Page:Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Grove).djvu/30

26 are the beauties of the second and third movements,—and it is impossible to exaggerate them,—and original, interesting, and impressive as are the various portions of the Finale, it is still the opening Allegro that one thinks of when the Ninth Symphony is mentioned. In many respects, it differs from other first movements of Beethoven. Everything seems to combine to make it the greatest of them all. The mysterious introduction which takes one captive at once; the extraordinary severity, simplicity, and force of the main subject; the number of the subsidiary themes, the manner in which they grow out of the principal one, as the branches, twigs, and leaves grow out of a tree, and the persistence with which they are forced on the notice; the remarkable dignity of some portions and the constant evident restlessness of others; the incessant alternations (as in no other work) of impatience and tenderness, with the strange tone of melancholy and yearning; and the consequent difficulty of grasping the composer's ideas, notwithstanding the increasing conviction that they must be grasped,—all these things make the opening Allegro of the Ninth Symphony a thing quite apart from all the others. Even the first Allegro of the "Eroica," with all its grandeur and all its beauty, must yield to this, at once the last and the greatest orchestral work and the most personal legacy of its great author. It is