seem really trifling (nay, almost jiggy) by the side of the grand opening, so broad and victorious? We are rather reminded of that traditional movement, whose ambling hilarity is our special horror, viz., the Rondo--we hope by now decently dead and buried; nay, we think, too, of the Sonata in G (Op. 31). This unlucky subject seems to us as unworthy its glorious predecessor as the last movement of that sonata is unworthy of the first--that burst of inspiration, like water from the rock, rolling on into broad _Symphonische Dichtung_. (In the course of the present _motiv_, consecutive octaves are prominent). A little further on--one bar and a half, true Beethoven, is worth a page of such undignified _Tonspiel_. It is one of those bars which convey a "shock of delight" whenever they catch the musician's eye--
[A] Neither can we but regret the re-introduction of the "allegro" subject; that sublime idea had already done its true work (as we feel), and there only remained to break into one overwhelming burst of triumph, and then an end.
Few pleasures could be more elegant than to extend such an idea _ad lib._ as an andante on the organ. (We can imagine its effect as a prelude in some old rural church--say on a mellow Sunday afternoon).
Another notable point is, the "grinding out" (long before Berlioz) of the minor second against the tonic; an effect of extraordinary resolution and power--
eloquently expressive, indeed, of a determination to bear it out against the shocks of doom. In this and other traits, we have the true Beethoven--such spiritual energy as (except in Handel, and with him it was less human) had not yet been dreamt of; such suffering in strife, and yet such glorying in it; such temptations in the wilderness (of his own heart, as well as elsewhere); such final victorious success! And, here we are brought back into our old more genial vein and strain; we forget the spots on the sun, and lose ourselves in his overpowering effulgence. This "_erhabensten Triumphgesang_" is, to us, that of resurrection; when the ponderous lid was burst from within with light, which at once--so the great fancy expatiates--redoubled the splendour of day all over the world. Handel's selected words--nay, and very remarkably, the great flash-of-chorus itself (one could, indeed, imagine it as having suggested Beethoven's, they are so much alike)--come into the mind,--