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 ideas from his treatment in choral music of words which themselves interpret the intention of the composer. There is so little but the music itself by which one can express Beethoven’s thought, that the utmost we can do here is to refer the reader, as before, to the articles on, , , and , where he will find further attempts to indicate in what sense pure music can be described as dramatic and expressive of emotion.

As our range of investigation widens, and thoroughness of analysis and study increases, so we shall surely find in ourselves an ever-deepening conviction that Beethoven, whether in range, depth and truth of thought, perfect sense of beauty, or absolute conscientiousness of execution, is the greatest musician, perhaps the greatest artist, that ever lived. There is no means of measuring Beethoven’s influence upon subsequent music. Every composer of every school claims it. The immense changes he brought about in the range of music have their most obvious effect in the possibilities of emotional expression; and so any outbreak of vulgarity or sentimentality can with impunity claim descent from Beethoven, though its ancestry may be no higher than Meyerbeer. Again, we have already referred to that confusion of thought which regards a series of works markedly different in form as containing less form than any number of works cast in one mould. Hence the works of Beethoven’s third period have been cited in defence of more than one “revolution,” attempted in a form which never existed in any true classic, for the purpose of setting up something the revolutionist has not yet succeeded in inventing. To measure Beethoven’s influence is like measuring Shakespeare’s. It is an influence either too vaguely universal to name or too profoundly artistic to analyse. Perhaps the truest account of it would be that which ignored its presence in the works of ill-balanced artists, or even in the works of those who profited merely by an increase of technical and harmonic resource which, though effected by Beethoven, would, after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, almost certainly have to some extent arisen from sheer necessity of finding expression for the new experience of humanity, if Beethoven had never existed. Setting aside, then, all instances of mere domination, and of a permanently established new world of musical thought, and omitting Schubert and Weber as contemporaries, the one attracted and the other partly repelled, we may, perhaps, take three later composers, Schumann, Wagner and Brahms, as the leading examples of the way in which Beethoven’s influence is definitely traceable as a creative force. The depth and solemnity of Beethoven’s melody and later polyphonic richness is a leading source of Schumann’s inspiration, though Schumann’s artistic schemes exclude any high degree of formal organization on a large scale. Beethoven’s late polyphony is carried on by Brahms to the point at which perfect smoothness of style is once more possible, and there is no aspect of his form which Brahms neglects or fails to realize with that complete originality which has nothing to fear from its ancestry. Wagner does not handle the same art-forms; his task is different, but Beethoven was the inspiring source, not only of his purely musical sense, but also of his whole sense of dramatic contrast and fitness. When he had shaken off the influence of Meyerbeer, which has so often been confused with that of Beethoven, there remained to him, pre-eminently in his music and more imperfectly realized in his drama, a power of combining contrasted emotions such as is the privilege of only the very greatest dramatic artists. Bach and Beethoven are the sources of the polyphonic means of expression by which he attains this. Beethoven alone is the extraneous source of his knowledge that it was possible. And it is as certain as anything in the history of art that there will never be a time when Beethoven’s work does not occupy the central place in a sound musical mind.

Up to 1823 we give in most cases the dates of publication, the date of composition being generally from one to three years earlier. Beethoven seldom had less than a dozen projects in hand at once, and their immediate chronology is inextricable; whereas publication generally means final revision. This list is purposely incomplete in order that unimportant works may not distract attention, even when they are late and on a large scale.


 * Sonata = Pianoforte sonata. Violin or violoncello sonata = for pianoforte, V. or Vc. Pianoforte trio = Pfte., V., Vc. Pianoforte quartet = Pfte., V., viola and Vc. String trio = V., Va., Vc. String quartet = VV., Va. and Vc. Pianoforte or violin concerto = Concerto with orchestra.