By thus filling a conventional group of movements with one and the same life, Beethoven brought the sonata to a height beyond which it can never go. It may, indeed, be asked whether these last works are sonatas, whether they be not some new form. Yet the steps by which they evolved are clear, and in them all there are manifold traces of their origin. There is no other literature for the pianoforte comparable to them in scope and power. The special quality of their inspiration each must judge for himself, whether it move him, appeal to him, suit his taste in beauty of sound. But to that inspiration no one can deny a grandeur and nobility, a heroic proportion unique in pianoforte music. V The sonatas, from first to last, are Beethoven’s chief contribution to this special branch of music. Two of the five concertos have held their place beside these, the fourth in G major and the fifth in E-flat major. The huge proportions of the latter will probably not impress so much as they have in years past. It is commonly called the ‘Emperor’ concerto. In the first movement there are many measures which give an impression of more or less perfunctory, intellectual working-out. The middle movement is inspired throughout, and the modulation from B major to the dominant harmony of E-flat major just before the final rondo is wonderfully beautiful. The subject of the rondo has a gigantic vigor. The G major concerto is of much more delicate workmanship and, from the point of view of sheer beauty of sound, is more effective to modern ears. The treatment of the solo instrument is more consistently pianistic, adds more in special color, therefore, to the beauty of the whole. The slow movement fulfills an ideal of the concerto which up to that time and even later has been almost ignored. It is a dialogue, a dramatic conversation between the orchestra and the piano, the one seeming to typify some dark power of fate, the other man. Its beauty is matchless. It is worthy of remark that both the G major and the E-flat major concertos begin with passages for the solo instrument. Besides the sonatas and the concertos Beethoven published several sets of shorter pieces, rondos, dances, variations, and ‘Bagatelles.’ They are hardly conspicuous, and, in comparison with the longer works, are insignificant. The thirty-three variations on a waltz theme of A. Diabelli, published in 1823 as opus 120, are marvellous as a _tour de force_ of musical skill; second, however, to the Goldberg Variations of Bach, to which they seem to owe several features. Is it possible that a variation like the twenty-eighth owes something to Weber as well?