239-307) are entitled
"Helden Weihe," (Consecration of the Hero,) "Die Sinfonie Eroica und
die ideale Musik," (The Heroic Symphony and Ideal Music,) and "Die
Zukunft vor dem Richterstuhl der Vergangenheit" (The Future before the
Judgment-Seat of the Past). Save the first fourteen pages, which are
given to Beethoven's sickness in 1802, the testament which he wrote at
that time, and some remarks upon the "Christ on the Mount of Olives,"
these chapters are devoted to the "Heroic Symphony,"--its history, its
explanation, and a polemical discourse directed against the views of
Wagner, Berlioz, Oulibichef, and others.
The circumstances under which this remarkable work was written, the
history of its origin and completion, are so clearly related by Ries
and Schindler, that it seems hardly possible to make any great blunder
in repeating them. Marx has, however, a very happy talent for getting
out of the path, even when it lies directly before him.
"When, therefore, Bernadotte," says he, "at that time French Ambassador
at Vienna, and sharer in the admiration which the Lichnowskis and
others of high rank felt for Beethoven, proposed to him to pay his
homage to the hero [Napoleon] in a grand instrumental work, he found
the artist in the best disposition thereto; perhaps such thoughts had
already occurred to his mind.
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