Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/76

This page needs to be proofread.
48
BEETHOVEN

Symphony,[1] the overture on the name of Bach, the music for Grillparzer's Melusina,[2] for Körner's Odyssey and Goethe's Faust,[3] the Biblical oratorio of Saul and David, all shew that he was attracted by the mighty serenity of the old German masters—Bach and Handel—and more still to the light of the South—the South of France or Italy, where he hoped to travel.[4]

    Elysian fields I must leave behind me what the spirit inspires and tells me to finish. It seems to me that I have scarcely written anything." (To the brothers Schott, Sept. 17th, 1829.)

  1. Beethoven wrote to Moscheles on March 18th, 1827: "The complete sketch of a Symphony is in my desk with a new overture." This sketch has never been found. One only reads in his notes:
    Adagio cantique." Religious song for a symphony in the old modes (Herr Gott dich loben wir.—Alleluja), may be in an independent style, may be as introduction to a fugue. This Symphony might be characterised by the entrance of voices, perhaps in the finale, perhaps in the adagio. The violins in the orchestra, etc., increased ten times for the last movements. The voices to enter one by one; or to repeat the adagio somehow in the last movements. For words for the adagio, a Greek myth or an ecclesiastical canticle, in the allegro, Bacchus' Feast (1818). As has been seen the choral conclusion was intended to be reserved for a Tenth Symphony and not for the Ninth Symphony.
    Later he said that he wished to accomplish in his Tenth Symphony "the reconciliation of the modern world with the ancient, which Goethe had attempted in his Second Faust."
  2. The subject is the legend of a horseman who is loved and captured by a fairy, and who suffers from nostalgia and lack of liberty. There are analogies between this poem and that of Tannhauser. Beethoven worked at it between 1823 and 1826. (See A. Ehrhard Frans Grillparzer, 1900).
  3. Since 1808 Beethoven had made plans for writing the music to Faust. (The first part of Faust appeared under the title of Tragedy in the autumn of 1807). It was then his dearest plan.
  4. "The South of France! It is there, there!" (from a note- book in the Berlin Library). "To go away from here. Only on this sole condition will you be able to rise again to the