Matthews writes that it is not fanciful to see the final movement's second fugue as a "gathering of confidence after illness or despair" , a theme which can be discerned in other late works by Beethoven ( compares it with the "Cavatina" from the String Quartet Op. 130). describes the coda as "passionate" and "heroic", but not out of place after the arioso's distress or the fugues' "luminous verities". Rosen states that this movement is the first time in the history of music where the academic devices of counterpoint and fugue are integral to a composition's drama, and observes that Beethoven in this work does not "simply represent the return to life, but persuades us physically of the process" .