Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Swafford, Jan

  4. Ibid., no. 50.

  5. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 87.

  6. Grove Music Online, s.v. “Punto, Giovanni.” The Baroque style of extreme high horn and trumpet playing, which in Bach’s day made melodic writing possible on those valveless instruments, had died out by the later eighteenth century.

  7. Thayer/Forbes, 1:256–57.

  8. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 273.

  9. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 163.

  10. The account of Beethoven’s encounters with Steibelt is in Wegeler/Ries, 70–71. Since the Trio is op. 11, Wegeler’s memory may be faulty, or the encounters may have happened earlier.

  11. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 163.

  12. Wegeler/Ries, 87–88.

  13. Czerny, quoted in Drake, Beethoven Sonatas, 127: “One often finds in Beethoven’s works that he bases the structure of his piece on single, seemingly unimportant notes, and insofar as one brings out these notes (as he himself used to do) one gives the whole piece proper color and unity.” I have followed that principle here, though I differ with Czerny’s “single” motif; I think there are several leading ideas in a given work.

  14. Thayer/Forbes, 1:257.

  15. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 40.

  16. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 97.

  17. Winter and Martin, Beethoven Quartet Companion, 10. Today Beethoven’s quartet of instruments resides in a case at the Beethovenhaus, Bonn.

  18. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 10.

  19. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 51.

  20. Winter and Martin, Beethoven Quartet Companion, 10; Thayer/Forbes, 1:262.

  21. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 53.

  22. Heartz, Mozart, 622. Griffiths, String Quartet, 81, cites Landon saying that Haydn may have failed to complete his Lobkowitz set of quartets because he did not want to compete with Beethoven. I suppose that’s possible, but I think exhaustion and incipient senility were Haydn’s main problems. He would not have found Beethoven a threat if he had had his full faculties. More likely, as he did with Mozart, he would have absorbed some of Beethoven’s ideas into his own work.

  23. Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 162.

  24. Heartz, Mozart, 749.

  25. When I say that Beethoven in the Pathétique and here and there in other early opuses already had much of his voice but had not yet settled into it, or perhaps had not fully understood it, I’m thinking of artists in general, who do not necessarily have a eureka moment when they find their voice. Many of the larger issues of one’s own creativity are seen through a glass darkly. They seem obvious only in retrospect, from the outside. In the same way, it is easy for a skilled mimic to imitate the style of distinctive artists like, say, Frost or Matisse or Beethoven. It was anything but easy for those men to create, because they were not imitating themselves but rather trying to do something fresh.

  26. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 30.

  27. Simpson, “Chamber Music,” 250. In the first drafts, the opening movement, featuring the same motif, was actually in 4/4, not 3/4.

  28. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 32. An example of a kind of thematic relationship that is not motivic or exactly tonal, which I call gestural, is seen in each of the movements’ opening themes in the F-major quartet. In the beginning, after repeating his turn figure several times, starting on F, in the second line he climbs the figure upward by steps: F–G–A. The opening themes of the other three movements all have figures climbing by step. Meanwhile, all those movements start with some transformation of the opening turn motif.

  29. Continuing his experiments with various kinds of relationships among themes beyond the usual motivic snippets, with the first chord in m. 3 of the D Major Quartet, Beethoven sets up the idea of strong-beat suspensions or appoggiaturas, especially 4–3 suspensions, as a leading motif of no. 3. This is another case of a gestural connection of themes.

  30. Quartet No. 4 in C Minor is an example of what I call “ideas not up to the level of the craftsmanship” here and there in op. 18. Joseph Kerman writes, “The C-minor first movement is more crudely written than anything in the other Op. 18 Quartets” (Beethoven Quartets, 68). I abstain from voting on that question, but it’s not one of his more striking movements. Yet here are the beginnings of ideas that will bear fruit in the Fifth Symphony in C Minor: the main motif in the quartet seems to be less the pitches or intervals of the beginning than the shape of the figure at the end of m. 1: C–E-flat–D, that is, leap up and step down. Expanded, that becomes the figure of the second phrase in m. 5, which in turn becomes the second theme in m. 34. By the bottom of the first page, the shape and its rhythm are being variously retrograded and diminished. The leading rhythmic motif is the &-2-&-1 of the first two bars—the same leading rhythmic motif as in the Fifth Symphony and other works.

  31. Specifically in regard to the first movement of the C Minor, I mean what seems to my ear a too-abrupt transition to the second theme in m. 33 and an awkward harmonic jump from E-flat major to G minor in the second ending of the exposition.

  32. Schiedermair, 152–53.

  33. In Beethoven Quartets, Joseph Kerman finds La Malinconia interesting but in the end not entirely successful: “The mood of La Malinconia does not really seem to approach melancholy” (76). I don’t completely disagree—Beethoven would advance in portraying emotion, as in all else—but I see the movement in the context of the whole, which adds to its impact. I also think that among other things Beethoven was looking (in contrast to the Pathétique) for an original way of depicting pathos and melancholy, one with no traditional musical topics representing sorrow. In that respect, the movement is a success.

  34. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 167. Hoffmeister’s publishing house would end up an acquisition of the still-extant C. F. Peters. As Wyn Jones details in Symphony, 30–31, Hoffmeister had great ambitions to publish symphonies in Vienna but gave them up because of lack of interest. By the time he sold out, in 1806, Beethoven’s First was the only symphony he had published.

  35. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 41. In the letter, in regard to all the instruments being obbligato (required) in the Septet, Beethoven says in passing, “As a matter of fact, I came into this world with an obbligato accompaniment.” In regard to that sentence, Anderson notes an old story that Beethoven was born with a caul.

  36. Charles Rosen (Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 149) calls op. 22 Beethoven’s “farewell to the 18th century” in the sonatas.

  37. Scherer, Quarter Notes, 53–63.

  38. Tyson, “Notes,” 441–42.

  39. Scherer, Quarter Notes, 52.

  40. Arnold and Fortune, Beethoven Reader, 468.

  41. Scherer, Quarter Notes, 170.

  42. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 51.

  43. Thayer/Forbes, 1:269.

  44. See Solomon, “Beethoven’s ‘Magazin der Kunst.’”

  45. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 44. Note that Beethoven refuses to write the whole word Rezensenten, “reviewers,” because he is furious at them. This is another time when he cannot bring himself to write a name or even a word representing something or someone he is angry at.

  46. Sipe, Beethoven, 12.

  47. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 379–81.

  48. Sipe, Beethoven, 13.

  49. Schiller, Aesthetic Education, xvii.

  50. Ibid., xv.

  51. Ibid., 9.

  52. This is from the later and more detailed description of the story in the appendix of Sipe, Beethoven, 118. No. 9, the murderous dance of Melpomene, begins with a quasi-recitative, followed by operatic furioso music. Thalia makes her deus-ex-machina entrance to a lilting pastoral tune.

  53. Aldrich, “Social Dancing,” 128. She notes that the democratic associations of the englische were enough to drive it out of favor in countries with a more rigid class structure than existed in Vienna.

  54. Schiller, Aesthetic Education, 300, in the notes for letter 17. This letter was addressed to Schiller’s close friend and confidant the former Illuminatus C. G. Körner, who had been an influence on “An d
ie Freude.”

  55. Thayer/Forbes, 1:193.

  15. The New Path

  1. Landon, Beethoven, 80.

  2. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, nos. 215–16.

  3. Landon, Beethoven, 79.

  4. Geiringer, Haydn, 172. Haydn wrote in a letter, “This whole passage [in The Seasons] imitating a frog has not flowed from my pen. I was forced [by van Swieten] to write down this Frenchified trash.”

  5. Ibid., 179.

  6. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 48.

  7. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, no. 174.

  8. See Lockwood, “On the Beautiful.”

  9. What I’m calling the recapitulation on the “wrong” theme, on a V6 chord, in the first movement of op. 23 (after a hold) could also be considered a false recapitulation. The real one would then arrive later with the first theme, fortissimo. But then we’d have to declare a false recapitulation in the tonic key, which seems dubious. I think the real point is an ambiguous recapitulation that flows out of the development, and an experiment with the formal model, which is true, to some degree, of the whole sonata. The slow movement is an unusual full-scale sonata form with repeat of the exposition, the form of the last movement a complicated rondo. In other words, op. 23 is characterized by experiments with form throughout. That quality may be in response to a program of some sort, but here, as most of the time, Beethoven kept his programs to himself.

  10. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 51.

  11. Thayer/Forbes, 1:293–94.

  12. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 284–85.

  13. Czerny, Proper Performance, 9, 13.

  14. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 51. Paragraph divisions added.

  15. Ibid., no. 53.

  16. Ibid., no. 54.

  17. Landon, Beethoven, 80.

  18. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 137.

  19. Landon, Beethoven, 82.

  20. Thayer/Forbes, 1:292.

  21. Quoted in Tyson, “New Letter,” 9–10.

  22. Czerny memoir, in B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 17. Czerny puts the quote in 1803, but Lockwood corrects it to 1802, the year of op. 31. Common wisdom has it that the first unequivocal works on the New Path are the piano sonatas of op. 31, especially no. 2, misnamed The Tempest. I don’t essentially disagree with that, but I feel that the first steps started in op. 26, which has the mature Beethoven voice. It is not certain when he announced the New Path to Krumpholz; it could have been before, during, or after the opp. 26–28 Sonatas of 1801. The New Path is, of course, what a later time would call the Second or Heroic Period, named for the Eroica. As is often noted, however, the music of the Second Period is not all in the heroic vein, and the symphony is not the first sign of his full maturity.

  23. Drake, Beethoven Sonatas, 121–22.

  24. Ironically, an orchestration of the op. 26 Funeral March was heard at Beethoven’s funeral. He was already identified with the heroic images in his own music.

  25. Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 134–35.

  26. Senner, Critical Reception, vol. 1, nos. 177–78n7.

  27. If the atmosphere of the Moonlight Sonata was unique in its time, there is at least one likely precedent: the bubbling C Major Prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier.

  28. Modern pianos, with their longer sustain, cannot play with the pedal down throughout the first movement of the Moonlight. The effect has to be approximated. I’ve found that hearing the piece on a period piano, performed as directed, can be a stunning experience. Because of the short sustain, the overlap is subtle and beautiful. The main overlap on period pianos is in the longer-sustaining bass. See Swafford, “In Search.”

  29. Czerny, cited in Arnold and Fortune, Beethoven Reader, 109.

  30. B. Cooper, Creative Process, 44.

  31. The String Quintet in C Major is one of the works in the early opuses that to a modern ear, if not strongly “Beethovenian” in voice, is at the same time not particularly Mozartian or eighteenth-century either. From the perspective of the present, the most startling thing about it is how much the opening and a lot else about it sound like Brahms via Schubert. Besides the flowing theme and warm scoring, the opening resembles Brahms in its quick midphrase modulations. The piece is exceptionally unified in patterns of tonality and in its playful treatment of both key and form. The first movement, for example, has an unusual return to the opening theme, varied, at the end of the exposition; the effect is of an ABA exposition. The modulations throughout seem to turn mainly on the presence of a “sore” C-sharp/D-flat, and, as is usually the case in such situations, C-sharp is the first accidental in the piece. The Quintet is surely one of the most interesting of Beethoven’s lesser-known works, compromised, to my ear, only by some themes on the bland side.

  32. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 114.

  33. Charles Burney, quoted in Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 173.

  34. Thayer/Forbes, 1:303.

  35. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 58.

  36. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 38.

  37. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 59.

  38. Thayer/Forbes, 1:302.

  39. Wegeler/Ries, 76–77 notes.

  40. Thayer/Forbes, 1:318.

  41. The C-sharp grace note at the beginning of the G Major Violin Sonata that I call the “hiccup” is echoed in the comical C-sharp grace notes in the theme of the finale. The C-sharps in the finale rondo theme also give it a bit of a Lydian feel.

  42. Anton Schindler’s report that Beethoven snapped, “Read Shakespeare’s Tempest!” when asked what the D Minor Sonata was “about” can no more be relied on than anything else Schindler says. Which is to say that it might actually be true, but absent other evidence there is no way to know. Even if the story is true, it is by no means certain whether Beethoven was being ironic or serious. I think the efforts by Romain Rolland and others to connect this sonata to the play don’t add up.

  43. For a tour of contrasting theories on the form of The Tempest, see Jones, Beethoven. That Beethoven would make the idea of an arpeggio into a motif is characteristic of his drive to thematicize every element of music. He does the same here with the Neapolitan chord. Earlier in his music, as with most composers, N was a passing harmonic color. Now, it became a thematic element in some of his most fraught pieces. The exposition of the first movement of The Tempest climaxes on a hair-raising N chord folded into a chromatic-turn figure that is also a leading motif. If in theory the first theme proper is at m. 21, the reality is that the earlier Allegro passage sounds more like a theme than an introduction—so which is it? In the recapitulation, the first-theme section is elided and recomposed, further unsettling the expected formal outline. To repeat an earlier point: the driving and demonic quality of this work (Sturm und Drang, if you like) is amplified by compromising the formal model. For that reason, I submit that theoretical arguments over what the form of the movement “really” is miss the point. What the form really is, in this case, is intentionally, and expressively, ambiguous. Karl Dahlhaus: “The ambiguity should be perceived as an artistic factor—an attribute of the thing itself . . . The very contradictions of the form constitute its artistic character” (Ludwig van Beethoven, 170).

  44. The warm opening chord of the E-flat Major is a ii 6/5, at that time considered a dissonance.

  45. The nice thing about dancing a tarantella to keep from dying from the tarantula’s bite was that it always worked, because the tarantula is not poisonous to humans.

  46. The overall descending-third tonal progression of the op. 34 F Major Variations is foreshadowed in the opening phrase of the theme itself. The first chord change is to IV, prophesying the next two keys, D and B-flat. The following key, G, is the melodic goal of the first phrase, in bar four. By then the third bar has introduced an E-flat, the first accidental in the piece and the key of variation IV (the only one of the tonic notes in the piece not part of F major). So the keys of the theme itself descend in thirds.

  47. The canonic variation 7 in the Prometheus Variations and their other echoes of Bach suggest that at this point Bee
thoven knew Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which were already well known and much admired. Another point of resemblance is that Bach’s and Beethoven’s variations are both based on what would seem to be an insubstantial dance tune. The nostalgic appearance of the englische theme near the end prophesies its similar but more impactful appearance near the end of the Eroica. Another Eroica prophecy is his extensive use of the three-note chromatic motif from the Prometheus bass as a melodic element.

  48. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 62.

  49. Ibid., no. 57.

  50. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 39.

  51. Blanning, Pursuit of Glory, 348.

  52. Nicholls, Napoleon, 62.

  16. Oh, Fellow Men

  1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:304–6. Paragraph divisions added.

  2. What Beethoven was headed toward after the crisis embodied in the Heiligenstadt Testament was, of course, the Eroica. Long-standing common wisdom holds three things about the Eroica that I do not entirely subscribe to. One is that the Third Symphony is primarily about himself, his own heroism. As will be shown, it is about himself in part, but by no means entirely. Next, history has named his Second Period for the Eroica (though that is now understood to be dubious, since much of the Second Period music is not in his “heroic” style), so it is traditionally assumed that the Third Symphony inaugurated the Second Period. I think there is a growing understanding that this period really started earlier, sometimes located at op. 31. Since I think the Second Period—here called the New Path—is more a matter of consolidation and intensification than of heroism, I’ve located its wellspring in the sonatas of opp. 26–28 and the next decisive step as op. 31. Finally, the Heiligenstadt Testament is often assumed to have directly inspired or galvanized the Eroica. There is no way fully to know, but I doubt it. I think Beethoven was headed for the Eroica before his crisis, was planning it during the period of the Prometheus Variations, and its roots go back to Bonn. In other words, I believe Beethoven would have written the Eroica in any case.

  3. Thayer/Forbes, 1:309.