Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Swafford, Jan

  42. The chromaticism of the Joseph Cantata is complex and rambling, though mostly theoretically correct. It is based less on chromatic voice leading than on a steady diet of rapid modulation, altered chords, diminished sevenths, and the like. In other words, in the cantata Beethoven is thinking from chord to chord. Later, after he had studied counterpoint, he thought in terms of lines, which produce the harmony.

  8. Stem and Book

  1. Albrecht, vol. 1, nos. 10–11.

  2. Thayer/Forbes, 1:111.

  3. Mai, Diagnosing Genius, 20, notes that the apparent smallpox scars on Beethoven’s face as an adult might have been from acne.

  4. See the entry on Eulogius Schneider in the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, at http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/s/s1/schneider_eu.shtml. It is not recorded whether Beethoven knew Schneider personally, but it seems likely that they met and even lifted a glass together in the small confines of Bonn, where nearly everybody artistic and politically progressive frequented the Zehrgarten.

  5. Quoted in the Wikipedia entry for Eulogius Schneider, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulogius_Schneider.

  6. Sipe, Beethoven, 3.

  7. Saint-Just and Lebas, quoted in the Wikipedia entry for Eulogius Schneider, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulogius_Schneider.

  8. Joseph Haydn, quoted in Gartenberg, Vienna, 46.

  9. Landon, Haydn, 62.

  10. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 20. Thayer/Forbes called March 6 Karneval Sunday, Schiedermair called it Shrove Tuesday. In fact it was a Friday.

  11. Quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:98.

  12. Maybe most startling of the Beethoven thumbprints in the Righini Variations is variation no. 4, its train of trills resembling the shimmering, uncanny textures in the late piano sonatas. The fading-into-the-distance ending sounds like a sketch for the coda of the first movement of the Lebewohl Sonata of nearly twenty years later. The contrapuntal variation no. 7 recalls his ongoing experience with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

  13. Thayer/Forbes, 1:125, notes that Czerny recalled that Beethoven used the Righinis to introduce himself in Vienna, which suggests that Beethoven intended them for a personal showpiece.

  14. In 1809 Napoleon officially dissolved the Teutonic Knights and distributed their land to his allies, though the order lingered on.

  15. The accounts of the trip are in Thayer/Forbes, 1:101–5; Wegeler/Ries, 23–24; and the Simrock account in Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 51. For his not being impressed, see the subsequent Junker account in the text.

  16. Schiedermair, 213.

  17. Nikolaus Simrock, quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:106.

  18. Karl Ludwig Junker, quoted in Schiedermair, 90.

  19. Ibid., 88–89; translation in Scherman and Biancolli, 30–31.

  20. B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 13.

  21. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 36–37.

  22. Landon, Haydn, 73.

  23. Schloßmacher, “Die Redoute in Bad Godesberg,” 108. Schloßmacher points out that the details of Haydn and Beethoven’s encounters in Bonn are hazy, including whether they met at the beginning or end of Haydn’s trip to England, and what music Beethoven showed Haydn. (Wegeler/Ries say it included one of the Imperial Cantatas.) Most scholars vote for the meeting on Haydn’s return, because it had dramatic effects that were not seen earlier. The usual surmise is that of the cantatas it was most likely the Joseph that Beethoven showed Haydn, because he would have known it was the stronger of the two works, and its chief glory is the opening movement: he wanted to put his best foot forward. Schloßmacher notes that the Elector, who was fond of Godesberg, bought a house there and gave it to Count Waldstein as a sign of his favor and affection. Eventually, court concertmaster Franz Ries had a house on the main street; his son Ferdinand, Beethoven’s pupil, retired there.

  24. From Fischenich letter in Thayer/Forbes, 1:121.

  25. Friedenthal, Goethe, 313.

  26. The Beethovenhaus publication of the Beethoven Stammbuch (Braubach, Die Stammbücher) includes the one made for Babette Koch, which has far more and warmer entries than Beethoven’s, each enlivened by a silhouette of the writer perhaps made by Babette. Given that the entries in the Beethoven Stammbuch are fewer and that some of his closest friends and mentors do not appear, I suspect the book was a last-minute affair at the time. Still, Beethoven thought enough of the Stammbuch to preserve it, in quite good condition.

  27. Translations from Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 13 and 13n. Descriptions are based on Beethoven’s Stammbuch in Braubach, Die Stammbücher.

  28. Mark Evan Bonds, cited in Sisman, “Spirit of Mozart,” 311n16.

  29. Wetzstein/Fischer, 118.

  30. Bartolomäus Ludwig Fischenich, quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:121.

  31. Thayer/Forbes, 1:113.

  9. Unreal City

  1. Quoted in Knight, Beethoven, 24.

  2. Wetzstein/Fischer, 124n456; Thayer/Forbes, 1:115–17; Guzmer, Chronik der Stadt Bonn, 84.

  3. Thayer/Forbes, 1:258.

  4. Specht, Beethoven as He Lived, 21.

  5. Thayer/Forbes, 1:135.

  6. Brion, Daily Life, 9.

  7. Barry Cooper’s Beethoven Compendium, 69, notes that the average income for a middle-class bachelor in Vienna in 1804 was 967 florins for basics, around 1,200 with luxuries and amusements. In calculating the practical value of Beethoven’s earnings in this period, I’m assuming a round 1,000 florins as a minimal workable middle-class income.

  8. Thayer/Forbes, 1:135 and 137.

  9. As a doctor, Davies, in Character of a Genius, 14, interprets Johann’s death as most likely alcoholic cardiomyopathy, though it could have been cirrhosis of the liver.

  10. Wetzstein/Fischer, 132.

  11. Thayer/Forbes, 1:136.

  12. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 14.

  13. Quoted in Kaufmann, “Architecture and Sculpture,” 146.

  14. Marek, Beethoven, 194.

  15. Knight, Beethoven, 33; Erickson, “Vienna,” 16.

  16. Landon, Beethoven, 67.

  17. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 12.

  18. Gartenberg, Vienna, 69.

  19. Aldrich, “Social Dancing,” passim.

  20. Solomon, Beethoven, 124.

  21. Marek, Beethoven, 89.

  22. Madame de Staël, quoted in Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 77.

  23. Quoted in Knight, Beethoven, 26–27.

  24. Quoted in Solomon, Beethoven, 124.

  25. Quoted in Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 52.

  26. Solomon, Beethoven, 78.

  27. Pestelli, Age of Mozart and Beethoven, 114.

  28. Quoted in Biba, “Concert Life,” 78.

  29. Marek, Beethoven, 94. The statue of Schikaneder as Papageno remains today above the entrance of the Theater an der Wien.

  30. Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 74.

  31. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 52–53.

  32. Geiringer, Haydn, 58 and 65; Raynor, Social History, 312.

  33. Leopold Mozart, quoted in Scherer, Quarter Notes, 107.

  10. Chains of Craftsmanship

  1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:138.

  2. DeNora, Beethoven, 96.

  3. Copying music of other composers was a common way of studying in those days, as was demonstrated by J. S. Bach’s copying and arranging of Vivaldi—which also handily produced scores to be used in performance. Among a great number of pieces, Beethoven twice copied out the contrapuntal development in Haydn’s Symphony No. 99 (Walter, “Die biographischen Beziehungen,” 116).

  4. In various adaptations, the study of species counterpoint flourishes to this day in schools of music. For aspiring composers, it remains as difficult and as stimulating as ever.

  5. Walter, “Die biographischen Beziehungen,” 116.

  6. Geiringer, Haydn, 121.

  7. Ibid., 131.

  8. Thayer/Forbes, 1:138.

  9. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 44; Webster, “Falling-Out,” 11–14. Cooper writes that it has not been determined who made the corrections on Beethoven’s exerc
ises, Haydn or somebody else, but most people assume the corrections are Haydn’s. Later, Anton Schindler colluded with Schenk in the story, including forging entries about it in Beethoven’s conversation books.

  10. Walter, “Die biographischen Beziehungen,” 116. Haydn did take a break from Eisenstadt in August; he and Beethoven may have gotten together then.

  11. Solomon, Beethoven, 92.

  12. Ibid., 89.

  13. Anderson, Mozart’s Letters, 169. One of the pianos in that duel was lent to Mozart by his friend Countess Thun, mother of Princess Christiane Lichnowsky.

  14. Quoted in DeNora, Beethoven, 119–20. The Gelinek–Beethoven duel is generally agreed to have taken place in 1793, but the chronology of Gelinek’s encounter is muddled in the elder Czerny’s recall. He has Gelinek saying Beethoven was already a protégé of Karl Lichnowsky and had already studied with Johann Albrechtsberger. It’s possible the duel took place later, but after 1793 it’s hard to imagine Gelinek would not have known about Beethoven. Carl Czerny would have been told the story by his father years later; in 1793, the younger Czerny was only two.

  15. Irmen, “Beethoven, Bach,” 32. A French visitor, quoted in Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 68, notes his surprise to find that Lichnowsky, along with much of the high nobility in Austria, was sympathetic to the French Revolution.

  16. Thayer/Forbes, 1:157.

  17. Quoted in Marek, Beethoven, 107.

  18. Irmen, “Beethoven, Bach,” 32.

  19. Wegeler/Ries, 33–34.

  20. Landon, Beethoven, 46.

  21. DeNora, Beethoven, 200n2.

  22. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 67.

  23. Wegeler/Ries, 35–36.

  24. Ibid., 32.

  25. Thayer/Forbes, 1:220–22 and 262.

  26. Irmen, “Beethoven, Bach,” 40–41.

  27. Solomon, Beethoven, 81.

  28. Irmen, “Beethoven, Bach,” 44.

  29. Ibid., 40.

  30. Thayer/Forbes, 1:157.

  31. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 18.

  32. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 7.

  33. Ibid., no. 9.

  34. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 16. Which pieces Beethoven sent to Bonn are uncertain, and the Oboe Concerto has not survived. The “Parthie” was probably the minor Wind Octet eventually published as op. 103. Haydn’s citing the opinion of “connoisseurs and nonconnoisseurs” reflects the attitude of his time, that music should be written to appeal to all levels of taste and knowledge.

  35. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 17.

  36. This point is made in Webster, “Falling-Out,” 22. The gist of that article is that there is no reliable evidence for any significant break between Haydn and Beethoven, though Webster concedes that there was unquestionably tension and rivalry between them.

  37. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 52. Beethoven jotted down this comment, which may have come from Haydn.

  38. Ibid., 50.

  39. Ibid., 50–51.

  40. Kirkendale, “Great Fugue,” 17. Kirkendale compares Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge to Bach’s Art of Fugue, which is also a compendium of fugal devices, such as combining a fugue subject with its mirror image and with faster and slower forms of itself.

  41. Solomon, Beethoven, 98.

  42. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 4.

  43. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 49.

  44. Quoted in ibid., 51.

  11. Generalissimo

  1. When I say Beethoven intended to write the first important piano “repertoire,” I am using a modern conception. As I have noted before, the idea of a standing repertoire was only beginning to take shape in Beethoven’s lifetime. But he would have been aware of a body of work in each of the various media by Haydn and Mozart.

  2. Johnson, “Decisive Years,” 17.

  3. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 38.

  4. Formed in 1792, the First Coalition against France included most of the German states, some Italian territories, Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands.

  5. Thayer/Forbes, 1:168.

  6. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 10. In 1793, Simrock had published Beethoven’s Bonn-written variations on a theme from Dittersdorf’s Das rote Käppchen (Little Red Riding Hood). In his spring 1794 letter, Beethoven chides him for sloppy proofreading and for giving him only one free copy.

  7. Wegeler/Ries, 32. They say it was sul G (on the G string), but in the score it’s sul C.

  8. Solomon, Beethoven, 106.

  9. Landon, Beethoven, 46.

  10. Solomon, Late Beethoven, 136.

  11. Knight, Beethoven, 33.

  12. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 12.

  13. Wetzstein/Fischer, 123nn453, 455.

  14. Gutzmer, Chronik der Stadt Bonn, 83–87.

  15. “Französische Ouvertüre,” 17. The only recorded communication between Beethoven and Neefe after Beethoven left Bonn is the letter of thanks Beethoven wrote shortly after leaving.

  16. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 389.

  17. Wegeler/Ries, 24–25.

  18. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 15.

  19. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 53.

  20. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 2, no. 171n2.

  21. Wyn Jones, Symphony, 43–44, 51, 58.

  22. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 212–13.

  23. Landon, Beethoven, 94.

  24. Solomon, Beethoven, 86.

  25. Thayer/Forbes, 1:156.

  26. Wegeler/Ries, 38. Beethoven had been planning and sketching the C Major Concerto before the day he wrote out the score.

  27. Thayer/Forbes, 1:175.

  28. At some point, Beethoven wrote out cadenzas for the Mozart D Minor Concerto.

  29. Landon, Beethoven, 44.

  30. That concertos were practical items is the gist of Plantinga’s view of the piano concertos in Beethoven’s Concertos.

  31. Ibid., 67. The early versions of the B-flat Concerto are lost, but the rondo that appeared as WoO 6 seems to have been the original finale (61).

  32. The second theme of the B-flat Concerto’s first movement is in D-flat, then G-flat in the recap; in the C Major, the second theme is in E-flat, and the recap drifts briefly into A-flat. So in both cases Beethoven surrounds the tonic of the work with flat submediant keys—prophetic of his later interest in mediant relationships.

  33. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 64–65.

  34. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 55–56; Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 43–44. Various sources cite a different sum as Beethoven’s profit on op. 1.

  35. Wegeler/Ries, 74. Ferdinand Ries was not yet in Vienna when the op. 1 Trios were first played and published, and his memoir was written decades later. As a result, it’s not clear when Haydn actually first heard the trios—in earlier versions before he left for England, or the published versions after he returned. (At some point he may well have critiqued one or more of the trios as Beethoven worked on them.) Thus it’s also unclear when Haydn gave Beethoven the advice about holding back the C Minor. Ries would have heard the story from Beethoven (not a particularly reliable source). Afterward, Ries asked Haydn personally about the matter. Haydn replied that “he had not imagined that this trio would be so quickly and easily understood nor so favorably received by the public.”

  36. Thayer/Forbes, 1:139.

  37. Douglas Johnson, in “Decisive Years”: “What the new works show . . . is a conflict between ambitious compositional technique . . . and not altogether suitable material, some of it borrowed from earlier works and some of it beefed up to approximate symphonic proportions” (26).

  38. Solomon, Beethoven, 94.

  39. An introduction to a work, especially a long and slow introduction to a first-movement Allegro, is a kind of exception to my rule that the beginning lays out the leading ideas of a piece, because a long, slow introduction is usually not the real Thema. Instead, the introduction tends, one way or another, to suggest the leading theme or themes of the following Allegro, as if it were the seedbed of the leading ideas. The theme following the introduction is treated in practice as das Thema. As for das Thema in music, the eight
eenth- and nineteenth-century theorist H. C. Koch wrote, “Just as in speech the principal idea, or theme, provides the essential content of the same, and must contain the material for the development of principal and subsidiary ideas, so it is in music, with respect to the modifying of an emotion that is possible through the principal subject, and just as an orator moves on from his principal subject to subsidiary subjects, antitheses, dissections etc. . . . so the composer will act in the same manner in the treatment of a principal subject” (quoted in Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven, 121).

  40. At various speeds and in various forms, the E-flat Trio’s arpeggio motif turns up in Alberti-like figures through the first movement, in the B theme of movement 2, in the end of the A theme and the trio section of the scherzo, and in the finale from the main theme on.

  41. From m. 299 of the finale, Beethoven provides, perhaps with tongue in cheek, a précis of his short–short–long rhythmic motif and, for that matter, his way of handling rhythmic motifs: first we hear it in quarters, then diminished in eighths, then in sixteenths. Then he neatly links the motif to the wry two-eighth-octave hiccup that opens the main theme.

  42. The beginning of the slow movement takes a detour to the subdominant, just as the first movement did. Here Beethoven makes a recurring motif out of a modulation—but then, he eventually makes any recurring element a motif, including rests and single pitches.

  43. Already in the C Minor Trio, Beethoven can wield the harmonic effect known as the “Neapolitan sixth” (N6) in dazzling ways. It feels not just like a fresh color in the harmony but like something breathtaking, almost vertiginous.

  44. In the C Minor Trio, the tritone first shows up in the top piano line in mm. 7 and 9, followed by the violin solo emphasizing the same C–F-sharp tritone. Most of the tritones in the trio resolve normally, but there is an unusual interest in them throughout. On the third page, all three instruments come to a weird, pianissimo pause on E-flat–A, which finally and furiously resolves fortissimo. Meanwhile, I think the first movement demonstrates that one of the ear-dazzling effects of the N6 chord is that its root forms a tritone with the dominant note to which it resolves. So, the Neapolitans in the C Minor Trio are another manifestation of the tritone motif.