OVERTURE TO “CORIOLANUS,” OP. 62
Someone said—was it A. W. Thayer?—of this overture that he could not understand it—until he read Collin’s tragedy; that he could not reconcile the music with Shakespeare’s text. Pray, what would the gentleman have had? It is immaterial whether Beethoven had Collin or Shakespeare in mind. The name Coriolanus was enough, even if he knew it only from some schoolboy history of Rome; for in this music we hear the proud voice, we hear the haughty, inexorable bearing of the soldier-patrician. Nor does it matter whether the lyrical theme is the entreating voice of wife or mother. Possibly if one should read Collin’s play he would wonder that Beethoven should have written an overture for it. There it is—one of Beethoven’s greatest works. From his own disdain of the mob, from his own contempt of what the public thought of his music, he recognizes in Coriolanus a kindred spirit.
The original manuscript of the overture bears this inscription: Overtura (zum Trauerspiel Coriolan) composta da L. v. Beethoven, 1807. The words in parentheses are crossed out. The overture was published in 1808. The tragedy by Heinrich Joseph von Collin, in which the hero kills himself, was produced in Vienna on November 24, 1802. Collin (1771-1811) was jurist and poet. In 1803 he was ennobled. In 1809 he became court councillor. Other tragedies by him were Regulus and Polyxena. In 1807 Beethoven was expecting a libretto from him. Collin tried Macbeth, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and a Bradamante to which J. F. Reichardt set music. But Beethoven wrote to Collin:
“Great irate poet, give up Reichardt. Take my music for your poetry; I promise that you will not thereby suffer. As soon as my concert is over ... I will come to you, and then we will at once take in hand the opera—and it shall soon sound. For the rest you can ring out your just complaints about me by word of mouth.” The libretto before this had seemed to Beethoven “too venturesome” in respect of its use of the supernatural. Collin’s biographer, Laban, says that the Macbeth libretto was left unfinished in the middle of the second act “because it threatened to become too gloomy.” At various times Beethoven thought of Grillparzer’s Melusine, Körner’s Return of Ulysses, Treitschke’s Romulus and Remus, Berger’s Bacchus, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Schiller’s Fiesco, Grillparzer’s Dragomira, Voltaire’s tragedies, and Goethe’s Faust, as operatic subjects. He told Rellstab that the material must be attractive to him; that it must be something he could take up with sincerity and love. “I could not compose operas like Don Juan and Figaro. They are repugnant to me. I could not have chosen such subjects; they are too frivolous for me!”
It is in one movement, allegro con brio, in C minor, 4-4, as written, alla breve as played. It begins with a succession of three long-held fortissimo C’s in the strings, each one of which is followed by a resounding chord in the full orchestra. The agitated first theme in C minor soon gives place to the second lyrically passionate theme in E flat major. The development of this theme is also short. The free fantasia is practically passage-work on the conclusion theme. The tendency to shorten the academic sonata form is seen also in the third part, or recapitulation. The first theme returns in F minor with curtailed development. The second theme is now in C major. The coda begins with this theme; passage-work follows; there is a repetition of the C’s and the chords of the beginning; and the purely dramatic close in C minor may be suggestive of the hero’s death.