Beethoven by George Alexander Fischer (reading in the dark .TXT) 📕

The Second Symphony is a great advance on the first, and consequently a greater departure from the advice laid down to him by others. His independence and absolute faith in himself and the soundness of his judgment are clearly illustrated here. The composition is genial and in marked contrast to the gloomy forebodings that filled his mind at this time. The second movement, the Larghetto, is interesting on account of the introduction of conversation among the groups of instruments, an innovation which he exploited to a much greater extent in subsequent works. In the Larghetto one group occasionally interrupts the other, giving it piquancy. There is a rhythm and swing to it which makes it the most enjoyable of the four movements. The critics hacked it again as might have been expected, the result being that the next one diverged still more from their idea of what a good symphony should be.

It was at this period that life's tragedy began to press down on him. He had left youth behind, and had entered on a glorious manhood. He was the idol of his friends, although his fame as a great composer had yet to be established. The affirmations of his genius were plainly apparent to him, if not to others, and he knew that he was on the threshold of creating imperishable masterpieces. A great future was opening out before him, which, however, was in great part to be nullified by his approaching deafness and other physical ailments. His letters at this time to his friend Dr. Wegeler, at Bonn, and to others, are full of misgivings.

But not alone is this unhappy frame of mind to be attributed to approaching deafness or any mere physical ailment. The psychological element also enters into the account and largely dominates it. The extraordinary character of the First and Second Symphonies seem to have had a powerful effect on his trend of thought making him introspective and morbidly conscientious. In a mind constituted as was his, it is quite within bounds to assume that the revelation of his genius was largely the cause of the morbid self-consciousness which appears in his letters of the period, and in the "Will." He recognized to the full how greatly superior this work was to anything of the kind that had yet appeared; singularly the knowledge made him humble. What he had accomplished thus far was only an earnest of the great work he was capable of, but to achieve it meant a surrender of nearly all the ties that bound him to life. The human qualities in him rebelled at the prospect. With the clairvoyance superinduced by much self-examination, he was able to forecast the vast scope of his powers, and the task that was set him. The whole future of the unapproachable artist that he was destined to become, was mirrored out to him almost at the beginning of his career, but he saw it only with apprehension and dread. There were periods when a narrower destiny would have pleased him more. "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required." He at times recoiled from the task, and would have preferred death instead. This was probably the most unhappy period of his life. He had yet to learn the hardest lesson of all, resignation, renunciation. That harsh mandate enunciated by Goethe in Faust: "Entbären sollst du, sollst entbären," had been thrust on him with a force not to be gainsaid or evaded.

With such a man but one issue to the conflict was possible: obedience to the higher law. In a conversation held with his friend Krumpholz, he expressed doubts as to the value of his work hitherto. "From now on I shall strike out on a new road," he said. He is now dominated by a greater seriousness; his mission has been shown him. Adieu now to the light-hearted mode of life characteristic of his friends and of the time. His new road led him into regions where they could not follow; from now on he was more and more unlike his fellows, more misunderstood, isolated, a prophet in the wilderness. Placed here by Providence specially for a unique work, he at first does not seem to have understood it in this light, and reached out, the spirit of the man, after happiness, occasional glimpses of which came to him, as it does to all sooner or later. He soon found, however, that happiness was not intended for him, or rather, that he was not intended for it. Something higher and better he could have, but not this. On coming to Vienna, and while living with Prince Lichnowsky, he made so much of a concession to public opinion as to buy a court suit, and he even took dancing lessons, but he never learned dancing, never even learned how to wear the court suit properly, and soon gave up both in disgust. The principle on which he now conducted his life was to give his genius full play, to obey its every mandate, to allow no obstacle to come in the way of its fullest development. That this idea controlled him throughout life, is apparent in many ways, but most of all in his journal. "Make once more the sacrifice of all the petty necessities of life for the glory of thy art. God before all," he wrote in 1818, when beginning the Mass in D. All sorts of circumstances and influences were required to isolate him from the world to enable him the better to do his appointed work. Probably no other musician ever made so complete a surrender of all impedimenta for the sake of his art as did Beethoven.

Music as an art does not conduce to renunciation, since its outward expression always partakes more or less of the nature of a festival. The claims of society come more insistently into the life of the musician than in that of other art-workers, the painter or literary man, for instance, whose work is completed in the isolation of his study. The musician, on the contrary, completes his work on the stage. He must participate in its rendering. He is, more than any other, beset by social obligations; he perforce becomes to a certain extent gregarious, all of which has a tendency to dissipate time and energy. It is only by a great effort that he can isolate himself; that he can retain his individuality. Beethoven's reward on these lines was great in proportion to his victory over himself.