. Sometimes, as in the C major quintet, the new elements are too perfectly assimilated for the contrast to appear. The range of key and depth of thought are beyond those of Beethoven's first manner, but the smoothness is that of Mozart.

In the three pianoforte sonatas, op. 31, the struggle of the tran sition is as manifest as its accomplishment is triumphant. The first movement of the first sonata (in G major) deals with widely separated keys on new principles. These are embodied in a style which for abruptness and jocular paradox is hardly surpassed by Beethoven's most nervous early works. The exceptionally ornate and dilatory slow movement reads almost like a protest ; while the finale begins as if to show that humour should be beautiful, and ends by making fun of the beauty. The second of these sonatas (in D minor) is the greatest work which Beethoven had as yet written. Its first movement, already cited above in connection with the dramatic rising bass in op. 2, No. 2, is like that of the Sonata Appassionata, a locus classicus for such powerful devices. And it is worth noting that the only sketch known of this movement is a sketch in which nothing but its sequential plan is indicated. In the third sonata Beethoven enjoys on a higher plane an experience which he had often indulged in before, the attainment of smooth ness and breadth by means of a delicately humorous calm which gives scope to the finer subtleties of his new thoughts.

Beethoven himself wrote to his publisher that these three sonatas represented a new phase in his style ; but when we realize his artistic conscientiousness it is not surprising that they should be contemporary with larger works like the end symphony, which are characteristic rather of his first manner. His whole develop ment is ruled by his determination to let nothing pass until it has been completely mastered; and, long before this, his sketch-books show that he had many ambitious ideas for a 1st symphony, and that it was a deliberate process that made his ambitions dwindle into something that could be safely realized in the masterly little comedy with which he began his orchestral career. The easy breadth and power of the end symphony represent an amply suf ficient advance, and leave his forces free to develop in less expan sive forms those vast energies for which afterwards the orchestra and the string-quartet were to become the natural field.

Beethoven's Rubicon.

In the Waldstein sonata, op. 53, we see Beethoven's second manner forcibly displacing his first ; that is to say, we reach a state of things in which the two can no longer form an artistic contrast. The work, as we know it, is not only perfect, but has all the qualities of art in which the newest ele ments have long been familiar. The opening is on the same har monic train of thought as that of the sonata, op. 31, No. i, but there is no longer the slightest need for a paradoxical or jocular manner. On the contrary, the harmonies are held together by an orderly sequence in the bass, and the onrush is that of some calm diurnal energy of nature.

The short introduction to the finale is harmonically and emo tionally the most profound thing in the sonata, while the finale itself uses every new resource in the triumphant attainment of a leisure more splendid than any conceivable in the most spacious of Mozart's rondos. Yet it is well known that Beethoven originally intended the beautiful Andante in F, afterwards published sepa rately, to be the slow movement of this sonata. That Andante is, like the finale, a spacious and gorgeous rondo, which probably Beethoven himself could not have written at an earlier period. The modulation to D flat in its principal theme, and that to G flat near the end, are its chief harmonic effects and stand out in beau tiful relief within its limits. After the first movement of the Waldstein sonata they would be as out of place as the line, "But hist ! I must dissemble " in a play by Ibsen.

The sketch-books show that Beethoven when he first planned the sonata, was by no means inattentive to the balance of harmonic colour in the whole scheme, but that at first he did not realize how far that scheme was going to carry him. He originally thought of the slow movement as in E major, a remote key to which, however, he soon assigned the more intimate position of complementary key in the first movement. He then worked at the slow movement in F with such zest that he did not discover until the whole sonata was finished that he had raised the first and last movements to an altogether higher plane of thought, though the redundancy of the two rondos in juxtaposition and the unusual length of the sonata were so obvious that his friends ventured to point them out.

Beethoven's revision of his earliest works is now known to have been extensive and drastic ; but this is the first instance—and Fidelio and the quartet in B flat, op. 131, are the only other in stances—of any later work needing important alteration after it was completely executed.

Central Masterpieces.

From this point up to op. I o i we may study Beethoven's second manner entirely free from any survivals of his first, even as a legitimate contrast ; though it is as impossible to fix a point before which his third manner cannot be traced as it is to ignore the premonitions of his second manner in his early works. The distinguishing features in Beethoven's second style are the result of a condition of art in which enormous new possibilities have become so well known that the need for paradox ical emphasis has vanished, but the remoter issues have not yet come into view. Hence these works have become for most people the best-known and best-loved type of classical music. In their perfect fusion of untranslatable dramatic emotion with every beauty of musical design and tone they have never been equalled, nor is it probable that any other art can show a wider range of thought embodied in a more perfect form. In music itself there is nothing else of so wide a range without grave artistic defects from which Beethoven is entirely free. Wagnerian opera aims at an ideal as truly artistic, but in range so far wider than Bee thoven's that it passes beyond the bounds of pure music altogether. Within those bounds Beethoven remained, and even the apparent exceptions (such as Fidelio and his two great examples of "pro gramme music," the Pastoral symphony and the sonata, Les Adieux) only show how universal his conception of pure music is. Extraneous ideas had here struck him as magnificent material for instrumental music, and he never troubled to argue whether instru mental music is the better or worse for expressing extraneous ideas.

To describe the works of Beethoven's second period here would be to describe a library of well-known classics. Further illustra tions will be found in the articles on SONATA FORMS, CONTRAPUN TAL FORMS, HARMONY and INSTRUMENTATION. It remains here to indicate the essential features of his third style, and to conclude with a survey of his influence on the history of music.

The Third Period.

Beethoven's third style arose impercept ibly from his second. His deafness had very little to do with it; indeed, all his epoch-making discoveries in orchestral effect date from the time when he was already far too much inconvenienced to test them in a way which would satisfy anyone who depended more upon his ear than upon his imagination. The general features of Beethoven's latest style may be paralleled by the tendencies of all great artists who have handled their material until it contains nothing that has not been long familiar with them.. Such tenden cies lead to an extreme simplicity of form, underlying an elabora tion of detail which may at first seem bewildering until we realize that it is purely the working out to its logical conclusions of some idea as simple and natural as the form itself. The form, however, will be not merely simple, but individual. Different works will show such striking external differences of form that a criticism which applies merely a priori or historic standards will be tempted by the fallacy that there is less form in a number of such mark edly different works than in a number of works that have one scheme in common.

The extreme simplicity of Beethoven's themes in the first two movements of the quartet in B flat, op. 13o, and the tremendous complexity of the texture into which they are woven, at first seem mysterious and intangible rather than astonishing. The boldness with which the slow introduction is blended in broad statement and counter-statement with the allegro, is directly impressive, as is also the entry of the second subject with its dark harmony and tone, but the work needs long familiarity before its vast mass of thought reveals itself to us in its true lucidity. Such works are "dark with excessive bright." When we enter into them they are transparent as far as our vision extends. and their darkness is that of a depth that shines as we penetrate it. In all probability only a veil of familiarity prevents our finding the same kind of difficulty in Beethoven's earlier works.

Increasing Polyphony.

What is undoubtedly newest in the last works is their ubiquitous polyphony, an element always essen tial to the life of a composition, but never so prominent before, except in regular fugues. Polyphony inevitably draws attention to detail, and thus Beethoven in his middle period found its more obvious forms but little conducive to the breadth of designs which were not as yet sufficiently familiar to take any but the foremost place. Hence, among other interesting features of that second period, his marked preference for themes founded on rhythmic figures of one note, e.g., the famous "four taps" in the C minor symphony; an identical rhythm in a melodious theme of very dif ferent character in the G major concerto; a similar figure in the Sonata Appassionata ; the first theme of the scherzo of the F major quartet, op. 59, No. 1, and the five drum-beats in the violin con certo. Such rhythms give thematic life to an inner part without distracting attention from the surface. But in proportion as poly phony loses its danger, so does the prominence of such rhythmic figures decrease, until in Beethoven's last works they are no more noticeable than other kinds of simplicity. The impression of crowded detail is naturally more prominent the smaller the means with which Beethoven works and the less outwardly dramatic his thought. Thus those most gigantic of all musical designs, the 9th symphony, and the Mass in D, are, but for the mechanical difficul ties of the choral writing, as directly impressive as the works of the second period; and the enormous pianoforte sonata, op. 106, is in its first three movements easier to follow than the extremely terse and subtle works on a smaller scale that preceded it (sonata in A major, op. i o 1, and the two sonatas for violoncello, op. 102) .

New Fugue Forms.

Beethoven's increasing need for poly phony soon led him to write in fugue, not only, as previously, by way of episodic contrast to passages and designs in which the form and not the texture is the main object of interest, but as the con summation of a unity of form and texture that allows the mind to concentrate itself on the texture alone. This union was not effected without a struggle, the traces of which present a parallel to the abrupt sententiousness of some of Beethoven's early works. In his fugue-writing the impulse is so dramatic that it demands all Beethoven's firmness and resource in relation to the form of the whole piece. Yet the listener must attend not to the whole form, but must listen to the texture only, and let the form remain in the background of his mind. This notion is, in relation to the style, a paradox; and accordingly the texture is forced upon the listen er's attention by a continual series of ruthlessly logical bold strokes of harmony. From this and from the notorious violence of Bee thoven's choral writing, and also from his well-known technical struggles in his years of pupilage, the easy inference has been drawn that Beethoven never was a great master of counterpoint. Beethoven himself might afford to think so ; but his art is on the plane where an imperfect style becomes no worse than an imper fect instrument of which the defects can all be turned into quali ties. And the fact is that Beethoven's counterpoint becomes rough only under dramatic and emotional stress. No doctor of music could do better triple counterpoint than that in the andante of the string quartet in C minor, op. 18, No. 4, and there is no trace of crudeness in Beethoven's handling of harmonies, basses, or inner parts at any period of his career.

Beethoven may have mastered some things with difficulty, but he mastered nothing incompletely; and where he is not orthodox it is safest to conclude that orthodoxy is wrong. Had he lived for another ten years he would certainly have produced many choral works and many other great instrumental works in which this last remaining element of conflict between texture and form would have dwindled away. But while this would doubtless result in such works being easier to follow, it would yet be no sound criterion by which to stigmatize as an immaturity the roughness of the polyphonic works that we know. That roughness is a necessary condition, without which Beethoven's extant material could have received only the academic handling of a dead language. And by it was created that permanent reconciliation of polyphony and form from which has arisen almost all that is true in "Romantic" music, all that is peculiar to the thematic technique of Wagnerian opera, and all the perfect smoothness of Brahms's polyphony. Supreme Artistic Concentration.—The depth of thought and closeness of texture in Beethoven's later works are, of course, the embodiment of a no less profound emotional power. If we at times feel that the last quartets are more introspective than dra matic, that is only because Beethoven's dramatic sense is higher than ours. The subject is too large and too subtle for dogmatism to be profitable; and we cannot in Beethoven's case, as we can in Bach's, cite a complete series of illustrations of his musical ideas from his treatment in choral music of words which themselves interpret the intention of the composer. There is so little but the music itself by which one can express Beethoven's thought, that the utmost we can do here is to refer the reader, as before, to the articles on SONATA FORMS, HARMONY, INSTRUMENTATION, OPERA and Music, where he will find further attempts to indicate in what sense pure music can be described as dramatic and expressive of emotion.

As our range of investigation widens, and thoroughness of analy sis and study increases, so we shall surely find in ourselves an ever-deepening conviction that Beethoven, whether in range, depth and truth of thought, perfect sense of beauty, or absolute conscientiousness of execution, is the greatest musician, perhaps the greatest artist, that ever lived. There is no means of measuring Beethoven's influence upon subsequent music. Every composer of every school claims it. The immense changes which he brought about in the range of music have their most obvious effect in the possibilities of emotional expression ; and so every outbreak of vulgarity or sentimentality can with impunity claim descent from Beethoven, though its ancestry may be no higher than Meyerbeer. Consider, again, that confusion of thought which regards a series of works markedly different in form as containing less form than any number of works all cast in the same mould. Hence the works of Beethoven's third period have been cited in defence of more than one "revolution," attempted in a form which never existed in any true classic, for the purpose of setting up something the revo lutionist has not yet succeeded in inventing.

Immeasurable Influence.

To measure Beethoven's influence is like measuring Shakespeare's. It is an influence either too vague or too profound to define. Perhaps the truest account of it would be that which ignored its presence in the works of ill-balanced artists, or even in the works of those who profited merely by an increase of technical and harmonic resource which, though effected by Beethoven, would, after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, almost certainly have to some extent arisen, from sheer necessity of finding expression for the new experience of humanity, if Beethoven had never existed. Setting aside, then, all instances of mere domination, and of a permanently established new world of musical thought, and omitting Schubert and Weber as contemporaries, the one attracted and the other partly repelled, we may, perhaps, take three later composers, Schumann, Wagner and Brahms, as the leading examples of the way in which Bee thoven's influence is definitely traceable as a creative force.

The depth and solemnity of Beethoven's melody and later poly phonic richness are a leading source of Schumann's inspiration, though Schumann's artistic schemes exclude any high degree of organization on a large scale. Beethoven's late polyphony is carried on by Brahms to the point at which perfect smoothness of style is once more possible, and there is no aspect of his form which Brahms neglects or fails to realize with that complete originality which has nothing to fear from its ancestry. Wagner does not handle the same art-forms ; his task is different ; but Beethoven was the inspiring source, not only of his purely musical sense, but also of his whole sense of dramatic contrast and fitness. When he had shaken off the habits of second-rate operatic styles there remained to him, pre-eminently in his music and more imperfectly realized in his drama, a power of combining contrasted emotions found only in the greatest dramatists. Bach and Beethoven are the sources of the polyphonic means of expression by which he attains this achievement. Beethoven alone is the extraneous source of his knowledge that it was possible.

It is as certain as anything in the history of art that there will never be a time when Beethoven's work does not occupy the cen tral place in a sound musical mind. When Beethoven is out of fashion, that is because people are afraid of drama and of sublime emotions. And that amounts merely to a fear of life.