The sign of revolt is given; there is a rushing and running about of the multitude; an innocent man, or party, is surrounded, overpowered after a struggle and haled before a legal tribunal. Innocency weeps; the judge pronounces a harsh sentence; sympathetic voices mingle in laments and denunciations--they are those of widows and orphans; in the second part of the first movement the parties have become equal in numbers and the magistrates are now scarcely able to quiet the wild tumult. The uprising is suppressed, but the people are not quieted; hope smiles cheeringly and suddenly the voice of the people pronounces the decision in harmonious agreement.... But now, in the last movement, the classes and the masses mix in a variegated picture of unrestrained revelry. The quality still speak aloofly in the wind-instruments,--strange bacchantic madness in related chords--pauses, now here, now there--now on a sunny hill, anon on flowery meadow where in merry May all the jubilating children of nature vie with each other with joyful voices--float past the fancy. It is scarcely to be wondered at that such balderdash disgusted and even enraged Beethoven. In the fall of 1819, he dictated a letter to Müller--it has, unfortunately been lost--in which he protested energetically against such interpretations of his music. He pointed out, says Schindler, who wrote the letter for him, the errors to which such writings would inevitably give rise. If expositions were necessary, they should be confined to characterization of the composition in general terms, which could easily and correctly be done by any educated musician.