If we would understand Beethoven’s language we must study the way in which he works out his motives. His peculiarities are the peculiarities of the naturalistic school. The melody mounts or falls as his emotion mounts or falls. He takes a motive and narrows it until its parts curve upon each other, and then again makes it greater and broader, until it lies open before us. This is a deep and mysterious language, which deals with the tones as a word, an expression; which looks on us, shall I say? like the eye of certain animals--we understand them through and through, and yet their speech is not ours. But the most powerful agent in stirring our emotion is the rhythm, that soul of all expression. It is the absolute pulse of things, which only the finer ears can hear in the outer world; it lies here before us in its artistic purity. The pauses, the leaps, the syncopations, the gigantic parallelisms of structure, the dynamic surprises, leave but a thin wall of partition between the phenomenal and the transcendental of music. There is no longer any reserve in the language. There are some movements in which Beethoven’s music stands at the very doors of verbal speech: such, for example, as the allegretto in Op. 14, 1 and the first movement of Op. 90. The words appear to tremble on the lips; but it would be the disappearance of the apparition were we to utter them. Over Beethoven’s realm broods a deep tragedy. A constraining seriousness speaks to us--the dark abyss of passionate emotion: a total pitilessness, a gloomy brooding, accents of misery, a unison of terror. Beethoven began his piano publications with the three sonatas (Op. 2.) dedicated to Haydn; works full of inexhaustible inspirations, of the ravishing freshness of youth. The second is introduced by sharp accents and those broad extensions of chords by means of octaves, which remained to the end characteristic of the author. Another man would have begun the piece _after_ this tragic cry, with the contrapuntally-rocking motive. But the first of his greater tragic outbreaks was the mighty Sonata in C minor, the so-called Pathétique, which he dedicated to his patron Lichnowsky. Upon the heavy, slow introductory passage follows the stormy First Movement, whose themes are, first, a tempest of rage, secondly, an utter despair; and the Grave intrudes its monitory remembrances in the midst. Unity of colouring is preserved. Over the second singing movement, and the third with its rondo-like passages, lies the same sombre tone; and the conclusion is sharply cut short.