Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Swafford, Jan

  45. Solomon, Beethoven, 101.

  12. Virtuoso

  1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:177; Landon, Beethoven, 49. The dances are WoO 7–8. Also this year, Beethoven wrote two other sets of six minuets. In Beethoven, 60, Barry Cooper details the striking sequence of tonalities in Beethoven’s pension-fund-ball dances, the keys forming a chain of descending thirds and upward fourths, and compares them to the similar, if less exploratory, sequence in Haydn’s dances for the 1792 ball. This is another case of Beethoven taking a model and elaborating on it.

  2. Landon, Beethoven, 49. The headline dances for the November balls were by Franz Süssmayer, a prominent Mozart pupil best known for completing Mozart’s unfinished Requiem.

  3. Thayer/Forbes, 1:180–81.

  4. Braubach, “Von den Menschen,” 73.

  5. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 16.

  6. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 63–64. There is little documentation of these concerts or how they were received. Countess Clary was a well-known amateur singer.

  7. The difficulties of Ah! perfido for the singer, probably coming no more from expressive intentions than from Beethoven’s lack of experience writing for voice, are so fierce that there is no surprise in the report that one soprano “almost suffered a heart attack” from stage fright during the piece (Scherman and Biancolli, 367).

  8. Thayer/Forbes, 1:183.

  9. Important generating motifs of the F Minor Sonata include three elements of the beginning: the sixth from C to A-flat of the “rocket” motif (spread through two octaves), the turn figure of m. 2, and the first left-hand “&-2-&” rhythm. In mm. 7–8, the sixth motif is filled in to make a descending-sixth pattern that Kenneth Drake (Beethoven Sonatas, 88) calls the leading thematic idea in the sonata. Drake’s examples showing how the descending-sixth idea is used are an excellent summary of the way Beethoven develops a motif: sometimes putting it on the surface, sometimes decorating it, sometimes making it a scaffolding on which to build a phrase or a new theme. Drake does not mention the main rhythmic motif (&-2-&) of the F Minor, but by and large nobody mentions Beethoven’s steady use of rhythmic motifs (or Haydn’s, or Mozart’s).

  10. The second theme of the A Major provides a good demonstration of the subtlety and discipline of Beethoven’s handling of rhythmic motifs. The first gesture in the movement establishes the basic rhythmic idea, dotted rhythms creating upbeats: short upbeats like the beginning eighth, which is immediately decorated into a four-thirty-seconds upbeat, and in m. 11 extended into a three-eighths upbeat. In m. 58, the beginning of the second theme, the articulation implies a dotted quarter and then an eighth upbeat; two bars later, that idea is diminished into a dotted eighth and two thirty-seconds; the articulation of mm. 60 and 61 implies a dotted half and quarter. In other words, the second theme is saturated with one dotted rhythmic figure expressed in three speeds. The main theme of the scherzo features a four-sixteenths upbeat; the main theme of the finale starts with a four-beat upbeat to the second bar. This kind of meticulous thematic work, in which an idea is expressed in a constant variety of ways both overt and covert, is common in Beethoven, even in the early opuses. He did not invent this kind of thematic work, but as with all his models, Beethoven took up ideas from the past and broadened and intensified them.

  11. The rising fourth of bar 2 is an important motif in the Sonata in C Major, but the subtlest motif from the beginning is the implied turn figure D–E–F–E–(D) in the upper voice. It becomes a real turn in the beginning of the second theme, in m. 27, and starts the main theme of both middle movements. (A motif will routinely be inverted and/or retrograded, as in the second- and third-movement themes.) Spread out over two octaves, the opening theme of movement 1 is the scaffolding on which the scampering theme of the finale is constructed.

  12. Skowroneck, Beethoven the Pianist, 68.

  13. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 17. Johann Streicher was from childhood a friend of Schiller’s, and would have spoken of him to Beethoven.

  14. Ibid., no. 18. Note 4 identifies the young pianist as a Fräulein von Kissov, the trio movement she played probably the Adagio cantabile of op. 1, no. 1. Note 6 points out that, so far in letters, Beethoven uses both the terms fortepiano and Klavier referring to the instrument. Later he tended to use Klavier, but occasionally Piano.

  15. While Beethoven was perennially dissatisfied with the pianos of his day, he also composed skillfully and idiomatically for them. A prime example is the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, which works beautifully on period pianos but on modern instruments can’t be played as written, with the sustain pedal held down throughout, because modern instruments sustain notes much longer.

  16. Gutman, Mozart, 695. Mozart’s tour of 1789 was his longest separation from his wife, Constanze. It was during the trip that he wrote the famous yearning and graphic letters to his wife back home. There was eventually a break between Mozart and Lichnowsky, who two years later sued Mozart over a loan made during the trip.

  17. Thayer/Forbes, 1:187.

  18. Ibid., 1:185.

  19. In the next decade, Jean-Louis Duport would publish what became one of the most influential cello methods of the time, showing influences of the French school and using a new fingering system.

  20. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 91.

  21. The Berlin stay is described in Thayer/Forbes, 1:184–87.

  22. Kinderman, in Beethoven, 45, calls the introduction of the G Major prophetic of the beginning of the Pathétique and of La Malinconia in op. 18, no. 6.

  23. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 19.

  24. Wegeler/Ries, 156.

  25. The full Schönfeld article is in Sisman, Haydn. History would not agree in the least with Schönfeld’s skepticism about Haydn’s late symphonies. That he called the symphonies Haydn’s greatest works shows the current status of the genre.

  26. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 22.

  27. Thayer/Forbes, 1:190.

  28. Wegeler/Ries, 107–8.

  29. B. Cooper (Beethoven, 60) points out how little Adelaide resembles other lieder of the time.

  30. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 40. Other composers set “Adelaide,” but in 1811, Matthisson belatedly named Beethoven’s as his favorite. Schubert did several Matthisson settings. To later sensibilities, the poem “Adelaide” would seem sentimental and dated, but Matthisson’s admirers of the time included Friedrich Schiller.

  31. Wegeler/Ries, 42–43.

  32. Douël, “Beethoven’s ‘Adelaide,’” 210–13.

  33. Knight, Beethoven, 41.

  34. Stendhal, quoted in ibid., 38.

  35. Knight, Beethoven, 38–43.

  36. Gutzmer, Chronik der Stadt Bonn, 87.

  37. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, 636.

  38. Knight, Beethoven, 43.

  39. Herriot, Life and Times, 68–70.

  40. Nicholls, Napoleon, 24. Napoleon approved when, in 1810, Bernadotte was given virtual rule of Sweden, but later Bernadotte joined the coalition against Napoleon. In 1818, he succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway as King Carl XIV and had a long and successful reign.

  41. Knight, Beethoven, 45.

  42. Broyles, Beethoven, 125.

  43. Donakowski, Muse, 46–59.

  13. Fate’s Hammer

  1. The darting, light-footed, entirely delightful finale of the op. 9, no. 1 Trio seems to prophesy the style of Mendelssohn’s “fairy scherzos” decades later.

  2. Solomon, Beethoven, 86.

  3. Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 125–27. The first two extant sketchbooks are known as Grasnick 1 and 2.

  4. From an Amenda memoir quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:224–25.

  5. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 31.

  6. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 30.

  7. At this point Beethoven was not a beginner at writing for violin and piano. In his teens he had written or sketched a sonata and a rondo, and in Vienna finished the “Se vuol ballare” Variations as a duo. The Rondo survives as WoO 41, and the Variations are WoO 40.

  8. Brandenburg, “Beethoven’s Op. 12,
” 19–20.

  9. C-flat major is a quite peculiar key to find oneself in, since it is enharmonically the same as the common B major. At the end of the development of no. 3, it is explained as a transition back to the recap: the C-flat becomes the root of a German sixth leading to V in E-flat.

  10. Brandenburg, “Beethoven’s Op. 12,” 19. There is no specific record of what Beethoven and Schuppanzigh played in their March program, but op. 12 is the most likely. This concert was a benefit for Mozart’s admired singer Josefa Duschek, for whom Beethoven had written Ah! perfido.

  11. Perhaps the most famous example of descending half steps representing grief is the ostinato bass line in the “Crucifixus” of Bach’s B Minor Mass.

  12. To modern ears the kind of emotionalism heard in the Pathétique seems familiar, if not overfamiliar, on the border between drama and melodrama. Some find its effect more “rhetorical” than “real.” If so, in its time it was a new kind of rhetoric. For all the traditional elements, to the ears of the late eighteenth century the piece seemed revolutionary.

  13. Kinderman, “Piano Music,” 115.

  14. In recognition of the maturity of the “First Period” works, which have no apprentice pieces at all, Lewis Lockwood aptly calls this period the First Maturity. I am using the terms “New Path” and “full maturity” for the old “Second (or Heroic) Period,” and generally am not using the old three-period terminology, because Beethoven and his time were not aware of it. He was aware, however, that around 1801–2 he was striking out on a new path, because he said so. When my subject supplies an apt term, I use it.

  15. There is a long-standing debate about whether or not the exposition repeat in the first movement of the Pathétique includes the introduction.

  16. Voices, strings, winds, and brass instruments playing without keyboard do not normally use equal temperament or anything other than their ears. A good violinist, for example, instinctively tunes each sonority individually, often without any rationalized system. That is why a string quartet can be more satisfyingly in tune than a piano. There have been myriad keyboard-tuning systems over the centuries. Recordings of works in traditional tunings have appeared, but not many; that remains a fertile field for scholarship and performance.

  17. See Swafford, “Wolf at Our Heels.”

  18. Duffin points out (Equal Temperament, 87) that by 1818, equal temperament was dominant in keyboard and chamber music, but Beethoven was deaf by then and in his inner ear probably retained what he had grown up with, which was likely extended meantone temperaments. But he was vitally involved in his interpretation of the character of keys, which inevitably concerns tuning: claiming keys have individual characters on an equal-tempered keyboard makes no real sense. Meanwhile, for all the impact of equal temperament (ET) on the nineteenth century, mathematically correct ET was actually not attained until the early twentieth century. As Duffin and others note, tuners of the nineteenth century thought they were tuning equally, but they were actually shading toward well-temperament. As for Beethoven’s favored tuning, there is no record of his talking about tuning at all.

  19. Steblin, History of Key Characteristics, 78, quoting Abraham Peter Schulz, a student of leading theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger.

  20. Steblin, History of Key Characteristics, 118 (quoting Schubart).

  21. Respectively, ibid., 105 (quoting Francesco Galeazzi), 109 (quoting Ribcock).

  22. Ibid., 104–5 (quoting Galeazzi).

  23. Compare Galeazzi’s characterizations of the keys to, respectively, the First Symphony in C Major; most Beethoven pieces in C minor; the slow movement of op. 10, no. 3 in D Minor; the Archduke Trio in B-flat Major; the op. 14, no. 2 Sonata in E Major; most of his pieces in E-flat major; and the Seventh Symphony in A Major. All those are close to Galeazzi’s characterizations, and plenty of other examples could be cited. In contrast, the Waldstein Sonata seems a deliberate essay in getting away from the usual character of C major, turning it in a more colorful and exciting direction than its traditional reputation would suggest.

  24. Schulz, quoted in Steblin, History of Key Characteristics, 79.

  25. Galeazzi, quoted in ibid., 105.

  26. Schubart, quoted in ibid., 116.

  27. Galeazzi, quoted in ibid., 104. In regard to Bach’s expressive associations of keys in the WTC, it is worth noting that some of those pieces were first written in other keys and transposed to fit the scheme of the work.

  28. Thayer/Forbes, 1:149.

  29. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 70–71.

  30. Solomon, Beethoven, 160. This was a Beethoven memory of 1815 and was reported to Thayer long after by a second person, so it should be taken with due caution. But the details of the event are convincingly specific, and Beethoven would likely have had a vivid memory of the first time his hearing problems struck him. My surmise as to the year his hearing problems first appeared comes from his first recorded mention of it, in a letter to Franz Wegeler of June 1801 (Anderson, vol. 1, no. 51), where he says it happened three years before. Of the few extant letters from that year, 1798, the earlier ones are notably gay in tone (this was the time of Zmeskall as “Baron Muckcart-driver”). Letters later that year are sober and practically humorless. In fact, one of late 1798 to Zmeskall is a complaint over a misunderstanding that ends, “It is difficult for a friendship to thrive under such conditions” (Anderson, vol. 1, no. 31). The tone of that note is uniquely bristly among his surviving notes to Zmeskall. To the degree that notes to Zmeskall are a rough barometer of Beethoven’s state of mind, it is significant that it is not until late 1802 that the notes return to their lighthearted and teasing tone: “sweetest and most extraordinary Count!” (Anderson, vol. 1, no. 65). It would be surprising if Beethoven’s anxiety and depression over his hearing did not affect his letters. This evidence suggests it did, and implies a time of later 1798 when his hearing was first stricken.

  31. Mai, Diagnosing Genius, 17.

  32. Wenzel Johann Tomaschek, quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:207–8.

  33. Beethoven, Ein Skizzenbuch, 1:8–9.

  34. Johnson, Tyson, and Winter, Beethoven Sketchbooks, 1:87.

  35. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, no. 5. Senner (vol. 1, no. 3) calls the AMZ “the primogenitor of modern music criticism.”

  36. Tomaschek, quoted in DeNora, Beethoven, 154.

  37. DeNora, “Piano Duel,” 263–66; Clive, Beethoven and His World, 401.

  38. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, no. 4.

  39. Sonneck, Beethoven, 36–37.

  40. Charles Rosen, in Classical Style: the Classical style was “in its origins, basically a comic one . . . the pacing of classical rhythm is the pacing of comic opera, its phrasing is the phrasing of dance music, and its large structures are these phrases dramatized” (96).

  41. Heinrich Christoph Koch, quoted in Jones, Beethoven, 57.

  42. Mozart, quoted in Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 169–70. This letter of Mozart’s was probably intended to reassure his father, who always worried that his son was getting too arcane. It should not be taken for the whole of Mozart’s attitude toward his work.

  43. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, no. 65.

  44. Brandenburg, “Beethoven’s Op. 12,” 21.

  45. Geiringer, Haydn, 355.

  46. Landon, Beethoven, 97–98.

  47. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 29.

  48. Thayer/Forbes, 1:209.

  49. Ibid., 1:210.

  50. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, no. 63.

  51. Ibid., no. 67. Oddly, in his review of the Pathétique the AMZ critic complains about a “reminiscence” in the third movement but can’t figure out what it is. He is correct: the main theme of the rondo is based on the second theme of the first movement. The critic seems to feel that too overt a resemblance of themes between movements is a fault.

  52. Czerny’s account is in Thayer/Forbes, 1:225–28. Czerny taught Liszt and also taught Leschetizky, who taught Artur Schnabel, who as one of the premiere Beethoven pianists
of his generation played and recorded in the first half of the twentieth century. Today Czerny is mainly known for his ubiquitous finger-training exercises, which were surely influenced by Beethoven’s teaching.

  53. Anderson, vol. 1, nos. 33–34. The current German edition of the complete letters speculates that the first letter may have been to Ignaz Schuppanzigh (because of the “he” form that Beethoven used with Schuppanzigh) and has no suggested recipient for the second, addressed as “Natzerl.” Anderson assumes that to be a familiar diminutive for Ignaz, which is not Hummel’s name. But the letter also uses the familiar du, “thou,” and Beethoven did not appear to be on du terms with any of his friends named Ignaz. Sticking to the traditional addressee for both notes, I have used the form “’Nazy,” another diminutive of Ignaz, which could be a pet name.

  54. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 94. Dragonetti was associated with Beethoven’s music for the rest of his life. He played in Beethoven’s concert of December 1813 and years later played the finale bass recitatives of the Ninth Symphony as a solo in London performances. He used a three-stringed instrument, tuned A–D–G.

  55. Grove Music Online, s.v. “Dragonetti, Domenico.”

  14. The Good, the Beautiful, and the Melancholy

  1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:255. There is a long-standing debate about whether Beethoven played Concerto No. 1 or No. 2 in his 1800 concert. In Beethoven, 90, Barry Cooper notes that just before the concert, he copied out a new score of No. 1 in C Major, with accumulated revisions, so that suggests it was the one performed.

  2. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, nos. 162–63.

  3. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 57.