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The music of Beethoven expresses the struggle, the contest, the sufferings of humanity, as Art has never done before; but it always contains an eternal prophecy, rather than a mournful regret, and in the last triumphant symphony it swells onward and upward, until at last it bursts forth in all the freedom and gush of song, and its theme is "The Hymn to Joy."
When Dvorák is himself, and does not pass outside the boundaries within which he can breathe freely, he produces results so genuine and powerful that one might easily mistake him for a great musician; but when he competes with Beethoven or Handel or Haydn, we at once realise that he is not expressing what he really feels, but what he thinks he should feel, that he is not at his ease, and that our native men can beat him clean out of the field.
At the Gewandhaus and also at Prague, where Dionys Weber ran through a Beethoven symphony as if it was a Haydn allegro Richard got his first lessons in the art of conducting, by a method for which much may be said, that is, he first learnt here how the thing should not be done.
Beethoven had been disappointed in any and every plan formed for the future of the young man. He at first looked for great things from him; by gradual stages his expectations were so modified that at last he began to fear that he would never be able to provide for his own maintenance.
Haydn, and eventually Beethoven, have improved this form, and rendered it artistically significant, by the originality of their devices, and particularly, by connecting the single variations one with the other, and establishing relations of mutual dependence between them.
It was not that he disputed the greatness of these composers, but he was out of sympathy with them, and never could forgive the last two for having led music astray from the Handel tradition, and paved the road from Bach to Beethoven. Everything connected with Handel interested him. He remembered old Mr.
Where Beethoven is unapproachable, however, is in his slow movements, the Adagios, solemn and portentous, in which all of world-sorrow finds expression. It is in these scenes of terror that his powers stand out with supernatural clearness. His infinitude impresses one. It is as if he had penetrated other spheres and could speak in new tongues. He delighted in startling contrasts.
In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall. Beethoven chose to make all right in the end. He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered.
"When you funked becoming a Beethoven, I got a dog and called him after you." "What? you called him Peter?" "No, Beethoven!" "Beethoven! Really?" "Really. Here, Beethoven!" The spaniel shook himself, and perked his wee nose up wistfully towards Lancelot's face. Peter laughed, with a little catch in his voice. He didn't know whether he was pleased, or touched, or angry.
What has become of the threescore and more operas of Donizetti, and the forty of Rossini some of which for years monopolized the stage so completely the world over that Weber and Beethoven were ignored even in Vienna and the German capitals? They are dead, and all efforts to revive them have been futile.
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