Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/429

 to let the material dictate new idioms—and those of the third often show the positive overbalancing of all formal factors by the stress of self-expression, so that the result is difficult, abstruse, occasionally almost incoherent. Even in the first 'manner,' we notice the composer's desire to say something, to communicate, rather than merely to make something impersonally attractive. In the second, this greatly increases, showing itself sometimes in impatient or humorous caprice, sometimes in novel and daring cumulations of energy and animation, sometimes in wistful pathos or ecstatic elevation, but with all elements under perfect artistic control. In the third, the subjective values are not only intensified, but often marked by a different quality. The conceptions are usually gigantic, the strain of emotion constant and even agonized, the sense of struggle more pervasive. By common consent these final works are felt to represent one of the highest efforts of musical art to utter the deepest experiences of the human spirit. But to appreciate them requires a perception made sympathetic both by study and by much acquaintance with life.

The merely technical innovations of Beethoven are relatively few. His prevailing general method is that of the sonata, though he was also fond of variations. Within the sonata outlines he was freer than his predecessors in key-contrasts and modulation, the constituent materials were far better connected and blended, his 'subjects' strikingly fresh and telling, especially in rhythmic structure, his subsidiary matter and episodes often raised into great prominence, and his introductions and codas sometimes surprisingly expanded and enriched. His frequent replacing of the stiff minuet by a piquant or fiery scherzo was a genuine novelty, as was also his building out of some extended works by means of a grand finale, sometimes in variation-form. He was singularly free from dependence upon stock-phrases or conventional passages, as well as from mannerisms of his own. All this illustrates not only his originality, but how radical was his revolt from the habitual commonplaces of the 18th century.

His melodic freshness and richness are conspicuous, surpassing even Mozart's in many ways. The difference lies in extension of phrase, fullness of harmonic substance, power of climacteric and often pathetic suggestion, readiness of development and transformation. Every passage has its own character, individual and unmistakable, and each is fraught with meaning