Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (159 page)

31. Wegeler/Ries, 42–43.

32. Douël, “Beethoven's ‘Adelaide,'” 210–13.

33. Knight,
Beethoven
, 41.

34. Stendhal, quoted in ibid., 38.

35. Knight,
Beethoven
, 38–43.

36. Gutzmer,
Chronik der Stadt Bonn
, 87.

37. Blanning,
Pursuit of
Glory
, 636.

38. Knight,
Beethoven
, 43.

39. Herriot,
Life and Times
, 68–70.

40. Nicholls,
Napoleon
, 24. Napoleon approved when, in 1810, Bernadotte was given virtual rule of Sweden, but later Bernadotte joined the coalition against Napoleon. In 1818, he succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway as King Carl XIV and had a long and successful reign.

41. Knight,
Beethoven
, 45.

42. Broyles,
Beethoven
, 125.

43. Donakowski,
Muse
, 46–59.

 

13. Fate's Hammer

 

1. The darting, light-footed, entirely delightful finale of the op. 9, no. 1 Trio seems to prophesy the style of Mendelssohn's “fairy scherzos” decades later.

2. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 86.

3. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 125–27. The first two extant sketchbooks are known as Grasnick 1 and 2.

4. From an Amenda memoir quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:224–25.

5. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 31.

6. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 30.

7. At this point Beethoven was not a beginner at writing for violin and piano. In his teens he had written or sketched a sonata and a rondo, and in Vienna finished the “Se vuol ballare” Variations as a duo. The Rondo survives as WoO 41, and the Variations are WoO 40.

8. Brandenburg, “Beethoven's Op. 12,” 19–20.

9. C-flat major is a quite peculiar key to find oneself in, since it is enharmonically the same as the common B major. At the end of the development of no. 3, it is explained as a transition back to the recap: the C-flat becomes the root of a German sixth leading to V in E-flat.

10. Brandenburg, “Beethoven's Op. 12,” 19. There is no specific record of what Beethoven and Schuppanzigh played in their March program, but op. 12 is the most likely. This concert was a benefit for Mozart's admired singer Josefa Duschek, for whom Beethoven had written
Ah! perfido
.

11. Perhaps the most famous example of descending half steps representing grief is the ostinato bass line in the “Crucifixus” of Bach's B Minor Mass.

12. To modern ears the kind of emotionalism heard in the
Pathétique
seems familiar, if not overfamiliar, on the border between drama and melodrama. Some find its effect more “rhetorical” than “real.” If so, in its time it was a new kind of rhetoric. For all the traditional elements, to the ears of the late eighteenth century the piece seemed revolutionary.

13. Kinderman, “Piano Music,” 115.

14. In recognition of the maturity of the “First Period” works, which have no apprentice pieces at all, Lewis Lockwood aptly calls this period the First Maturity. I am using the terms “New Path” and “full maturity” for the old “Second (or Heroic) Period,” and generally am not using the old three-period terminology, because Beethoven and his time were not aware of it. He was aware, however, that around 1801–2 he was striking out on a new path, because he said so. When my subject supplies an apt term, I use it.

15. There is a long-standing debate about whether or not the exposition repeat in the first movement of the
Pathétique
includes the introduction.

16. Voices, strings, winds, and brass instruments playing without keyboard do not normally use equal temperament or anything other than their ears. A good violinist, for example, instinctively tunes each sonority individually, often without any rationalized system. That is why a string quartet can be more satisfyingly in tune than a piano. There have been myriad keyboard-tuning systems over the centuries. Recordings of works in traditional tunings have appeared, but not many; that remains a fertile field for scholarship and performance.

17. See Swafford, “Wolf at Our Heels.”

18. Duffin points out (
Equal Temperament
, 87) that by 1818, equal temperament was dominant in keyboard and chamber music, but Beethoven was deaf by then and in his inner ear probably retained what he had grown up with, which was likely extended meantone temperaments. But he was vitally involved in his interpretation of the character of keys, which inevitably concerns tuning: claiming keys have individual characters on an equal-tempered keyboard makes no real sense. Meanwhile, for all the impact of equal temperament (ET) on the nineteenth century, mathematically correct ET was actually not attained until the early twentieth century. As Duffin and others note, tuners of the nineteenth century
thought
they were tuning equally, but they were actually shading toward well-temperament. As for Beethoven's favored tuning, there is no record of his talking about tuning at all.

19. Steblin,
History of Key Characteristics
, 78, quoting Abraham Peter Schulz, a student of leading theorist Johann Philipp Kirnberger.

20. Steblin,
History of Key Characteristics
, 118 (quoting Schubart).

21. Respectively, ibid., 105 (quoting Francesco Galeazzi), 109 (quoting Ribcock).

22. Ibid., 104–5 (quoting Galeazzi).

23. Compare Galeazzi's characterizations of the keys to, respectively, the First Symphony in C Major; most Beethoven pieces in C minor; the slow movement of op. 10, no. 3 in D Minor; the
Archduke
Trio in B-flat Major; the op. 14, no. 2 Sonata in E Major; most of his pieces in E-flat major; and the Seventh Symphony in A Major. All those are close to Galeazzi's characterizations, and plenty of other examples could be cited. In contrast, the
Waldstein
Sonata seems a deliberate essay in getting away from the usual character of C major, turning it in a more colorful and exciting direction than its traditional reputation would suggest.

24. Schulz, quoted in Steblin,
History of Key Characteristics
, 79.

25. Galeazzi, quoted in ibid., 105.

26. Schubart, quoted in ibid., 116.

27. Galeazzi, quoted in ibid., 104. In regard to Bach's expressive associations of keys in the
WTC
, it is worth noting that some of those pieces were first written in other keys and transposed to fit the scheme of the work.

28. Thayer/Forbes, 1:149.

29. Landon,
Beethoven
unabridged, 70–71.

30. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 160. This was a Beethoven memory of 1815 and was reported to Thayer long after by a second person, so it should be taken with due caution. But the details of the event are convincingly specific, and Beethoven would likely have had a vivid memory of the first time his hearing problems struck him. My surmise as to the year his hearing problems first appeared comes from his first recorded mention of it, in a letter to Franz Wegeler of June 1801 (Anderson, vol. 1, no. 51), where he says it happened three years before. Of the few extant letters from that year, 1798, the earlier ones are notably gay in tone (this was the time of Zmeskall as “Baron Muckcart-driver”). Letters later that year are sober and practically humorless. In fact, one of late 1798 to Zmeskall is a complaint over a misunderstanding that ends, “It is difficult for a friendship to thrive under such conditions” (Anderson, vol. 1, no. 31). The tone of that note is uniquely bristly among his surviving notes to Zmeskall. To the degree that notes to Zmeskall are a rough barometer of Beethoven's state of mind, it is significant that it is not until late 1802 that the notes return to their lighthearted and teasing tone: “sweetest and most extraordinary Count!” (Anderson, vol. 1, no. 65). It would be surprising if Beethoven's anxiety and depression over his hearing did not affect his letters. This evidence suggests it did, and implies a time of later 1798 when his hearing was first stricken.

31. Mai,
Diagnosing Genius
, 17.

32. Wenzel Johann Tomaschek, quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:207–8.

33. Beethoven,
Ein Skizzenbuch
, 1:8–9.

34. Johnson, Tyson, and Winter,
Beethoven
Sketchbooks
, 1:87.

35. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 5. Senner (vol. 1, no. 3) calls the
AMZ
“the primogenitor of modern music criticism.”

36. Tomaschek, quoted in DeNora,
Beethoven
, 154.

37. DeNora, “Piano Duel,” 263–66; Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 401.

38. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 4.

39. Sonneck,
Beethoven
, 36–37.

40. Charles Rosen, in
Classical Style:
the Classical style was “in its origins, basically a comic one . . . the pacing of classical rhythm is the pacing of comic opera, its phrasing is the phrasing of dance music, and its large structures are these phrases dramatized” (96).

41. Heinrich Christoph Koch, quoted in Jones,
Beethoven
, 57.

42. Mozart, quoted in Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 169–70. This letter of Mozart's was probably intended to reassure his father, who always worried that his son was getting too arcane. It should not be taken for the whole of Mozart's attitude toward his work.

43. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 65.

44. Brandenburg, “Beethoven's Op. 12,” 21.

45. Geiringer,
Haydn
, 355.

46. Landon,
Beethoven
, 97–98.

47. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 29.

48. Thayer/Forbes, 1:209.

49. Ibid., 1:210.

50. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 63.

51. Ibid., no. 67. Oddly, in his review of the
Pathétique
the
AMZ
critic complains about a “reminiscence” in the third movement but can't figure out what it is. He is correct: the main theme of the rondo is based on the second theme of the first movement. The critic seems to feel that too overt a resemblance of themes between movements is a fault.

52. Czerny's account is in Thayer/Forbes, 1:225–28. Czerny taught Liszt and also taught Leschetizky, who taught Artur Schnabel, who as one of the premiere Beethoven pianists of his generation played and recorded in the first half of the twentieth century. Today Czerny is mainly known for his ubiquitous finger-training exercises, which were surely influenced by Beethoven's teaching.

53. Anderson, vol. 1, nos. 33–34. The current German edition of the complete letters speculates that the first letter may have been to Ignaz Schuppanzigh (because of the “he” form that Beethoven used with Schuppanzigh) and has no suggested recipient for the second, addressed as “Natzerl.” Anderson assumes that to be a familiar diminutive for Ignaz, which is not Hummel's name. But the letter also uses the familiar
du
, “thou,” and Beethoven did not appear to be on
du
terms with any of his friends named Ignaz. Sticking to the traditional addressee for both notes, I have used the form “'Nazy,” another diminutive of Ignaz, which could be a pet name.

54. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 94. Dragonetti was associated with Beethoven's music for the rest of his life. He played in Beethoven's concert of December 1813 and years later played the finale bass recitatives of the Ninth Symphony as a solo in London performances. He used a three-stringed instrument, tuned A–D–G.

55.
Grove Music Online
, s.v. “Dragonetti, Domenico.”

 

14. The Good, the Beautiful, and the Melancholy

 

1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:255. There is a long-standing debate about whether Beethoven played Concerto No. 1 or No. 2 in his 1800 concert. In
Beethoven
, 90, Barry Cooper notes that just before the concert, he copied out a new score of No. 1 in C Major, with accumulated revisions, so that suggests it was the one performed.

2. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, nos. 162–63.

3. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 57.

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.