the Mass in D and the last Quartets and Pianoforte Sonatas.
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827; nature most appropriately
giving a dramatic setting to the event by a terrific storm of hail
and snow, lightning and thunder. It would take too long to dwell
on the many characteristics of the man Beethoven. Power, indi-
viduality and sincerity were stamped upon him, and his music
is just what we should expect from his nature. He embodied all
the longings, the joys and sorrows of humanity, and gave them
such burning utterance that the world has listened ever since.
[Footnote 133: The prefix van is not a symbol of nobility.]
[Footnote 134: See the twoBeethovenianaby Nottebohm.]
To touch now upon a few of the formal aspects of Beethoven’s
work, as far as verbal analysis can help, it may be asserted
that he is the acknowledged master of the Sonata Form as Bach
was of the Fugue, and in his hands this form, and also the Air
with Variations, were raised to a potency the influence of which
is felt even to-day. From beginning to end every portion of
the Sonata Form was made over and vitalized. Instead of the
perfunctory “flourish of trumpets” which served previous com-
posers for an introduction, this portion with Beethoven deftly
leads on the hearer to a contemplation of the main work, and
is as carefully planned as the porch of a great Cathedral. For
examples, witness the continually growing excitement generated
in the introductions to the Second and Seventh Symphonies, the
breathless suspense of the introduction to the Fourth, and the
primeval, mysterious beginning of the Ninth. And then what
a difference in the character and emotional suggestiveness of
the themes, that with Beethoven are actual human voices, dra-
matic characters, which once met can never be forgotten. As
Lavoix says of the Fifth Symphony, “Is not this a drama in its
purity, where passion is no longer the attribute of a theatri-
cal work, but the expression of our own individual feelings?”
No longer are the transitions mere mechanical connections, but
a portion of the structure which, though subsidiary, is yet or-
ganically developed from that which precedes and inevitably
related to that which follows. In the development section we
find the real Beethoven. Here his marvellous freshness of inven-
tion found full play. Such inexhaustible fancy, such coherence
of structure, such subtlety of transformation were unknown in
former times, when development was often as lifeless as the per-
functory motions of an automaton. Beethoven’s developments