NOTTEBOHM'S 'BEETHOVENIANA'.
iii.
IT is unfortunate that the most important of all recent contributions to Beethoven literature, the two Beethoveniana volumes, should contain nothing more than passing reference to the Third Symphony, and that the great work which marks a turning-point in the history of orchestral music should be the very one on the production of which the sketchbooks, as far as they are yet published, fail to throw new light. The interval in time between the Septett and the Eroica is short, but measured by its significance in the progress of music, enormous. Beethoven had passed at a bound from youth to manhood, and in the Third Symphony stands erect and free at his full height, pointing the way onward. The Eroica is the first great symphonic work which openly defines the poetic basis on which it rests ; it is the first to proclaim the possibility and necessity for a wider and more liberal interpretation of the laws of symphonic form, and it is the first which places the relation of that form to its poetic substance in true clear light. Beethoven did not, it is true, belong to that class of reformers who pro- ceed to the creation of art-work on a basis of pre- conceived theory, and the distinction di-awn in the Third Symphony with such subtlety between the essential and the arbitrary in musical law, was doubtless to a large extent instinctive and un- conscious on the part of the artist. At the same time, knowing what Beethoven's manner of working was, it is certain that the Eroica which to all previous symphonies stands in the same relation as a mighty cathedral to a row of neatly finished villas, must have cost more, certainly not less, painstaking thought and preparation than the other symphonies, the development of which is recorded in the sketch- books. Commentators as a rule have shown more zeal in discussing the nature of the poetic subject — matter of the symphony, than in endeavouring to ascertain the exact nature of the preliminary studies, which certainly did, and may perhaps still, exist. Hints and allusions of various writers assure us on this point, but with the exception of the departure from the original intention in the case of the open- ing chords, and a fragment relating to the slow movement, no definite information is forthcoming. Even Thayer's Catalogue, which supplies so much valuable information as to first sketches, tells us only, in the case of the Eroica of the first per- formance when the symphony was announced as in D shai-p, of some points connected with the instru- mentation, Beethoven's wishes as to its position in the programme, and of the alteration of superscrip- tion when Beethoven discovered that his hero was, after all, only an adventurer of genius. After Beethoven's death the manuscripts and sketch were sold with his other effects by auction, and scattered with a lamentable ignorance of their value far and wide over Europe. Tlie British Museum, the libraries of Berlin and Vienna, and many private collections, have been laid under contribution by Grove, Tiiayer, and other writers on Beethoven, but these treasures have not yet been brought as a whole sufficiently within the reach of the public. Their significance to the student has only recently been realised. Some appear to have remained un- touched as Beethoven left them, but others liave suffered more or less serious mutilation. Notte- bohm did not live to finish the editing of the material he had collected ; had he done so it is possible that he might have unearthed other sketches belonging to the first years of the century, or at least have furnished some explanation of their absence. Let us hope that the English translation of the two Beethoveniana so much to be desired may supply the missing links in the chain of evi- dence regarding Beethoven's compositions, and may also show some appreciation of the importance to students of a more methodical arrangement of the sketches already collected. In the original, no attempt at chronological order has been made, and in the absence even of an index, the process of gathering evidence or of comparing different sketches referring to any particular composition involves a great deal of quite unnecessary labour. Surely art is long enough, and life is short enough, without the gratuitous imposition of a profligate waste of time.
There is nothing more strikingly interesting in the sketch-book literature than the passages bearing on the C Minor Symphony. For not only are the first rough drafts of the thematic material in themselves of striking interest, but the sketches show the possibility in this case of an intimate relationship of the symphony to another important composition to be considered. As usual, Beethoven worked at several different compositions simultaneously ; but in the case of the C Minor Syinphony and G Major Pianoforte Concerto, a connection deeper than a mere coincidence of date is at work. Nottebohm points out that the first four notes of the principal subjects of the symphony and concerto are identical as regards their rhythmic structure. Moreover, sketches for the two different forms of a rhythmi-
