Page:Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Grove).djvu/23

19 has an astonishingly passionate effect. But Beethoven is still too restless to remain even in this noble and dignified frame of mind; and he brings it to an end, as he did the prologue, with impatient sforzandos—this time in C minor,—and again introduces his four semiquavers, which he seems to love, as a mother sometimes loves a puny child, almost in inverse proportion to their significance. Something appears at last to decide him; and he goes off into a lengthened passage, founded entirely on these two bars of his original subject:—

The Second Violins and Basses have the working of the subject, while the First Violin indulges in savage leaps from its lowest G to the same note two octaves higher. This passage, six bars in length, is repeated three times in "double counterpoint,"—that is to say, the instruments change their parts among themselves, that which was above being played below, that which was below, above,—with other variations suggested by the ingenuity of the composer. There are three subjects,—that in semiquavers, that in quavers, and the octavo passage of the Violins; and