Then comes a most grotesque and amusing passage, in which, three several times, these poor lumbering double basses hurl themselves upon the theme, twice only to give up in despair after the first measure and pause as if for breath. The effect of this brave attack and utter failure to "keep up the pace" is irresistibly comic. But the third time proverbially never fails, and in the measures following 168 they hold to their effort with bull-dog tenacity, and succeed in reaching a safe haven in the G of measure 173. Thereupon the theme enters once more above them, and is once more carried through an exciting fugal chase, the entrances, which the student should trace out carefully, occurring in measures 176, 180, 182, and 184, each time a little higher up. The cadence is reached in 200, and the entire passage from the inept onslaughts of the basses is almost literally repeated (200-227), except that now it becomes quieter and quieter, and finally leads back to the mysterious scherzo theme (239-257).
This time the ruggedness of the second strain of the scherzo has all disappeared, and it remains delicate, almost ethereal, through measures 258 to 330, with which the scherzo proper ends. As has been stated, no complete pause is reached before the finale, but instead of the cadence we have placed at the end, there is a long passage leading over into the splendid march-like theme of the last movement. How this passage is made out of the themes of the scherzo itself will be seen by referring to Figure LXIII.
With this scherzo from the Fifth Symphony we may take our farewell of Beethoven for the present, and also of the art in which he represents one of the great culminating points. After him it seemed to musicians for a while as if the triumphs of organic musical structure could no further go, and they turned their attention in other directions, and sought for other kinds of interest. But to follow them on these new paths is not a part of our present undertaking.
We have now followed the continuous and unbroken course of the development of music from the most primitive sounds grouped together in rude patterns by savages, up to the symphonies of Beethoven, which must always remain among its most wonderful and perfect monuments. We have seen how all music, which has any beauty or interest, is based on certain short characteristic groups of tones called motives, and how these are made to take on variety, without losing unity, by being "imitated," "transposed," "restated after contrast," "inverted," "augmented" or "diminished," "shifted in rhythm," and otherwise manipulated. We have examined simple cases of this treatment of musical ideas in representative folk-songs. We have seen how the polyphonic style of Bach, in which these bits of melody occur everywhere throughout the tissue of the music, arose and reached its perfection. We have studied the simple dances which, adopted by the musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were developed by them and combined in "suites." Then, proceeding to a higher stage of artistic evolution, we have examined the various plans which composers devised for making longer pieces in which variety and unity were still able to coexist--such forms as the minuet, the theme and variations, the rondo, and the sonata-form. In conclusion, we have analyzed representative examples of music composed in these typical forms during the great classical period of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.