The technique, whether of the piano or of the orchestral colouring, though joyous, is yet severe. Far from all coquetry and all mere show--the technique stands, especially in the cheerful E flat major, on a height of extraordinary purity. The form is clear, but not so precise as not to admit of modifications in single sections, especially those devoted to the solo instrument. The intellectual G major, the technical E flat major, represented an extreme of happy sympathetic innovation. We only need to compare the great Waldstein Sonata in C major (Op. 53) with the Concertos, in order at once to see that the latter have stood godfather to the former. There are not merely external likenesses, as when the piano figures a theme which might have been played already on the orchestra, or when more important divisions close with a long shake, as in all concertos the piano sections usually do on the re-entrance of the tutti; or when with passages played pianissimo, and hurrying ghostlike, or in octaves, an effect is introduced which in Beethoven’s concertos the delicate piano is generally used to play out in contrast with the orchestra. Rather the important likeness lies in the whole broad outline. The themes appear as a rule twice, as is naturally the case in the concerto; the exposition is done leisurely and cheerfully; a cadenza, such as Beethoven had already used (_e.g._, in Opp. 2, 3, and 27, 2), gives to the conclusion of the first movement a specially concerto-like quality. The second slow movement is a short emotional transition, such as Beethoven has written so exquisitely in the G major and E flat major concertos; and the last movement, far from being a “concession” to the “light-robed” muse, is a spirited rondo, in brilliant style it is true, but in its augmentations and diminutions, its _stretto_ and the trill-conclusion, a genuine Beethoven--as no other could be. As thus the dependence on the broad effects to which the concerto style had accustomed the hearer, gave to the first movement of the sonata a new form and extent which it had hitherto not known, it was possible for Beethoven to infuse into it a tragic content which soars far above the general coloration of the “Pathétique” and the brooding naturalism of the “Recitative” Sonata. Here for the first time we hear those trumpet-calls to the battle with Fate, those heavy rolling waves at the return to the first theme, which later in Op. 111 found so concentrated an expression. A monumental epic develops itself about the conflict, which usually forms the content of first movements. This mighty form represents a mighty picture.