Beethoven's Eighth

Continuing my series of program notes:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony No.8 in F, Op.93

Allegro vivace e con brio

Allegretto scherzando

Tempo di minuetto

Allegro vivace

This symphony was one of Beethoven’s own favourites. He described it affectionately as his ‘little’ symphony. Unfortunately, that description has led many listeners to regard it as slight. Actually, the work may be a listener’s best opportunity to get a comprehensive musical portrait of the composer. It is Beethoven’s most personal utterance, according to Sir George Grove in his book, Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies. And it’s not just the popular stereotype of ‘Beethoven the thunderer’ we hear – although his forceful personality drives the workings-out of the first and last movements – it is Beethoven the rough humourist.

The Eighth is an example of the sort of pithy statement Beethoven could make when he worked quickly. Beethoven usually sketched his symphonies in the summer then wrote them up in detail, in the studio so to speak, during the winter and spring. But that doesn’t appear to have been the method this time. The Eighth was composed during the summer months of 1812, close upon the completion of Symphony No.7. The whole composition took only four months.

Beethoven spent the summer of 1812 travelling around the various mineral baths of Bohemia – from Teplitz to Karlsbad to Franzensbrunn and back to Karlsbad and Teplitz. 

A 19th century view of Teplitz by Lovro Janša

He was hoping to alleviate various stomach ailments by taking the waters, unsuccessfully as it turns out. There were various other disturbances in the composer’s life at the time. This was the period of his letter to the ‘Immortal Beloved’, an artefact of his unrequited love for a woman whose identity still eludes scholars. And he was, as always, struggling with money. The value of his annuity from Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Count Kinsky had shrunk due to devaluation of the Austrian currency.

At Teplitz, Beethoven met the great poet and playwright, Goethe, for whose play, Egmont, he had provided incidental music in 1810. Goethe’s diary notes the 19, 20, 21 and 23 July as occasions on which they met. But Goethe’s overall impression of Beethoven could be distilled in one word. He is ‘uncontrolled’ (ungebändigt) he wrote to the songwriter, Carl Zelter, on 2 September 1812. Notwithstanding the fact that Goethe noted that Beethoven played for them (‘beautifully’) on 21 July, he was shocked by Beethoven’s personal behaviour. Much of Vienna’s aristocracy was present at Teplitz that summer, all anxious about Napoleon’s latest exploit: his foray into Russia. Beethoven deliberately snubbed the Austrian royal family in front of Goethe who had stood to one side and bowed as they passed. ‘Goethe delights far too much in the court atmosphere, far more than is becoming in a poet’, said Beethoven. Of course, we might agree; Beethoven and Goethe are better remembered these days. But that didn’t make Goethe feel any better about Beethoven’s behaviour.

Beethoven snubs the Austrian royal family; Goethe bows as they pass

Yet this work gives the lie to any perception that Beethoven was ‘uncontrolled’ in his musical mind. It is probably more important to note that Beethoven the composer was able to master violent contradictory impulses in this music. Goethe’s ‘ungebändigt’ refers, of course, to Beethoven’s personality. But it is also true that Goethe would probably not have recognised the immense control Beethoven exercised in controlling his violent musical impulses. This symphony is arguably Beethoven’s most disciplined. Its containment of jokes and distortions within the prevailing classical style reveals immense intellectual power.

The symphony begins with a phrase that sounds like the posing of a rhetorical question and its various answers. A consequent development in a series of long notes could be considered deepening of the subject matter except that it goes on so long you wonder if Beethoven is pulling our legs. And then the music peters out in staccato leaps leaving the solo bassoon exposed just prior to the second subject. All jokes aside, the development almost rises to the intense heights of some of Beethoven’s longer first movements. There is dissonant drama, fugal intensity, dizzying displacement of metre, a whiff of victory...Then the sustained notes from the exposition return. We hear the petering-out prior to the return of the ‘second subject’. But are we already in the recapitatulation? We haven’t heard the return of the first subject yet! Yes, we have: disguised as development. Beethoven has played expertly with classical sonata form in this first movement, and it ends pertly with an exact repetition of the symphony’s opening phrase: a neat punchline.

Perhaps the genuine novelty in this symphony is the second movement. Not a typical slow movement, it has almost a ‘comic opera’ feel. The ‘tock-tock-tock’ woodwind accompaniment to the opening theme was said to have been inspired by a new time-keeping instrument, Mälzel’s chronometer.

It was Beethoven who had pioneered the replacement of the standard third-movement minuet and trio with the scherzo and trio in his Second Symphony. Such was the Allegretto scherzando’s level of whimsy here, however, that Beethoven reverted to a minuet and trio – albeit a robust one - for this work.

The final movement is a sonata rondo, but once again Beethoven is not content to work safely within a standard form. The movement makes its way to the end via the expedient of a march – joking? Or intensifying the form?

In October 1812, Beethoven left the spas and moved on to Linz. There he finished this work, but his real purpose in travelling south was to intervene in his brother’s personal life. Beethoven was scandalised by the fact that his brother was living ‘in sin’ with his housekeeper, Therese Obermeyer; he took unjustified steps to put an end to it; the brothers came to blows. We have already noted Goethe’s judgement of Beethoven as ‘uncontrolled’. At least he was disciplined in the music, and, as Goethe concedes, his playing was ‘beautiful’.

The Eighth premiered 27 Feb 1814 in a concert which saw repeats of the Symphony No.7 and Wellington’s Victory, a display piece Beethoven had originally written for another of Mälzels inventions, the panharmonicum. In Beethoven’s day, the Seventh Symphony was much admired, and Wellington’s Victory (celebrating the defeat of Napoleon) made quite a splash. But Beethoven’s ‘kleine’ symphony deserved, and still deserves, more appreciation.

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2011

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published 


 

Barely contained (Manhattan, Sunday 15th)

Had another of those experiences of Americans who round out conversations today. We got lost looking for the Lorimar Street L, the train into the city, and finally I asked for help from a minister (preacher), who peered at our map trying to find the Queens Expressway. He eventually realised that what we had was a transport map and it didn't show the Expressway, but nevertheless, there was something wrong with the connection we were trying to make.

He then asked, "Where are you from?" When we told him Sydney, he told us it was one of his favourite places in the world. As an engineer he built three power plants out there in the early 1970s. The Opera House hadn't been built then.

I mentioned that Utzon, the Opera House's architect, had been contacted before he died to provide his design principles, all these decades after the New South Wales had sacked him and replaced him with an architectural committee. The preacher, who was holding our map, and had been an engineer, said that the problem with the Opera House was that the design was for something that engineering hadn't caught up with. "As I was going to say with this," he said, tapping our paper, "You can't get there from here."

We did, though, get into Manhattan, and later to a recital of the complete Duparc songs, with some excellent young singers and accompanists. The venue was the Renee Weiler concert hall in Barrow Street in Greenwich Village, a lovely hall in an old brownstone, backed by picture windows of a green American garden. It was great to hear song this close, where you can feel the physicality of the singing, and find yourself leaning forward on a harmonic suspension (as you're probably supposed to) and really notice the perfection of each number. The program booklet provided English-only versions of the songs and what really struck me was that all languages must have certain words that work better in their language than in another. "Rest, o Phidyle!" said the translation, but 'reposez' was a better word for 'rest' at that moment.

This was the second songwriting experience of the week. Last Tuesday we went to a venue in the East Village where folksingers perform. A Scottish singer, Fraser Anderson, made great use of the room and variety in his guitar, but the song that struck me was one by a Florida duo called The Winterlings. 'Jenny Hodges' was the story of a woman who disguised herself as a man and joined the Army of the Tennessee. She remained a man all her life, getting to vote before other women, and asked to be buried in her 'union blues' (the Army of the Tennessee being a union army). But what was so great about the song? Simple words, repeating phrases (both text-wise and musically; the technical term would be isorhythm) and concrete concepts. Great, simple, disciplined storytelling. I once read that concrete imagery and the definiteness of metre was what made Goethe attractive to all those 19th century German composers. It's something I still think about.

Down at Cortlandt Street, we had one of those great experiences you have when you wander around a city, and stumble over something you didn't know was there. We knew the World Trade Center site was down there.

But what we didn't know was that across the road is the oldest continually operating building in New York City, St. Paul's Chapel.

This was where George Washington attended a prayer service after his inauguration in 1789 and continued to go to Sunday service until the capital moved to Philadelphia. His pew is still there. Across the other side, is the pew Governor George Clinton had built there when he became the first republican governor of New York and wanted to sit separate from the congregation but still be seen.

It's a peaceful place. But photographs in the cemetary show Sep 11, 2001, with computers and filing paper, printouts and other debris bestrewing the grounds. Inside the church is a fireman's coat and boots resting on a pew as if one of the relief workers has just come in for a well-earned break. I didn't find it hard to imagine that day. The church must have been cast in shadow by the buildings not much later than midday most days, so close must they have been. Then suddenly, no more. There is a sad quiet here now, but what must the noise have been like then, as two huge jets smashed into the towers and people who had had nothing more on their mind at 9am than wishing perhaps that they didn't have a dental appointment this afternoon, found themselves ending the day at 9.30 by leaping to their deaths?

If I were a Goethe I could probably say this effectively, more simply. But there are so many things to say here. I'll have to see what happens if I do my best to aim, like most Americans, to rounding stories off.