His friend Schuppanzigh, the violinist, complained to him that certain passages in one of his quartets were impossible; and Beethoven replied: "Do you believe that I think of a wretched violin, when the spirit speaks to me and I write it down?" The last five quartets have been called transcendental, even incomprehensible, on account of their strangeness and obscurity. They are his last utterances, the mystical creations of a man who neared the end of his life-tragedy. "The events in Beethoven's life," says Nohl, "were calculated more and more to liberate him heart and soul from this world, and the whole composition of the quartets appears like a preparation for the moment when the mind, released from existence here, feels united with a higher being. But it is not a longing for death that here finds expression. It is the heartfelt, certain, and joyful feeling of something really eternal and holy, that speaks to us in the language of a new dispensation. And even the pictures of this world, here to be discerned, be they serious or gay, have this transfigured light, this outlook into eternity." Spirituality is impressed on the eternal features of the music: that is, the technical treatment of the four instruments. The melodies move freely in a wide compass, the voices cross each other frequently. Widely extended, open harmony is often employed, giving wonderful etherealness and spirituality to the effect of the strings by their thinness and delicacy of tone when thus separated by long intervals between the several parts of the chords. Nor is the polyphonic melodiousness of the voices abandoned, as in certain quartets of later masters in which the treatment is more orchestral than is in keeping with the character of the solo instruments. And yet these great quartets are not even now accepted by certain men of marked musical temperament and discriminating taste. They are called "charcoal sketches"; they are erroneously regarded as draughts for elaboration in orchestral form. Others shrug their shoulders and speak compassionately of the deafness of Beethoven. But he was deaf when, in directing the Seventh Symphony, he was obliged to follow the movements of the first violin that he might keep his place; he was deaf when he thought out the melodic freshness and elegance of the Eighth Symphony; and even before the Heroic, the Fifth and the Pastoral he mourned his physical infirmity in the celebrated letter to his brothers. In judging of the masterpieces of the so-called third period it is not necessary to join the cry of the critics like Fétis who complain of "the aberrations of a genius that goes out in darkness," or to swell the chorus of wild enthusiasts as Nohl and Lenz, who wrench the dictionary in the expression of their delight. In the light of these great works all criticism is blind and impotent.