(An answer to Schindler’s question as to what poetical conceit underlay
the sonatas in F minor. Beethoven used playfully to call the little son
of Breuning, the friend of his youth, A&Z, because he employed him often
as a messenger.)
[“Schindler relates that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what the F minor and D minor (op. 31, No. 2) meant, he received for an answer only the enigmatical remark: ‘Read Shakespeare’s “Tempest.”’ Many a student and commentator has since read the ‘Tempest’ in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly associated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests, perhaps, too much on outward things, but still one full of suggestion, that had Beethoven said: ‘Hear my C minor symphony,’ he would have given a better starting-point to the imagination of those who are seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companionship of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven himself said, indicates, in the symphony, the rappings of Fate at the door of human existence, is common to two works which are also related in their spiritual contents. Singularly enough, too, in both cases the struggle which is begun in the first movement and continued in the third, is interrupted by a period of calm, reassuring, soul-fortifying aspiration, which, in the symphony as well as in the sonata, takes the form of a theme with variations.”—“How to Listen to Music,” page 29. H. E. K.]
88. “Sinfonia Pastorella. He who has ever had a notion of country life can imagine for himself without many superscriptions what the composer is after. Even without a description the whole, which is more sentiment than tone painting, will be recognized.”
(A note among the sketches for the “Pastoral” symphony preserved in the
Royal Library at Berlin.)
[There are other notes of similar import among the sketches referred to which can profitably be introduced here:
“The hearer should be allowed to discover the situations;”
“Sinfonia caracteristica, or a recollection of country life;”
“Pastoral Symphony: No picture, but something in which the emotions are expressed which are aroused in men by the pleasure of the country (or) in which some feelings of country life are set forth.”
When, finally, the work was given to the publisher, Beethoven included in the title an admonitory explanation which should have everlasting validity: “Pastoral Symphony: more expression of feeling than painting.” H. E. K.]
89. “My ‘Fidelio’ was not understood by the public, but I know that it will yet be appreciated; for though I am well aware of the value of my ‘Fidelio’ I know just as well that the symphony is my real element. When sounds ring in me I always hear the full orchestra; I can ask anything of instrumentalists, but when writing for the voice I must continually ask myself: ‘Can that be sung?’