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Eroica --represents not merely a contribution of unparalleled brilliancy to the symphonic music of the period, but an immense enlargement of its previously known possibilities. Such a work naturally dwarfs all that has gone before in its own kind; but it is very desirable to avoid the mistake of certain commentators who, perceiving a great gulf between No. 2 and No. 3, declare the former to be an immature work, not thoroughly characteristic of Beethoven, but exhibiting him as a mere disciple of Haydn and Mozart. While listening yesterday to the wonderfully animated and expressive rendering one could scarcely fail to be struck by the fact that it is all intensely Beethovenish; that it goes beyond Mozart, quite as distinctly and persistently as Mozart in his superb G minor Symphony goes beyond Haydn. We need a revision of the current view in regard to these early Beethoven Symphonies. Only the first is immature. No. 2 is stamped with the true Beethoven individuality on every page, and is comparable with Mozart's G minor in the richness of its organisation and the potency of its charm. The enormous difference between No. 2 and No. 3 is not to be correctly indicated by calling the former immature. It is a difference that separates the Beethoven Symphonies from No. 2 to the end into two well-defined groups. As was long ago observed, the odd-number Symphonies, beginning with 3, are cast more or less in the heroic mould, while the intervening even-number Symphonies are much milder in character--creations of halcyon periods in which the composer would seem to have been storing up energy for the titanic labours of 3, 5, 7, and 9. Bearing this in mind, we have no difficulty in assigning No. 2 to its proper place. It is to be grouped along with 4, 6, and 8, and it may thus be called the first of the
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Symphonies. Besides the general character of the music there is one very special reason for not accepting the view of No. 2 as an immature work. In the second subject of the Larghetto, we have a very beautiful and original musical idea, so thoroughly recognised by the composer as one of his best and most characteristic that he returned to it many years later when composing his last and greatest slow movement. Compare pp. 29 and 363 of Sir George Grove's
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Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies,
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Missa Solennis.
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Missa Solennis had not been heard at these concerts, but it is not surprising that performances of such a work should be few and far between. It is, beyond question, the most austere of all musical works--a product of Beethoven's quite inexorable mood. At the period when it was written the composer had become a sort of suffering Prometheus. Even apart from his deafness, it is wonderful that Beethoven's persistent ill-fortune, his isolated and unhappy life, should not have discouraged him and checked the flow of his creative energy. But that the mightiest of his compositions should have been produced when he was stone-deaf--that is surely one of the most perfectly amazing among well-authenticated facts! So far as we know, there never was any other case in which deafness failed to cut a person off altogether from the world of music. With Beethoven it only brought a gradual change of style. As the charm that music has for the ear faded away he became more and more absorbed, aloof, austere, and spiritual. The warm human feeling of his middle-period compositions gave way to a style of such unearthly grandeur and sublimity as are oppressive to ordinary mortals. Of that unearthly grandeur there is no more typical example than the
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Missa Solennis. Not only in regard to the composition but even in regard to a performance the ordinary language of criticism is at fault. Who ever heard a
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performance of the
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Missa Solennis