131.] This is marked "molto vivace," and the character of the
entire movement is thus appropriately indicated. In quite an
exceptional way, however Beethoven has, in this quartet, so
arranged the several movements that they are heard in immediate
succession, without the customary interval; indeed they appear to
be developed one from the other according to certain delicate
laws. Thus the Allegro immediately follows an Adagio full of a
dreamy sadness, not to be matched elsewhere in the master's
works. If it were permitted to interpret the Allegro as showing a
state of feeling, such as could in some sort be reproduced in
pictorial language, (deutbares Stimmungsbild) one might say that
it shews a most lovely phenomenon, which arises, as it were, from
the depths of memory, and which, as soon as it has been
apprehended, is warmly taken up, and cherished. Evidently the
question, with regard to execution, here is: how can this
phenomenon (the new Allegro theme) be made to arise naturally
from the sad and sombre close of the Adagio, so that its abrupt
appearance shall prove attractive rather than repellant? Very
appropriately, the new theme first appears like a delicate,
hardly distinguishable dream, in unbroken pp, and is then lost in
a melting ritardando; thereafter, by means of a crescendo, it
enters its true sphere, and proceeds to unfold its real nature.
It is obviously the delicate duty of the executants to indicate
the character of the new movement with an appropriate
modification of tempo--i.e., to take the notes which immediately
succeed the Adagio for a link, and so unobtrusively to connect
them with the following that a change in the movement is hardly
perceptible, and moreover so to manage the ritardando, that the
crescendo, which comes after it, will introduce the master's
quick tempo, in such wise that the molto vivace now appears as