,--Beethoven could and
did despatch with extreme rapidity; but works of a different order, for
which he could take his own time, and which were to be the expression
of the grand feelings of his own great heart,--the composition of these
was no light holiday-task. He could "make music" with all ease and
rapidity; and had this been his aim, the extreme productiveness of the
first years in Vienna shows that he might, perhaps, have rivalled
Father Haydn himself in the number of his instrumental compositions.
His difficulty was not in writing music, but in mastering the poetic
conception, and finding that tone-speech which should express in epic
progress, yet in obedience to the laws of musical form, the emotions,
feelings, sentiments to be depicted. Hence the great length of time
during which many of his works were subjects of meditation and study.
Hence the six years which elapsed between the conception and completion
of the "Heroic Symphony."
Beethoven passed his youth near the borders of France, under a
government which allowed a republican personal freedom to its subjects.
He was himself a strong republican, and old enough, when the crushed
people over the border at length arose in their terrible energy against
the King, to sympathize with them in their woe, perhaps in their
vengeance.
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