Beethoven in Vienna, 1820-25.
Pen and ink sketch by J. P. Lyser.
These solo parts have lost none of their difficulty for singers, and from the sopranos of the chorus Beethoven well-nigh demands the superhuman. With a view to helping matters some conductors have transposed the Finale down a whole tone, thus dimming its brilliance and upsetting Beethoven’s scheme of keys. Wagner believed that Beethoven by having words and singers in the Finale had closed the cycle of purely orchestral music. Others, however, regard the singers as a mistake and maintain that Beethoven recognized his error. So devout and searching a student of Beethoven as Professor Tovey, while dismissing as absurd the theory of Beethoven’s discontent with instrumental music, holds that every part of the Ninth Symphony becomes clearer when we assume that the choral Finale is right, and that hardly a point in the work but becomes difficult and obscure when we assume that the choral Finale is wrong. Though he admits that Beethoven, long after the production of the symphony, told some friends that the choral inclusion was a mistake and that perhaps some day he might write an instrumental Finale, he sets this down to a fit of depression. At any rate, the Finale stands as written and there is no choice but to grapple with its problems.
For three movements the symphony is of course, purely instrumental. Of the first movement (“Allegro, ma non troppo, un poco maestoso,” in D minor) Ricciotto Canudo has written: “In the beginning was space; and all possibilities were in space; and life was space.” It begins pianissimo in empty fifths. A descending figure of two notes, from the heights to the depths, is reiterated while a tremendous crescendo leads to the theme that dominates the movement, given out fortissimo in unison and octaves:
The entire movement, which is well stocked with other themes, has the majesty and impetus of a titanic tragedy, and its propulsive drama ends with a defiant proclamation of the chief theme.
Now Beethoven reverses his usual procedure by postponing the slow movement and introducing a “Molto vivace” (in F minor), which has been called at once the greatest and the longest of his scherzos. A phrase of three notes, repeated on each interval of the chord of D minor, begins it, followed immediately by this fugal subject:
The enormous vitality and rhythmic drive of the Scherzo have deafened some hearers to the bitter strain in the jest. Joy unalloyed has not yet burst upon the scene.