The idea of making it of more importance than the
voice, upset all preconceived theories on the subject. The orchestra was
emphatically the tool best adapted to Beethoven's powers; he developed
it into something wholly different from what it was when he found it. He
put it to exquisite uses. His effects are the happiest imaginable and
they are introduced with a prodigality and lavishness suggesting a
reserve as of oceans from which to draw. Much of his vocal music is
dominated by the orchestra.
It took a long while to make people understand that music instead of
being the handmaid of poetry, whose function is merely to reflect the
ideas of our spoken language, has a language of its own, which can
convey ideas in itself, and that there are subtilties that can be
expressed in this manner, which evade one when we come to use our
coarser mode of expression. This is specially in evidence in Beethoven's
later work, particularly in the mass we are now considering. Wagner
frequently compares it to a symphony. In _Zukunftsmusik_, he says: "In
his Great Mass Beethoven has employed the choir and orchestra almost
exactly as in the symphony;" and elsewhere he cites it as being a
"strictly symphonic work of the truest Beethovenian spirit.
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