Philip Hale's Boston Symphony Programme Notes

by Philip Hale

I. Adagio molto; allegro con brio II. Andante cantabile con moto III. Menuetto: allegro molto e vivace; trio IV. Finale: adagio; allegro molto e vivace

Why debate whether the music of this First symphony is wholly Mozartian; whether there are traces of the “greater” Beethoven? Let the music be taken for what it is, music of the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time let us recall the fact that when this symphony was played in Paris a hundred years ago, two or three critics protested against the “astonishing success” of Beethoven’s works as “a danger to musical art.” “It is believed,” said one, “that a prodigal use of the most barbaric dissonances and a noisy use of all the orchestral instruments will make an effect. Alas, the ear is only stabbed; there is no appeal to the heart.”

In spite of pages of mere routine, the music still has a certain freshness and a quaint beauty. The symphony will always remain a charming work with trivial passages, not to be compared as a whole with the three great symphonies of Mozart or the latter symphonies of Haydn.

The symphony in C major, No. 1, probably originated in 1800, was sketched at an earlier period, and elaborated in 1799.

The first performance was at a concert given by Beethoven at the National Court Theater, “next the Burg,” Vienna, April 2, 1800.

The concert began at 6:30 P.M. The prices of admission were not raised. It was the first concert given in Vienna by Beethoven for his own benefit. A correspondent of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (October 15, 1800) gave curious information concerning the performance. “At the end a symphony composed by him was performed. It contains much art, and the ideas are abundant and original, but the wind instruments are used far too much, so that the music is more for a band of wind instruments than an orchestra.” The performance suffered on account of the conductor, Paul Wranitzky. The orchestra men disliked him and took no pains under his direction. Furthermore, they thought Beethoven’s music too difficult. “In the second movement of the symphony they took the matter so easily that there was no spirit, in spite of the conductor, especially in the performance of the wind instruments.... What marked effect, then, can even the most excellent compositions make?” The parts were published in 1801 and dedicated to Baron von Swieten.

Berlioz[3] wrote concerning it as follows: “This work is wholly different in form, melodic style, harmonic sobriety, and instrumentation from the compositions of Beethoven that follow it. When the composer wrote it, he was evidently under the sway of Mozartian ideas. These he sometimes enlarged, but he has imitated them ingeniously everywhere. Especially in the first two movements do we find springing up occasionally certain rhythms used by the composer of Don Giovanni, but these occasions are rare and far less striking. The first allegro has for a theme a phrase of six measures, which is not distinguished in itself but becomes interesting through the artistic treatment. An episodic melody follows, but it has little distinction of style. By means of a half cadence, repeated three or four times, we come to a figure in imitation for wind instruments; and we are the more surprised to find it here, because it had been so often employed in several overtures to French operas. The andante contains an accompaniment of drums, piano, which appears today rather ordinary, yet we recognize in it a hint at striking effects produced later by Beethoven with the aid of this instrument, which is seldom or badly employed as a rule by his predecessors. This movement is full of charm; the theme is graceful and lends itself easily to fugued development, by means of which the composer has succeeded in being ingenious and piquant. The scherzo is the first-born of the family of charming badinages or scherzi, of which Beethoven invented the form and determined the pace; which he substituted in nearly all of his instrumental works for the minuet of Mozart and Haydn with a pace doubly less rapid and with a wholly different character. This scherzo is of exquisite freshness, lightness and grace. It is the one truly original thing in this symphony in which the poetic idea, so great and rich in the majority of his succeeding works, is wholly wanting. It is music admirably made, clear, alert, but slightly accentuated, cold, and sometimes mean and shabby, as in the final rondo, which is musically childish. In a word, this is not Beethoven.”

This judgment of Berlioz has been vigorously combated by all fetishists that believe in the plenary inspiration of a great composer. Thus Michel Brenet[4] (1882), usually discriminative, found that the introduction begins in a highly original manner. Marx took the trouble to refute the statement of Ulibichev,[5] that the first movement was an imitation of the beginning of Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony—a futile task. We find Dr. Prof. H. Reimann[6] in 1899 stoutly maintaining the originality of many pages of this symphony. Thus in the introduction the first chord with its resolution is a “genuine innovation by Beethoven.” He admits that the chief theme of the allegro con brio with its subsidiary theme and jubilant sequel recalls irresistibly Mozart’s “Jupiter”; “but the passage pianissimo by the close in G major, in which the basses use the subsidiary theme, and in which the oboe introduces a song, is new and surprising, and the manner in which by a crescendo the closing section of the first chapter is developed is wholly Beethovenish”! He is also lost in admiration at the thought of the development itself. He finds the true Beethoven in more than one page of the andante. The trio of the scherzo is an example of Beethoven’s “tone-painting.” The introduction of the finale is “wholly original, although one may often find echoes of Haydn and Mozart in what follows.”

Colombani combated the idea that the symphony is a weak imitation of symphonies by Haydn and Mozart. Ulibichev wrote that Beethoven, in order to reveal himself, waited for the minuet. “The rhythmic movement is changed into that of a scherzo, after the manner instituted by the composer in his first sonatas.” When the symphony was first performed at Leipsic, a critic described it as a “confused explosion of the outrageous effrontery of a young man.” At Vienna in 1810, the work was described as “more amiable” than the second symphony.