Symphony No. 6, in F Major, “Pastoral”, Opus 68
In the three symphonies that successively precede the Sixth, Beethoven, as we have seen, is concerned with man as lover or as hero, for the spiritual conflict of the Fifth Symphony is no less heroic than are the exploits and lamentations of the Third. The Sixth Symphony, however, though quite as personal, treats of man from a totally different angle. This symphony, which the composer himself called “Pastoral,” is Beethoven’s monument to Nature. It expresses his personal devotion to the country and to what life in the country meant to him. He spent a great deal of time in the lovely Viennese countryside, especially at Heiligenstadt, but here the country is no battlefield as it had been in the summer of 1802, the summer of the “Heiligenstadt Will”; it is rather the cheerful, sunlit province of Nature’s healing power.
Copious and quaint is the verbal testimony to Beethoven’s pleasure in Nature. A lodging had once been bespoken for him at the coppersmith’s at Baden (near Vienna). When he saw there were no trees around the house, he exclaimed, “This house won’t do for me. I love a tree more than a man.” According to the Countess Therese von Brunswick, his one-time betrothed, “he loved to be alone with Nature, to make her his only confidante. When his brain was seething with confused ideas, Nature at all times comforted him. Often when his friends visited him in the country in summer, he would rush away from them.” Charles Neate, one of the founders of the London Philharmonic Society, who was on intimate terms with Beethoven in Vienna in 1815, assures us that he had “never met anyone who so delighted in Nature, or so thoroughly enjoyed flowers or clouds or other natural objects. Nature was almost meat and drink to him; he seemed positively to exist upon it.” Michael Krenn, Beethoven’s body-servant during the last summer of his life when he was staying at his brother’s house at Gneixendorf, relates that Beethoven spent most of his time in the open air from six in the morning till ten at night, ranging over the fields, often hatless, shouting (he had long been completely deaf), gesticulating, and in general quite beside himself from the torrent of ideas in his mind.
The character of the Sixth Symphony Beethoven immediately makes plain on the dedicatory page. “Pastoral Symphony,” he calls it, “or a recollection of country life. More an expression of feeling than a painting.” The word “more” is important, for actually the symphony is in part a painting in tone, even if not for the greater part. Instead of keeping to the traditional four movements, this symphony rejoices in five, each carrying an identifying title. The first, “Allegro ma non troppo” in F major, explains itself thus: “The cheerful impressions excited on arriving in the country.” It begins immediately with this theme:
which really holds the germ of the entire movement and, as Beethoven develops it, becomes as the whole countryside in Maytime bloom.
The second movement, “Andante molto moto” in B-flat major, is more definite in its treatment of Nature. Beethoven calls it “Scene by the brookside,” and from the very first note you hear the purling of the water in the lower strings.
Against this murmurous background lovely melodies bud and flower and the whole orchestra seems filled with the tiny, numberless noises of summer. Near the end occurs a specific imitation of the call of birds, nightingale, cuckoo, and quail. Beethoven himself said that he meant these measures as a joke, and others have termed them parody or caricature. But, joke or parody, the unconquerable artist in Beethoven has made them of one substance with the heavenly summer light and shade that pervade this interlude of leisure by the brook.
Though not entitled Scherzo, the third movement, Allegro in F major, is one in fact. Here the human beings that people this countryside possess the picture. Beethoven labels the movement “Jolly gathering of country folk.” Its downright gayety brings in its train an amusing takeoff on a village band, especially the befuddled bassoon. The middle part of the movement, “In tempo d’allegro,” corresponding to the usual trio, has been construed by some as a quarrel among the dancers, by others as just a rude episode in the dance. The jolly character of the movement is evident in these consecutive tunes, in the contrasting keys of F and D, that start it off:
The last three movements of the symphony are continuous. A dominant seventh of F ends the “Jolly Gathering,” but, instead of its resolving, an ominous drum roll on D flat immediately ushers in the fourth movement, “Thunderstorm; Tempest” (Allegro in D minor), the storm without which no country scene is perfect. In spite of the formidable title, this is by no means a devastating outburst, though quite sufficient to postpone festivities. Memorable is the feeling of tension in the opening measures, the distant grumbling of the thunder, the first staccato raindrops. The disappearing tempest is followed directly by the last movement: “Shepherd’s Song; joyous and thankful feelings after the storm.” Happiness settles on the landscape once more, as this light-hearted tune abundantly proves:
Some of the melodies in this symphony are said to be derived from Carinthian or Styrian folk songs. As we have observed, the work was originally brought out at the same concert in Vienna (December 22, 1808) with the Fifth Symphony. Since it had an earlier place on the program, it was known for a while as the Fifth and the Fifth as the Sixth, but the mistake was soon rectified.
Fidelio and the “Leonore” Overtures
The period of Beethoven’s Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies covers, roughly speaking, a number of other compositions, some of them relatively trifling, others of greater moment, still others of altogether sovereign importance. Among the first type we can mention the Romances in G and F for violin and orchestra, composed in 1802; the oratorio “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” from the same year; and the Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and cello, which dates from 1805. The two Romances are fluent, lyrical movements, but without special depth or originality. The “Mount of Olives,” a sort of dramatic cantata which at first enjoyed an almost incredible popularity, for which it has paid with speedy and wholesale neglect, is a score of extremely uneven value, which handles a religious subject in a superficial, operatic fashion scarcely in keeping. Here and there it is possible to find in it interesting details but the chances for a revival of this work (which Beethoven’s intelligent contemporary, Rochlitz, criticized in spots as “comic”) are remote. The Triple Concerto, though not a masterwork of the first order, has been somewhat too harshly dismissed by many and therefore seldom visits our concert halls.
Otherwise the principal productions of these years include a quantity of the brightest jewels in Beethoven’s crown. Leaving aside the chamber music, which we prefer to consider by itself, they comprise the opera Fidelio and the three “Leonore” Overtures written in connection with it; the Violin Concerto (which the composer also arranged as a sort of piano concerto); and the “Coriolanus” Overture.
Fidelio, which Beethoven originally called Leonore, was begun in 1804. A child of sorrow to its composer, it was not to achieve the form in which we now know it till 1814. In the odd century and a half of its existence it has been attacked for countless reasons in spite of which it lives on with an incredible tenacity and obstinately refuses to die. It has been reproached for being poor theater, undramatic, unvocal, patchy, and countless other things. The book, originally adapted from Leonore, ou l’amour conjugale, by the Frenchman, Bouilly, and translated into German by Joseph Sonnleithner, was cast into its definitive form by Friedrich Treitschke. For a variety of reasons the work failed when it was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in November 1805. A bold attempt at revision the following season did not manage to keep it afloat and it was not till eight years later that the composer, with the clever dramatic surgery of Treitschke, made a final attempt to salvage it. Just how drastic were the alterations that the composer and librettist made in the piece can best be appreciated by those who have had the opportunity to examine the reconstruction of the original version which Erich Prieger published in 1905 on the occasion of the centenary of the work. From this it can be seen that not only have entirely new musical numbers supplanted the old but the opera (or rather Singspiel) has been reduced from its original three acts to two and that the dramaturgy betrays a vastly more experienced hand. The musical changes and condensations of Beethoven have, in their way, been no less thorough.
Far from being bad theater or unoperatic as sometimes charged, Fidelio is basically one of the most dramatic and profoundly moving masterpieces the lyric theater can show. The 1805 version lacked a number of its most striking musical features. The original, for example, shows no trace of the great outburst, Abscheulicher, which introduces Leonore’s tremendous scena in the first act; and in the second, Florestan’s dungeon air lacks its present “Und spür ich nicht holde, sanft säuselnde Duft,” which took the place of the long-winded bravura phrases the composer originally gave the presumably starving prisoner to sing. Even the present touching close of the dungeon episode was originally quite different.
It has often been claimed that the previous “failure” of the work so discouraged the composer that his operatic achievements ended then and there. As a matter of fact, Beethoven to the end of his days never gave up his search for another libretto. That he never found it was due to the very special slant of his requirements. As for the “unvocal” character of his writing for voices, it is necessary to remember that, for all the opera’s undeniable exactions, generations of great dramatic singers have repeatedly triumphed in the chief roles of Fidelio.
Beethoven composed four overtures to his opera—the three so-called “Leonore” Overtures in C and the one in E major, known as the “Fidelio” Overture. The last-named was written in 1814 for Treitschke’s new version of the piece. It is the slightest of them all and is the one that invariably prefaces performances of the opera. For years controversies have raged as to the order in which the “Leonore” Overtures were written and for what reason one supplanted the other. The Second Leonore was the first used to preface the drama at its 1805 hearing; the Third introduced the 1806 revision. Theories have been bandied about for generations to account for the First Overture, which was issued as Opus 138 only some years after the composer’s death. The researches of Dr. Joseph Braunstein in his exhaustive study Beethovens Leonore-Ouvertüren, eine historischstilkritische Untersuchung have settled the problem for us. The overtures were composed in the order of their numbering. “Leonore” No. 1 was found too light for its purpose and, after a private try-out, was discarded before being publicly performed. “Leonore” No. 2, less polished and formally perfect than the more structural and popular No. 3, ranks if anything as more dramatic, modern, and powerful, even if it does lack the brilliantly jubilant coda that is the particular glory of No. 3. Neither of these two, however, is a wholly well-conceived introduction to Fidelio, for the reason that both overpower the opera as a whole and might almost be said to render the drama superfluous. Actually, a Fidelio representation profits by the omission of all the “Leonore” Overtures, though practically every audience these days expects the “Leonore” No. 3 quite as a matter of course and ordinarily gets it as a sort of interlude between the dungeon and the concluding scenes.
A word as to the “Fidelio” Overture of 1814, which has none of the features of the “Leonore” tone poems, either thematically or otherwise. It is more in the character of a Singspiel overture and has as good as no dramatic connection with the opera itself—no reference to Florestan’s dungeon song nor to the off-stage fanfare of the rescue scene; yet it leads quite properly into the light moods of the opening episodes of the chattering Marzelline and Jacquino in the first scene and does not, like the Second and Third “Leonore,” completely overweight the remainder of the score. At that, it is structurally and otherwise fully worthy of its composer and is a more logical adjunct to Fidelio than any one of the “Leonore” Overtures. Actually, it is a good deal more interesting in its own right than the average person imagines and merits far closer study than it ordinarily receives.
The “Coriolanus” Overture virtually coincides, in point of time, with the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies. One of its creator’s most striking, yet economically fashioned works, it is in no way related to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus as has frequently been imagined, but was derived from a Coriolanus tragedy by Heinrich von Collin. Yet many (including Richard Wagner) have interpreted it in terms of Shakespeare’s drama, the basic emotional pattern of which it can suggest.