SYMPHONY NO. 3, IN E FLAT MAJOR “EROICA,” OP. 55
I. Allegro con brio II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace; Trio IV. Finale: Allegro molto
It is interesting to note the difference in the expression of heroism between this symphony and Strauss’s Heldenleben. To be sure, Beethoven had Bonaparte at first in mind, while in Heldenleben the hero is—Richard Strauss, defying his enemies, rejoicing vaingloriously in his immortality as a composer. It is not necessary to accept the theories of Beethoven’s commentators. The excellent Nietzel finds that, in the second theme of the first movement, “the hero, having for the first time exerted his force, turns about to look at the path he has trod.” Wagner sees Man, not merely a triumphant soldier, the hero. Schindler believes the symphony to be the celebration of the French Revolution. And so on and so on. It is enough that the structure and the spirit of the symphony are heroic, that there is the grand gesture, that even in the Funeral March there is no whine of pessimism, no luxury of woe. It is a heroic lamentation over heroes slain in defence of freedom, a lamentation in which there is exultation, even in grief.
At Nussdorf in the summer of 1817, Beethoven, who had then composed eight symphonies, and the poet Christian Kuffner were having a fish dinner at the Tavern Zur Rose. Kuffner asked him which of his symphonies was his favorite.
“Eh! Eh!” said Beethoven. “The Eroica.”
“I should have guessed the C minor,” said Kuffner.
“No, the Eroica.”
Anton Schindler wrote in his life of Beethoven:
“First in the fall of 1802 was his [Beethoven’s] mental condition so much bettered that he could take hold afresh of his long-formulated plan and make some progress: to pay homage with a great instrumental work to the hero of the time, Napoleon. Yet not until 1803 did he set himself seriously to this gigantic work, which we now know under the title of Sinfonia Eroica: on account of many interruptions it was not finished until the following year.... The first idea of this symphony is said to have come from General Bernadotte, who was then French Ambassador at Vienna and highly treasured Beethoven. I heard this from many friends of Beethoven. Count Moritz Lichnowsky, who was often with Beethoven in the company of Bernadotte, ... told me the same story.”[7] Schindler also wrote, with reference to the year 1823: “The correspondence of the King of Sweden led Beethoven’s memory back to the time when the King, then General Bernadotte, Ambassador of the French Republic, was at Vienna, and Beethoven had a lively recollection of the fact that Bernadotte indeed first awakened in him the idea of the Sinfonia Eroica.”
These statements are direct. Unfortunately, Schindler, in the third edition of his book, mentioned Beethoven as a visitor at the house of Bernadotte in 1798, repeated the statement that Bernadotte inspired the idea of the symphony, and added: “Not long afterward the idea blossomed into a deed”; he also laid stress on the fact that Beethoven was a stanch republican and cited, in support of his admiration of Napoleon, passages from Beethoven’s own copy of Schleiermacher’s translation of Plato.
Thayer admits that the thought of Napoleon may have influenced the form and the contents of the symphony; that the composer may have based a system of politics on Plato; “but,” he adds, “Bernadotte had been long absent from Vienna before the Consular form of government was adopted at Paris, and before Schleiermacher’s Plato was published in Berlin.”
The symphony was composed in 1803-04. The story is that the title page of the manuscript bore the word “Buonaparte,” and at the bottom of the page “Luigi van Beethoven”; and “not a word more,” said Ries, who saw the manuscript. “I was the first,” also said Ries, “to bring him the news that Bonaparte had had himself declared emperor, whereat he broke out angrily: ‘Then he’s nothing but an ordinary man. Now he’ll trample on all the rights of men to serve his own ambition; he will put himself higher than all others and turn out a tyrant!’” There is also the story that when the death of Napoleon was announced, Beethoven exclaimed: “Did I not foresee the catastrophe when I wrote the Funeral March in the Eroica?” Vincent d’Indy argues against Schindler’s theory that Beethoven wished to celebrate the French Revolution en bloc. “C’était l’homme de Brumaire” that Beethoven honored by his dedication. The autograph score, sold at auction in Vienna in 1827 for three florins, ten kreutzers, shows the erasure of two words under “Sinfonia grande” on the title page: one is plainly “Bonaparte”; under his own name, Beethoven wrote, in large characters, “Written on Bonaparte.” Paul Bekker, arguing that the Eroica is not the portrait of any one hero, but that the symphony represents his concept of human heroism, believes that the first movement is the only one of direct connection with Napoleon: “The hero’s deeds have resulted in victory, the restless will has achieved fulfilment.”[8]
There can be nothing in the statements that have come down from Czerny, Dr. Bartolini, and others: the first Allegro describes a sea fight; the Funeral March is in memory of Nelson or General Abercrombie, etc. There can be no doubt that Napoleon, the young conqueror, the Consul, the enemy of kings, worked a spell over Beethoven, as over Berlioz, Hazlitt, Victor Hugo; for, according to W. E. Henley’s paradox, although, as despot, Napoleon had “no love for new ideas and no tolerance for intellectual independence,” yet he was “the great First Cause of Romanticism.”
The first performance of the symphony was at a private concert at Prince Lobkowitz’s in December, 1804. The composer conducted, and in the second half of the first Allegro he brought the orchestra to grief, so that a fresh start was made. The first performance in public was at a concert given by Clement at the Theater an der Wien, April 7, 1805. The symphony was announced as “A new grand Symphony in D sharp by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to his Excellence Prince von Lobkowitz.” Beethoven conducted. Czerny remembered that someone shouted from the gallery: “I’d give another kreutzer if they would stop.” Beethoven’s friends declared the work a masterpiece. Some said it would gain if it were shortened, if there were more “light, clearness, and unity.” Others found it a mixture of the good, the grotesque, the tiresome.
The symphony was published in October, 1806. The title in Italian stated that it was to celebrate the memory of a great man. And there was this note: “Since this symphony is longer than an ordinary symphony, it should be performed at the beginning rather than at the end of a concert, either after an overture or an aria, or after a concerto. If it be performed too late, there is the danger that it will not produce on the audience, whose attention will be already wearied by preceding pieces, the effect which the composer purposed in his own mind to attain.”
The theme of the first movement is note for note the same as that of the first measures of the Intrade written by Mozart in 1768, at Vienna, for his one-act operetta, Bastien et Bastienne, performed that year in a Viennese garden house. Beethoven’s theme is finished by the violins and developed at length. There is a subsidiary theme, which begins with a series of detached phrases distributed among wood-wind instruments and then the violins. The second theme, of a plaintive character, is given out alternately by wood-wind and strings. The development is most elaborate, full of striking contrasts, rich in new ideas. The passage in which the horn enters with the first two measures of the first theme in the tonic chord of the key, while the violins keep up a tremolo on A flat and B flat, has given rise to many anecdotes and provoked fierce discussion. The coda is of unusual length.
The Funeral March, Adagio assai, C minor, 2-4, begins, pianissimo e sotto voce, with the theme in the first violins, accompanied by simple chords in the other strings. The theme is repeated by the oboe, accompanied by wood-wind instruments and strings; the strings give the second portion of the theme. A development by full orchestra follows. The second theme is in C major. Phrases are given out by various wood-wind instruments in alternation, accompanied by triplet arpeggios in the strings. This theme, too, is developed; and there is a return to the first theme in C minor in the strings. There is fugal development at length of a figure that is not closely connected with either of the two themes. The first theme reappears for a moment, but strings and brass enter fortissimo in A flat major. This episode is followed by another; and at last the first theme returns in fragmentary form in the first violins, accompanied by a pizzicato bass and chords in oboes and horns.
M. d’Indy,[9] discussing the patriotism of Beethoven as shown in his music, calls attention to the militarisme, the adaptation of a warlike rhythm to melody, that characterizes this march.
Scherzo: allegro vivace, E flat major, 3-4. Strings are pianissimo and staccato, and oboe and first violins play a gay theme which Marx says is taken from an old Austrian folk song. This melody is the basic material of the scherzo. The trio in E flat major includes hunting calls by the horns, which are interrupted by passages in wood-wind instruments or strings.
Finale: allegro molto, E flat major, 2-4. A theme, or, rather, a double theme, with variations. Beethoven was fond of this theme, for he had used it in the finale of his ballet, Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, in the Variations for pianoforte, Op. 35, and in a country dance. After a few measures of introduction, the bass to the melody which is to come is given out, as though it were an independent theme. The first two variations in the strings are contrapuntal. In the third the tuneful second theme is in the wood-wind against runs in the first violins. The fourth is a long fugal development of the first theme against a counter subject found in the first variation. Variations in G minor follow, and the second theme is heard in C major. There is a new fugal development of the inverted first theme. The tempo changes to poco andante, wood-wind instruments play an expressive version of the second theme, which is developed to a coda for full orchestra, and the symphony ends with a joyful glorification of the theme.
First performances: London, 1814. Paris (at a rehearsal in 1815 everybody laughed after the first and second movement; this happened at another attempt some years later), Conservatory Orchestra, 1828. St. Petersburg, 1834. Rome, 1860. Madrid, 1878.