SYMPHONY NO. 4, IN B FLAT MAJOR, OP. 60
I. Adagio; Allegro vivace II. Adagio III. Allegro vivace. Trio. Un poco meno allegro IV. Finale: Allegro, ma non troppo
Of the nine symphonies of Beethoven the Fourth and Sixth are the least impressive. The First is historically interesting, and its finale is delightfully gay. The Second is also interesting as showing the development of Beethoven’s musical mind. After the Eroica, the Fourth seems a droop in the flight of imagination. Yet there are noble and strange things in this symphony, things that only Beethoven could have written: the introduction, the mysterious measures with the crescendo that majestically reëstablishes the chief tonality in the first movement; the superb adagio.
The old theory that the Fourth was inspired by Beethoven’s love for Therese Brunswick; that he was betrothed to her, which made happiness the keynote to the music, has been disproved, if ever it was accepted by students of Beethoven’s life. As a matter of fact, nothing is known about the “origin” of the music. A German commentator has recently spoken of “indecisiveness of mood” as “part of the imaginative scheme of the whole work”; he even sees in the adagio “the stimulus of some tense emotion” such as inspired the love letter, whether aroused by the “Immortal” or some other beloved. Is it not enough to hear the serene, nobly emotional adagio without vain speculation as to why Beethoven was so deeply moved? Nor is it necessary to see Berlioz’s Archangel Michael, who, by the way, was the warlike leader of the angelic hosts, sighing and overcome by melancholy, as “he contemplated the worlds from the threshold of the empyrean.” One might ask why should Michael grow melancholy at the glorious sight? Nor can Beethoven’s adagio be justly characterized as melancholy.
The composition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor was interrupted by work on the Symphony in B flat major, No. 4, a symphony of a very different character. The symphony was probably planned and composed in the summer of 1806. “Having been played in March, 1807, at one of the two subscription concerts at Lobkowitz’s,” Thayer is justified in adding solemnly that “it must have been finished at that time.”
After the performance of the Eroica, Beethoven also worked on his opera, Fidelio. The French army entered Vienna November 13, 1805; on the 15th, Napoleon sent to the Viennese a proclamation dated at Schönbrunn, and on November 20, 1805, Fidelio was performed for the first time, before an audience largely composed of French officers. There were three performances, and the opera was withdrawn until March 29, 1806, when it was reduced from three acts to two. The opera was again coldly received; there were two performances; and there was no revival in Vienna until 1814.
Beethoven, disturbed by the disaster which attended the first performances of his Fidelio in Vienna, during the French invasion, went in 1806 to Hungary to visit his friend, Count Brunswick. He visited the Prince Lichnowsky at Castle Grätz, which was near Troppau in Silesia. It has been said that at Martonvásár, visiting the Brunswicks, he found that he loved Therese and that his love was returned. Some, therefore, account for the postponement of the Fifth symphony, begun before the Fourth, “by the fact that in May, 1806, Beethoven became engaged to the Countess Therese.... The B flat symphony has been mentioned as ‘the most tenderly classical’ of all works of its kind; its keynote is ‘happiness’—a contentment which could have come to the master only through such an incident as the one above set forth—his betrothal.” We do not see the force of this reasoning.
It is better to say with Thayer that nothing is known about the origin of the Fourth beyond the inscription put by the composer on the manuscript which belongs to the Mendelssohn family: “Sinfonia 4ta 1806. L. v. Bthvn.”
This we do know: that, while Beethoven was visiting Prince Lichnowsky at the latter’s Castle Grätz, the two called on Franz, Count Oppersdorff, who had a castle near Grossglogau. This count, born in 1778, rich and high-born, was fond of music; he had at this castle a well-drilled orchestra, which then played Beethoven’s Symphony in D major in the presence of the composer. In June, 1807, he commissioned Beethoven to compose a symphony, paid him two hundred florins in advance and one hundred and fifty florins more in 1808. Beethoven accepted the offer, and purposed to give the Symphony in C minor to the Count; but he changed his mind, and in November, 1808, the Count received, not the symphony, but a letter of apology, in which Beethoven said that he had been obliged to sell the symphony which he had composed for him, and also another—these were probably the Fifth and the Sixth—but that the Count would receive soon the one intended for him. The Fifth and Sixth were dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz and Count Rasoumowsky. Oppersdorff at last received the Fourth symphony, dedicated to him, a symphony that was begun before he gave the commission; he received it after it had been performed. He was naturally offended, especially as the Fourth symphony at first met with little favor. He did not give Beethoven another commission, nor did he meet him again, although Beethoven visited again the Castle Grätz in 1811. The Count died January 21, 1818.
The Fourth symphony was performed for the first time at one of two concerts given in Vienna about the 15th of March, 1807, at Prince Lobkowitz’s. The concert was for the benefit of the composer. The Journal des Luxus und der Moden published this review early in April of that year:
“Beethoven gave in the dwelling house of Prince L. two concerts in which only his own compositions were performed: the first four symphonies, an overture to the tragedy Coriolanus, a pianoforte concerto, and some arias from Fidelio. Wealth of ideas, bold originality, and fullness of strength, the peculiar characteristics of Beethoven’s Muse, were here plainly in evidence. Yet many took exception to the neglect of noble simplicity, to the excessive amassing thoughts, which on account of their number are not always sufficiently blended and elaborated, and therefore often produce the effect of uncut diamonds.”
Was this “Prince L.” Lobkowitz or Lichnowsky? Thayer decided in favor of the former.
Berlioz writes of this symphony:
“Here Beethoven abandons wholly the ode and the elegy—a reference to the Eroica symphony—to return to the less lofty and somber but perhaps no less difficult style of the Second symphony. The character of this score is generally lively, nimble, joyous, or of a heavenly sweetness. If we except the meditative adagio, which serves as an introduction, the first movement is almost entirely given up to joyfulness. The motive in detached notes, with which the allegro begins, is only a canvas, on which the composer spreads other and more substantial melodies, which thus render the apparently chief idea of the beginning an accessory. This artifice, although it is fertile in curious and interesting results, has already been employed by Mozart and Haydn with equal success. But we find in the second section of this same allegro an idea that is truly new, the first measures of which captivate the attention; this idea, after leading the hearer’s mind through mysterious developments, astonishes it by its unexpected ending.... This astonishing crescendo is one of the most skillfully contrived things we know of in music: you will hardly find its equal except in that which ends the famous scherzo of the Symphony in C minor. And this latter, in spite of its immense effectiveness, is conceived on a less vast scale, for it sets out from piano to arrive at the final explosion without departing from the principal key, while the one whose march we have just described starts from mezzo-forte, is lost for a moment in a pianissimo beneath which are harmonies with vague and undecided coloring, then reappears with chords of a more determined tonality, and bursts out only at the moment when the cloud that veiled this modulation is completely dissipated. You might compare it to a river whose calm waters suddenly disappear and only leave the subterranean bed to plunge with a roar in a foaming waterfall.
“As for the adagio—it escapes analysis. It is so pure in form, the melodic expression is so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness, that the prodigious art of the workmanship disappears completely. You are seized, from the first measure, by an emotion which at the end becomes overwhelming in its intensity; and it is only in the works of one of these giants of poetry that we can find a point of comparison with this sublime page of the giant of music. Nothing, indeed, more resembles the impression produced by this adagio than that which we experience when we read the touching episode of Francesca da Rimini in the Divina Commedia, the recital of which Virgil cannot hear ‘without weeping in sobs,’ and which, at the last verse, makes Dante ‘fall, as falls a dead body.’ This movement seems to have been sighed by the archangel Michael, one day when, overcome by melancholy, he contemplated the worlds from the threshold of the empyrean.
“The scherzo consists almost wholly of phrases in binary rhythm forced to enter into combinations of 3-4 time.... The melody of the trio, given to wind instruments, is of a delicious freshness; the pace is a little slower than that of the rest of the scherzo, and its simplicity stands out in still greater elegance from the opposition of the little phrases which the violins throw across the wind instruments, like so many teasing but charming allurements.
“The finale, gay and lively, returns to ordinary rhythmic forms; it consists of a jingling of sparkling notes, interrupted, however, by some hoarse and savage chords, in which are shown the angry outbursts which we have already had occasion to notice in the composer.”