Page:Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Grove).djvu/29

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Was ever grief at once more simply, more fully, and more touchingly told? Those sorrows which wounded the great composer during so many of the last years of his life,—through his deafness, his poverty, his sensitiveness, his bodily sufferings, the ingratitude and rascality of his nephew, the slights of friends, the neglect of the world, —sorrows on which he kept silence, except by a few jeering words in his letters, are here beheld in all their depth and bitterness. We almost seem to see the tears on his noble cheek. But, if Beethoven thus succumbs to emotion, it is only for a moment. His independence quickly returns, and the movement ends with the great subject in its most emphatic and self-reliant tone.

The opening movement is almost always the most important portion of a Symphony. It gives the key to the work, in every sense of the word, and is usually the representative member of the entire composition. The opening Allegro of the Ninth Symphony is no exception to this rule. Great as