New-York tribune., 1910-08-28

celestial regions, into WHICH BeetnOVenS soul
SCARED SO often when it's pinions took slow
and measured movement? Then. if shallow
assfons murmur "and the deeps dumb" as
Sir Walter Raleigh said. the passions which
not only murnur but mutter and swell and roar
in this sonata shallow? No one shall think IL
who hears the music. The epithet is misead-
ing becat Sc it is inconclusive and vague though
it is not as harmful as it's companion, Moon
light" which term has not only given rise to
multitude Of foolish interpretations, as / have
iatimated but also to multitude Of apocryphal
stories which in some instances have got into
and disfigured bioa,ra phies Of the great com
poser.
SCHNEIDER relates that once when ne asked
beethoven to tell him what the f minor and d
minor (Op 81, No. y sonatas meant he received
only the oracular answer, Read Shakespeares
Tempest Many a student and commentator
has no doubt since then read THE Tempest IN
the hope of finding a clew to the emotional
contents which Reethoven's utterance indicates
hid received expression in the two works 50
singuIarIy brought into relationship; has read
and been baffied But there no tempests
except those created by the elements OF nature?
What else those psychological struggles
which Beethoven felt called upon more and
more to deIfneate as he was more and more
shut out from companionship with the external
world and its denizens? Such struggles are in
the truest sense of the word tempests
The ,so ss@Res: ae s.ds. in ny 5sss mnd s feeling else
Save what beats there
And one shall scarcely attempt to find verbal
symbols for the music of the first and last
movements of the sonata without being thrown
lack on the familiar one Of night and storm.
The chief trouble caused by Beethoven's dark
hint is that it invites us to find in the sonatas
evFer
and internal such see in Shakespeares
comedy of enchantment But Beethoven some
times liked to talk in riddles. and was so fire.
uuentIy lost in profound broodings that it is
possible he did not mean his words 10 be ac-
cepted as literally and Complementary as his
Boswell wanted to accept them. 1t IS even pos
sible that the question merely brought up
feeting memory of the mood Of the last move
ment and the circumstances Of it5 composition
Ries is authority for the statement that once Gt
must have been in the summer of lSt4) while
he was walking with Beethoven they wandered
so far into the country that it nearly
o'clock before they got back to D0bling, where
Beethoven was living at the time During the
walk Beethoven alternately kept hUmming and
howling up and down the scale without ref
erence to any particular intervals. When asked
the meaning of this he replied that the theme Of
the final allegro of his sonata had occurred to
him. His conduct indicated that he was in a
state of emotional excitement-again storm,
struggle, but Of the soul not Of the earth.
1t was only when saying farewell TO the piano
forte in the last group Of sonatas that Bee
thoven made large use of the polyphonic forms;
but to another form he paid tribute all through
his career 1t is that OF the theme and yaria-
tions. He ten years old when he wrote
' arations on a march by Dressler; he vas
flty-three when he put the capstOne on his crea-
tions in this form by his "Thirty-three Earia-
tions on Waltz by DabelI" (Op- 12OD. The
variation form is old: it suggests reflection.
technical skill, Journalism; yet Beethoven made
il as perfect a vehicle for soulful poetizing
he had made the free fantasies in his sOnatas
and symphonies In the old conception Of the
FORM one which left the theme after all its
essentially what it had been at the
t beginning. il may be said to have reached its
in Bach. Beethoven breathed a
new life into it and lifted it to a height which
composer has been able to reach since. Indeed
it may be said that only three of his successors
have been able to apply his ideal methods
a-endelssohn in his Variations strieuses"
in his "Etudes symphoniqUes and
Brahms in his variations on themes by Handel
Paganin SchUmann and himself BeethOven's
purpose in his variations not, like that Of
the composer who preceded and the majority of