Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (161 page)

44. The warm opening chord of the E-flat Major is a ii 6/5, at that time considered a dissonance.

45. The nice thing about dancing a tarantella to keep from dying from the tarantula's bite was that it always worked, because the tarantula is not poisonous to humans.

46. The overall descending-third tonal progression of the op. 34 F Major Variations is foreshadowed in the opening phrase of the theme itself. The first chord change is to IV, prophesying the next two keys, D and B-flat. The following key, G, is the melodic goal of the first phrase, in bar four. By then the third bar has introduced an E-flat, the first accidental in the piece and the key of variation IV (the only one of the tonic notes in the piece not part of F major). So the keys of the theme itself descend in thirds.

47. The canonic variation 7 in the
Prometheus
Variations and their other echoes of Bach suggest that at this point Beethoven knew Bach's
Goldberg
Variations, which were already well known and much admired. Another point of resemblance is that Bach's and Beethoven's variations are both based on what would seem to be an insubstantial dance tune. The nostalgic appearance of the
englische
theme near the end prophesies its similar but more impactful appearance near the end of the
Eroica
. Another
Eroica
prophecy is his extensive use of the three-note chromatic motif from the
Prometheus
bass as a melodic element.

48. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 62.

49. Ibid., no. 57.

50. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 39.

51. Blanning,
Pursuit of
Glory
, 348.

52. Nicholls,
Napoleon
, 62.

 

16. Oh, Fellow Men

 

1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:304–6. Paragraph divisions added.

2. What Beethoven was headed toward after the crisis embodied in the Heiligenstadt Testament was, of course, the
Eroica
. Long-standing common wisdom holds three things about the
Eroica
that I do not entirely subscribe to. One is that the Third Symphony is primarily about himself, his own heroism. As will be shown, it is about himself in part, but by no means entirely. Next, history has named his Second Period for the
Eroica
(though that is now understood to be dubious, since much of the Second Period music is not in his “heroic” style), so it is traditionally assumed that the Third Symphony inaugurated the Second Period. I think there is a growing understanding that this period really started earlier, sometimes located at op. 31. Since I think the Second Period—here called the New Path—is more a matter of consolidation and intensification than of heroism, I've located its wellspring in the sonatas of opp. 26–28 and the next decisive step as op. 31. Finally, the Heiligenstadt Testament is often assumed to have directly inspired or galvanized the
Eroica
. There is no way fully to know, but I doubt it. I think Beethoven was headed for the
Eroica
before his crisis, was planning it during the period of the
Prometheus
Variations, and its roots go back to Bonn. In other words, I believe Beethoven would have written the
Eroica
in any case.

3. Thayer/Forbes, 1:309.

4. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 43n2.

5. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 165.

6. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 47.

7. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 53.

8. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 48.

9. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 50. As per no. 52, Carl at this point was also handling pieces for Anton Reicha. There is no record of the fate of Carl's dog.

10. Wegeler/Ries, 107.

11. Jones,
Beethoven
, 62. Forbes questions Ries's memory of the Quintet imbroglio.

12. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 49 and n3.

13. Wegeler/Ries, 77–78. The translation reads, “Where the devil . . . ,” but I surmise that Beethoven, who swore lustily, would not have been so polite at that moment. Despite all this, Beethoven, who was somehow remarkably patient and forgiving with publishers, had later dealings with Nägeli.

14. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 127–28.

15. Thayer/Forbes, 1:326–27.

16. Moore, “Beethoven and Inflation,” 202–4.

17. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 123.

18. Quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:324–25. Kotzebue also gives a nod to Baroness Dorothea Ertmann, who “plays with amazing precision, clearness, and delicacy.”

19. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, nos. 180–81.

20. Schiller,
Aesthetic
Education
, 155–57. This is a more considered, if less forceful, translation than the one in Lippman,
History
, 134: “In a truly beautiful work of art the content should do nothing, the form everything . . . Therefore the real artistic secret of the master consists in his annihilation of the material by means of the form.” I submit that the effect of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, especially in sonata form and variation movements, is indeed to suppress the moment for the whole, to make the listener involved in the totality of the piece as if it were an experience in life. A work, that is to say, can be like a little life, every part of it dependent on the whole for its impact and “meaning.” A theme and variations, for example, is involved with the moment, on what is happening to the theme, but there is still the cumulative effect (as Haydn regularly demonstrates) of an often-simple piece of material as foundation for a deepening unfolding of ideas.

21. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 29. One would like to ask this critic how a valley can be “laughing.”

22. J. G. Sulzer,
Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste
, quoted in Brinkmann, “Time of the
Eroica
,” 12–13.

23. Wegeler/Ries, 65.

24. Thayer/Forbes, 1:329–30.

25. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, no. 165. Tyson, in “1803 Version,” 79, notes that the “just take a left” line was revised for the published score.

26. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 171.

27. Barry Cooper makes this point about Beethoven's personal relation to the text in
Beethoven
, 126, and he is generally positive about
Christus
. On the whole, I am less so. Certainly the oratorio has its virtues, including a strong introduction and final chorus. To my ears the orchestration is highly interesting: rich, varied, and colorful without being overscored like the
Joseph
Cantata and, arguably, the First Symphony. In general effect its scoring is distinct from the style of Beethoven's symphonies or his theater music. The treatment of trombones in particular is striking, more elaborate than in any work of his at least until the Fifth Symphony. After the premiere Beethoven added a chorus and did various tinkering over the years, but, as he admitted later, “I know that the text is extremely bad. But once one has thought out a whole work which is based even on a bad text, it is difficult to prevent this whole from being destroyed if individual alterations are made here and there. And although it may only be the case of a single word to which sometimes great significance has been attached, well then, that word must stand. And he is a poor composer who is neither able nor anxious to extract as much good as possible even from an inferior text.” It would also be a poor composer who made revisions that were not consistent with the work's style, however unfortunate that style. To repeat what is said in the text, Beethoven had no illusions about
Christus
, but he did the best he could with it and hoped to profit from selling it. Moreover, when I call it his most misconceived and undigested large work, that is by no means to call it his worst.

28. Thayer/Forbes, 1:330.

29. Quoted in Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 270.

30. Since much of the Second Symphony appears to be concerned more with color, mass, and kinetic energy than with the usual kind of themes, its material seems more kaleidoscopic and diffuse than usual in Beethoven—in contrast, for example, to the motivically tight-woven C Minor Piano Concerto. Still, much of the thematic work draws on the three-note bit of scale from the second bar, and the startling diversion into B-flat on the second page finds many echoes. That note keeps turning up as part of various harmonies and keys (rather like A-flat in the C Minor Concerto). His sense of large-scale tonal dynamics can be seen in the finale: the “hiccup” opening figure repeatedly lands on the dominant in the A theme, but in the coda it is shifted to the tonic to make a large-scale resolution. Meanwhile, in calling the Second “operatic” in style, I am placing it with two other symphonies that seem similar, less in sound than in quasi-scenic effect: the Fourth and Eighth Symphonies (both of them also having buffa overtones). While the overall style of the Second is, I think, unique in Beethoven, there are certainly prophecies, one being the second, E-major theme of the second movement: for a moment in its expansive lyricism and elegant ornamentation, it looks forward to the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony.

31. Wegeler/Ries, 66–67.

32. The dates of composition of the C Minor Concerto are a matter of long debate. Kinderman (
Beethoven
, 65) votes for the traditional beginning date of 1800. In
Beethoven's Concertos
, Plantinga spends a chapter on the topic, “On the Origins of Piano Concerto No. 3,” and concludes it was written ca. May 1802–March 1803, completed just before the benefit concert. In any case there was further refinement of the concerto after the premiere. For one thing, Beethoven did not write down the solo part until Ries played the concerto in 1804.

33. Some have questioned the connection of the Mozart and Beethoven C-minor concertos, but it seems manifest to me, and Plantinga, in
Beethoven's Concertos
, after noting the questions, concludes, “There may yet be hope for the argument from/for the Mozart connection” (158).

34. To repeat a point made earlier, in most Beethoven works, there is a pervading rhythmic motif. Some are overt, as in the Third Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, and the Fifth Symphony; more often, the rhythmic motif is covert but still important. Just as he develops melodic motifs by devices such as inversion, extension, ornamentation, and foreshortening, and uses them as a scaffolding to build new themes, he develops rhythmic motifs by augmentation, diminution, extension, and decoration, and in essence uses them as scaffolding—as with the implied ­dotted-half and -quarter phrasing of the violins in m. 9, an augmentation of the dotted rhythmic motif of mm. 2 and 3. An abiding gestural element in the C Minor Concerto is that its themes have internal repeats, starting with the opening figure repeated up a step in a call-and-response of strings and winds. Other cases of internal repeat are the double descent from G-sharp to E in m. 2 of the second movement, and the figure that repeats on different degrees in mm. 3 and 5. The rondo theme in the finale is a pattern of repeated figures. Call-and-response episodes between strings, winds, and soloist are another unifying idea.

35. The magical jump into G major in the second line of the second movement, and its pianistic scintillation on a C-major chord, refers us back to the tonic key of the concerto and helps integrate this highly stretched key scheme. As Czerny noted in relation to Beethoven's keeping the pedal down through the first theme, that is no longer practical on pianos of a decade and more later because their sustain is longer. This is another version of the
Moonlight
Sonata problem: how to get the effect of a long-held pedal on a modern piano.

36. Quoted in Plantinga,
Beethoven's
Concertos
, 146.

37. Thayer/Forbes, 1:331.

38. F. G. E., “George P. Bridgetower,” 305. Also see Jander, “‘Kreutzer' Sonata.”

39. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 74.

40. Wegeler/Ries, 72.

41. Thayer/Forbes, 1:333.

42. The presence of F major as an important second key in this A-major work is one of the ideas that Beethoven picked up from the finale and transferred to the new movements. (As is noted before, in the Second Period he would be much interested in mediant relationships as substitutes for conventional tonic-dominant relations.) Another connection that has been noted in the literature is how the pounding theme at the beginning of the Presto relates to the 3–4-sharp–5 pattern over A in the opening theme of the finale. There is also the primal move E–F in the first movement (a dynamic gesture in itself, but also foreshadowing F major) and the resolving D-sharp–E in the finale, in both cases emphasizing a note a half step from the dominant. A deeper element, which as far as I know no one has noticed, is the rising chain of thirds Beethoven uses as a scaffolding for the first section of the finale, then uses to compose the beginning of the sonata. In the finale, it starts with the A and C-sharp between violin and piano in the first bars, adds E in bar 4, then moves on to G-natural and B in the piano, D and F-sharp in m. 11, A in the next measure, C-sharp in the violin, E and G in mm. 15–16, then B-flat to D in the piano, and F-sharp in the piano starting at m. 22. This F-sharp, the penultimate member in the chain, is prolonged and intensified in the next measures until the climactic arrival on A at m. 28. I think part of the exhilarating effect of that A is that it has been arrived at by a covert but still audible process of rising thirds: A–C-sharp–E–G–B–D–F-sharp–A–C–E–G–B-flat–D–F-sharp–A! In turn, Beethoven built the first movement's opening violin solo and answering piano phrases on a
descending
chain of thirds: A–F-sharp–D–B–G-sharp–E–C-sharp–A; that last violin A is picked up by the piano, which continues down the chain: A–F–D–B–G-sharp–E. From there, the chain starts to dissolve. Beethoven tends to be reliable about these matters, so the chain of thirds turns up in the slow movement, too: the top-voice E in m. 1, top-voice C in m. 2, then more directly A–F–D–B-flat–G–E–C in mm. 5–8. A worthwhile study waits to be written on Beethoven's interest in chains of thirds, already in evidence in his childhood Piano Quartets, which climaxed in the
Hammerklavier
Sonata.