ythm and the sheer beauty of orchestral sound. But to hold that such
a hearer gets as much from the work as he who knows the underlying
drama and can follow sympathetically the correspondence between the
characters and their musical treatment is to indulge in reckless
assertion. The true relationship between composer and hearer is this:
when works are entitled _Coriolanus_, _Melpomene_, _Francesca da
Rimini_, _Sakuntala_, _L'apres-midi d'un Faune_, _The Mystic
Trumpeter_, _L'apprenti Sorcier_, and the composers reveal therein the
influence such subjects have had upon their imagination, they are
paying a tacit compliment to the hearer whose breadth of intelligence
and cultivation they expect to be on a par with their own. If such be
not the case, the fault is not the composer's; the burden of proof is
on the listener.[167] Let us now trace certain relationships between
the drama of _Coriolanus_ and the musical characterization of
Beethoven. The Overture was composed as an introduction to a tragedy
by the German playwright von Collin, but as the play is obsolete and
as both von Collin and Shakespeare went to Plutarch for their sources,
a familiarity--which should be taken for granted[168]--with the
English drama will furnish sufficient background for an appreciation
of the music. The scene before the city gates is evidently that in
which Volumnia and Virgilia plead with the victorious warrior to
refrain from his fell purpose of destruction. The work is in
Sonata-form, since the great Sonata principle of _duality_ of _theme_
exactly harmonizes with the two main influences of the drama--the
masculine and the feminine. It is of particular interest to observe
how the usual methods of Sonata-form procedure are modified to suit
the dramatic logic of the subject. The work begins Allegro con brio,
with three sustained Cs--as if someone were stamping with heavy
foot--followed by a series of assertive _ff_ chords for full orchestra
(note the piercing dissonance in the 7th measure), which at once
establishes an atmosphere of headstrong defiance. The first theme,
beginning in measure 15 with its restless rhythm, is not meant to be
beautiful in the ordinary sense of the term--"a concourse of sweet
sounds"; rather is it a dramatic characterization, a picture in terms
of music, of the reckless energy and the fierce threats which we
naturally associate with Coriolanus. The theme is repeated and then
the transition develops this masculine