The nature of this music is such that up to the final rondo its various sections must, if taken from the whole, affect us as being fragmentary and unsatisfying. The work is more a fantasy than a sonata. The triplex form is not to be found in it. But it is accepted as a sonata, as is the previous one, opus 26, or Mozart’s sonata in A major, beginning with a theme and variations; and the close interdependence of its various sections, æsthetic if not thematic, points unmistakably to the method of the last sonatas. The movements of the sonata in C-sharp minor, opus 27, No. 2, are from the point of view of form complete in themselves. Moreover, the first and last movements are perfectly in triplex form. But this sonata, too, is to be regarded, according to Beethoven himself, as in the nature of a fantasy. This is because of the quality of improvisation which pervades it all, which cannot be hidden even by the perfect finish of the form. And the entire improvisation seems to be sprung of one mood, the whole music related to one fundamental idea. Whether or not it was inspired by the beautiful lady to whom it is dedicated, for whom Beethoven had an apparently lasting though vain passion, need not concern us. The music as it stands is full of the deepest and most passionate feeling. The slow movement has a great deal the nature of a prelude. Its lyric quality is passive; but it sings of emotions which must assert themselves in active and more violent self-expression. And so, passing under, as it were, the shadowy ephemeral second movement which may veil but not suppress them, they burst out in the last movement with the power of a great storm. Is the unity here merely one which great familiarity with the work as a whole may account for? One can point to no logical incompleteness in any one of the movements. Is their union in our mind essentially one of association? It is more than that. There is a single emotion underlying the work as a whole, which must seek further and different utterance than the first movement affords it; which the second movement may belie but not extinguish; to which only the fantastic coda of the last movement gives ultimate release. In both these sonatas there is a unity which cannot be destroyed. In both, however, it is artistic rather than organic, and this may be said of the subsequent sonatas up to opus 101. This, and the three succeeding sonatas, seem almost to be musical dramas, more than tone poems. They are huge allegories in music. The form which they take is one which is built up note by note out of the conflict of vast forces, natural or spiritual powers, rather than human emotions. Three of them work up to great fugues. The other two, opus 109 and opus 111, to towering series of variations.