After all, if Dussek does not stand among the immortals, he yet, in intellect and power of invention, ranks among the lesser stars[112] to whom we owe the full elaboration of the popular forms. His style is soon grasped. We know one of his sonatas already as soon as we hear the first bars. A broad first theme gives us a good tune; then it goes smoothly flowing through grateful passages to the second theme in the dominant or relative key. Other runs give the fingers some further opportunity for bravura; perhaps a third scrap of melody peeps out, and we are at the landmark of the first double bar. Next some suitable free fantasia is arranged, which sounds more scholastic than it is; we pass with it through a series of related keys--until a motive already known, the first theme, brings us back again with a smooth glide to the beginning, from which point the movement practically repeats itself. In the following movements there is a longer melody adorned with variations. In the third a seductively familiar theme tickles our fancy, which at times spreads itself out in bravuras, or gives itself effect in a very poor imitation of a fugue. [Illustration: Dussek.] In company such as this Beethoven stands absolutely alone. It is true he has not yet wholly cast off the garment of his time. In many a harmonic phrase, in many a formal turn, he is a child of the period; above all in many a _naiveté_. And he not seldom exerts himself about passages which are utterly unworthy of him. He, the composer of the A major symphony, wrote at the same time the incredible “Battle of Vittoria.” Conscious advance, such as Wagner set before himself, is to him unknown; and we find among his later works various things that remind us of an earlier period, as, for example, the wonderfully Mozart-like C major Rondo for the pianoforte. But his _naiveté_ was strangely warped; and thus arose noteworthy mixtures of style, such as we so often observe in men who stand on the borders of two ages. His character was the most complicated that ever musician had; and only investigators who know not the demon of the great soul, can seriously ascribe the paltry avarice of the master to humane goodwill for the notorious nephew whom he supported. A soul like Beethoven’s is a mystery into which we can only penetrate slowly and with difficulty; and who knows--even if perhaps the deepest secrets of his “last style” should become common and familiar, whether even then the last word would have been said on this strangely complicated and distorted character? But Beethoven composed from the soul outward. This was the great novelty. And we must penetrate into his soul if we will rightly apprehend him.