ot too long after the first chorale. This was the startling and almost fearful, but still uplifting, part in which the female and male vocals collided like two huge tidal waves with the power to splinter a fleet of ships with the German Alle Menschen repeated several times. Upon this onslaught of euphony, I turned from whatever I might have been thinking before, and looked at some violently twisting and rising leaves and other debris, and gazed at the playful heavens, again ominous.Annoyed with Beethoven and the cruel elements, I stood there, unmoving; indecisive, not knowing whether to turn around or pursue my present course, I felt the excited chorale still striking some unknown and inexplicable fear within me, as though some divine creature were about to strike me down in some vehemence which lies well beyond the realms of verbal description. So, as the chorus continued repeating its faithful mantra, the winds again rose up stronger than before, as twigs began to snap and fall about me; I was still, yet deeply moved.Perplexed at the whimsy antics of nature, I was about to retreat to my home, when, in the remarkable symphony, a single male vocal broke through the complicated entanglement of godly voices, and I, despite the protests of my superego, decided to continue on with some alien, renewed vigor against the gusty weather, as though I were the bearer of news about the winner of a war or some other momentous aftermath. At this, as though impressed with my displayof singular determination, the wind made itself placid, laying down before me.Violins were heard, along with the driving, male voice. Suddenly, completely without warning and all at once, what seemed like throngs of angelic, female voices sang as though sent on an appeal to God on the eve of apocalypse. They continued, soon joined by male voices, and other instruments, in the most spiritual and epiphytic reverberation Ive ever had the pleasure of witnessing, and, seemi...
