ken language, has a language of its own, which can
convey ideas in itself, and that there are subtilties that can be
expressed in this manner, which evade one when we come to use our
coarser mode of expression. This is specially in evidence in Beethoven's
later work, particularly in the mass we are now considering. Wagner
frequently compares it to a symphony. In _Zukunftsmusik_, he says: "In
his Great Mass Beethoven has employed the choir and orchestra almost
exactly as in the symphony;" and elsewhere he cites it as being a
"strictly symphonic work of the truest Beethovenian spirit."

In this work, however, he reaches out toward the infinite to a degree
not attempted in the symphonies; his spirit takes a bolder flight; more
of the inner nature of the artist is revealed; for the limits which
bound him in the symphony were not operative in the mass. The very mode
of projecting the first movement, the Kyrie, shows the splendor of the
conception as it took form in his consciousness. The scheme of the
movement can be summed up by the antithesis being presented of humanity,
weak and sinful on the one side, and the overwhelming majesty of a just
God on the other. It is a prayer for mercy, the cry of the soul in its
extremity; the underlying thought being repentance. Here we have the
embodiment of prayer, of supplication. A devotional feeling of the most
exalted kind pervades it. The first of the three parts comprising the
movement is storm and stress, a knocking on the gates, a De Profundus,
an accusing conscience arraigning humanity. He works out of this vein to
some extent in the second part, the Christe eleison, in which the appeal
is made directly to the human element of the Godhead. In the third part,
the themes of the first are again taken up, but by modulation they are
made to take on a new significance, and bring peace in the end. Although
the movement is cast for double chorus as regards the vocal part, the
voices are given a subordinate place, the portrayal being carried on by
the orchestra in true symphonic style. Notable in this movement is the
rhythm. In all the storm and stress, a rhythmic motion, a systole and
diastole, a surging to and fro, as of vast masses of beings in the last
extremity of peril, is apparent.

To read meanings and design into the work of such a composer as
Beethoven is the inevitable result of the transcendent nature of it. It
was seldom that he vouchsafed any explanation of his musical inte