Wagner calls it the Apotheosis of the dance. "Der in Toenen
idealisch verkoerperten Leibesbewegung," [an ideal embodiment in tones of
the movements of the human form]. This dance element is the
characteristic trait of the symphony; the dance element on a colossal
scale. Listen to Wagner's summary: "But one Hungarian peasant dance in
the final movement of his Symphony in A (the Seventh) he played for the
whole of nature; so played that who could see her dancing to it in
orbital gyrations must deem he saw a planet brought to birth before his
very eyes." In these later symphonies we see the beginnings of the
mysticism which so profoundly influenced Beethoven in his last years,
reaching its consummation in the Mass in D, the last Quartets, and the
Ninth Symphony. From this period on, the picture to be drawn of him is
of a man retiring more and more into himself as his growing experience
with the world shows him his unfitness for it. Only in his work did he
have any real reason for living. His every-day life became, for the most
part, a phantasmagoria, wherein persons and events continually changed
from grotesque to sublime, where nothing was stable or to be depended
upon.
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