Undoubtedly the orchestra is the chief figure of the opera, dominating constantly the scene. This, however, is as true of Wagner as of Beethoven. "There is not an instrumental note that has not its passionate, dramatic meaning; there is not an instrument that is not a party to the drama." With the exception of the prisoners' chorus, the most impressive passages of "Fidelio" are those in which the orchestra is openly master: the overture No. III., the melodramas, the introduction to the air of _Florestan_. The overture No. III. is the whole story of the agony and the womanly devotion of Leonore in concise and tragic form; just as the overtures to "Egmont" and "Coriolanus" are the summing up of the tragedies of Goethe and Collin, although "Coriolanus" is undoubtedly derived directly from Plutarch and Shakespeare. The force and the meaning of the accompaniment is always in proportion with the degree of passion on the stage. When _Pizarro_ meditates his vengeance and the orchestra mimics the storm within his breast, it matters little that the voice of the singer is drowned. And so the air of the delirious _Florestan_ is less thrilling than the preceding prelude; and the oboe tells of his agony although he himself cries it to the dungeon walls. There is little or no doubt that when Beethoven wrote his Ninth Symphony, he thought of Schiller's original conception, the ode to Freedom, and not the altered and present version, the ode to Joy. To Beethoven, freedom was the only joy; to him the universal freedom of loving humanity was true religion: the brotherhood of man. That the singers rebelled against the frightful difficulties of their task was nothing to him; he heard the voices of a triumphant world, and he was not to be confined by individual limitations. So in his mass in D, he thought not of the service of the Roman Catholic church: he arrayed the human against the supernatural. It is not church music so much as the direct, subjective expression of a religious heart, which cannot be restrained by the barriers of mere form and ritual. Some have argued seriously that because Beethoven was not punctilious in the observance of the rites of the Church he was therefore unfitted to celebrate in music her solemn service. Now whatever his religious opinions were, whether he was deist or pantheist, there is no doubt that he appreciated fully the dignity of his task and consecrated all his energies to the performance of it. He meditated it most carefully, as we know by his sketch-books. In 1818 he wrote a memorandum: "To compose true religious music, it is necessary to consult the olden chorals in use in monasteries"; and he added below: "Make once more the sacrifice of all the petty necessities of life for the glory of thy art. God before all!" In the manuscript is written over the _Kyrie_, "From the heart! May it go back to the heart!" and over the _Dona Nobis, "Dona nobis pacem_. Representing the inner and exterior peace."