Up to this period, there was no visible falling off in Beethoven’s creative powers. But as from this time, owing to his constantly increasing deafness, he could no longer hear any music, that of a necessity must have had a prejudicial influence upon his fancy. His constant endeavour to be original and to open new paths, could no longer as formerly, be preserved from error by the guidance of the ear. Was it then to be wondered that his works became more and more eccentric, unconnected, and incomprehensible? It is true there are people, who imagine they can understand them, and in their pleasure at that, rank them far above his earlier masterpieces. But I am not of the number, and freely confess that, I have never been able to relish the last works of Beethoven. Yes! I must even reckon the much admired Ninth Symphony among them, the three first themes of which, inspite of some solitary flashes of genius, are to me worse than all of the eight previous Symphonies, the fourth theme of which is in my opinion so monstrous and tasteless, and in its grasp of Schiller’s Ode so trivial, that I cannot even now understand how a genius like Beethoven’s could have written it. I find in it another proof of what I already remarked in Vienna, that Beethoven was wanting in aesthetical feeling and in a sense of the beautiful. << less