Books › The Violin Music Of Beethoven, 1902 › scan 49
Scan 49
The Violin Music Of Beethoven, 1902
9 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1me forget my true situation. It transports me into a condition not my own. Under the influence of music I seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to be able to do what I am not capable of doing. Music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which the composer of the music found himself at the time. My soul becomes confounded with his, and with him I pass from one state to another. Why so I cannot say. But Beethoven, who wrote the 'Kreutzer Sonata,' knew well why he found himself in a certain mood." The narrator then goes on to misread and degrade a noble work, finding in impassioned music of this description an incentive even to crime! That such music should not be performed unless some action corresponding to the excitement raised is to follow! and so forth. The simple nobility of the Andante does not touch him, that is dismissed as unimportant. Have we not here quite a revelation of the innate savagery underlying the Russian temperament? One is reminded of the heathen king who on first learning from a missionary monk of the sufferings of Christ at the hands of the Jews, started up, burning with indignation, eager to slay every Jew living in his dominions. So, in olden times did music, poetry, or narration actually overturn the reason in ill-balanced, unsophisticated temperaments.
3The original title of this sonata ran as follows:—
4"Sonata per il Pianoforte ed un Violino obbligato, scritta in un stilo molto concertante, quasi come d'un Concerto. Composta e dedicata al suo amico R. Kreutzer, Membro del Conservatorio di Musica in Parigi, Primo Violino dell' Academia delle Arti, e della Camera Imperiale, per L. Beethoven, Opera 47. A. Bonn, chez N. Simrock."
6The tenth and last sonata is numbered Op. 96, and comprises the following movements:—Allegro moderato, three-four time in G major; Adagio expressivo, two-four time in E flat major; Scherzo, three-four time in G minor, and Poco allegretto, three-four time in G major.
8We have not here so grand and noble-sounding a composition as the Kreutzer, or the C minor; a pastoral
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