SYMPHONY NO. 2, IN D MAJOR, OP. 36
I. Adagio molto; allegro con brio II. Larghetto III. Scherzo IV. Allegro molto
The symphony is an answer to those who insist that the inner emotions of a composer must find a vent in the music composed at the time. Never was Beethoven more wretched physically and mentally than when he wrote this symphony, music that breathes forth serenity, beauty, gayety, and courage.
In 1801 Beethoven’s deafness, which had begun with a roaring in his ears, grew on him. He suffered also from frightful colic. He consulted physician after physician; tried oil of almonds, cold baths and hot baths, pills and herbs and blisters; he was curious about galvanic remedies, and in his distress he wrote: “I shall as far as possible defy my fate, although there must be moments when I shall be the most miserable of God’s creatures.... I will grapple with fate; it shall never pull me down.”
Dr. Schmidt sent him in 1802 to the little village of Heiligenstadt, where, as the story goes, the Emperor Protus planted the first vines of Noricum. There was a spring of mineral water—a spring of marvelous virtues—which had been blessed by St. Severinus, who died in the village and gave the name by which it is known today. Beethoven’s house was on a hill outside the village, isolated, with a view of the Danube valley. Here he lived for several months like a hermit. He saw only his physician and Ferdinand Ries, his pupil, who visited him occasionally.
Nature and loneliness did not console Beethoven. He had been in dismal mood since the performance of the First symphony (April, 1800). The powers of darkness, “finstere Mächte,” to quote Wasielewski’s phrase, had begun to torment him. He had already felt the first attacks of deafness. It is possible that the first symptoms were in 1796, when, as a story goes, returning overheated from a walk, he plunged his head into cold water. “It would not be safe to say that the smallpox, which in his childhood left marks on his face, was a remote cause of his deafness.” In 1800-01 Beethoven wrote about his deafness and intestinal troubles to Dr. Wegeler, and to the clergyman, Carl Amenda, in Kurland. It was at the beginning of October, 1802, that Beethoven, at Heiligenstadt, almost ready to put an end to his life, wrote a letter to his brothers, the document known as “Beethoven’s will,” which drips yew-like melancholy.
Furthermore, Beethoven was still passionately in love with Giulietta Guicciardi, of whom he wrote to Wegeler, November 16, 1801: “You can hardly believe what a sad and lonely life I have passed for two years. My poor hearing haunted me as a specter, and I shunned men. It was necessary for me to appear misanthropic, and I am not this at all. This change is the work of a charming child who loves me and is loved by me. After two years I have again had some moments of pleasure, and for the first time I feel that marriage could make me happy. Unfortunately, she is not of my rank in life, and now I certainly cannot marry.” Beethoven, however, asked for her hand. One of her parents looked favorably on the match. The other, probably the father, the Count Guicciardi, refused to give his daughter to a man without rank, without fortune, and without a position of any kind. Giulietta became the Countess Gallenberg. Beethoven told Schindler that after her marriage she sought him out in Vienna, and she wept, but that he despised her.
Yet during the sad period of the winter of 1802-03, Beethoven composed the Second symphony, a joyous, “a heroic lie,” to borrow the descriptive phrase of Camille Bellaigue.
The first performance of the Second symphony was at the Theater an der Wien, April 5, 1803. The symphony was performed at Leipsic, April 29, 1804, and Spazier characterized it as “a gross monster, a pierced dragon which will not die, and even in losing its blood (in the finale), wild with rage, still deals vain but furious blows with his tail, stiffened by the last agony.” Spazier, who died early in 1805, was described by his contemporaries as a learned and well-grounded musician and a man of sound judgment.
A Leipsic critic found that the symphony would gain if certain passages were abbreviated and certain modulations were sacrificed. Another declared that it was too long; that there was an exaggerated use of the wind instruments; that the finale was bizarre, harsh, savage. Yet he added that there was such fire, such richness of new ideas, such an absolutely original disposition of these ideas, that the work would live; “and it will always be heard with renewed pleasure when a thousand things that are today in fashion will have been long buried.”
The sketch of Berlioz may here serve as an analysis: “In this symphony everything is noble, energetic, proud. The introduction (largo) is a masterpiece. The most beautiful effects follow one another without confusion and always in an unexpected manner. The song is of a touching solemnity, and it at once commands respect and puts the hearer in an emotional mood. The rhythm is already bolder, the instrumentation is richer, more sonorous, more varied. An allegro con brio of enchanting dash is joined to this admirable adagio. The gruppetto which is found in the first measure of the theme, given at first to the violas and violoncellos in unison, is taken up again in an isolated form, to establish either progressions in a crescendo or imitative passages between wind instruments and the strings. All these forms have a new and animated physiognomy. A melody enters, the first section of which is played by clarinets, horns, and bassoons. It is completed en tutti by the rest of the orchestra, and the manly energy is enhanced by the happy choice of accompanying chords.
“The andante [larghetto] is not treated after the manner of that of the First symphony: it is not composed of a theme worked out in canonic imitations, but it is a pure and frank song, which at first is sung simply by the strings, and then embroidered with a rare elegance by means of light and fluent figures whose character is never far removed from the sentiment of tenderness which forms the distinctive character of the principal idea. It is a ravishing picture of innocent pleasure which is scarcely shadowed by a few melancholy accents.
“The scherzo is as frankly gay in its fantastic capriciousness as the andante has been wholly and serenely happy; for this symphony is smiling throughout; the warlike bursts of the first allegro are wholly free from violence; there is only the youthful ardor of a noble heart in which the most beautiful illusions of life are preserved untainted. The composer still believes in immortal glory, in love, in devotion. What abandon in his gayety! What wit! What sallies! Hearing these various instruments disputing over fragments of a theme which no one of them plays in its complete form, hearing each fragment thus colored with a thousand nuances as it passes from one to the other, it is as though you were watching the fairy sports of Oberon’s graceful spirits.
“The finale is of like nature. It is a second scherzo in two time, and its playfulness has perhaps something still more delicate, more piquant.”