The sportive Beethoven lies in the lap of Nature. There he hears the entrancing imitations of his Haydn Sonatas, the hurrying ghost-like scherzo with its Schubert-like romantic middle movement (Op. 10, 2), the sparkling Rondo of the Variation Sonata. This we must hear played by Risler in order to appreciate its inimitable humour and poetry, which is based entirely on the soft touch of the contrary motions. The most perfect of Nature prayers, a Pastoral Symphony on the pianoforte, is the _Pastorale_ (Op. 28). Not only the second movement with its bird-like middle part; nor only the third with its extreme cheerfulness, nor the fourth with its outlook on the woods, its delight in the chase, its joyous conclusion; but also, and in the highest degree, the first movement, are confessions of Beethoven’s natural symbolism. This work stands on that indefinable border-line between the comic and the tragic, which is the unfailing mark of the intensest poetry. It is a complete picture of the world. Beethoven’s scherzi, his most peculiar form of art, which in the Sonata take the place of the old minuets, stand on this ground, and might be termed “secular,” in comparison with the dramatic embodiments of his first movements, or the complete picturings of the last. The Rondos exhibit a similar process of alteration. In them first, so early as the time of Philip Emanuel Bach, had the capacity of tonic art to “let a theme speak,” been exercised. They allowed a theme its full expressive value. To Beethoven, accordingly, in his first period, such rondos appealed with the strongest effect, and their charming melodies throng in his earlier sonatas. But he was able to give this form a still deeper meaning. In place of the melodies he adopts genuine motives of pregnant brevity, which, as in Op. 10, 3, he develops with characteristic reserve. These pieces, as contrasted with the old melodic rondo, show a convincing naturalism. To the old rondo they are related as his scherzo to the minuet. Equally significant is his love for certain diatonically moving accompaniment figures, as in Op. 14, 1, or Op. 28; he thus avoids the impression of a regularly harmonised theme, and allows the naturalistic motive to predominate over the formal melody.