Of the later sonatas that in B minor, op. 40, No. 2, and that in G minor, op. 50, No. 3, have been justly admired. Yet excellent as they are, one can hardly pretend to do more than lay a tribute on their graves. Only some unforeseen trump can rouse them from what seems to be their eternal sleep. One feature of the former may be noted: the return of a part of the slow movement in the midst of the rapid last movement. Such a process unites at least the last two movements very firmly together, tends to make of the sonata as a whole something more than a series of independent movements put in line according to the rule of convention. The sonata in G minor also seems to have an organic life as a whole. Clementi gave it a title, _Didone abbandonata_, and called the whole a _scena tragica_. This is treating the whole sonata as a drama based upon a single idea; but inasmuch as it was written probably between 1820 and 1821, this conception of the sonata probably came to him from Beethoven rather than from his own idealism.[25] It is hard to turn our thumbs down on Clementi. It may be unjust as well. He entered the arena of the sonata and in many ways no man excelled him there. Mozart’s impulsive condemnation has gone hard with him. We are like sheep, and even the wisest will listen all but unquestioning to a man who had, if ever man had, the voice of an angel. And so Clementi is all but forgotten as a sonatorial gladiator and remembered only as a trainer. That the greatest of the fighters profited by his teaching cannot be doubted. That they despoiled him of many ideas and even of his finery before his flesh was cold is also true. They made better use of them. A glance over Clementi’s sonatas can hardly astonish more than by what it reveals of the great commonness of musical idioms during the Viennese period. Phrase after phrase and endless numbers of fragments bob up with the features we had thought were only Haydn’s, or Mozart’s, or Beethoven’s. Mozart quite openly appropriated a theme from one of Clementi’s sonatas[26] as the basis of his overture to the ‘Magic Flute.’ Such a fact is, however, far less suggestive than the intangible similarity between the stuff Clementi used and that which his greater contemporaries in Vienna built with. Compare, for instance, the first movement of Clementi’s sonata in B-flat, op. 34, No. 2, with the first movement of Beethoven’s symphony in C minor. Likeness of treatment, likeness of skill, likeness of mood there are not; but the juxtaposition of the two movements creates a whisper that Clementi passed through music side by side with some of the greatest of all composers. IV