Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Swafford, Jan

61. As Wyn Jones details in The Symphony, 167–68, the tryouts of the Eroica Lobkowitz arranged are not entirely documented, and Beethoven was not present at private performances of the piece Lobkowitz arranged in Bohemia—which the prince could arrange at will, since by contract he owned the piece for some months. Later he temporarily owned the Fifth and Six Symphonies.

  62. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 98.

  63. Landon, Beethoven, 97.

  64. Senner, Critical Reception, 1:168.

  65. Thayer/Forbes, 1:375.

  66. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:15–16.

  67. Ibid., 2:17.

  68. Thayer/Forbes, 1:376.

  69. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:18.

  70. Ibid., 2:19.

  71. Ibid., 2:20–24.

  72. Ibid., 2:32–33.

  73. Ibid., 2:35–36.

  74. Ibid., 2:37.

  19. Our Hearts Were Stirred

  1. Beahrs, “Immortal Beloved,” 67. Beahrs and Klapproth (Beethoven’s Only Beloved) believe Josephine Deym to be the “Immortal Beloved.”

  2. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 110, some paragraph breaks added. The exact dates of their letters in this period are uncertain. As will be noted again later, the tone of Beethoven’s letters to Josephine Deym in this period is close to that of the later letter to the “Immortal Beloved”—except that here he uses the formal Sie for “you” and in the I. B. letter he uses the intimate du.

  3. Ibid., no. 112.

  4. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 99.

  5. Beahrs, “Immortal Beloved,” 67. Beahrs and Klapproth call Josephine’s words of this time love letters—something of a stretch.

  6. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 100. Beahrs (“Immortal Beloved,” 66) questions Thayer’s translation of Josephine’s heilige Bande as “holy vows.” She suggests “solemn obligations,” referring to her children, and I have used that. A more literal translation is “sacred ties”—also likely referring to her children, who would lose their aristocratic privileges if she married a commoner. In any case, as Beahrs points out, Thayer was far off the mark when he suggested Josephine had taken some kind of vow of chastity. She bore at least two children out of wedlock.

  7. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 102. None in this exchange of letters between Beethoven and Deym of ca. spring 1805 have dates, the exact succession is conjectural, some letters exist in fragments, and likely some have been lost.

  8. Ibid., no. 164.

  9. Thayer/Forbes, 1:379.

  10. B. Cooper, Creative Process, 51.

  11. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:170.

  12. Winter and Martin, “Quartets,” 35.

  13. Rosen, Classical Style, 143.

  14. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 104.

  15. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 118.

  16. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:224.

  17. Thayer/Forbes, 1:400.

  18. Franz Grillparzer reported that at the meeting, “Beethoven was full of attention and respect toward Cherubini” (quoted in Landon, Beethoven, 201).

  19. Czerny, Proper Performance, 15.

  20. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 119.

  21. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 202. This account from a Ries letter of roughly that time to critic and poet Heinrich Rellstab is significantly different from, and less dramatic than, the well-known later account in Ries’s memoirs. I trust this one more because it was closer to the event (though Landon’s date of 1804 for the letter is approximate).

  22. Some details about the Appassionata: Like The Tempest, the Waldstein, the Fifth Symphony, and other of Beethoven’s most overwhelming pieces, the Appassionata is tight in material and taut in construction—powerful emotion under relentless control. As in the Waldstein, in this sonata sonority is tied to structure: each section is defined not only by its material but also by a distinctive color and texture. Performances on period pianos reveal how much the music was inspired by the contrasts in registers of those pianos, from booming low to silvery high (see Swafford, “In Search”). In general, the pianism here is as radically new as in the Waldstein. In regard to form, technically speaking, the A-flat-major and A-flat-minor themes are both part of the second group, but I think in practice there is a sense of three themes (the A-flat-major being a late addition). By this sonata the Neapolitan chord has been decisively promoted from a local harmonic event to a full-fledged motif: the beginning idea in F minor is immediately repeated in the Neapolitan key of G-flat. That in turn is linked to the D-flat–C tattoo, which implies N of V. The hopeful moments in the outer movements tend to be extinguished in one way or another. An example is the A-flat-major second theme from m. 35; at the point when we expect a firm cadence, it strays into N at m. 42, followed by an E-flat seventh that resolves not to A-flat major but, at length, into the driving A-flat-minor theme at m. 51. It is often noticed that the four-note tattoo here is the same as the one in the Fifth Symphony; in both cases it has a fateful cast. Recall Ries’s experience hearing Beethoven working on bits of the finale, improvising variations. That process seems to me to persist in the final version, which is virtually monothematic, the “whirlwind” idea constantly varied and redefined, as if the finale were in part about the process of composition itself. Finally, in material and tone there are interesting links from the Appassionata to two other well-known works: Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Minor, op. 90, and Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F Minor (the latter is Brahms’s response, I think, to both the Appassionata and op. 90).

  23. This is Donald Francis Tovey’s memorable phrase for the Appassionata finale.

  24. Hearing the Appassionata recorded by Stephen Porter on an 1827 Graf instrument from the Frederick Historic Piano Collection is unforgettable—in how the music utilizes the distinctive registers of the Viennese pianos of that time (lost on modern pianos), and in how the ending seems almost like an assault on the instrument, which struggles to contain the music.

  25. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:168.

  26. Thayer/Forbes, 1:380.

  27. Heinrich Heine, quoted in Knight, Beethoven, 61. Napoleonic-era military garb, up to the plumed shakoes, survives in the uniforms of American marching bands. (The word for the hat came from the Hungarian csákó, “peaked cap.”)

  28. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 121.

  29. Hill, Ferdinand Ries, 23; Thayer/Forbes, 1:382.

  30. Wegeler/Ries, 90.

  31. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 125.

  32. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 87.

  33. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 105.

  34. Ibid., no. 110.

  35. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 124. “Colic” means fits of vomiting.

  36. Knight, Beethoven, 62.

  37. Landon, Beethoven, 107.

  38. Knight, Beethoven, 61–62.

  39. Thayer/Forbes, 1:384.

  40. Ibid., 1:383. When Milder sang for Haydn in her teens, he exclaimed, “My dear child! You have a voice like a house!” It is reported that her age and inexperience showed at the premiere, but she later became a splendid Leonore.

  41. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 89.

  42. For a view of the final version of Leonore/Fidelio, see chapter 26. The overture for the original production was the one later known as Leonore No. 2. There is no surviving full score of the opera’s first version.

  43. Wegeler/Ries, 59–60.

  44. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 90.

  45. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:231.

  46. Ibid., 2:173.

  47. Thayer/Forbes, 1:399.

  48. Joseph Röckel, cited in Landon, Beethoven, 107–8, and in Sonneck, Beethoven, 60–64. These are two accounts by Röckel that differ in details. I am mainly relying on the fuller account in Sonneck.

  49. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 128.

  50. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 153.

  51. Czerny, Proper Performance, 14.

  52. Röckel, in Sonneck, Beethoven, 64–65.

  53. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:178.

  54. Knight, Beethoven, 65.

  55. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 130.

  56. Robinson,
Ludwig van Beethoven, 27–28.

  57. Sonneck, Beethoven, 66–67.

  58. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 116.

  59. Rev. Christian Sturm, quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:391–92. Though in theory Beethoven did not believe in miracles or a God who intervened to change our lives, he was at least as inconsistent as most people in the details of his beliefs. In any case, these words come from Sturm, not Beethoven.

  60. Thayer/Forbes, 1:399.

  61. Ibid., 1:408.

  62. Ibid., 1:400.

  63. Winter and Martin, “Quartets,” 36.

  64. Thayer/Forbes, 1:401.

  65. Specht’s characterization (Beethoven as He Lived, 146).

  66. Landon, Beethoven, 112.

  67. Specht, Beethoven as He Lived, 147.

  68. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 132. As is noted earlier, Beethoven apparently began the first Razumovsky at the end of May 1806. He declared it finished to Härtel at the beginning of July—which was not likely.

  69. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 158.

  70. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 252.

  71. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 125.

  72. Ibid., no. 178. Oppersdorff was present for the blowup at Lichnowsky’s in autumn 1806.

  73. Various versions of the story are found in Thayer/Forbes, 1:403; and Landon, Beethoven, 115–18. The servant’s story appears in Specht, Beethoven as He Lived, 20; Solomon, Beethoven, 190; and B. Cooper, Beethoven, 159.

  74. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 365–66.

  75. Quoted in Stowell, Beethoven, 22.

  76. Ibid., 6–10; Schwartz, “French Violin School,” 432, 446.

  77. Winds are used prominently in the Violin Concerto, often scored with oboes rather than flute on top, producing a distinctively eighteenth-century sound.

  78. As Stowell elaborates (Beethoven, 80–85), Owen Jander finds in the slow movement the atmosphere of a Romanze, of which Beethoven wrote two freestanding examples for violin. Plantinga among others is dubious about the connection. In general Plantinga finds more tension in the first movement than I do, using descriptions like “high pathos” and “insistent in the extreme.” As he notes, though, the most common descriptor applied to the whole work is “serene.” And as Plantinga also admits, most of the incipient disruptions are quickly restored to peace.

  79. At the end of the finale Beethoven recalls the opening timpani tattoo, but I think that since the tattoo has not been around throughout, it’s more a formal than an audible connection. In order to be meaningful, motifs have to keep happening. That the timpani tattoo largely gets lost after the first movement (though perhaps it survives in themes that tend to fall hard on the beat in duple patterns) and that the “sore” D-sharp near the beginning has only hazy implications later are, to me, signs of the haste in which the concerto was composed. The extreme regularity of the phrasing in the first movement may be another sign; likewise, that Beethoven used a perhaps-borrowed, at any rate conventional, theme for the finale. It took him time and energy to give fresh twists to ideas and their phrasing; his first thoughts were often more conventional and foursquare. My general sense is that the pieces he composed in a hurry have less pervasive and complex thematic, tonal, and rhythmic interrelationships, because there was not as much time to think, revise, and plan ahead.

  80. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:68–69.

  81. Stowell, Beethoven, 16–19, 24. Beethoven had heard Clement’s Violin Concerto in D Major, because it premiered on an April 1805 concert in which Beethoven conducted the Eroica. Plantinga (Beethoven’s Concertos, 233) notes that the violin writing in Beethoven’s concerto is on the whole less adventurous than Viotti’s.

  82. Stowell says (Beethoven, 52–55) that in the manuscript of the Violin Concerto, there are multiple staves given to the solo part, and many passages have two or three different versions noted on those staves. The whole manuscript is much worked over by Beethoven, but it remains unclear how the final published version was arrived at. As Plantinga writes (Beethoven’s Concertos, 239), “the current form of the violin part bears an odd, fragmented relationship to the text of the autograph”; sometimes it follows the top line of the solo, sometimes the second, and sometimes it has a passage that does not appear on the autograph at all.

  83. A paraphrase of Eugène Ysaÿe in Stowell, Beethoven, 20. It was mainly Joseph Joachim who placed the Violin Concerto in the repertoire, starting with a celebrated performance in 1844, when he was twelve.

  20. That Haughty Beauty

  1. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 92–93.

  2. Thayer/Forbes, 1:427–28.

  3. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:52–53.

  4. Grove Music Online, s.v. “Schuppanzigh, Ignaz.” As a historical footnote, Schuppanzigh also was one of only two men known to play in the premieres of every Beethoven symphony. The other was Anton Schreiber, the violist of his quartet.

  5. Landon, Beethoven, 56–58.

  6. Wegeler/Ries, 116.

  7. Specht, Beethoven as He Lived, 42–43.

  8. B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 234.

  9. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 59.

  10. Part of the effect of the beginning of op. 59, no. 1, is that the cello solo mostly falls on the relatively milder middle G and D strings. The melody on the C string would have been stronger, on the A string more lyrical and sweet. Both were possible, but Beethoven chose the strings with the least distinctive character. Ratner, in Beethoven String Quartets, considers the tone of the movement “melancholy and nostalgic . . . bittersweet in the touches of sharp dissonance” (106). Most commentators don’t hear it in those terms. I find a certain expressive elusiveness in the F Major—part of its relatively undramatic quality.

  11. Kerman in Beethoven Quartets emphasizes the individuality of the works. I’m concerned with how that individuality is expressed not only in the themes and forms but also in the colors and textures.

  12. The opening of the F Major is made still more unstable, more strange, by its theme that turns around C, the fifth degree of the scale, treated as if it were the first degree, giving the cello theme a certain modal, Mixolydian flavor.

  13. A few more elements unite the main theme of the first and last movements of the F Major Quartet. Both have a falling step on A–G that echoes the D–C motif, and the articulation of the finale theme has a resemblance to the 1234 1 rhythmic motif of the first movement: its implied phrasing is 1212 1. Also, both themes have a modal quality. The first segment of each transacts its main business within the compass of the sixth C to A. And, of course, both themes are presented by the cello, the main protagonist of the quartet, often involved in playing a melody rather than the usual bass line—which, as is noted, gives the whole quartet a bit of a suspended, modal quality (see Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 93).

  14. In characteristic Beethovenian fashion, the F Major’s opening 1234 1 rhythmic motif is diminished from quarters to eighths in the third bar, augmented to whole notes in the violin from m. 16.

  15. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, uses “reinterpretation” for the effect I’m calling “redefinition” in the F Major, though he applies it only to the first movements of all three quartets. I think the most elaborate example of it is in the second movement of the F Major, with its constant reenvisioning of its opening rhythmic motif.

  16. As late as the final manuscript, Beethoven had planned to repeat the entire development and recapitulation of the F Major Quartet first movement, but he finally struck it out (Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 320). As Lockwood notes, even without the repeat this is still the longest quartet movement written to that time. Also, until late in the game he planned a similar repeat in the second movement, which is likewise enormous even without the repeat. If he had included the repeats, he would have ended up with a quartet as long as or longer than the Eroica. Lockwood concludes that the F Major “formed the primary model for quartet composers for the rest of the 19th century” (321), including Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.

  17. The element that unifies
the basketful of keys in the development of the F Major first movement is that most of them involve, and so constantly redefine, the note D: it is the sixth degree of the scale in F, the third degree in B-flat, the fifth degree in G minor, and so on, until it becomes the much-emphasized leading tone of E-flat minor.

  18. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 109.

  19. Regarding the form of the second movement of the F Major, see Ratner, Beethoven String Quartets, 117 and 119. He calls the total effect a “picaresque journey.” It is in a barely noticeable sonata form with elements of rondo. “Drumbeat” and “pirouette” are Ratner’s terms for the second movement’s two leading ideas.

  20. Landon, Beethoven unabridged, 208.

  21. Kerman, Beethoven Quartets, 110.

  22. Solomon, in “Beethoven, Freemasonry,” 116, speculates that the “brother” involved in the slow movement of op. 59, no. 1, might have been a Masonic brother; the acacia is a Masonic symbol (though the willow is not). It is not likely that Beethoven was referring to a brother of his who died in infancy.

  23. As is common in a slow-movement sonata form, there is no repeat of the exposition. The scalewise rising-fourth figure from the first movement turns up periodically, sometimes inverted, and there is a series of them in the first violin leading to the transitional violin solo, which has a series of fourth descents and ends with repeated D–C figures—the quartet’s primal motif.

  24. The primal D–C motif is very much around in the finale of the F Major—it arose from the first two notes of the Thème russe in the first place. As in the first movement, the keys tend to involve and redefine D (notably the redefining of D in the wrong-key recapitulation in B-flat), with one exception: there are excursions to D-flat in the developments of the first and third movements and a similar one to A-flat in the finale. All of them make a point of the D-flat becoming D-natural in modulating away from the flat key. I tend to agree with Kerman’s and other scholars’ feeling that the finale is not up to the level of the other movements. That is not an uncommon problem with Beethoven—and myriad other composers. Finales are a chronic headache.