Page:Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Grove).djvu/16

 in that great phrase (see a, No. 2), notes for which a very remarkable and important rôle is destined. But, though for a moment in B-flat, he has no present intention of remaining there, and he immediately returns into D minor, and gives us this vigorous new phrase, ben marcato and forte in the whole orchestra.

which he immediately repeats, according to a favorite habit, in a more florid form,—showing at the same time how it can be made to imitate at a bar's interval—and at length arriving at the "second subject" in the key of B-flat. According to the usual rule, the "second subject" should have been in F, the relative major of D minor; but Beethoven has chosen otherwise. Having reached the key of B-flat, he plainly signifies his intention of not going back for some considerable time to D minor, by altering the signature to two flats, a thing which I am not aware of his having done in any other of his Symphonies.

The second subject is as strong a contrast to the first as can be desired or devised:—