fly in the face of facts, for a large proportion of the music since
Beethoven is on a poetic basis and has descriptive titles. Others
claim that they cannot understand it. But that is their loss, not
the fault of the music; the composer writes it and it is for us to
acquire the state of mind to appreciate it. Another misleading
allegation, often heard, is that a piece of program music should
be so clear and self-sufficient that the hearer needs to know noth-
ing of the title to derive the fullest enjoyment. But this simply
begs the question. As well say that in listening to a song we need
to know nothing of the meaning of the text. It is true that in
listening to Beethoven’sCoriolanus, for example, any sensitive
hearer will be impressed by the vitality of the rhythm and the
sheer beauty of orchestral sound. But to hold that such a hearer
gets as much from the work as he who knows the underlying
drama and can follow sympathetically the correspondence be-
tween the characters and their musical treatment is to indulge in
reckless assertion. The true relationship between composer and
hearer is this: when works are entitledCoriolanus,Melpomene,
Francesca da Rimini,Sakuntala,L’après-midi d’un Faune,The
Mystic Trumpeter,L’apprenti Sorcier, and the composers reveal
therein the influence such subjects have had upon their imagi-
nation, they are paying a tacit compliment to the hearer whose
breadth of intelligence and cultivation they expect to be on a
par with their own. If such be not the case, the fault is not the
composer’s; the burden of proof is on the listener.[167] Let us
now trace certain relationships between the drama ofCoriolanus
and the musical characterization of Beethoven. The Overture
was composed as an introduction to a tragedy by the German
playwright von Collin, but as the play is obsolete and as both
von Collin and Shakespeare went to Plutarch for their sources,
a familiarity—which should be taken for granted[168]—with the
English drama will furnish sufficient background for an appreci-
ation of the music. The scene before the city gates is evidently
that in which Volumnia and Virgilia plead with the victorious
warrior to refrain from his fell purpose of destruction. The work
is in Sonata-form, since the great Sonata principle ofduality
ofthemeexactly harmonizes with the two main influences of
the drama—the masculine and the feminine. It is of particu-
lar interest to observe how the usual methods of Sonata-form
procedure are modified to suit the dramatic logic of the sub-
ject. The work begins Allegro con brio, with three sustained
Cs—as if someone were stamping with heavy foot—followed by
ann
(Ann)
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