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When the reason alleged for ranking the symphony above the oratorio leads us likewise to rank the sonata above the symphony, we seem to have reached a reductio ad absurdum. Now within two years, Mr. Paine's C-minor symphony has followed the completion of his oratorio. These peculiar associations are no doubt what is chiefly enjoyed in music, antecedent to a properly musical culture.

He was able to cope vigorously with the gigantic programs he set for himself. At moments, no doubt, as in the C-minor Symphony and so many of his piano-sonatas, one is repelled by a certain indefinable pompousness and self-righteousness and exasperated by the obviousness and dullness and heaviness of his art.

It is not merely the opening it is the whole content of the thing the struggle of a prisoned spirit. I would call The Captive a symphony, and print the C-minor themes in it, only it would seem fanciful. But it would not really be fanciful to put the second theme opposite the thought of freedom of the blue sky and the dawning spring. All except the scherzo. I couldn't find room for the scherzo.

And just then was a time when he was sick and worn when it seemed to him that the burden of his life was more than he could bear. He was haunted by the thought that he would lose his long battle, that he would go under and go down; and then it was that chance took him to a concert which closed with the great "C-Minor Symphony."

"As he looks through the C-minor symphony by Beethoven, a musician is transported to the world of fancy on the golden wings of the subject in G-natural repeated by the horns in E. He sees a whole realm, by turns glorious in dazzling shafts of light, gloomy under clouds of melancholy, and cheered by heavenly strains."

The secret of the thing is iteration. I must find a word that is like a hammer-stroke. I have tried twenty, but I have not found the one. I spent the rest of the day thinking over the whole first act, mapping it out, so to speak. I have often fancied a resemblance between The Captive and the C-minor symphony; I wonder if any one else would have thought of it.