Page:Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Grove).djvu/24

 each of the three is made to do duty in different positions and parts of the scale, with great ingenuity, and with an effect of which the hearer may judge for himself. At length, the semiquavers are consigned to the Basses, who retain them for twenty bars. It takes Beethoven, in all, forty bars to work off this mood; and at the end of it he seems more than ever alive to the capabilities of his little subject for expressing the thoughts which are in his mind. But the mood has softened, and now the phrase appears as a "Cantabile" — a word he never uses without special meaning — between the First and Second Violins, the 'Cellos, accompanying with the quaver portion of the theme.

At length, he seems to recollect that there are other materials at command, and, turning to the second half of the second subject (No. 7), he gives it in A minor, treating it partly as before and partly in double counterpoint, the melody in the Basses and the arpeggios in the Treble. But the charm of the little semiquaver phrase is still too much for him. He returns to it once more, trying it this time mixed with inversions; and at length, as if resolved to dismiss it forever from his thoughts, gives it with one grand burst of the whole Orchestra. With this, he completes the due circle of the form, and arrives at the resumption of the original subject (No. 2) in its entirety, after having made so thorough a treatment