All these threads were gathered together by Beethoven, and woven into the complex fabric of his music. Great men are usually born at just the right moment, and Beethoven was no exception to the rule; for he found the art at just the point where a master spirit was needed to take its various elements and fuse them. Under his hands all the inessential parts dropped away, and the essentials were placed in such relation to each other that a completely organic work of art resulted.
_"Oxford History" Vol. III: Chapters X and XI. Grove's "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies." Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians:" articles "Beethoven," "Symphony," and "Form." Mason's "Beethoven and His Forerunners," Chapters VII, VIII, and IX._
[39] An examination of any one of the best folk-songs quoted in Chapter II, or the melodies of Bach, Handel, Haydn or Mozart quoted in succeeding chapters, will show how important an element of melody is this curve or outline.
[40] The themes in the minuet and finale of Haydn's "Emperor" quartet have a slight similarity of contour.
[41] Published for piano, two or four hands, by Peters, Leipzig. For convenience of reference, number all measures and parts of measures consecutively.
[42] The presence of measure 389--which is silent--has been a subject of discussion among musicians: it is sometimes omitted in performance.
[43] "Evolution of the Art of Music," Chapter XII.
The slow movements of the sonatas and symphonies of Haydn and Mozart were essentially lyric pieces in which the composer relied for his effect on the beauty of his melodies. These melodies, usually two in number, were varied by being presented in different keys and by being ornamented with passing-notes, scale passages, trills, etc. Each section was clearly separated from the others by cadence chords, so that the total effect was of a series of separate divisions, each, as it were, independent and complete in itself. There are, of course, exceptions to this method of procedure, particularly in the string quartets of Haydn and Mozart, which are more highly developed than is usual in their piano sonatas, but as a general rule this was their way of treating slow movements.
This lyric, sectional form of slow movement served as a foil to the more involved first movement. The lovely, serene melodies were not disturbed by passion, nor sacrificed for picturesque effect of any kind. In the string quartets and symphonies they were enlivened by a certain amount of polyphony (see Chapter X), and in the piano sonatas they occasionally departed from the simple regular form, but they seldom dealt with tragedy and seldom presented any evidence of that idiosyncrasy and intense individuality that marks the slow movement of later times.