He was the child of his time, and he lived to witness the great movement for freedom and humanity in America and Europe. Although he had warm friends and admirers among the nobility he would not bow down to rank and wealth. The prince held no higher position in his estimation than the private citizen. "It is good to be with the aristocracy," he said; "but one must be able to impress them." "A trace of heroic freedom pervades all his creations," says Ferdinand Hiller. The expression "Im Freien," which in German means both the open air and liberty, might serve as an inscription of a temple devoted to his genius. It was this lofty spirit that impelled him to find new methods of musical expression in the older forms of the symphony, sonata, string quartet, etc., which have the same general outlines of formal construction. These classical forms consist of a cycle or group of three or four movements related to each other by contrast in tempo, rhythm, key, and æsthetic character. These movements are combined so as to constitute an organic whole; complex and highly developed, like a great architectural building. Madame de Stael called architecture "frozen music." This fanciful idea, so often quoted, suggests a different conception, perhaps as near the truth, that music may be considered as a kind of rhythmical architecture. Such architectural music appeals to the æsthetic sense of form and proportion through the ear by the stream of melody and harmony that flows in a rhythmical mass, whereas the "frozen music" appeals to us through the eye, which is able to take in the great outlines of proportion and form at once; so that the element of time is not considered. So far as form and construction are concerned, a Beethoven symphony might well be compared with a Gothic cathedral in its grand outlines of beauty and strength, complexity, relation of the parts to the whole, sense of proportion, and unity in variety. But in music, as in all true art, form is but the means to an end: which is to move the soul through the æsthetic sense of beauty. This ideal structure of tones was not the invention of one musician; it was built up gradually, in the course of a century and a half, by various composers until it reached its culmination in the works of Beethoven. There are two distinct sources from which cyclical instrumental music is derived. First, the sonatas for violins and bass which sprang up in the 17th century under Corelli, Biber, Purcell and others. Subsequently the sonata was applied to the solo clavichord by Kuhnau, Sebastian and Emanuel Bach. Second, the Italian opera overture, which came into vogue as separate instrumental music early in the 18th century under the names of symphony and concerto. The Italian overture consisted of three short, related movements--_allegro_, _adagio_, _allegro_,--a slow movement between two fast ones. Sammartini, Emanuel Bach and a few others were the first to cultivate this three-movement