How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. | Page 9

same line into Beethoven's symphony in A major, in which the external sign of the poetical idea which underlies the whole work is also rhythmic--so markedly so that Wagner characterized it most happily and truthfully when he said that it was "the apotheosis of the dance." Here it is the dactyl, [dactyl symbol], which in one variation, or another, clings to us almost as persistently as in Hood's "Bridge of Sighs:"
"One more unfortunate Weary of breath, Rashly importunate, Gone to her death."
[Sidenote: Use of a dactylic figure.]
We hear it lightly tripping in the first movement:
[Music illustration] and [Music illustration];
gentle, sedate, tender, measured, through its combination with a spondee in the second:
[Music illustration];
cheerily, merrily, jocosely happy in the Scherzo:
[Music illustration];
hymn-like in the Trio:
[Music illustration]
and wildly bacchanalian when subjected to trochaic abbreviation in the Finale:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: Intervallic characteristics.]
Intervallic characteristics may place the badge of relationship upon melodies as distinctly as rhythmic. There is no more perfect illustration of this than that afforded by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Speaking of the subject of its finale, Sir George Grove says:
"And note--while listening to the simple tune itself, before the variations begin--how very simple it is; the plain diatonic scale, not a single chromatic interval, and out of fifty-six notes only three not consecutive."[A]
[Sidenote: The melodies in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.]
Earlier in the same work, while combating a statement by Lenz that the resemblance between the second subject of the first movement and the choral melody is a "thematic reference of the most striking importance, vindicating the unity of the entire work, and placing the whole in a perfectly new light," Sir George says:
"It is, however, very remarkable that so many of the melodies in the Symphony should consist of consecutive notes, and that in no less than four of them the notes should run up a portion of the scale and down again--apparently pointing to a consistent condition of Beethoven's mind throughout this work."
[Sidenote: Melodic likenesses.]
Like Goethe, Beethoven secreted many a mystery in his masterpiece, but he did not juggle idly with tones, or select the themes of his symphonies at hap-hazard; he would be open to the charge, however, if the resemblances which I have pointed out in the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, and those disclosed by the following melodies from his Ninth, should turn out through some incomprehensible revelation to be mere coincidences:
From the first movement:
[Music illustration]
From the second:
[Music illustration]
The choral melody:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: Design and Form.]
From a recognition of the beginnings of design, to which identification of the composer's thematic material and its simpler relationships will lead, to so much knowledge of Form as will enable the reader to understand the later chapters in this book, is but a step.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies," p. 374.

III
The Content and Kinds of Music
[Sidenote: Metaphysics to be avoided herein.]
Bearing in mind the purpose of this book, I shall not ask the reader to accompany me far afield in the region of ?sthetic philosophy or musical metaphysics. A short excursion is all that is necessary to make plain what is meant by such terms as Absolute music, Programme music, Classical, Romantic, and Chamber music and the like, which not only confront us continually in discussion, but stand for things which we must know if we would read programmes understandingly and appreciate the various phases in which music presents itself to us. It is interesting and valuable to know why an art-work stirs up pleasurable feelings within us, and to speculate upon its relations to the intellect and the emotions; but the circumstance that philosophers have never agreed, and probably never will agree, on these points, so far as the art of music is concerned, alone suffices to remove them from the field of this discussion.
[Sidenote: Personal equation in judgment.]
Intelligent listening is not conditioned upon such knowledge. Even when the study is begun, the questions whether or not music has a content beyond itself, where that content is to be sought, and how defined, will be decided in each case by the student for himself, on grounds which may be said to be as much in his nature as they are in the argument. The attitude of man toward the art is an individual one, and in some of its aspects defies explanation.
[Sidenote: A musical fluid.]
The amount and kind of pleasure which music gives him are frequently as much beyond his understanding and control as they are beyond the understanding and control of the man who sits beside him. They are consequences of just that particular combination of material and spiritual elements, just that blending of muscular, nervous, and cerebral tissues, which make him what he is, which segregate him as an individual from the mass of humanity. We speak of persons as susceptible or insusceptible to music as we speak of good and poor conductors of electricity;