ant, motive is not only the kernel
of the first movement, it is the fundamental thought of the whole
symphony. We hear its persistent beat in the scherzo as well:
[Music illustration]
and also in the last movement:
[Music illustration]
More than this, we find the motive haunting the first movement of the
pianoforte sonata in F minor, op. 57, known as the "Sonata
Appassionata," now gloomily, almost morosely, proclamative in the
bass, now interrogative in the treble:
[Music illustration]
[Sidenote: _Relationships in Beethoven's works._]
[Sidenote: _The C minor Symphony and "Appassionata" sonata._]
[Sidenote: _Beethoven's G major Concerto._]
Schindler relates that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what
the F minor and the D minor (Op. 31, No. 2) sonatas meant, he received
for an answer only the enigmatical remark: "Read Shakespeare's
'Tempest.'" Many a student and commentator has since read the
"Tempest" in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents
which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly
associated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests
perhaps too much on outward things, but still one full of suggestion,
that had Beethoven said: "Hear my C minor Symphony," he would have
given a better starting-point to the imagination of those who are
seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means
music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those
psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more
to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companionship
of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the
word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven
himself said indicates, in the symphony, the rappings of Fate at the
door of human existence, is common to two works which are also related
in their spiritual contents. Singularly enough, too, in both cases the
struggle which is begun in the first movement and continued in the
third, is interrupted by a period of calm reassuring, soul-fortifying
aspiration, which in the symphony as well as in the sonata takes the
form of a theme with variations. Here, then, the recognition of a
simple rhythmical figure has helped us to an appreciation of the
spiritual unity of the parts of a symphony, and provided a commentary
on the poetical contents of a sonata. But the lesson is not yet
exhausted. Again do we find the rhy
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