mphony should consist of consecutive
notes, and that in no less than four of them the notes
should run up a portion of the scale and down
again--apparently pointing to a consistent condition of
Beethoven's mind throughout this work."

[Sidenote: _Melodic likenesses._]

Like Goethe, Beethoven secreted many a mystery in his masterpiece, but
he did not juggle idly with tones, or select the themes of his
symphonies at hap-hazard; he would be open to the charge, however, if
the resemblances which I have pointed out in the Fifth and Seventh
Symphonies, and those disclosed by the following melodies from his
Ninth, should turn out through some incomprehensible revelation to be
mere coincidences:

From the first movement:

[Music illustration]

From the second:

[Music illustration]

The choral melody:

[Music illustration]

[Sidenote: _Design and Form._]

From a recognition of the beginnings of design, to which
identification of the composer's thematic material and its simpler
relationships will lead, to so much knowledge of Form as will enable
the reader to understand the later chapters in this book, is but a
step.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] "Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies," p. 374.

III

_The Content and Kinds of Music_

[Sidenote: _Metaphysics to be avoided herein._]

Bearing in mind the purpose of this book, I shall not ask the reader
to accompany me far afield in the region of aesthetic philosophy or
musical metaphysics. A short excursion is all that is necessary to
make plain what is meant by such terms as Absolute music, Programme
music, Classical, Romantic, and Chamber music and the like, which not
only confront us continually in discussion, but stand for things which
we must know if we would read programmes understandingly and
appreciate the various phases in which music presents itself to us. It
is interesting and valuable to know why an art-work stirs up
pleasurable feelings within us, and to speculate upon its relations to
the intellect and the emotions; but the circumstance that
philosophers have never agreed, and probably never will agree, on
these points, so far as the art of music is concerned, alone suffices
to remove them from the field of this discussion.

[Sidenote: _Personal equation in judgment._]

Intelligent listening is not conditioned upon such knowledge. Even
when the study is begun, the questions whether or not music has a
content beyond itself, where