Beethoven's instrumentation bears the unmistakable impress of his own personal individuality, and purely sensuous tone-effect is ever subordinated to the inceptive æsthetic scheme and clearness of thematic delineation. The employment of specific tonal quality of the various instruments capable of variated coloring, effectiveness, and scope, was absolutely faithful to the momentary requirements of the orchestral situation. And thus, while his predecessors had been absorbed in the contemplation and exposition of abstract musical thought, and, on the other hand, the sequent composers of the nineteenth century laid undue stress upon the portrayal of their conceptions in gorgeous orchestral raiment, Beethoven's masterpieces embody the temperate assimilation of fervent feeling, architectural structure, contrast of the various choirs, and intermixing of instrumental coloring, simultaneously and harmoniously developed, without apparent effort, all-satisfying, inseparable. One feature of Beethoven's greatness is emphasized by the self-restraint he exercised in usually making demands for but a modest apparatus as the interpreter of his orchestral conceptions. Thus, in spite of being tremendously progressive, and betraying at every step the inclination to enlarge the scope of his creations in every way, he was content to employ Mozart's scoring for all of his symphonies excepting the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth,--that is to say, strings, the four usual wood-instruments in pairs, two horns, two trumpets, and kettle-drums, were practically sufficient for his needs. This numerical distribution of parts differed but slightly in all but the above three excepted symphonies. Comparing this aggregation with those in Mozart's three representative symphonies, we find, as the only difference, that Beethoven's wood-wind includes two flutes in all but the Fourth Symphony, and that clarinets were now enrolled as a permanent adjunct to the orchestra. Two horns sufficed for them all excepting for the Third, "Eroica," where three are to be found, this being, moreover, the first time that more than two had been employed in symphonic writing by Beethoven.