The year 1800 found Beethoven already busy with his "Mount of Olives," which, however, was not produced till 1803. This, the master's first and last attempt at oratorio writing, "is a striking instance of the insufficiency of even the highest powers to accomplish that to which the special call has not been given. It was impossible for Beethoven to feel himself so inspired by his task as the composer of a time when the mind of the people was almost exclusively occupied by religious convictions; the man of the revolutionary period could not see or think out a Christ like that of Bach and Handel before him. Even the pure spring, out of which we Protestants of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries draw our ideas of Christ--the Bible--flowed not for him; his Christ must first be poetically made for him. And how? The poet had no other aim but that of making verses for a composer; the latter no other motive than the ordinary creative impulse prompting him to try his powers in a different and important sphere. The result on both sides could not, therefore, be other than _Phrases_, although the better of the two proceeded from the composer, and that composer was Beethoven. To conceal or palliate this would be derogatory to the reverence which we all owe to Beethoven,--he stands too high to be in need of extenuation." So far Marx; but in addition to the miserable libretto (which imparted unreality, artificiality, to the whole work, and especially gave to the part of the Saviour a theatrical air which Beethoven afterwards deplored) many peculiarities of the oratorio--with all deference to the able critic just quoted--may be traced to the period in which it was composed. The very choice of subject reveals the convulsion that was taking place in Beethoven's _volcanic_ nature. It is a question whether Beethoven would ever have asserted his sovereignty in this branch of composition; it may be, as Marx hints, that the peculiar tone of thought and feeling necessary to the successful treatment of sacred subjects was wanting in him; but there can be no doubt that had the master's attention been devoted to the subject in happier days, when his tempest-tossed natures had attained to some degree of peace and serenity, the result would have been very different. Let him who would see Beethoven as a _devotional_ writer, turn to his Gellert songs, which breathe the very depths of true religious feeling.