coda of the Second Symphony, speaking of the holding note of the wind instruments as a pedal point.' His analysis of the passage we cannot accept; and though in general it is unsuitable to introduce musical technicalities into an article of this kind, we must be allowed here, in case any musician should read this, to give what we consider the true construction of a passage which has caused much discussion; and those who do not understand musical technique can pass over this paragraph. From his quotation in short score Sir G. Grove evidently thinks that the E in the horns is the real bass, and that the basses and 'cellos are playing a melody above it. This is a mistake. The E for the horns, owing to the confusion as to notation for these instruments, is written an octave lower than it really sounds. (On this point we may again refer Sir G. Grove to the pages of his own Dictionary, article Horn,' written by Dr. Stone, who knew more about wind instruments than most people.) The real bass is the phrase for the strings. In the six bars preceding this passage the basses and 'cellos are making a regular descent through G, F, E, and finally to the low D, to which the 'cellos continue their descent; the only reason the basses do not is because their lowest string is E, and therefore they necessarily take a leap to the higher octave (where, however, their actual sounds are still below the E of the horn); but the progression in the violoncello part is conclusive as to what Beethoven meant. The succeeding passage, the locus vexatus, reduced to its simplest harmonic terms, might be defined as a succession of alternate harmonies of on D and sharp (the '4' of the former chord is not actually present), the wind instruments sustaining the E, which is common to both harmonies; the bass, however, plays round the C sharp with a melodic phrase in order to maintain the characteristic rhythm of the composition. At all events, no one with any perception of musical logic, who looks at the position of the basses immediately before and immediately after this passage, can have any doubt that this is the true interpretation of it, and that they have been playing the bass all through; and we hope that point may be considered as settled. Whether the passage itself is an addition to the beauty of the composition is very questionable. It introduces an eccentric and slightly grotesque feature into a composition which in every other respect is perfectly clear and wellbalanced, and the critics who objected to it when the work was first produced had more reason on their side than people in the present day are willing to allow.

on C

The Eighth Symphony shows in its first three movements

a curious reversion to an earlier and more naïve style and feeling, and its real beauty has been, perhaps, rather underrated in consequence of its simplicity. The finale belongs to a different region, and is a most extraordinary mingling of impetuosity and fire with almost grotesque humour, alternating with passages of great beauty and grandeur. While admitting the obviously humorous element in it, however, we have little sympathy with Sir G. Grove's jocular expressions on this point (as where he tells us that one passage is as if Beethoven said Boh!' to us), which might pass for the moment in a musical symposium, but are in very bad literary taste, and suggest an element of vulgarity in the music which certainly does not exist; and when the author, seeking for a reason for all this outbreak of musical high spirits, admits that it is exceedingly hazardous to attempt 'to connect Beethoven's music with the simultaneous events ' of his life,' one is inclined to ask why he did not find that out before, and what else he has been attempting to do in many previous pages of his volume.

Concerning the massive and colossal movement which opens the Ninth Symphony it is difficult to speak with precise discrimination. In no composition, perhaps, has Beethoven shown such sustained grandeur and elevation of style, with the exception only of the rather eccentric and certainly not happy device of anticipating the real subject by the weak and uninteresting tentative passage, as it may be called, which mystifies the hearer at the opening. This is one of the eccentricities by which Beethoven sometimes vexes us unexpectedly in some of his greatest works. How far grander and more impressive would have been the immediate starting off with the broad and powerful unison passage which forms the real theme of the movement! And yet the modern Beethoven critics would persuade us that this preliminary passage is an added beauty, simply because it is there. But, with all the elevated style of the composition when it fairly commences, the earnest tone which pervades it, the breadth of phrasing (especially shown in the wide-spaced intervals constantly employed in the bass), and the amount of interesting and highly finished detail in the orchestration, there seems to be a want of spontaneity and charm about it in comparison with many of the composer's earlier works; it has not that indefinable magic of beauty which we find in so many of its predecessors; we seem able to analyse its effect; it is the music of determination rather than of inspiration. Of the scherzo we have already spoken. As to the adagio, which takes the peculiar

form of an instrumental song with instrumental symphonies (for that is the real definition of it), words can hardly do justice to its beauty. It is true that in an æsthetic sense it is not quite so perfect and rounded in form as some others of the slow movements. It is somewhat discursive;

but it grows in beauty as it proceeds, and the new melody introduced at the change of time to andante is one of the most wonderful in all music: it is as if the whole sadness and longing of humanity-the lacrymæ rerum-were summed up in it. It is with the finale that we have to drop into the questioning mood again. The theme to which the first verses of Schiller's ode are set is indeed a golden and immortal melody, such as once heard can never be forgotten. But in the prelude to it Beethoven has become materialistic again. The crashing discords which precede both the instrumental introduction and the subsequent vocal portion of the movement are obviously discords of set purpose, introduced in order to contrast with the 'joy' which is to follow, and the rebuke of the bass solo, Friends, not these tones,' &c.; but this employment of music involves a perfectly false æsthetic. It is the employment of sounds which are literally and materially harsh, instead of the symbolising of harshness by the legitimate use of musical expression. The conversational recitative passages for the basses, in which they seem to comment on the themes offered to them, form a piquant piece of musical humour, but it has been much overrated; it is hardly a kind of device in keeping with a great and serious work of art, and it is, moreover, of a kind which becomes less effective the more one becomes familiarised with it. In the subsequent developement of the music the composer seems to have lost his artistic balance altogether, and the expression of Fanny Mendelssohn when she first heard the symphony, which is quoted by Sir G. Grove: A gigantic tragedy with a conclusion meant to be dithyrambic, but falling from its 'height into the opposite extreme-into burlesque,' is no more than the truth, however harsh the words may seem; and many people who hear it even now in their own hearts feel the same, if they would say the truth.

6

With this result we feel convinced that the composer's sad affliction of deafness had something to do. However a great composer may hear music with the ear of the mind, the bodily ear counts for something in the matter also, and we are convinced that if Beethoven had still possessed his bodily faculty of hearing, he would not have written those 'crashes' at the commencement of the finale, nor the

absurd grunts for the contrafagotto which introduce the march, nor the noisy and screaming passages through which the chorus have to scramble later on. Some part of the misfortune, however, is to be attributed to an inherent excitability of temperament, which increased as Beethoven advanced in life, and which led him to exaggerate the climax of a composition to a degree totally at variance with true artistic balance, and even with the musical dignity of the subject treated. We see this tendency even in earlier works, which are otherwise sound and symmetrical enough in form. We see it in the conclusion of the Hallelujah from the Mount of Olives,' which begins as one of the most sublime of choruses, and ends like an opera overture; in the presto at the end of the Symphony in C minor, which brings the composition to what is called a brilliant close,' but at the expense of the grandeur and dignity which have characterised it up to that point; or (to come to later works) in the presto which winds up the Gloria in Excelsis' of the Mass in D, with the hysterical shouts of Gloria' at the close; in the extravagances of the Et vitam venturi' chorus in the same work; and, last of all, and most prominently, in the finale which in the Ninth Symphony forms such an unfortunate anti-climax to an otherwise great and sublime composition. And if the reader be told that this is flat blasphemy as ever was committed,' we would exhort him to have the courage to think for himself instead of following the fashions of musical critics; to remember that indiscriminate worship is a poor homage to pay to genius, creditable neither to the genius nor to the worshipper, and that one may bow the head before Michelangelo's figure on the Medici tomb without therefore thinking the Christ of the Last Judgement' an ideal portrayal of the Saviour; and, finally, to be grateful to Sir George Grove for his facts about Beethoven's symphonies without accepting his fancies. The manner in which this colossal, but most unequal and tantalising, work is run after now is a curious instance of the influence of fashion in musical taste. Like the 'Passion-musik' of Bach, the Mass in D has become a kind of popular idol, to the entire exclusion and forgetfulness of the composer's more simple, but much more beautiful, Mass in C, mainly because it is a late work of the composer, and is very big and very difficult. We should say unhesitatingly that there is not a movement in the Mass in D equal to the Quoniam' of the Mass in C, with its broad and perfectly balanced style and essentially vocal or 'singable' character; and yet the public who run after the later work know nothing of the earlier one, and many are hardly even aware of its existence.

ART. X.—1. The Life of the Lady Arabella Stuart, in Two Parts, containing a Biographical Memoir, and a Collection of her Letters, with Notes and Documents from original sources, relating to her History. By E. T. BRADLEY (Mrs. A. MURRAY-SMITH). 2 vols. 8vo.

London: 1889.

2. The Life and Letters of Lady Arabella Stuart, including numerous original and unpublished Documents. By ELIZABETH COOPER. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1866. 3. Despatches Preserved in the Archives of the Frari' at Venice the Series, in MS. folio, labelled 'INGHILTERRA, 'Senato III., Segreto ':-namely, Vol. II. Gio. Carlo Scaramelli, Segretario, 1603; Vol. III. Pietro Duodo, Nicolo Molin, Ambri, 1604; Vol. VIII. Marc. Ant. Correr, Francesco Contarini, Ambri, 1609; Vol. IX. Idem, 1610; Vol. X. Marc. Ant. Correr, Antonio Foscarini, Ambri, 1611; 1611; Vol. XI. Ant. Foscarini, Ambre, 1612; Vol. XII. Idem, 1613; Vol. XIII. Idem, 1614; Vol. XIV. Idem, 1615; Vol. XV. Antonio Foscarini, K, et Gregorio Barbarigo, Ambri, 1615.

UN

NTIL recently, our best authority for Lady Arabella Stuart has been the biography which Miss Cooper published close upon thirty years ago. Miss Cooper, however, with some justice, complains in her preface of having been prevented from using many MSS. in family muniment rooms; but the times have now changed, private archives and collections have become generally attainable, and after the lapse of a third of a century a new work on this most unfortunate princess of the luckless house of Stuart was certainly called for. Mrs. Murray-Smith has done us this good service, and in her recent work, having had access notably to the Cecil Papers, besides other MS. records, she has been able to set in their true light for the first time many important incidents, and fill in details of the biography which Miss Cooper had perforce left blank. On some points, nevertheless, the new volumes still fail to afford us full explanation, and hence it will be found worth our while to examine the Despatches of the Venetian Envoys who resided in London during the years when Arabella Stuart played a somewhat prominent part in English history. The Venetian Dispacci of this epoch have not yet been published either in Italian or in any translation, for the latest volume of the ' Calendars of State Papers: Venetian,' which Mr. Horatio