were written during a stay of several months at Töplitz. These works are veritable orgies of rhythm and humour; in them he is perhaps revealing himself in his most natural and as he styled it himself, most "unbuttoned " (aufgeknopft) moods, transports of gaiety contrasting unexpectedly with storms of fury and disconcerting flashes of wit followed by those Titanic explosions which terrified both Goethe and Zelter[1] and caused the remark in North Germany that the Symphony in A was the work of a drunkard. The work of an inebriated man indeed it was, but one intoxicated with power and genius; one who said of himself, "I am the Bacchus who crushes delicious nectar for mankind. It is I who give the divine frenzy to men." Wagner wrote, "I do not know whether Beethoven wished to depict a Dionysian orgy[2] in the Finale of his Symphony, though I recognise in this passionate kermesse a sign of his Flemish origin, just as we see it likewise in his bold manner of speech and in his bearing so free and so utterly out of harmony with a country ruled by an iron discipline and rigid etiquette. Nowhere is there greater frankness or freer power than in the Symphony in A. It is a
- ↑ Letter from Goethe to Zelter, and September, 1812. Zelter to Goethe, 14th September, 1812 . . . . "Auch ich bewundere ihn mit Schrecken" ("I, too, regard him with mingled admiration and dread "). Zelter writes to Goethe in 1819, "They say he is mad."
- ↑ At any rate, this was a subject which Beethoven had in his mind; for we find it in his notes, especially those for the proposed Tenth Symphony.
