SYMPHONY NO. 2, IN D MAJOR, OP. 36
I. Adagio molto; allegro con brio II. Larghetto III. Scherzo IV. Allegro molto
The symphony is an answer to those who insist that the inner emotions of a composer must find a vent in the music composed at the time. Never was Beethoven more wretched physically and mentally than when he wrote this symphony, music that breathes forth serenity, beauty, gayety, and courage.
In 1801 Beethoven’s deafness, which had begun with a roaring in his ears, grew on him. He suffered also from frightful colic. He consulted physician after physician; tried oil of almonds, cold baths and hot baths, pills and herbs and blisters; he was curious about galvanic remedies, and in his distress he wrote: “I shall as far as possible defy my fate, although there must be moments when I shall be the most miserable of God’s creatures.... I will grapple with fate; it shall never pull me down.”
Dr. Schmidt sent him in 1802 to the little village of Heiligenstadt, where, as the story goes, the Emperor Protus planted the first vines of Noricum. There was a spring of mineral water—a spring of marvelous virtues—which had been blessed by St. Severinus, who died in the village and gave the name by which it is known today. Beethoven’s house was on a hill outside the village, isolated, with a view of the Danube valley. Here he lived for several months like a hermit. He saw only his physician and Ferdinand Ries, his pupil, who visited him occasionally.
Nature and loneliness did not console Beethoven. He had been in dismal mood since the performance of the First symphony (April, 1800). The powers of darkness, “finstere Mächte,” to quote Wasielewski’s phrase, had begun to torment him. He had already felt the first attacks of deafness. It is possible that the first symptoms were in 1796, when, as a story goes, returning overheated from a walk, he plunged his head into cold water. “It would not be safe to say that the smallpox, which in his childhood left marks on his face, was a remote cause of his deafness.” In 1800-01 Beethoven wrote about his deafness and intestinal troubles to Dr. Wegeler, and to the clergyman, Carl Amenda, in Kurland. It was at the beginning of October, 1802, that Beethoven, at Heiligenstadt, almost ready to put an end to his life, wrote a letter to his brothers, the document known as “Beethoven’s will,” which drips yew-like melancholy.
Furthermore, Beethoven was still passionately in love with Giulietta Guicciardi, of whom he wrote to Wegeler, November 16, 1801: “You can hardly believe what a sad and lonely life I have passed for two years. My poor hearing haunted me as a specter, and I shunned men. It was necessary for me to appear misanthropic, and I am not this at all. This change is the work of a charming child who loves me and is loved by me. After two years I have again had some moments of pleasure, and for the first time I feel that marriage could make me happy. Unfortunately, she is not of my rank in life, and now I certainly cannot marry.” Beethoven, however, asked for her hand. One of her parents looked favorably on the match. The other, probably the father, the Count Guicciardi, refused to give his daughter to a man without rank, without fortune, and without a position of any kind. Giulietta became the Countess Gallenberg. Beethoven told Schindler that after her marriage she sought him out in Vienna, and she wept, but that he despised her.
Yet during the sad period of the winter of 1802-03, Beethoven composed the Second symphony, a joyous, “a heroic lie,” to borrow the descriptive phrase of Camille Bellaigue.
The first performance of the Second symphony was at the Theater an der Wien, April 5, 1803. The symphony was performed at Leipsic, April 29, 1804, and Spazier characterized it as “a gross monster, a pierced dragon which will not die, and even in losing its blood (in the finale), wild with rage, still deals vain but furious blows with his tail, stiffened by the last agony.” Spazier, who died early in 1805, was described by his contemporaries as a learned and well-grounded musician and a man of sound judgment.