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