Beethoven's Eroica: The Hero Within the Music

Another Heroic Monument

This weekend, the Harrisburg Symphony, conducted by Stuart Malina, presents Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, the Eroica, on its opening program of the new season. The concerts at the Forum are Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm with Truman Bullard's pre-concert talk an hour before each performance. You can read the previous posts in this series - about the program in general (complete video performances included); about Beethoven and Bonaparte the Hero; and about hearing the Eroica for the first time. And they can be read before or after (but not during) the performance.

While Bonaparte – that is, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte (born Buonaparte), not the Emperor Napoleon – was the impetus behind the Symphony in E-flat Major Beethoven began working on in 1802, I'm wondering if Haydn wasn't closer to the mark when he allegedly said, “He's placed himself at the center of his work. He gives us a glimpse into his soul. ...But it is quite, quite new – the artist as hero – quite new... Everything is different from today.” (– quoted as it was used in the BBC/Pro Arte film Eroica which was imbedded in the previous post.)

Haydn (from BBC's "Eroica")

The idea of the “artist as hero” is entirely antithetical to the “artist as craftsman” of the Classical Era of which Haydn is generally considered the ultimate example. Yet he had already begun pushing these boundaries, now that he had retired after nearly thirty years as a court composer for Prince Nicholas Esterházy and had few requirements to fulfill for his successor. He composed two immense oratorios – completing The Creation in 1798 and The Seasons in 1801 – and six monumental masses between 1796 and 1802, his last major works. And there is certainly something of the sublime far beyond the classical craftsman in these works.

Haydn teaching Beethoven

Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, a year after the death of Mozart – whose own music, especially in things like his D Minor Piano Concerto and the opera Don Giovanni challenged 18th Century Classical proprieties with an abundance of Romantic emotions – and studied with Haydn until he left once more for London in 1794. Though their relationship was never friendly – in fact, Haydn treated the young composer with some disdain if not jealousy and didn't seem to take these lessons seriously (Beethoven refused to list Haydn as his teacher on his first publications because he felt Haydn had taught him too little; another composer, examining Beethoven's counterpoint notebook, found several errors that Haydn had not bothered to correct) – Haydn was, after all, the most celebrated living composer in Europe at the time. One could point out many similarities in their works – the opening of “Winter” in Haydn's Seasons and the introduction to Beethoven's 4th Symphony, both in the same key, for instance – but then the “common language” of 18th Century classicism was so “common,” it is difficult to say how much of this is influence or coincidence much less imitation.

But there was something so startlingly new in the Eroica for 1803, it's impossible not to ask “where did that come from!?”

Yet if we examine the symphony in terms of its overall structure, it turns out not to be that different from the models that inspired Beethoven's first two symphonies between 1800 and 1802: instead of a slow introduction, typical with Haydn, Beethoven uses two peremptory chords to get out attention (no chance to settle comfortably into “listening mode,” here), but after that, the overall concepts are not unfamiliar – just incredibly expanded, especially in the middle section's development which is the hallmark of Sonata Form (in the 18th Century, this might be so brief as to be no more than a digression, but in Beethoven, it becomes the dramatic focus of the struggle between leaving the tonic key and its eventual return.

This first movement – full of excruciating dissonances and nearly as long as any of Haydn's earlier symphonies entirely – is followed, as expected, by a slow movement, but again one of immensely expanded proportions and intense drama – a funeral march, no less.

Haydn's third movements are often earthy and more dance-like than the standard courtly minuet of his earlier works, but Beethoven's takes this peasant-like energy to a new and often frenetic level, a return to life after the slow movement tragedy.

Haydn's finales were often light-hearted, full of tricks or jokes, but also capable of hiding intellectual details, but none of them were ever as long or as commanding as the Eroica's finale: here, a set of variations on what seems to be a simplistic, almost inane idea later turns out to be the bass of a theme introduced almost as an afterthought, but simple or not, it is full of “learnèd counterpoint” and out-and-out fugues, the culmination of the intellectual.

And it was the tradition in the 18th Century approach to variations that the next to the last one would be in a slow tempo (a way to inform the audience the end is near) which is exactly what Beethoven does here except, again, it is greatly expanded, almost into a slow movement of its own. It becomes an emotional climax if not of the whole piece, then at least the second half of the symphony (nothing could be more emotional that that funeral march's final disintegration). And how to end it? With an uproarious “happy ending,” a triumphal dance that, to a proper 18th Century classicist, would be vulgar in the extreme, pounding away at the final resolution to the home tonic – repetitive but also drunk with joy!

The skeleton of the classical symphony is still there but the surface of it – its scope and dimensions and what activates it as a work of art – are almost unrecognizable, certainly on first hearing. Yet it is not so revolutionary as we tend to think, embedded in the past as it is.

So it is interesting to read someone writing about the “sublime” in music:

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“In music, only that can be sublime which exceeds the conceptual powers of the imagination: which appears too large and significant, too foreign and strange, for the imagination to grasp it easily...”

“The feeling of sublimity in music is aroused when the imagination is elevated to the plane of the limitless, the immeasurable, the unconquerable. This happens when such emotions are aroused as... prevent the integration of one's impressions into a coherent whole.”

– Christian Friedrich Michaelis, “Some Remarks on the Sublime in Music” (Leipzig, 1805) quoted in James Webster's essay, The Creation, Haydn's Late Vocal Music and the Musical Sublime in the Bard Music Festival Series, Haydn and His World (Princeton, 1997)
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It is interesting to read this because it very much describes the music we associate with the huge emotional – indeed, “sensual” – leap into 19th Century romanticism which, as any music student has been told, essentially began with Beethoven's Eroica in 1803. Outside of a close circle of friends of Prince Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz, no one else heard this symphony until April, 1805, when it was first performed at Vienna's Theater an der Wien.

And yet Michaelis published his “Remarks” in Leipzig in 1805: had he been in Vienna and heard Beethoven's startling new music? It's almost as if he were describing the Eroica's impact on its listeners:

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“Firstly, by uniformity so great that it almost excludes variety: by the constant repetition of the same note or chord... by long, majestic, weighty, or solemn notes, and hence by very slow movement; by long pauses holding up the progress of the melodic line, or which impede the shaping of a melody, thus underlining the lack of variety. Secondly, by too much diversity, as when innumerable impressions succeed one another too rapidly and the mind is too abruptly hurled into the thundering torrent of sounds, or when (as in many polyphonic compositions involving many voices) the themes are developed together in so complex a manner that the imagination cannot easily and calmly integrate the diverse ideas into a coherent whole without strain. Thus in music, the sublime can only be that which seems too vast and significant, too strange and wonderful, to be easily assimilated by it.”

– Michaelis, ibid
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The first idea certainly seems to pertain to Beethoven's epic Funeral March – even to that mysterious, unexpected D# interrupting the 1st Movement's opening cello melody, though not a “long pause,” which holds up the progress of the melodic line and expands it in such a way, there is this harmonic hiccup before the phrase cadences where it's expected to.

And the second idea – too much diversity – is another element of Beethoven's development sections, one thing after another thrown at you – melodic fragments, harmonic implications, striking dissonances and rhythmic irregularities – before you're back on any kind of solid (expected) ground.

Yet Michaelis is no doubt responding to elements of Haydn's oratorios – especially The Creation which already begins pushing beyond mere craftsmanship: the opening depiction of chaos was, to an 18th Century listener, sheer chaos, harmonically; the appearance of Light a stroke of brilliance that, though obvious to us (especially tame compared to today's special effects we witness daily in television, movies and video games) was thrilling to first-time listeners.

But it's all about expectations and how they're met: how did Beethoven get from being the Student beginning his studies with Haydn at 21 to the Master who wrote the Eroica at 32?

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Cherubini & Muse (by Ingres)

It is tempting to write about the influences on Beethoven' style we don't usually think about, especially composers of his time whom we no longer know. There was a whole school of French artists active in post-Revolutionary Paris who painted, sculpted and composed on an epic scale, composers like Cherubini, an Italian transplant who became the leading French composer and dominated the musical style of his generation. Beethoven's sole opera, Fidelio, premiered in 1805, is based on a French "rescue" drama and heavily inspired by Cherubini.

But the musical style of Gossec, Gretry and Mehul was known to Beethoven whether or not he was aware of the paintings of David and Ingres. But this would take another sizable post of more interest to scholars than listeners, so let's leave that for now. It is, however, an area little written and less talked about in the Beethoven literature.

After producing six string quartets by 1800, his first symphony and a series of piano sonatas – including the very Romantic “Pathetique” in 1798 and the so-called “Moonlight” in 1801 (which could easily have been called the “Tempest” after its stormy finale) and the very next sonata, the placid “Pastoral” – Beethoven said to a friend, “I am only a little satisfied with my previous works. From today on I will take a new path.”

The next works he composed were the 2nd Symphony, the three violin sonatas of Op. 30 (dedicated to Tsar Alexander I), the “Eroica” Variations for solo piano which made use of a successful dance tune from his ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus of the previous year (a view of Creation from the perspective of classical Greek mythology, by the way), and the three piano sonatas that includes the very unusual one actually known as the “Tempest” (from a chance remark he made about Shakespeare's play when asked what its opening movement meant without ever really explaining how it applies). And then he started working out some new ideas for another symphony.

But something else happened in Beethoven's life that year.

A far from heroic-looking Beethoven walking in the woods

He had begun experiencing symptoms that indicated something was wrong with his hearing and the idea of a concert pianist, indeed a composer, going deaf came at a time just as Beethoven's reputation was growing, that his new pieces were bringing in a good income. He was nearly 30 – what did it mean if he would soon go deaf and all this would come to a sudden halt?

In October, 1802, in the midst of the last movement of the 2nd Symphony, Beethoven wrote a heart-rending letter to his two brothers, intended to be opened after his death, which is known as “The Heiligenstadt Testament.” In places, it reads like a suicide note.

He had been troubled by the first symptoms around 1796, enough to worry about it. In a letter to a friend back home in 1801, he wrote “I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.”

When he wrote his 5th Symphony – which he started sketching probably while he was working on the Eroica and had completed the opening movements before he'd begun the 4th Symphony – he used that famous motive he described to his student Ferdinand Ries as “fate knocking at the door.” This gives rise to the idea the symphony is clearly about Man overcoming Fate and celebrating a great victory in the finale. It doesn't matter if that Man is actually the man Beethoven because the music itself transcends whatever inspired it, but certainly his own experiences dealing with what Fate has dealt him – in this case, his deafness – might have given him the dramatic inspiration whether he's writing an autobiographical piece or not.

Another fanciful image of Beethoven

And just as the Hero of the Eroica Symphony probably isn't a musical portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte – after all, how do you make sense of a hero who has a funeral in the second movement when the hero it is supposed to be dedicated to is very much alive? – is it any more possible the struggle in this music is the first stage of Beethoven coming to terms with his own deafness, becoming his own hero in grabbing Fate, two quick knocks at the door to start the symphony on its way?

Perhaps not. It's always dangerous to read anything into what Beethoven may have been thinking because he never told anyone what was specifically on his mind – even the reference to the “Tempest” is so vague, it hardly begins to answer the question.

But whether it is a musical portrait of Beethoven – or more likely his state of mind – or of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, is immaterial. You may hear great armies marching across battlefields in the first movement or hear in it a portrait not of Bonaparte but of Alexander the Great (as one writer insisted) but that may have nothing to do with what Beethoven was thinking about when he composed it.

What it comes down to is more like what Arturo Toscanini said: it is Allegro con brio, the tempo Beethoven gave to the first movement. It is about music and how it's put together: what you make of it is your own side of the equation.

- Dick Strawser

Heroic Beethoven: Some People Behind the Music

Beethoven in 1803

The Harrisburg Symphony opens its new season in the newly renovated Forum in Harrisburg's capitol complex with two works by Beethoven - his 4th Piano Concerto (with Alon Goldstein as the soloist) and his 3rd Symphony, known simply as "The Eroica." You can read more about the concert here and other posts about the symphony here. (Check out some photos from the Forum's renovation process, here.)

Concert times are Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm with Truman Bullard's pre-concert talk an hour before each program.
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Given the news today – pick your horror story: Ebola, ISIS, gun violence, political campaigns, what-have-you – it's sometimes difficult to imagine yourself living in some other era that could be any worse (your good-old-days or someone else's).

We often view Art as a means of escaping from our daily travails, a chance to forget about reality and lose ourselves in the glories of some past century.

But we often forget about the composer's reality at the time this music was being written and usually dismiss it as unnecessary to our enjoyment of it.

Granted, one can enjoy Beethoven's Eroica without knowing what was going on in his life or beyond hearing how it had once been dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte.

But if, after you've heard this composition – regarded as the first major work to unleash what became known as 19th Century Romantic Music – you wondered “where did that come from?”, then read on.

To open last season, Stuart Malina programmed Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring which is credited as being where 20th Century Music began. This season, he begins with Beethoven's Eroica which is usually given the credit for being the starting point for the 19th Century, dividing what's become standard classical music fare from the 18th Century's Baroque and Classical styles.

Heroic, indeed, whether it was inspired by Napoleon or not. It was longer than any symphony written before it and it was far more dramatic than anything Haydn had ever written. The demands on the listeners – not to mention the players – were unprecedented. What must it have been like to hear this for the first time in 1804, knowing only what listeners in Vienna knew? How can we, today, forget everything we've heard that's been written since then – written, mostly, in Beethoven's shadow?

Prince Lobkowitz

I'd recently discovered this 2003 BBC film – it lasts less than 90 minutes – which attempts to do just that: it takes place on the day Beethoven rehearsed his new symphony with an orchestra hired by his friend and patron, Prince Lobkowitz. Considering how Hollywood usually treats the arts – classical music, in particular – this is not a bad representation of the possibilities (at least no St. Bernards were harmed in the filming of this program). Many comments (whether they occurred that day or not) are factual or at least taken from historical documents. But it gives you a reasonable idea as far as “historical fiction” is concerned what could have happened.

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The BBC/Opus Arte film “Eroica” (2003) directed by Simon Cellan-Jones with Ian Hart as Beethoven:

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What discrepancies exist are minor – the room it was filmed in may not be the music room of Lobkowitz's Vienna palace (see below) and the military gentleman, Count Dietrichstein, could not be the same Count Dietrichstein who exists in Beethoven's biography, a man five years the composer's junior who, aside from being artistically astute and a close friend, was also a composer himself.

Yes, Beethoven was in love with the young woman, Josephine von Deym, née Brunsvick (who arrives late with her older sister, Therese – both were piano students of Beethoven's and both have been considered candidates for the Immortal Belovéd who figures in Beethoven's life in 1812 - you can read more about the women in Beethoven's life in my blog post, here). Yes, she was recently widowed with four children (though one of them was only a few months old at the time, despite the scene where all four of them romp through the music room). Hopeful of marrying her, Beethoven was well aware of the laws which forbade her, an aristocrat, from marrying a “commoner” like Beethoven, despite his being a genius and being – well, Beethoven!

And yes, since the composer often styled himself in French, signing his name as Louis van Beethoven, his close friends are calling him Louis – not Louie...

Ferdinand Ries

Keep in mind Beethoven was 33 years old at this time – we tend to forget that he was only 56 when he died. His student, Ferdinand Ries (the son of Beethoven's first violin teacher back in Bonn), he who makes the hapless comment about the horn player coming in early, would have been 19, then. A month later, Ries made his debut as a concert pianist playing Beethoven's C Minor Piano Concerto (No. 3) with his own cadenza. Though he left Vienna in 1805, it is his account, written 34 years later, that supplies most of the information we have about this particular day along with several other anecdotes which give us such a wonderful view of the human who was The Master.

The biggest doubt about the film, of course, is the level of the performance. Ries remarks that the rehearsal was “terrible” and indeed here it begins that way. It is hard to imagine that, after a particularly bumpy start, this sight-reading session of such new and strange music should suddenly become a performance any ensemble today would be proud of – and kudos to the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique for supplying the musicians of the orchestra (except for one of the bass players and perhaps the second horn player) who are, in fact, led here by their actual concertmaster if, in the soundtrack, by John Eliot Gardiner. Still, it would be excruciating theater to subject modern audiences to what the actual rehearsal may have sounded like.

One of the things I like about this presentation is watching the faces of those people hearing this music for the first time – and not just hearing it but hearing music like it for the first time. There are those who are confused by it or perplexed by certain passages – especially the more dissonant ones – and those who are excited by it. For instance, Princess Caroline, Lobkowitz's wife, has an eagerness about her listening: clearly the music thrills her and she is up on the very latest of what is “new.”

There are those who clearly have no clue what is going on here, musically or otherwise, and can only compare it to what they know (“if this were by Haydn, it would be over by now,” someone – a footman? – says near the end of the first movement). There are those who have no clue what is going on, either, but are somehow aware whatever it is is something significant.

Count Dietrichstein, depicted here as an old fuss-budget clearly out of sorts over Beethoven's dedication to Bonaparte, is deeply affected by the slow movement, its funeral march: perhaps he is remembering friends he has lost on the battlefield? And the young woman – who is Josephine von Deym, the woman Beethoven is disappointed had not, at the beginning, arrived yet – is no doubt thinking about her late husband who'd died that January.

Prince Lobkowitz, historically described as “absent-minded,” is at times unsure what he is hearing, closing his eyes to better concentrate, perhaps, or is he nodding off, a bit? Suffering from gout? Perhaps.

Typical would be the discussion heard after the first movement – what each listener heard in the music, whether inspired by knowing it was a “Bonaparte Symphony” or simply in hearing great armies marching across history to do battle. Listeners have always heard music their own way, trying to create some story, perhaps, to hang on to, to explain what they're listening to when all the composer may have been thinking about was how to lead up to these particularly dissonant chords at the climax of the development section.

Haydn arrives at Beethoven's rehearsal

I don't know, frankly, if Haydn did show up at his student's rehearsal – and if he did, why not late, after all? – but I love the shot where Beethoven is standing in front of the orchestra (not as a conductor: conductors with batons didn't exist at the time!) and we see the old man Haydn entering behind him, like a ghost peering over his shoulder. Brilliant. Even more brilliant is the expression on Haydn's face as the camera moves in to focus on him, as Beethoven commits something his teacher (and many in those first audiences) would have viewed as a mistake – “why would he do that?”

What he says at the end is perhaps the most telling line in the entire film. Attributed to Haydn, I'm not sure (since I can't verify it anywhere other than having heard it so often) if it is factual or one of those mythological statements created by the well-meaning Anton Schindler years later, but it does sum up an attitude about Beethoven that transcends the usual misunderstanding between the Old Guard and the New.

“He's placed himself at the center of his work,” Haydn tells his hosts after the rehearsal has concluded. “He gives us a glimpse into his soul – I expect that's why it's so... noisy... but it is quite, quite new – the artist as hero – quite new... Everything is different from today.”

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To help imagine the mortal who could create such music, here is a video-montage of still photographs of a house in Döbling, now a section of Vienna. It is here that Beethoven lived when he composed most of his Third Symphony during the summer of 1803.
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(The soundtrack is part of the slow movement of the C Minor Violin Sonata, Op. 30/2 – here with Pinchas Zukerman and Daniel Barenboim – which was composed in the summer of 1802 when he was in Heiligenstadt, though I've never seen it referred to as the “Eroica Sonata” before. It's from the set I'd mentioned in a previous post as having been dedicated to the Russian tsar, Alexander I.)

The apartment Beethoven occupied that summer is accessible through a door off the courtyard just off the street. Presumably, he had a view of the fields and woods beyond though today, one can see only the house across the street.

The house itself – much less the grounds – is different from what it would have been during Beethoven's stay here, a house built in the 1790s on the main street of a quiet country suburb. The second floor was added in 1840 and the ornate lamp post is certainly later still. The house is currently a museum – apparently it was not open the day the poster of this video visited – and contains little actual material about Beethoven beyond some period furniture and informative displays, but you can find a little more about it and see a couple images from the inside at the official Vienna Museum website, here.

The Palace of Prince Lobkowitz (left), Vienna

The Palace of Prince Josef Maximilian Lobkowitz still stands in Vienna though the main family castle is in Prague. The Prince who was Beethoven's friend and patron (and, for a time, landlord) was the 7th prince of the family and lost much of the family fortune not only in supporting the arts in Vienna, maintaining his own orchestra, but in the political instability and economic downturns that affected Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.

The music room where this first “read-through” of the symphony took place is now called the “Eroicasaal” (or Eroica Concert Hall). In the photograph here, it is a scene of a lecture. It figures also in a scene from the PBS “Keeping Score” episode on the Eroica with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas walking through the space.

Though you would think the Viennese palace would be the spot for this, the family's collection of Beethoven memorabilia as well as numerous instruments and other manuscripts is housed at the castle in Prague. Here is a Viking Tours promotional video about the Lobkowicz's Palace. The Beethoven Collection begins c.3:20 into the clip:
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Beethoven also dedicated his 5th Symphony to both Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador who commissioned the three string quartets bearing his name (he also had household musicians which frequently played and premiered Beethoven's newest works). Among other works dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz are the Op. 18 String Quartets (first heard in 1800) as well as the “Harp” Quartet, Op. 74 (published in 1810), the Triple Concerto (written, however, for the Archduke Rudolph, the Austrian Emperor's youngest brother, who as both a piano and a composition student of Beethoven's and who was a frequent performer at the Lobkowitz's), and the song cycle, An die ferne Geliebter (“To the Distant Belovéd”) in 1816.

Lobkowitz, one of three aristocrats to guarantee Beethoven a pension to keep him in Vienna, was nearly ruined in the Depression of 1811 and was forced to renege on his contribution, much to Beethoven's displeasure. He wrote a small cantata for the Prince's birthday in 1816 to be sung to him by members of his family – he and the Princess had, by the way, twelve children – but the performance did not take place. The prince was “deathly ill” at the time and died a week later.

After Prince Joseph Maximilian's death, the family usually rented out the palace before selling the building in the mid-19th Century. It was for a while (with a bit of irony) the home of the French Embassy from 1869-1909: Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew ruled France as the first popularly elected President in 1848 who then staged a coup and overthrew his own government, naming himself Emperor Napoleon III in 1851 and ruled until 1870. From 1945-1980, it housed the French Institute of Vienna before becoming a government building which, since 1991, has been part of Vienna's Museum of Art and History, the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

As for Beethoven's pupil, Ferdinand Ries went on to become a well-known composer and pianist, if forgotten today beyond his association as Beethoven's Student. As Beethoven said of him, "He imitates me too much." As Grove's Dictionary put it, he caught the style and phrases but not the immortality of his master. For instance, the second symphony he composed - written in 1813, it was later published as No. 5 in D Minor - uses the famous Fate-Knocks-at-the-Door rhythm from Beethoven's 5th.

Opening of Ferdinand Ries' Symphony #5 (arr. as a Septet) 1813

(One should also point out, so did Gustav Mahler in his 5th Symphony...)

Ries spent a busy decade in London where he was also instrumental in helping secure a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society for what became Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Then he returned to Germany and became a respected composer and conductor in Frankfurt where he died in 1838 at the age of 53. He composed eight symphonies, eight piano concertos, three operas and two oratorios plus a large amount of chamber music and piano music, all of it forgotten today.

 - Dick Strawser

Beethoven's Heroic Symphony: Beethoven & Bonaparte

This weekend, Stuart Malina conducts the Harrisburg Symphony in an All-Beethoven program to open the new season featuring the 4th Piano Concerto with Alon Goldstein and the Symphony No. 3, the Eroica. The performances - in the newly refurbished Forum with new and wider seats, not to mention new rest rooms - are Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. Truman Bullard offers the pre-concert talk an hour before each concert.

You can read more about the program in this earlier post, which includes videos of complete performances of both works, and read Ellen Hughes' preview in the Patriot-News, here interviewing both soloist and conductor about the music they will bring to life. Another post about the Eroica examines some of the people and places associated with the first time it was heard.
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an epic Beethoven monument by Max Klinger, 1902

Within the comparatively small world of Classical Music, given the greater aspects of the Music Business in general, there's a whole “Beethoven Industry” out there that has turned the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony from the writer “E. T. A. Hoffmann’s vehicle of awe and terror [...] into a meaningless blur of disco beats, hip-hop samples, jingles, and ringtones.”

I'm quoting from Alex Ross' new column in the New Yorker magazine about the influence of Beethoven where he describes the final chapter of Matthew Guerrieri's book on the impact of Beethoven's most popular piece, a book called “The First Four Notes,” and I recommend both.

There are probably more books written about or inspired by Beethoven and his music than any other classical composer – no doubt the least of them being my own novel, The Lost Chord, a "classical music appreciation comedy-thriller" which you can read on the installment plan at my other blog – and in addition to Guerrieri's book, there's a new biography by Jan Swafford – appropriately entitled Beethoven: Anguish & Triumph – I can also highly recommend, as yet sight unseen, just on the basis of two earlier biographies, one of Johannes Brahms, the other of Charles Ives, that manage to make their subjects much more human than the typical, academic biographies that are generally available and generally of interest only to other typical academics.

I've just ordered mine and though it won't arrive before this weekend's concert – nor could I read much of its 1,100 pages in time, either – it is something I expect to enjoy in the coming months of what will no doubt be a dreary time of year for me.

And that's primarily because Beethoven is one of those composers who is a composer for all times and all seasons, not just the occasion of a concert.

Oh, I know there are more Beethoven Festivals and All-Beethoven concerts in the Classical Music World, but there are few composers who could reach more people (in whatever way one cares to “reach” people, these days) and few works that can be embraced by more listeners beyond those “classical music aficionados” that Beethoven's 5th and 9th Symphonies – or, for that matter, the 3rd, the one known as “The Eroica.”

The Heroic Symphony – it's one of those defining works that give us a glimpse of Beethoven the Creator, that epic genius, suffering and misunderstood, striding across the landscape of mortal mankind, the composer who went from being Haydn's student to become first a marble bust and then the God of Classical Music.

That mysterious journey from mere mortal to mythologized hero begins with the opening chords of his Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 55 which, admittedly, doesn't sound as grand as calling it “The Eroica,” does it?

It is difficult to separate the man from the deity he became.

How does one “come to terms with” this music when music, generally speaking, was rarely something one needed to “come to terms with” before him?

As well-crafted as a Haydn Symphony may have been, it was always perfectly entertaining. The difference between what Haydn and Mozart composed, at least in the best of their works, and all those works by their contemporaries whom we no longer know or bother to remember is similar to what might be considered “art” and what we regard as “kitsch,” the idea of seeing Leonardo's Mona Lisa at the Louvre and the ubiquitously reproduced image that has come to mean “art” hanging on someone's living room wall.

We have become addicted to Beethoven. Generations have been trained to “fear” Beethoven. As Ross mentions in his article, he walked into Boston's Symphony Hall as a young would-be composer and saw the “name BEETHOVEN emblazoned on the proscenium arch [–] 'Don't bother,' it seemed to say.”

It's like those signs at amusement parks that were the bane of many a child's existence: “You must be this tall to ride.”

How different Brahms' life would've been – or at least his music – if Robert Schumann hadn't crowned him “Beethoven's Heir” when he was 20 years old. "You have no idea how the likes of me feels with the tramp of a giant like him behind you!" That's why it took him over 20 years to complete a first symphony – no pressure, right?

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About 3½ minutes into the PBS program Keeping Score's episode about Beethoven's Eroica, Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony's conductor, said how much of his life had been spent coming to terms with this piece while showing you an incredibly marked up score that leaves little uncircled, unhighlted, unquestioned.

Part of the problem is it's so often performed “ponderously, seriously, perhaps because it's called the 'Heroic'” and certainly because... well, after all, it's by Beethoven! But Tilson Thomas didn't think that way, studying the score: he found it at times “light, breezy, confident, frustrating, dangerous – even comic” and so we go from trying to depict Napoleon in the first movement to understanding a composer dealing with life and all the things that can affect one's life.

Of course, it's difficult to remove images of Napoleon – speaking of marble busts – from our minds, given the famous story of Beethoven dedicating his new symphony to Napoleon (originally, it was the “Bonaparte Symphony”) then tearing up the title page when he heard his hero had crowned himself Emperor, erasing the word “Bonaparte” so vigorously, there's a hole in the paper. Later, it became a work dedicated to the “memory of a hero.”

But was the music “about” Bonaparte, then “First Consul” of France following the revolution, or inspired by what he stood for, elements of freedom after years of tyranny under centuries of French kings? The fact he became Emperor a few weeks before Beethoven's new symphony was first played through is a historical detail: I'm talking about the writing process, when the symphony was being composed.

It's true that Beethoven viewed Bonaparte (to distinguish him from the Emperor Napoleon) as a hero bringing the ideals of the French Revolution to The People. The fact that Beethoven lived in Vienna, an imperial city, and depended on its aristocrats for their patronage, it seems counterintuitive that Beethoven should support what people considered the “anti-aristocratic” policies of the French. But politics – then as now – were more complex than that. Beethoven was most interested in what was good for Beethoven and the fact that Vienna was proving to be a dead end, financially, had him thinking about looking for a new place to live – perhaps Paris?

In 1798, he had briefly been befriended by the French Ambassador, Bernadotte – a general who would later become King of Sweden, by the way – and there's little doubt that at some point in their conversations, the ambassador might not have suggested the composer write a symphony “about Bonaparte.” That's at least what Beethoven's later secretary Schindler recalled, though much of what Schindler seemed to recall is always suspect.

But if Beethoven would go to Paris, how would he get Bonaparte's attention? How did an artist get anybody's “attention” except by dedicating a work to them? A copy of the score would be sent to the dedicatee with an appropriate letter and in return the artist hoped for some gift, some form of remuneration. The trick was being allowed to dedicate a piece to that person – seeing that name on the title page was like an endorsement and would influence people who would buy and/or perform his new work.

It was expedient, given the musical politics of the day, that a young composer like the recently arrived Beethoven dedicate his first piano sonatas to the Great Man with whom he studied, Franz Josef Haydn. The first violin sonatas were dedicated to another important composer in Vienna, in fact the most powerful composer in a very politically aware musical society – Antonio Salieri.

It also had very little to do with gratitude. Even when he dedicated a new symphony to his patrons Prince Lobkowitz or Prince Lichnowsky, the composer expected something in return usually in the form of a gift of money.

In 1803, Beethoven dedicated his Op. 30 Violin Sonatas to the Russian tsar, Alexander I, whom he'd just been introduced to by the Russian ambassador, Count Razumovsky (who would soon be asking for three new string quartets for his house musicians). Nobody calls these the “Alexander Sonatas.” Beethoven simply anticipated a gift in return – if not cash, perhaps a ring or a jeweled snuff box which the composer could then sell or pawn. It seems crass, but how, then, did a composer like Beethoven – essentially a free-lancer – expect to pay his bills?

I've never understood why people think the Eroica is “about” Napoleon. Those Op. 30 Violin Sonatas are certainly not “about” Tsar Alexander I nor are those three string quartets “about” their namesake, Count Razumovsky, though his being Russian instigated the use of some Russian melodies in the first two.

And wasn't that what Beethoven was doing with his third symphony – initially dedicating it to Bonaparte, the First Consul of France, hoping that, with a positive enough response, he might find it worth his while to move to Paris and perhaps receive patronage from France's ruler.

1st Consul Bonaparte, 1801

Certainly, it's of a grand scale, suitable for a musical depiction of the great revolutionary leader of the French. Remember the epic style of painting that was a hallmark of French style following the Revolution, especially the grandeur of Jacques-Louis David whose portrait of Bonaparte, then First Consul, crossing the Alps in 1801 (see right), edifies the hero on the level with Hannibal – not to forget the official portrait of Napoleon's coronation completed about two years after the fact, harking back to the grandeur that was Rome.

A “Revolutionary Piano Sonata” as had been suggested by the publisher Hoffmeister in 1798 wasn't going to cut it, nor, for that matter, would an ordinary Haydnesque symphony. No, it would have to be something on a scale unheard of in Vienna at the time, something immense – something, like the painting equating him with Hannibal (who, it was overlooked, lost the war when he invaded Italy with his elephants, by the way), something epic - something French: the musical equivalent of a painting by David!

People could hear the stature of the general in this dynamic and highly dramatic music, in the sheer scope of the piece, unlike any symphony written before – as people wrote after first hearing the piece, imagining great armies marching across battlefields and so on.

But was that what Beethoven was envisioning when he wrote this music? A heroic portrait in music of the great general, Napoleon Bonaparte?

According to the famous title page – which was not “ripped in two” upon hearing the news of Napoleon's crowning himself Emperor – the text reads

Sinfonia Grande
Intitolata Bonaparte (erased so roughly as to leave a hole in the paper)
[1]804 im August
de[l] Sigr.
Louis van Beethoven
Geschrieben
auf Bonaparte

The lines in Italian were written by a copyist (and the date, [1]804 August, added by another hand) and Beethoven's name Ludwig was styled, as he often did, in French as “Louis” – at other times he used “Luigi” instead.

But the German lines – “Written for Bonaparte” – were added in pencil by Beethoven himself and were not erased.

To make it more complicated, though, even before he had completed the score Beethoven indicated to his would-be publisher, through his student-secretary Ferdinand Ries, he had planned on dedicated the symphony to Bonaparte but this created a problem because Prince Lobkowitz offered to pay him a considerable fee for six-month's “exclusive usage” – ultimately, the symphony was performed privately several times at his palace before its official public premiere on April 7th, 1805 – and so he would give the dedication to Lobkowitz in honor of the fee but entitle the work “Bonaparte.”

By this time, Beethoven may have thought less of the idea of leaving Vienna for Paris. Even so, in August of 1804, three months after removing Bonaparte's name from the title page's second line, he wrote directly to his publisher describing what he was working on, including the Triple Concerto, some new piano sonatas and a new symphony.

“The title of the symphony is really Bonaparte.”

By the time the work was officially published, however, it was called “Sinfonia Eroica, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.”

Who Bonaparte had been in 1803 was different from the Napoleon who unleashed almost constant warfare on the rest of Europe for the next twelve years.

Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French in December, 1804, and then attacked and occupied the city of Vienna in September, 1805, before defeating them and their Russian allies at the Battle of Austerlitz that December.

It would hardly do to be the composer of a work bearing the name of Austria's enemy...

Still, in the autumn of 1808, Beethoven received an invitation from Jerome Bonaparte, youngest brother of Napoleon and newly named the King of Westphalia, created out of various German states with Kassel as its capital. It was a job offer – to become the royal court composer with a hefty salary. Jerome was intent on creating a great cultural center in his capital – the Brothers Grimm were already the royal librarians.

It was unrealistic for Beethoven to accept the position, given his by now anti-Bonapartist views, but he let it be known he was considering it. As a result, the Austrian emperor's youngest brother, the Archduke Rudolph (a student of Beethoven's), along with Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Kinski, guaranteed Beethoven a pension if he would stay in Vienna. He did.

But perhaps there's more to the “Hero” in this symphony than the name Bonaparte implies?

There is an old quote from Haydn which, at the moment, I can't verify or find, and which might just as well be one of those mythological details associated with Beethoven and his teacher.

It is used in the 2003 BBC film “Eroica,” set on the day the new symphony was first heard in a rehearsal at Prince Lobkowitz's – I'll get to this in my next post – in which Haydn, arriving late in the midst of the scherzo, tells his hosts afterwards,

“He's placed himself at the center of his work – he gives us a glimpse into his soul – I expect that's why it's so... noisy... but it is quite, quite new – the artist as hero – quite new... Everything is different from today.”

To be continued...

- Dick Strawser

Heroic Beethoven: Starting a New Season

The Harrisburg Symphony's new 2014-2015 Season begins soon with a program called "Heroic Beethoven" and features Stuart Malina conducting the orchestra in two works by - no surprise - Beethoven.

Pianist Alon Goldstein will be the soloist for the 4th Piano Concerto and the second half of the program is the Eroica Symphony, the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat.

The concert will open the newly renovated Forum on Saturday, October 18th at 8pm and Sunday, October 19th at 3pm. Truman Bullard offers the pre-concert talks an hour before each program.

And you can come to walk around the newly renovated Forum - it's "Opening Night" in more ways than one - and look at the newly cleaned and refurbished maps that line the back wall of the promenade, paying special attention to those maps detailing the Napoleonic Era, when Beethoven composed this music.

Here is Alon Goldstein playing the slow movement of Mozart's A Major Piano Concerto, K.488, with the Bucharest Philharmponic conducted by Christian Mandeal:
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Some years ago, I heard a radio announcer (no one I knew) say, “Beethoven is one of the few composers you could make an All-Beethoven program with” – and while that may seem obvious, I think what he meant was that there's enough variety in Beethoven's music, you can create an interesting, varied program of great music all by just one composer. And that's not something you can do with every composer.

Though it's easy to be overwhelmed by it, too – too much of a good (or great) thing, perhaps. So usually programmers balance their concerts by selecting from the three basic food-groups: Early-, Middle- and Late-Beethoven.

Stylistically, you've got the very “classical lines” and leaner textures of Early Beethoven, still emerging from the shadow of his teacher, Haydn; the larger emotions and epic proportions of Middle Beethoven, the “Romantic Beethoven,” say; or the more internal, more spiritual explorations of Late Beethoven, particularly in the late Sonatas and Quartets, which never seem to have been duplicated since.

And then there's “Heroic Beethoven,” the hero striding across the landscape of history, larger than life, with an intensity that can be shattering to us mere mortals, the Beethoven of myth and magic – in short, a composer comparable to today's comic book action heroes out to save the universe from evil.

And yet this music – and the myths we associate with it – came from somewhere more normal. The fact that it transcends normality is what gave birth to the myths that surround it – (insert deep and deeply awed announcer's voice, here) – the suffering, misunderstood artist, the loner, the genius – the composer who went deaf. The one who must be approached with reverence and... well, awe.

What is it about Beethoven – more to the point, his music – that affects us like this over 200 years later? And for over 200 years, that's something people have been asking, something every composer since then has been dealing with (or ignoring). It's that idea of a “giant treading behind you,” the way Brahms felt his legacy.

I'm not sure the Harrisburg Symphony's opening concert of the new season will answer that and that's only because there is no answer, at least one that would satisfy the whole audience. It's the same thing, for many people, one can feel after an exceptional performance of Shakespeare: how could any man create something like that? And why has it rarely, if ever, been equaled since...?

Beethoven's 3rd Symphony has always been known as “The Eroica” and it would seem obvious once you've heard it. The Hero – Napoleon Bonaparte, specifically – that inspired the music may be less important to it than the idea of a hero.

Certainly, Beethoven's Eroica is a ground-breaking work of immense proportions, compared to what people were expecting when he wrote it in 1803, but it is more than a depiction of a historically significant person (and a perception that radically changed from the time Beethoven began it to the time the audience first heard it two years later). And part of the impact of this piece (calling it a “piece” sounds so trivial...) can be heard in the 4th Piano Concerto that opens the concert – and which he began not long after he'd completed the Eroica.

Music, somehow, was going to be different, now.

The soloist in this video – courtesy of last year's BBC Proms and the YouBiquitous YouTube – perhaps will give you an idea of the artist's responsibility in dealing with a work like this, what it “means” to play it, interpret it, take it from the written page to the sounds you hear. It is not a challenge to be taken lightly, tossed off to dazzle the audience with your virtuosity. In fact, if anything, this is about as “un-virtuosic” a piece as there is in the concerto repertoire – in terms of its show-casing a player's technique – but that doesn't mean it's easy to play.

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Mitsuko Uchida, pianist, with Mariss Jansons & the Bavarian Radio Symphony (BBC Proms, 2013)

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Basically, the concept of this concerto grew out of the tradition of those Viennese concertos which Mozart composed in the 1780s – Beethoven played a number of this, particularly the D Minor concerto, K.466, which Stuart Malina will perform with the orchestra here in January – but it has little to do with the concertos that were being written in Vienna after 1800, most of which we never hear any more. And the 19th Century concerto which primarily became vehicles for virtuosic display (think Liszt or Chopin if you're not familiar with those by Hummel, who studied with Mozart, or Kalkbrenner and Moscheles).

It's interesting to realize, also, that for all we think about The Great Beethoven, this concerto was not well-received at its premiere (the length of the concert – 4 hours! – the fact it had been under-rehearsed and not to mention the concert hall was under-heated as well all may have had something to do with the audience's reaction) and fell into oblivion until it was brought into the repertoire by a young pianist named Felix Mendlessohn in 1836, nine years after Beethoven died.

But it varies little from its models, a tradition Beethoven inherited not from his teacher, Haydn, who never quite produced concertos comparable to those symphonies, but from his idol, Mozart. However, it was more subtle than flashy (even by contemporary standards) and more lyrical than dramatic (even with the brief slow movement's dialogue which later critics likened to Orpheus taming the wild beasts). While it's not necessarily more symphonic in the role of soloist and orchestra, it was a direct model for Brahms, especially in his 2nd Piano Concerto, who spent most of his life listening to the tramp of this giant behind him.

Beethoven had his fans and he certainly had his detractors. Most of the audience, then, supporters and otherwise, probably didn't "get" what it is we feel about Beethoven today. It's not like Beethoven wrote a new piece and every other composer went and did likewise. It took a while for his innovations to become part of the musical landscape. It's just that we don't know much about all the other composers who lived and worked during Beethoven's lifetime or even the generation that followed his death. Except for the last few years of Schubert's life, the Marvel Comics version of Classical Music tends to jump right from Mozart (who died in 1791) and Haydn (whose last symphonies were written in 1795) to Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and Brahms, whose careers all began between the 1830s and the 1850s.

It's a bit sobering to think that, while Mendelssohn was 16 when he composed his Octet in 1825, two years before Beethoven died, Brahms' 1st Symphony (dubbed "Beethoven's 10th") wasn't finished until 1876.

So it's interesting to follow the 4th Piano Concerto with something considered one of the greatest symphonies of all times – different enough to create its own variety despite the fact Beethoven composed the concerto in 1805 after completing this symphony the year before. Even the opus numbers – indicating when the works were published, not necessarily when they were composed – are close: preceded by the Waldstein Sonata, the Eroica Symphony is Op. 55, the Concerto, Op. 58. In between come the “Triple Concerto” (for piano trio and orchestra) and the Appassionata Sonata, followed by the three Razumovsky Quartets, the 4th Symphony and the Violin Concerto, all composed between 1803 and 1806.

I'll get more into the question “Where did that come from?” in the next post, but here's a performance also from the BBC Proms (2012, here) with an orchestra created by Daniel Barenboim with young musicians from the Middle East including Israel, Egypt, Palestine and Iran, among others. I chose this particular clip as much for the performance (even the context of the performers) as for the interview segment that precedes it.

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The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim (BBC Proms, 2012) (with interviews beforehand)

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If you're interested in finding out more about the world behind this music, check back for subsequent posts, including one featuring yet another BBC effort, a 2003 film called Eroica which is about the day Beethoven's new symphony was first heard.

Though I can't embed it here, you can also check out Michael Tilson Thomas' highly recommended “Keeping Score” episode from PBS with Beethoven's Third Symphony, here.

Here's a promo:


As they say, “stay tuned”...

- Dick Strawser

Beethoven's Fourth: Among Giants

Beethoven in 1806

This weekend's concert with the Harrisburg Symphony features three works: the world premiere of an orchestral work by Steve Rudolph commissioned by the Symphony Board to celebrate Stuart Malina's 50th Birthday (you can read about it, here); the greatest of the cello concertos with Zuill Bailey returning to Harrisburg to make his debut with the orchestra, playing Dvořák's concerto (you can read about it, here); and a symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven that should need no introduction but usually needs some background since it's not one of those you usually hear that often.

Saturday's concert is at 8pm and Sunday's is at 3pm in the Forum, and assistant conductor Greg Woodbridge will be offering the pre-concert talks an hour before each performance.

And if you haven't already read it, here's a link to Ellen Hughes' article for the Patriot-News.

Here, Stuart Malina talks about the February Masterworks concert, Romancing the Cello, recorded at last September's "Season Preview" held at Harrisburg's Midtown Scholar Bookstore.



This performance of the complete 4th Symphony of Beethoven is taken from a DVD that includes both the 4th and the 7th, and while I'm not going to tell you don't listen to the 7th, you can sample the 4th here with the legendary Carlos Kleiber and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, recorded in 1983: the performance begins at 0:53 after that long walk down the steps, and ends at 34:32.
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You can also hear a different performance by Kleiber for comparison's sake on these “audio-clips” posted at YouTube as well, movement by movement, recorded in 1982 with the Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich's National Theater.

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1st Mvmt:


2nd Mvmt:


3rd & 4th Movements:

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Robert Schumann once wrote about Beethoven's 4th Symphony as being “a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants,” and while this comment has fallen before political correctness these days, his description is apt if you consider his context.

The Norse giants, symbols of Capital-R Romanticism even before Wagner began The Ring of the Nibelung, would be the 3rd Symphony, the mighty Eroica, initially intended as a Bonaparte Symphony and the 5th Symphony with its “Fate Knocks at the Door” Motive and its Victory Over Tragedy conclusion.

By comparison to these two symphonies, unlike any composed before if not since, the 4th Symphony appears to be a more Capital-C Classical symphony without any sense of a program, abstract in the nature of symphonies by his teacher Haydn (who, when this was composed, was still alive), less extroverted not only in its nature – neither heroic nor dramatic – but also in its form. It might be exuberant the way many Haydn symphonies are exuberant but it is never the wildly emotional drama that Beethoven's contemporaries heard in the other two and considered chaotic, especially the 3rd which to many seemed interminably long. If people in those days ever said “But you can't do that” about a symphony, they would've been saying it about the 3rd & 5th.

The problem is, if you compared the 4th Symphony to what Haydn had written a little over a decade earlier and certainly to what Beethoven's own contemporaries were writing, it is still a bold, challenging statement to what a classical symphony could be, breaking boundaries of its own.

It's just that, after the 3rd and then looking back on it with the 5th (and of course even later after the Bacchic frenzy of the 7th and the sublime monumentality of the 9th), the 4th seems pretty tame to us.

Another thing writers about Beethoven Symphonies tell us is something like “Beethoven developed the habit of writing monumental works in his odd-numbered symphonies and saving his more personal, less exploratory [read, perhaps, 'less interesting'] statements for the even-numbered symphonies.”

But in hindsight, while that may seem a fairly accurate stereotype as stereotypes go, it was not Beethoven's intent.

And we know that because he began writing the 5th Symphony immediately after the 3rd – wait, to save some confusion, let's refer to them by their tonalities or nicknames. He began writing the C Minor Symphony immediately after the Eroica only to put it aside to write the B-flat Symphony. Then he finished the C Minor while already sketching the Pastoral which, when they were first performed had their numberings reversed.

So, when Count von Oppersdorf requested a symphony from Beethoven in 1806 while he was in the midst of sketching the C Minor, that one (first begun) might've become the 4th Symphony and the B-flat, assuming he'd write it next, would've become the 5th.

And then later, since the C Minor and the Pastoral were premiered on the same concert, if Beethoven had been concerned about this odd and even-numbered business, he wouldn't have called the Pastoral his 5th and the C Minor the 6th.

Perhaps that's why Beethoven's 4th has become one of the least performed of Beethoven's nine symphonies: because it doesn't seem to match the standards of these giants we have come to revere, and we find, by comparison, those less “bombastic” (or out-going) works like the 2nd, 8th and even the 6th (which at least is popular because of its “story,” in itself revolutionary) less magnificent.

Had it been written by a composer like Josef Weigl who was one of the most frequently performed composers in Beethoven's Vienna at the time, it would undoubtedly be called Weigl's masterpiece.

(Weigl, however, was almost exclusively an opera composer: we tend to forget that, despite Beethoven and Schubert and later Brahms, the Viennese were not generally fond of symphonies - too abstract for their tastes: opera was where the money was at and that was why Beethoven expended so much effort on his one opera which had the bad luck to fail there three times.)

By the way, if Schumann thought it comparable to a classical Greek statue of a demure maiden, Hector Berlioz – himself a rather over-the-top Romanticist most (in)famous for his Symphonie fantastique – thought the slow movement of Beethoven's 4th must have been written by the Archangel Michael and not a mere human!

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I've heard from music lovers that Beethoven must have been “relaxing” after completing the momentous, ground-break Eroica, saving up energy for the 5th. The implication is often that this is “laid-back” Beethoven or that he was not inspired to write “great music” because these other works took so much out of him.

We tend to forget, today, that composers often worked “in sets.” Haydn would write 6 string quartets and publish them as a set. Beethoven would do the same with his first six quartets of Op. 18, published in 1800. Even though Mozart wrote his six quartets “dedicated to Haydn” consecutively, they appeared as a set of six quartets – the use of individual catalogue numbers courtesy of Mr. Köchel also emphasizes the individuality of these quartets.

Haydn often wrote groups of symphonies – there are a dozen “London Symphonies” but they were composed in two sets of six each, composed for different seasons on his London tours.

Since these were meant to be heard in some sort of context – if not all on one evening, perhaps all in one season – this required a certain sense of variety. In terms of quartets, one might be a “concertante” one where it was like a mini-concerto for the 1st violinist; another might be a more “symphonic” one (certainly, in the case of Beethoven) where the four players were more tightly integrated and the form more developed; another might be pastoral or dramatic (usually the only one in a minor key), lyrical or light-hearted.

When we hear Mozart's “Little” G Minor Symphony, we wonder what anxieties the 17-year-old composer must have been going through but it was really a young composer who was writing the expected “storm und drang” piece because that's what he chose to write, whether he was feeling particularly stressed-out or not. In the last three symphonies Mozart composed, the “Big” G Minor is the tragic piece and again we think of Mozart, the starving artist dying at the age of 35, though when these were composed, he had no idea he'd only have three more years to live. This was his attempt to write a “dramatic” symphony between the lyrical E-flat and the sublime grandeur of the one later dubbed “The Jupiter.”

Beethoven, it seems, often conceived his symphonies in pairs – the 5th (eventually) became a companion piece with the 6th and their natures (no pun intended) are very different because they're meant to be very different: one is dramatic, the other lyrical. The 7th and 8th were conceived as a pair, one totally extroverted (probably the happiest music he ever composed) followed by one more refined, reticent and (by comparison) introverted.

We also know that Beethoven planned two more symphonies in his last years – and it was the 10th that was supposed to have a choral finale before he decided to set the “Ode to Joy” for the 9th. The sketches for the 10th which can never be successfully realized indicate an expansive but again quite different approach than we hear in the 9th.

The 4th, however, is a bit of an odd-man out. We know nothing of its sketches – for instance, bits of later pieces often appeared in earlier sketch books, where a theme from one symphony stands beside a theme used (and intended for) a different symphony. But that doesn't exist for this symphony. Even the original manuscript apparently is lost – it was once owned by Mendelssohn and housed in the family library in Berlin but where it is now, I'm not sure.

Beethoven had been invited to spend the summer of 1806 at the Silesian estate of one of his long-suffering patrons, Prince Lichnovski where one of the other visitors was Count Franz von Oppersdorf, a relative of the prince's, who heard a performance of Beethoven's 2nd there and immediately commissioned Beethoven to write him a new symphony.

Though he'd already begun working on the 5th at the time and had composed at least its 1st movement, Beethoven put this aside for some reason to write an entirely new one. Apparently he felt the 5th would take more time to do his ideas justice. Or perhaps he thought the Count (or his orchestra) couldn't handle what became the 5th...

At any rate, he completed the work that same summer – a short time, given Beethoven's usual mode of writing – and it was premiered the following March in Vienna, then published with a dedication to the Silesian nobleman who'd commissioned it.

It's interesting to look at the other pieces Beethoven was working on at the same time. Again, we usually think of a composer working on one piece, finishing it, then going on to the next piece and so on. But Beethoven was an inveterate multi-tasker – look at this list of works also composed in 1806:

- the 2nd version of the opera Leonore (later, Fidelio) with the “Leonore” Overture No. 3 (premiered in March, 1806)
- the String Quartet in C, the 3rd of the Three Razumovsky Quartets (completed in the spring of 1806)
- the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G (completed in the summer of 1806)
- the Symphony No. 4 in B-flat (completed in the fall of 1806)
- the 32 Variations in C Minor for solo piano (written in the fall of 1806)
- and last but far from least, the Violin Concerto in D Major (completed in December of 1806).

The 4th Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto are both lofty, lyrical works far from the storminess of either the 3rd or the 5th Symphonies - yet he was working on the 5th in 1805, not returning to it until 1807 and completing it the following year, basically working on it over a four year period.

Basically, hardly the schedule of somebody “relaxing” or “unwinding” after having completed the Eroica in 1804.

You can read more about Beethoven's life at the time he was writing this symphony as well as the Violin Concerto in two separate posts at my blog Thoughts on a Train, here and here.

And you can also read about a similar conundrum with two other of Beethoven's even-numbered symphonies which the Harrisburg Symphony performed in recent seasons: the Pastoral here and the 8th Symphony, here and here.

- Dick Strawser

Beethoven's 8th Symphony: Getting Behind the Music

Beethoven conducted the first public performance of his 7th and 8th Symphonies in 1814. Stuart Malina conducts the 8th Symphony this weekend with the Harrisburg Symphony, part of the Masterworks program that also includes Bach's 3rd Orchestral Suite, Ives' "Unanswered Question" and a viola concerto by Czech composer Zdenek Lukas with the principal violist of the orchestra, Julius Wirth.

The performances are Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm at the Forum in downtown Harrisburg.

You can hear the conversation I had with Stuart about the concert in this podcast (the link takes you to his website - click on the 'podcast' link under the post title).

(Don't forget, this weekend's concerts are part of the nationwide drive "Feeding America," sponsored by the League of American Orchestras. Please bring non-perishable food items to the Forum for either concert. For more information, click here.)

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Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 is often overlooked in the sequence of his nine symphonies even though Beethoven himself had a special fondness for it (calling it "my little one") and preferring it to the 7th.

(You can read more details – or at least my thoughts on the matter – in a parallel post at my other blog, Thoughts on a Train, here.)

Since we normally think of a composer finishing one work before moving on to the next, I’d like to point out that Beethoven was a highly accomplished multi-tasker, writing several works if not concurrently, at least working out certain details simultaneously, often making great use of that back burner.

Look at the dates of all nine symphonies – not just when they were completed or premiered, but when they started showing up in his sketch books:

Symphony No. 1 in C: 1794 or 1795 to 1800
Symphony No. 2 in D: 1801-1802
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat (“Eroica”): 1802-1804
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat: around 1804 (while working on Fidelio) to 1806
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor: sketches between 1800-1804, begun in 1804 and completed in 1808

So far, everything looks fairly continuous, finishing one symphony before going on to the next. But it still goes against the conception that there were two years between symphonies while he concentrated on other works.


Keep in mind that between 1802 and 1804, in addition to the “Eroica,” Beethoven was also working on the opera Fidelio, the “Waldstein,” “Appasionata” and “Kreutzer” Sonatas – but also, during this time, sketching material that would eventually be part of the 5th Symphony which he put aside on a number of occasions in order to complete the 4th Symphony as well as Fidelio, the three Razumovsky Quartets, the 4th Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto and the Mass in C.

Eventually he completed the 5th while working on the 6th which were then premiered together at the same concert. Some of the 5th's sketches go back to the notebooks of 1800. Though most of the work was done between 1804 and 1808, the first two movements were largely complete by 1805 when he put it aside to compose the 4th. So, by some quirk of Fate (pun intended), for whatever reasons he chose to put the C Minor aside rather than wait to begin the new B-flat Symphony, the most epic of Beethoven’s heroic symphonies almost became an even-numbered symphony.

Symphony No. 6 in F (“Pastoral”): sketches appear as early as 1803, written between 1806-1808
Symphony No. 7 in A: sketches in 1809, completed 1812 (some sources say April, others “Summer”)
Symphony No. 8 in F: sketches in 1809, written between completion of 7th and August or October, 1812
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor (“Choral”): sketches in 1815 & 1817 (including an idea for another symphony in B-flat), then 1822-23 (first three movements complete), last movement finished in 1824.
Symphony “No. 10” in E-flat (left unfinished): fragments of ideas unrealized, found within the sketchbooks for the 9th (1822-24) – at one point, Beethoven mentioned the 9th would be an instrumental symphony, the “Ode to Joy” a separate cantata, but the 10th would end with a choral movement)

While Mozart and Schubert were spontaneous composers who sometimes seemed to write things down as fast as they heard them in their head (part of Mozart’s creative process, apparently, was to work things out in his head even before he put pen to paper), Beethoven struggled with new works over a long gestation period, as can be seem from the dates between some of the earliest sketches and the date of completion.

It’s unlikely, if he waited until he’d completed the 7th, Beethoven might have composed the 8th in a month or even four months as is usually stated. If he wasn’t actively working on it, the fact there were sketches for ideas made concurrently with the 7th – ideas that did not fit into that particular work – it’s very likely this new symphony was gestating similarly to the way he composed the 5th and the 6th, two remarkably contrasting works.

Therefore the 8th is to the 7th as the 6th is to the 5th – and presumably as the 10th might have been to the 9th. (Barry Cooper’s controversial realization of the 10th’s sketches are so disappointing by comparison, we have to remember that an unfinished 9th symphony realized from sketches before 1822 would have become a very different composition.)

Ironically, Beethoven was setting up his own odd/even conundrum.

If anything, Beethoven not only compartmentalized his creativity, working of contrasting works simultaneously, he compartmentalized his life from his creativity. While we could say the 5th is “about” his personal struggle with his deafness, the music manages to transcend that to a universal level that can be appreciated as the struggles of an archetypal hero or perceived as the listener’s own struggles with adversity, some immediate crisis that, through Beethoven’s music, we might find inspiration to overcome.

(This is essentially the way we interpret Tchaikovsky’s 4th, 5th and 6th Symphonies, except the hero doesn’t always win. You can read more about his three “Fate” Symphonies here, here and here.)

The 7th is often described as a public work, easy to access and appreciate (uncomplicated). The 8th is considered more abstract without the dance-like enthusiasms heard in its companion. Perhaps, as a more “aristocratic” or “courtly” work, it comes off as a throw-back to Haydn’s era, therefore old-fashioned, nostalgic. Yet there are many parallels between them: the joyful smiles of both opening themes (once past the 7th’s slow introduction), the rhythmic pulse of the 2nd movements, the dance of the 3rd movements or the humor and exuberance of the finales.

Except in the 8th, it’s not as overt – again, perhaps more subdued by comparison, a citified person as opposed to one letting his hair down in the countryside, but both having a good time.

There is a stronger differentiation between the 2nd movements mostly because the 7th’s is in the minor mode and, at the tempo it’s usually taken, comes off like a funeral march. But the 7th’s is marked “Allegretto” and the 8th’s “Allegretto scherzando,” instead of the traditional slow movement, marked “andante” or “adagio.” (Andante is a leisurely walking tempo, but Adagio is slow – Lento, even slower. But Allegretto is not as slow as Andante but not as fast as Allegro, a fast, more lively tempo, the traditional tempo for a symphony’s first movement.)

Both “slow” movements are fueled by a pulse – in the 7th, by the steady quarter and two eighth notes, then two quarter notes, like a march – bummm bum-bum bumm bumm ; in the 8th, the bup-bup-bup-bup in the winds are 16th notes but pervade the texture much in the same way the 7th’s march-like rhythm underpins everything.

Whatever Beethoven may have intended (if anything) in his 2nd movements, the steady pulse in the 8th’s comes originally from a humorous canon he’d jotted down as a joking tribute to Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, the inventor of a metronome-like device that helped musicians systematize tempos. This was, however, only Mälzel’s latest invention to cross Beethoven’s path: earlier, in 1808, he invented an “ear trumpet” which Beethoven tried to help overcome his deafness; for something called a “panharmonicon” which was a kind of musical juke-box, a contraption that could imitate the sounds of an orchestra, Beethoven originally conceived his “Battle of Vittoria” (eventually known as “Wellington’s Victory”), reworking it for orchestra when the mechanical device proved to be less than adequate. Mälzel also invented a mechanical chess-player, but that’s another story…

The 7th is propelled by its rhythms – many of the “themes” grow out of nothing more than repeated notes in a given rhythm. The 8th is more tuneful in the traditional sense – for instance, the not-quite-a-minuet (the old-fashioned 3rd movement before Beethoven replaced it with a scherzo or “joke”) compared to the wild country dance of the 7th.

Rhythm is a driving force behind the finales, as well. The 7th's may be more like “composing under the influence” compared to the 8th’s (see below), but there are still unexpected turns (the sudden changes in dynamic, the sound of the timpani playing in octaves – interesting sound when you consider Beethoven was probably too deaf to appreciate it – and the overall genial humor).

But the finale of the 8th is fascinating for another reason. So far, this symphony is very short compared to the rest of them and this at a time when Beethoven was working towards elongating the forms he was using.

Traditionally, the “sonata form” that forms the basis of sonatas and symphonies was in three parts – the Exposition (where, as a student of mine once said, “the composer exposes himself” – or rather, states the movement’s main themes), the Development (where these ideas are taken and ‘developed’ or expanded or dissected and discussed – like a debate, the exposition might be the statement of the topic, the development becomes the “argument”) and then the Recapitulation (where these ideas are put back together again, rounding off the discussion with resolution).

To the exposition, a composer could add more themes or more transitional material between themes. To make sure the listener was well aware of the materials, this exposition was usually marked to be repeated. In the development (which in some composers is often brief, almost perfunctory; in others, the meat of the movement), a composer can just keep spinning out this material, creating more drama and more tension before it resolves into the recapitulation. But after this “recap,” composers started adding a “coda” (literally, “tail” in Italian) which extended the drama of the resolution. Haydn’s might be fairly brief but Beethoven turned them into “second development sections” where listeners might think “here we go again.”

In the 8th, it seems just when you think the movement is over, he begins a coda – and then when you think that’s over, there’s another section (or another coda) until, eventually, when you do reach the end, he gives you no less than 23 measures of final chords – the traditional V-I cadence, that dominant-to-tonic stamp that seals the final resolution, but here with not one final tonic chord but 15 of them! As if to say, “yes, it’s officially over! Really! Seriously! No, I’m not kidding, this time! That’s it! Done!”

Here is Tafelmusik (an early music group from Canada) conducted by Bruno Weil performing the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 8.
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And I haven’t even begun to get into what was going on in Beethoven’s life when he was writing this symphony!

Dick Strawser