1. I Am what Is.2. I am all that is, was, will be. No mortal hath ever lifted my veil.3. He is alone, self existent (Er ist allein von ihm selbst); and to this Unique all things owe their being.
1. I Am what Is.2. I am all that is, was, will be. No mortal hath ever lifted my veil.3. He is alone, self existent (Er ist allein von ihm selbst); and to this Unique all things owe their being.
In the last sentence, we may observe, there is (as usual) a contradiction with the first—a confusion between theism and pantheism; for, if the great I Am is all, all things cannot be said to owe their being to him, butarehim—fragmentary manifestations of him.
A list of the books found in Beethoven'sHandbibliothek, are also, in some sort, a key to the man (and his music).Ecco!Shakespeare; Goethe's Poems, "Wilhelm Meister," and "Faust"; Schiller; Tiedge's "Urania" (Beethoven's beautiful "An die Hoffnung," Op. 32, is a setting of a song in that); Seumes' and Matthison's Poems, and others; "Briefe an Natalie über Gesang," von Nina d'Aubigny-Engelbrunner (much esteemed, and recommended by Beethoven); Klopstock; Zach; Werner; Herder (Goethe's "Master"); Plato; Aristotle; Xenophon; Plutarch; Euripides; Horace; Pliny; Quintilian (these, I presume, translated—Dr. Nohl does not say); Thomson (whose nature-painting made him specially prized); and Ossian (Napoleon's favourite).
We read that against the words, often cited too, of Carlyle, "Two things strike me dumb; the moral law within us, and the starry heavens over us"; he wrote—"mit kräftigen Schriftzug"—Kant.In his celebrated will, we read—"I will seize Fate by the throat, quite bow me down it never shall." In his Journal, 1816, we read, "The grand mark of a great man; stedfastness in unhappy circumstances." One of his remarks was this:—"There is nothing higher than this—to getnearer to the Godhead than other men; and thence diffuse its beams over mankind." Another noteworthy observation was this:—"Celebrated artists are always prejudiced (or pre-occupied); therefore, their first works are the best, although they germinated in obscurity."—(Nohl's "Life of Beethoven," vol. 3, p. 238). One of his most pregnant remarks was the following:—"All real invention is moral progress" (Alle echte Erfindung ist moralisher Fortschritt).
Beethoven's music is so pregnant, that it is difficult to sum up what it contains. As before stated, it is a microcosm, both of man and the world: it especially unrolls before us man (how he thinks, and feels, and fights) as much as the powerful disquisitions of a Kant or Hegel. It is representative, because so intensely subjective; representative from himself outward—he being not a narrowly but comprehensively subjective soul; we find in it (very profoundly) his own unsatisfied heart—type of how much in the world! We find in it his unhappy life—type of still more. We find in it his intense character, full of sublime passion, and only more dear to us for its faults. We find in it his infirmities—especially a dark prophesy ofmensinsana in corpore insano; but we were spared that sad spectacle, by the "cruel-to-be-kind" messenger of Providence. We find in it the pure passionate love of Nature most concentrated in the Teutonic nature—coruscating with mystic sparks shooting from the heart on all sides outward. We find in it at once the most intense lyrical and dramatic power hitherto known. We find in it, alike, gracious fancy and grand imagination. We find in it humanity and humour. Moreover, we find in it the grandestobjectivepower of painting—heroic battles,as well as with hope—on "our prison walls; far-reaching landscapes and aurora"; together with a subjective power and pre-eminence that is almost awful in its majesty. We find in it the subtle and the sublime—if it be not for sublime to be subtle. Last, and lowest, we find in it unsettled faith—distracting a soul of good, wearying and worrying his great good heart, but not overcoming it:
"It could not bring him wholly under moreThan loud south-westerns, rolling ridge on ridgeThe buoy that rides at sea, and dips and springsFor ever;"
"It could not bring him wholly under moreThan loud south-westerns, rolling ridge on ridgeThe buoy that rides at sea, and dips and springsFor ever;"
and herein is our Beethoven—he, too, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.Ach!Man is that, most—most intensely representative. This is the real reason why he so speaks to us, and shakes us; why he so influenced his contemporaries and followers. An age is represented by its greatest—that is, by the richest in goodness and insight, and these mutually represent each other; but you will not find them in temple or tabernacle—except, indeed, that not made by hands. You will find them where you find their heart—(where a man's treasure is, there is his heart also). Ask them what they think, and feel. You will find that they consider all our commonismsandalitiesbut as episodes—aye, and brief ones—if not, more or less, unconscious insanities. That, inevitably, as the world in its giant history proceeded from Nothingism (for how many ages?) to Fetishism—to Confuciusism—to Buddhism—to Jewism—to Paganism (or Greek and Romanism)—to Christianity; so common Christianity (the temporal, dogmatic, superstitious, local, parochial), must also proceed to something higher; which shall be at onceoutcome and all-compriser of the rest. Man has got to realise his identity with the Imperishable (caring little, if he must "soon be making head to go" from this—has soon "notice to quit" this lodging—in the cold ground); the absolute indestructibility of any one manifestation of force—or rather fact of force—for the manifestations change, and pass away. He has got to learn to love goodness for its own sake alone, and know that Conscience is God—realisingwith the most lyric and scientific conviction thateveryviolation of right or law, moral even more inevitably than physical—let every one search his own life and conscience for the proof—is punished here without or within—frequently, and most sublimely, subtly, within. Finally, he has got to make this his faith that—while clinging to the truly blessed hope of everlasting life, which is the natural corollary of our consciousness, as our dearest sheet-anchor; as the sense that most makes us feel infinite; and as the soul of beauty, or beautifying soul of all—so, nevertheless, the practical immortality of right action (or of goodness) perpetuating itself in what we do and say, here and now—is our chief concern, the sole thing essential; which we may supplement and consummate by falling back on the tremendous realization before expressed. Ifweare not immortal, we are bubbles of the eternal sea of being, andthatis——
Once again, then, let us repeat, such high belief, more or less, is thesoulof Beethoven's music (aye, even in his masses), for the eternal speaks behind the temporary, the mask; hence its specific gravity (greatest of all), its infinite significance. He is the morning star of this reformation, the breast-inflaming dawn of a new heaven in a grander clime—new firmament over New Jerusalem. Powdered-wigged Haydnand Mozart—powdered-wigged genius even, including full-bottomed-wigged Handel—could not proclaim such a creed;—almost, as it were, with thunder of cannon. But Beethoven ushered in the nineteenth century; he was the Napoleon of its better half—higher life; and in due time and order followers and apostles will succeed—have already arisen. The symphony, especially the un-betitled be-programmed symphony, is the purest manifestation of music, whose eloquence is better than words—(space, too, is silent); and the talk of sundry German professors, &c., about music "no longer playing a single part," coolly assuming, almost, the symphony to be an exploded error, we are almost tempted to describe as crotchety maundering or wordy wind, if not blatant jargon. This superfluous pity for music standing alone, also reminds us of "Poor God! with nobody to help him!" No! the symphony will still be penned by the tone-poet—intensely feeling and thinking, lyrico-dramatic man. It will be broad as the world, and have a soul of the highest. It will be the grandest absolute expression of the best which we see and are. But it will also be counterparted and supplemented by the "Word-made-Flesh" in tone (the Word is never so beautifully made Flesh as in tone), as Thought is made Flesh in the Word. Religion is the Heart of Art, whence all pulses and flows; and composers will—at last—get sick of setting twaddle and dogma, however venerable; and will celebrate pure truth, old or new. In setting the Higher Utterance of the past, they will reject the husk and keep the kernel—that of eternal universal application; or they will transfigure by ideal interpretation. In setting the new, they will set lyrical expression of the profound poet—the earnest words of the intensethinker, and not the jingle of the song-writer, the farrago of the libretto-concocter. In a word, the higher oratorio (as well as the higher drama), will play its part; be the exponent—as the symphony will be the expression—of the new man. This will be the mightiest manifestation of music—universal truth, profound feeling, transcendency, and humanity; Shakespeare and Emerson (not Milton) in one; incarnate in tone, published and borne aloft by Music and the Human Voice; culminating in such apotheosis at last!—after so many ages of stuttering,singingwill at length have reached to Highest Thought!
[A]Strauss (notthe dance composer), in rather a cavilling spirit, says this symphony describes the life of a hero. So it does, but not in the external sense he uses it in, but in the internal; life, means inner life. Or, again, the work celebrates heroism rather than a hero.
[A]Strauss (notthe dance composer), in rather a cavilling spirit, says this symphony describes the life of a hero. So it does, but not in the external sense he uses it in, but in the internal; life, means inner life. Or, again, the work celebrates heroism rather than a hero.
[B]Neither can we but regret the re-introduction of the "allegro" subject; that sublime idea had already done its true work (as we feel), and there only remained to break into one overwhelming burst of triumph, and then an end.
[B]Neither can we but regret the re-introduction of the "allegro" subject; that sublime idea had already done its true work (as we feel), and there only remained to break into one overwhelming burst of triumph, and then an end.
[C]Wordsworth's sonnet on the Swiss.
[C]Wordsworth's sonnet on the Swiss.
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