His great service was twofold: to free the art from formalism and spirit-killing laws; and to lift it beyond the level of fashionable taste. In this service he typifies that spirit which, in the persons of Wordsworth, Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, has rescued literary art from similar deadening influences. Wagner expressed this feeling when he said, ‘For inasmuch as he elevated music, conformably to its utmost nature, out of its degradation as a merely diverting art to the height of its sublime calling, he has opened to us the understanding of that art in which the world explains itself.’ Herein lies his true relation to the world of art and the secret of his greatness; for almost unchallenged he takes the supreme place in the realm of pure instrumental music. His power is that of intellect combined with greatness of character. ‘He loves love rather than any of the images of love. He loves nature with the same, or even a more constant, passion. He loves God, whom he cannot name, whom he worships in no church built with hands, with an equal rapture. Virtue appears to him with the same loveliness as beauty.... There are times when he despairs for himself, never for the world. Law, order, a faultless celestial music, alone exist for him; and these he believed to have been settled before time was, in the heavens. Thus his music was neither revolt nor melancholy,’ and it is this, the noblest expression of a strange and otherwise inarticulate soul, which lives for the eternal glory of the art of music. F. B. FOOTNOTES: [50] Edward Dickinson: ‘The Study of the History of Music.’ [51] _Dichtung und Wahrheit._ [52] Thayer, Vol. I, p. 227. [53] Nottebohm: _Beethoveniana_, XXVII. [54] Arthur Symons, Essay ‘Beethoven.’ [55] Grove: ‘Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies,’ pp. 55-56. [56] Berlioz: _Étude critique des symphonies de Beethoven_. [57] Arthur Symons, Essay ‘Beethoven.’ [58] Thayer: Vol. II, p. 10. [59] Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) is now remembered chiefly by his technical studies for the pianoforte, though a much greater portion of his work deserves recognition. He was a great concert pianist, a rival of whom Mozart was a little unwilling to admit the ability. A great part of his life was spent in England. He composed a great amount of music for the pianoforte which has little by little been displaced by that of Mozart; and in his own lifetime symphonies which once were hailed with acclaim fell into neglect before Haydn’s. His pianoforte works expanded keyboard technique, especially in the direction of double notes and octaves, and were the first distinctly pianoforte works in distinction to works for the harpsichord. [60] Wagner, Essay ‘Beethoven.’ [61] ‘Oxford History of Music,’ Vol. V. [62] Grove, Vol. I, p. 204. [63] Arthur Symons, Essay ‘Beethoven.’ [64] Dannreuther, ‘Beethoven,’ Macmillan’s Magazine, July, 1876.