A third sort of expression characteristic of Beethoven is that of the whimsical, the perverse, the irrepressibly gay. Before him, the classical symphony had had room for the brisk jollity of the Haydn finale and for the forthright animation of the Mozart minuet; but nothing like the Beethoven scherzo had existed. In Italian the word scherzo means a joke; and when he substituted the rollicking scherzo for the more formal and stately minuet Beethoven introduced into music the element of banter, mischief, and whimsy. Even among his several scherzos, there is such a diversity of mood that they introduce into music far more than one new kind of expression; their fancy is protean, inexhaustible. The scherzo of the “Eroica” is a mixture of mystery, gaiety, and headlong _elan_; in that of the Fifth Symphony, a sort of groping as in darkness alternates with incisive, grandiose, military boldness; in the middle Allegro of the Pastoral Symphony, taking the place of the scherzo, there is rustic merry-making, the awkward, good-natured gambols of peasants; in the Presto of the Seventh, there is upwelling geniality, the broad smile of amiable indolence; and in the Minuet of the Eighth, the old minuet stateliness gives place to a mixture of animal spirits and intellectual subtlety. Nor are the scherzos proper the only embodiment of the antics of this musical Pan; such Finales as those of the Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies are but transfigured, ennobled scherzos, with the largeness of the heroic spirit added to the fancy, whim, and tireless merriment of the insatiable humorist. Beethoven is the extreme exponent of the spirit of comedy in music.