The reader who has attentively followed the story of the long and gradual development of music from the folk-song and peasant dance up to the point we have now reached, cannot but have been impressed by the character of preparation for some supreme achievement of which this development seems to partake throughout. All the laborious steps lead on toward a goal which even in the splendid work of Haydn and Mozart is not quite reached. Haydn crystallizes the form and style of instrumental music; Mozart adds his peculiar aristocratic grace of manner and classical beauty of substance, yet even in his work there remains a certain coldness and conventionality—the body of the art is perfect, but the spiritual passion of modern music as we know it is still lacking. Even during the life-times of these great musicians, however, the supreme genius who was to bring to its perfect flowering the plant they had so carefully tended was preparing for his work. In 1791, when Mozart died, and when Haydn made his first journey to London to produce his Salomon symphonies, Ludwig van Beethoven, born in 1770, was just entering on his young manhood.
In order to understand the character and work of Beethoven, it is necessary constantly to bear in mind the two-sidedtruth that the greatest men are those who combine the utmost receptivity and teachableness with a perfect self-dependence and fearless initiative. Beethoven, who is equally remarkable for both, could never have done what he did had he lacked either. Had he been merely "original" he could not have securely founded himself on the work of his predecessors, and, therefore, would probably not have surpassed them. Had he been content always to imitate, had he never ventured beyond what was sanctioned by tradition, he would never have inaugurated a new epoch in music. It becomes, therefore, a matter of great interest to trace these opposed but complementary traits of docility and unconventionality, first in his character, and secondly in his music.
In what has been written of Beethoven, his eccentricities have been so dwelt upon that his capacity for laborious study has hardly been appreciated. It is true that he was a restive pupil. He was taught for a while by Haydn, but soon quarreled with him. His teacher in counterpoint, the learned pedagogue Albrechtsberger, said of him: "He will never do anything according to rule; he has learnt nothing." But Beethoven was essentially self-taught; and in his efforts, under his own guidance, to master all the technical difficulties of his art, he showed the most inexhaustible patience and subjected himself to the most tireless labor. Never did the veriest dolt drudge more faithfully at the A, B, C of his art than the "divine Beethoven." We have proof of this in his sketch-books, many of which have been edited and printed by Nottebohm. In them we see him jottingdown his ideas, often surprisingly trite in the first instance, and then returning, day after day, to the task of developing them into the perfect themes of his finished compositions. Nothing could be more salutary to those who fancy that musical creation is entirely a matter of "inspiration" than a perusal of these endless pages in which Beethoven slowly and painfully separates the pure metal from the ore of his thought and refines it to complete purity.[36]
Beethoven's wonderful certainty of touch, economy of material, and logical coherence of ideas were doubtless attainable only by this laborious method of working. He learned, by careful imitation, all that the models left by his predecessors could teach him before he ventured to push beyond them. Yet even in his early 'prentice work, like the first two symphonies and the earlier piano sonatas, in which the influence of Haydn and Mozart are constantly evident, there is a vigor of execution, a ruggedness of style, and a depth of feeling, that are all his own. In other words, his strong originality was already coloring all that he did; even when he imitated, it was with a subtle difference.
Later, as his powers developed and self-confidence grew, he became more and more indifferent to tradition, more and more singly bent on following his own genius wherever it might lead him. A strong dramatic instinct began to possess him, showing itself in a love for sudden changes of harmony and rhythm, for unexpected transitions from loud tosoft or from soft to loud, and in other such eccentricities. His rhythms became more striking, his melodies broader and more various, his harmonies and modulations so daring and unprecedented that the conservatives of the day held up their hands in horror. His sense of musical structure, of that combining of themes in long movements which is akin to the architect's combination of pillars, arches, windows, buttresses and colonnades in great buildings, became so powerful and unerring that he created works of vaster proportions and more subtle symmetry than had ever been dreamed of before—so great and complex that they could be followed only by the highly trained ear and mind.
Such were the works of his maturity. Later still, as he became more and more thrown in upon himself by poverty, pride, the terrible affliction of deafness, and the failure of his contemporaries to understand him, he came to live entirely in his own ideal world, and his music became more and more markedly individual, and in some cases almost perversely so. His latest works are not thoroughly understood, even to-day, except after the most patient, exhaustive study.
The customary division of Beethoven's artistic life into three periods[37]is based on these internal differences observable in his works. Those of the first period, extending to about 1803, of which the most important are the piano sonatas up to opus 53, the first three piano concertos, the string quartets, opus 18, and the first and second symphonies, show him under the influence of Haydn and Mozart,though already more poignant, impassioned, and forcible than his models.
In the second period, the period of full and vigorous maturity, extending from 1803 to 1813, he throws off all restricting traditions, and stands forth a heroic figure, the like of which music had never seen, and may never see again. The compositions of this decade, among which may be specially mentioned the piano sonatas from the "Waldstein" to opus 90, the fourth and fifth piano concertos, the unique concerto for violin, the string quartets, opus 59 and opus 74, the overtures "Coriolanus" and "Egmont," the opera "Fidelio," the great Mass in C, and above all the six magnificent symphonies from the "Eroica" to the eighth, are among the supreme achievements of human art. They combine the utmost variety of form and style with a perfect unity; they are models of structure for all time; and as to expression, one knows not what to marvel at most, their rugged virility and intensity of passion, their deep pathos and tender sentiment, their moods of effervescent merriment, humor, and whimsical perversity, or their almost superhuman moments of mystical elevation.
The third period, extending from 1813 to Beethoven's death in 1827, is as we have said characterized by an almost excessive individuality, and is difficult to relate to the normal progress of musical art. Nevertheless it contains some of his greatest works—notably the Ninth Symphony, the Mass in D, and the final sonatas and quartets. The detailed study of it falls outside the province of this book.
With this brief and necessarily cursory survey of Beethoven'sachievement in its entirety, we may pass on to the examination of a single typical work, hoping in the course of it to make clearer to the student the two main facts about Beethoven on which we have been trying to insist: his indebtedness to his predecessors in the matters of general structure and style, and the indomitable originality by virtue of which all that he does is infused with a novel beauty and an unparalleled profundity of feeling. We shall choose for our first example one of the finest compositions of his first period—the "Path?ique Sonata," for piano, opus 13, taking up in later chapters some typical examples of his more advanced style.
Beethoven: Piano Sonata, Opus 13. First movement.
It will be noted that Beethoven adds to the three traditional sections of the sonata-form an introduction in slow tempo (of which we saw an earlier example in Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony) and a brief coda, based on the main material of the movement, to round out the complete movement satisfactorily. In his later work both of these additional sections came often to figure very prominently, the increased development he gave to them being indeed one of his most important contributions to sonata-form. We shall see in his Fifth Symphony a fine example of his treatment of the coda, which raises it to a dignity equal to that of the other organic sections. The introduction of theFourth Symphony extends to thirty-eight measures of slow tempo, that of the Seventh Symphony to sixty-two measures, with great variety of treatment.
The general structure of this movement, which is in extended sonata-form, is shown in the following tabular view: