Ninth. And then what a difference in the
character and emotional suggestiveness of the themes, that with
Beethoven are actual human voices, dramatic characters, which once met
can never be forgotten. As Lavoix says of the Fifth Symphony, "Is not
this a drama in its purity, where passion is no longer the attribute
of a theatrical work, but the expression of our own individual
feelings?" No longer are the transitions mere mechanical connections,
but a portion of the structure which, though subsidiary, is yet
organically developed from that which precedes and inevitably related
to that which follows. In the development section we find the real
Beethoven. Here his marvellous freshness of invention found full play.
Such inexhaustible fancy, such coherence of structure, such subtlety
of transformation were unknown in former times, when development was
often as lifeless as the perfunctory motions of an automaton.
Beethoven's developments are no mere juggling with tones; they are
vast tonal edifices, examples of what the imagination of man
controlled by intellect can achieve. Possibly Beethoven's greatest
skill as a musical architect was shown in his treatment of the Coda,
which became the crowning climax of a movement, a last driving home
with all possible eloquence of the message heretofore presented. The
end of previous compositions had too often been a mere ceasing to go,
a running down, but in Beethoven there is usually a strong objective
point towards which everything converges.

Fully conscious as he was of the throbbing human message it was his
mission to reveal, we may be sure that Beethoven spared no effort to
enhance the expressive capabilities of music as a language. Certain
aspects of his style in this respect are strikingly noticeable in
every one of his representative works. First, the marvellous rhythmic
vitality. Note the absence of the former sing-song rhythm of Haydn; in
its stead we hear the heart-beat, now fast, now slow, of a living
human being. No longer can the hearer in dreamy apathy beat time with
his foot. Second, his use of the fiercest dissonances to express the
heights and depths of our stormy human existence. In listening to
contemporary works nothing should persuade us more strongly to a
sympathetic tolerance, or at any rate to a suspension of judgment,
than the fact that many of Beethoven's most individual cries (surely
in his case the outward expression of what he heard within, those very
outb