Not much time to post these days, what with one thing and another, but music is always a good standby. In fact I’ve had this at the back of my mind for some time; hearing it on the radio last week gave me the nudge I needed to post it. I always feel a but uncomfortable about posting just a movement from a classical piece, but I think it is justifiable in this case. This is the 3rd Movement of String Quartet No. 15 (in A minor) by Ludwig van Beethoven (Opus 132).
The third movement is headed with the words
Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart
I take the liberty of translating the first two words, using my schoolboy German, as “A Holy Song of Thanksgiving”; Beethoven wrote the piece after recovering from a very serious illness which he had feared might prove fatal. The movement begins in a mood of quiet humility but slowly develops into a sense of hope and deeply felt joy. The most remarkable thing about this movement to me, though, is that the music possesses the same restorative powers that it was written to celebrate. This music has a therapeutic value all of its own.
I don’t know if William Wordsworth (of whose poetry I am also extremely fond) ever had the chance to hear Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15 , and in Tintern Abbey he was writing about the therapeutic power of nature rather than music, but surely the “tranquil restoration” described in that poem is exactly the feeling Beethoven achieves in his music:
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: — feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened: — that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, —
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
In the Dark 