The World of Music

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BEETHOVEN 1770-1827 T N the hierarchy of mythology there are many gods?gods of war and peace and love. In the elysian fields of music there are likewise many gods, among whom there is none greater in the interpretation of human love? none richer in expression of the deepest emotions of the soul?than...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BEETHOVEN 1770-1827 T N the hierarchy of mythology there are many gods?gods of war and peace and love. In the elysian fields of music there are likewise many gods, among whom there is none greater in the interpretation of human love? none richer in expression of the deepest emotions of the soul?than Beethoven. Across his work has been written in golden letters of undying lustre the glorious name of Tone-Poet. For has he not, in his flight to those heavenly fields, bathed the wings of his inspiration in the rainbow of sound? for sound has colour, albeit invisible to human view, yet clear as the rays of the stars of night to the eyes of the soul. Has he not caught in every matchless strain the rosy hue of love, the dazzling rays of passion, the sombre tints of despair, the very blackness of death ? In the Moonlight Sonata he has bequeathed to us a tone-poem matchless in the silver purity of its harmonies, full of the mystical beauty of night in its dreamy voluptuousness, as it is full of the pathetic despair of hopeless love, which pervades its lovely themes like the purple mists overhanging a fair valley. How superb the colour- fng of the Symphony Eroica, fitting memorial of one whose career was the most splendid failure the world has ever beheld, whose light went down like some lost sun never to shine again?Napoleon Bonaparte. Do not those stirring strains paint for us a picture of alternate light and darkness, sunshine and cloud ? The thunder of the bass ushers in the storm of battle. The cymbals emit their crashing cries. Sharp as the clash of whizzing steel rings the whirr of the wind instruments. We see the smoke, we tremble beneath the shock of all this din of arms. Soon the tumult fades away. The low mellow note of the horns steals like the disc of the golden moon ab..