The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination

by Matthew Guerrieri

  38. The catalog of Landsberg’s Beethoven collection is reproduced in Johnson et al., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, p. 32.

  39. See Gustav Nottebohm, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1880), pp. 70–71.

  40. Robert Haven Schauffler, The Unknown Brahms (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1933), pp. 139–40. Schauffler’s musical biographies can sometimes rival Schindler for engendering skepticism, but here he is quoting Brahms’s friend and biographer Max Kalbeck.

  41. Homer, The Iliad of Homer, Samuel Butler, trans. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898), p. 76.

  42. Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, J. H. Freese, trans. (Harvard University Press, 1926), pp. 385–86. (The translator uses the spelling paean.)

  43. Quintilian, Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory, John Selby Watson, trans. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1876), vol. 2, p. 237.

  44. Edwin E. Gordon, Tonal and Rhythm Patterns: An Objective Analysis (State University of New York Press, 1976), pp. 66, 71.

  45. Ibid., p. 123.

  46. Friedrich Kerst, Der Erinnerungen an Beethoven (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1913), Band 1, p. 54. (“Viele Motive Beethovens entstanden durch zufällige äußere Eindrücke und Ereignisse. Der Gesang eines Waldvogels (der Ammerling) gab ihm das Thema zur C-Moll-Sinfonie, und wer ihn fantasieren gehört hat, weiß, was er aus den unbedeutendsten paar Tönen zu entwickeln wußte.”) Czerny had contributed his reminiscences of Beethoven to Otto Jahn, an archaeologist and historian whose 1856 biography of Mozart still remains one of the great monuments of musical scholarship. Jahn never got around to writing his Beethoven biography, but Czerny’s notes survived to be published.

  47. Christoph Christian Sturm, Reflections on the Works of God in Providence and Nature, for Every Day in the Year, Adam Clarke, trans. (New York: McElrath, Bangs & Herbert, 1833), p. 183.

  48. The conversation books mention an intellectual dispute between Oken and Ignaz Troxler that was enough to pass for news of the day; see Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, Vierter Band (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1907), p. 154. Troxler, a doctor and philosopher, was an acquaintance of Beethoven’s in Vienna.

  49. See Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985), pp. 199–211.

  50. Wilhelm Christian Müller, “Something on Ludwig van Beethoven,” in Senner et al., The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, vol. 1, p. 106. Müller knew Beethoven largely through his daughter Elise, a pianist and composer who corresponded with Beethoven, and, scholarly temptation aside, most likely was not the dedicatee of “Für Elise.”

  51. Olivier Messiaen, the most famous of ornithologically inspired composers, always placed the yellowhammer’s final note a whole step higher than the repeated notes, but dialects vary; see, for instance, Gundula Wonke and Dieter Wallschläger, “Song dialects in the yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella: bioacoustic variation between and within dialects,” Journal of Ornithology 150, no. 1 (Jan. 2009): 117–26.

  52. See Owen Jander, “The Prophetic Conversation in Beethoven’s ‘Scene by the Brook,’ ” The Musical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 520.

  53. Harvey Grace, “Interludes,” The Musical Times, Sept. 1, 1920: p. 595.

  54. As in Haydn’s 104th Symphony, for instance: Adagio

  55. As quoted in Sandra P. Rosenbaum, Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music (Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 368.

  56. Richard Wagner, On Conducting, William Ashton Ellis, trans., in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 4 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1912), p. 311.

  57. For a fascinating look at such technology, see George Thomas Ealy, “Of Ear Trumpets and a Resonance Plate: Early Hearing Aids and Beethoven’s Hearing Perception,” 19th Century Music 17, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 262–73.

  58. Gustav Nottebohm, Beethoveniana. Aufsätze und Mittheilungen (Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1872), p. 135.

  59. Felix Weingartner, On Conducting, pp. 35–36.

  60. Weingartner, On the Performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies, Ernest Newman, trans. (London: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1906), p. 61.

  61. Gunther Schuller, The Compleat Conductor, pp. 148–49. (This table seems to be more precise than the one on page 123.)

  62. Quoted in Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini (University of California Press, 1994), p. 339.

  63. Jean Vermeil, Conversations with Boulez, Camille Naish, trans. (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), p. 71.

  64. See Schumann’s letter to Friedrich Hiller, April 25, 1853, in Gustav F. Jansen, ed., Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue Folge (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1904), pp. 370–71.

  65. See William Malloch, “Carl Czerny’s Metronome Marks for Haydn and Mozart Symphonies,” Early Music 16, no. 1 (Feb. 1988): 72–82, which also includes a reproduction of Beethoven’s own metronome-marking table from the December 1817 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.

  66. Peter Stadlen makes this point in “Beethoven and the Metronome,” Soundings 9 (1982): 38–73.

  67. Kielan Yarrow et al., “Illusory Perceptions of Space and Time Preserve Cross-Saccadic Perceptual Continuity,” Nature 414 (Nov. 15, 2001): 302–5.

  68. For effects of musical training, see, for example, Bruno H. Repp, “Sensorimotor Synchronization and Perception of Timing,” Human Movement Science 29 (2010): 200–213. For a study of the deafness aspect, see Joanna Kowalska and Elzbieta Szelag, “The Effect of Congenital Deafness on Duration Judgment,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47, no. 9 (Sept. 2006): 946–53.

  69. See Helga Lejeune and J. H. Wearden, “Vierordt’s The Experimental Study of the Time Sense (1868) and Its Legacy,” European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 21 (2009): 941–60. Vierordt’s book has never been translated into English.

  70. Simon Grondin, “Timing and Time Perception: A Review of Recent Behavioral and Neuroscience Findings and Theoretical Directions,” Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 72 (2010): 581, n. 4.

  71. Ibid., p. 564.

  72. One can compare three notable recordings from the 1980s that took up the historically informed Beethovenian challenge. The Hanover Band, led by Roy Goodman, takes the first movement of the Fifth at around 104 on their 1984 recording (Nimbus NIM 5007); Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music hover just under the 108 threshold on their 1987 version (Decca L’Oiseau-Lyre 417–615 2); Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players (EMI 7–49656–2) deliver their 1989 reading at a solid 108.

  73. Richard Taruskin, “On Letting the Music Speak for Itself: Some Reflections on Musicology and Performance,” The Journal of Musicology 1, no. 3 (July 1982): 338–49.

  74. Jean-Paul Sartre, War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War 1939–40, Quentin Hoare, trans. (London: Verso, 1999), p. 221.

  75. Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations, vol. 4, Benita Eisler, trans. (New York: G. Braziller, 1965), p. 222.

  76. Jules Michelet, Historical View of the French Revolution, Charles Cocks, trans. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888), p. 439.

  77. Maynard Solomon, “Beethoven’s ‘Magazin der Kunst,’ ” 19th-Century Music 7, no. 3 (April 1984): 207.

  78. The news was duly transmitted by a professor in Beethoven’s hometown of Bonn, B. L. Fischenich, to Schiller’s wife:

  I am enclosing a musical setting of the Feuerfarbe [a poem by Sophie Mereau, a friend of Schiller’s] and I would like to know your opinion of it. It is by a young man from here, whose musical talents are praised everywhere and whom the Elector has sent to Haydn in Vienna. He is also going to set Schiller’s Joy with all the verses to music.

  Quoted in Tia DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792—1803 (University of California Press, 1995), p. 85. Settings of the “Ode” were hardly rare, but Beethoven knew that Fischenich was on letter-writing terms with the Schillers, and that his own setting might stand a better-tha
n-average chance of standing out from the crowd. Beethoven’s “Feuerfarbe” was published as op. 52, no. 2.

  79. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, trans. (Oxford University Press, 1983).

  80. Ibid., p. 191.

  81. Schiller to Goethe, March 2, 1798 (“die Reiche der Vernunft”). In Friedrich Schiller, Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Neunundzwanzigster Band: Schillers Briefe 1796–1798, Norbert Oellers and Frithjof Stock, eds. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1977).

  82. Solomon, “Beethoven and Schiller,” in Beethoven Essays, p. 208.

  83. Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven Remembered: The Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Frederick Noonan, trans. (Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publishers, 1987), p. 68.

  84. Solomon, Beethoven, p. 182.

  85. See Nicholas Mathew, “History Under Erasure: Wellingtons Sieg, the Congress of Vienna, and the Ruination of Beethoven’s Heroic Style,” The Musical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 17–61.

  86. Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), p. 409.

  87. Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia, Frank Jellinek, trans. (University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 139.

  88. As suggested by Solomon in Beethoven, pp. 219–26.

  89. Thayer-Forbes, p. 536.

  90. Beethoven’s Letters (1790–1826) from the Collection of Dr. Ludwig Nohl, Lady Wallace, trans. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1866), vol. 1, pp. 114–15.

  91. Quoted in Thayer-Forbes, Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, p. 538.

  92. Quoted in ibid., p. 403, n. 10.

  93. Rodeina Kenaan. “Staff Try to Save Battered Hotel That Was Journalist’s Haven,” Associated Press, Feb. 25, 1987.

  94. All examples from Paul-Édouard Levayer, ed., Chansonnier révolutionnaire (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989).

  95. Michael Broyles, Beethoven: The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s Heroic Style (New York: Excelsior Music Publishing Co., 1987), p. 125.

  96. Arnold Schmitz, Das romantische Beethovenbild (Berlin und Bonn: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlag, 1927), pp. 166–67. Also see Broyles, Ibid., pp. 120–23.

  97. Jean-François Le Sueur, “Chant du 1er Vendémiaire An IX,” in Constant Pierre, Musique des fêtes et cérémonies de la révolution française, p. 167:

  For comparison, Cherubini’s “L’Hymne du Panthéon” can be found on p. 367 of the same volume.

  98. Julien Tiersot, Les Fêtes et Les Chants de la Révolution Française (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie., 1908), pp. 313–15.

  99. See David Charlton’s preface to his edition: Étienne Nicolas Méhul, Symphony no. 1 in G minor (Madison: A-R Editions, Inc., 1985), p. ix.

  100. Robert Schumann, Music and Musicians: Essays and Criticisms, Fanny Raymond Ritter, trans. (London: William Reeves, 1891), p. 385.

  101. Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism 1789–1830, Sylvain Frémaux, trans. (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), pp. 319–20.

  102. Étienne Nicolas Méhul, Euphrosine, ou Le Tyran Corrigé, libretto by François Hoffmann (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980) (facsimile of the first printed edition), p. 2 (mm. 23–27); see also p. 5 (mm. 87–89), a particularly Beethovenian instance.

  103. Étienne Nicolas Méhul, Ariodant, libretto by François Hoffmann (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980) (facsimile of the first printed edition), pp. 70–73.

  104. Étienne Nicolas Méhul, Uthal, libretto by Jacques Benjamin Saint-Victor (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980) (facsimile of the first printed edition), p. 48.

  105. Although the printed score of Méhul’s G-minor symphony is for a small, Mozart-size orchestra, some manuscript fragments indicate that Méhul either arranged or made an arrangement from a version including trumpet and trombone; see appendices to Charlton’s edition.

  106. Quoted by David Charlton in the preface to his edition of Méhul’s Symphony no. 1, p. ix.

  107. Quoted by David Charlton in the preface to his edition of Étienne Nicolas Méhul, Three Symphonies (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1982), p. xiii.

  108. Henri Radiguier, “La Musique Française de 1789 à 1815,” in Albert Lavignac and Lionel de la Laurencie, eds., Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du conservatoire, p. 1638. Lavignac famously assigned characteristics to all the keys; his C minor was “gloomy, dramatic, violent.”

  109. Alexander L. Ringer, “A French Symphonist at the Time of Beethoven: Etienne Nicolas Méhul,” The Musical Quarterly 37, no. 4 (Oct. 1951): 551.

  110. Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics, Mark Polizzotti, trans. (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2006), p. 43.

  111. Ibid., p. 44.

  112. “The Great Lower Rhine Music Festival at Düsseldorf, Whitsuntide 1830,” in Senner et al., The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries, vol. 2, p. 132.

  113. Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), pp. 116–17.

  114. Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 26.

  115. From “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Karl Marx, The Essential Marx: The Non-Economic Writings—a Selection, Saul K. Padover, ed. (New York: New American Library, 1978), p. 234.

  116. “La Marseillaise” was performed in Gossec’s standard orchestration, originally written for his 1792 opera L’Offrande à la liberté. The concert closed with the final “Hallelujah, Amen” from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. See Prod’homme, “La musique et les musiciens en 1848,” Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 14, no. 1 (Oct.-Dec. 1912): 158.

  117. Quoted in Beate Angelika Kraus, “Beethoven and the Revolution: The View of the French Musical Press,” in Music and the French Revolution, Malcolm Boyd, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 307.

  CHAPTER 2. Fates

  1. Kurt Münzer, Mademoiselle, in Die flammende Venus: Erotische Novellen, Reinhold Eichacker, ed. (Munich: Universal-Verlag, 1919), pp. 122, 121. (“Mademoiselle langte nach dem Beethovenband. Sie schlug die Symphonie auf, legte das Heft auf das Notenpult und setzte sich neben Eduard zurecht. ‘Erste, zweite, drit–te –,’ begann sie und schlug an. Aber Eduard ließ plötzlich die Hände sinken und sagte, ohne das Fräulein anzusehen. ‘Heut,’ sagte er leise, ‘heut sprach der Brunner aus der Obersekunda mit mir, der einmal Klavierkünstler werden will. Ich erzählte ihm, daß wir diese Symphonie spielten, und da nannte er sie die Schicksals-Symphonie. Diese ersten Noten, sagte er, bedeuten: so klopft das Schicksal an die Pforte.’ Und er schlug die Töne an und summte leise dazu: ‘So klopft das Schick- / sal an die Pfor–te.’ ‘Natürlich’, sagte Mademoiselle gedankenlos. Gott weiß, wo ihre Gedanken waren.”)

  2. Anton Schindler, The Life of Beethoven, Ignace Moscheles, trans. and ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1841), vol. 2, p. 150.

  3. Anton Schindler, Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, vol. 1, p. 158. As translated by Donald W. MacArdle in Anton Schindler, Beethoven as I Knew Him (New York: Dover Publications, 1996), p. 147.

  4. Felix Weingartner, On Conducting, Ernest Newman, trans. (London: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1906), p. 35.

  5. Margaret Fuller, Papers on Literature and Art (New York: John Wiley, 1848), Part I, pp. 86–87.

  6. William Mason, Memories of a Musical Life (New York: The Century Co., 1902), p. 80.

  7. Ibid., pp. 81–82.

  8. William S. Newman, “Yet Another Major Beethoven Forgery by Schindler?” The Journal of Musicology 3, no. 4 (Autumn 1984): 397–422.

  9. Standley Howell, “Beethoven’s Maelzel Canon: Another Schindler Forgery?” The Musical Times (December 1979): 987–90.

  10. See Peter Stadlen, “Schindler’s Beethoven Forgeries,” The Musical Times (July 1977): 549–52, and Dagmar Beck et al., “Einige Zweifel an der Überlieferung der Konversationshefte,” in Bericht über den Int
ernationalen Beethoven-Kongreß 20. bis 23. März 1977 in Berlin, Harry Goldschmidt et al., eds. (VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig, 1978), pp. 257–74.

  11. Philip Hale, Philip Hale’s Boston Symphony Programme Notes, John N. Burk, ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1935), p. 23.

  12. Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Beethoven, Collected, Translated and Edited with an Introduction, Appendixes, Notes and Indexes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), pp. 66–68.

  13. Maynard Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch of 1812–1818,” In Beethoven Studies 3, Alan Tyson, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 212.

  14. Ibid., p. 249. Beethoven’s original (“Zeige deine Gewalt Schicksal! Wir sind nicht Herrn über uns selbst; was beschlossen ist, muß seyn, und so sey es dann!”) is a slight misquotation of Christoph Martin Wieland’s translation (“Schiksal, zeige deine Macht: Wir sind nicht Herren über uns selbst; was beschlossen ist, muß seyn, und so sey es dann!”). Shakespeare, Shakespear Theatrikalische Werke, Christoph Martin Wieland, trans. (Zürich: Orell, Geßner und Comp., 1766), VIItr. Band, p. 437.

  15. Solomon, “Beethoven’s Tagebuch of 1812–1818,” p. 232.

  16. Editha and Richard Sterba, Beethoven and His Nephew: A Psychoanalytical Study of Their Relationship (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 10.

  17. Johann Kasper Lavater, Hundert Christliche Lieder (Zurich: Orell, Gessner, Füßli und Comp., 1776), p. 46. Lavater, who once tried to convert Moses Mendelssohn, was, incidentally, indirectly responsible for the existence of Beethoven’s death mask; his 1778 Physiognomische Fragmente spurred the vogue for such casts.

  18. James Macpherson, Die Gedichte Ossians eines alten Celtischen Dichter, Michael Denis, trans. (Vienna: Johann Thomas Edlen v. Trattern, 1769), Dritter Band, p. 157.

  19. German: Der Koran: oder Das gesetz der Moslemen durch Muhammed den sohn Abdallahs, translated by Friedrich Eberhard Boysen (Halle:“in der Gebauerschen Buchhandlung,” 1828), p. 343; English: The Koran, translated by J. M. Rodwell (London: Williams and Norgate, 1861), p. 204.