The circumstances under which this remarkable work was written, the history of its origin and completion, are so clearly related by Ries and Schindler, that it seems hardly possible to make any great blunder in repeating them. Marx has, however, a very happy talent for getting out of the path, even when it lies directly before him.
"When, therefore, Bernadotte," says he, "at that time French Ambassador at Vienna, and sharer in the admiration which the Lichnowskis and others of high rank felt for Beethoven, proposed to him to pay his homage to the hero [Napoleon] in a grand instrumental work, he found the artist in the best disposition thereto; perhaps such thoughts had already occurred to his mind. In the year 1802, in autumn, he put his hand already to the work, began first in the following year earnestly to labor upon it, and, with many interruptions, and the production of various compositions in the mean time, completed it in 1804."
From this passage, and from remarks in connection with it, it is clear that Professor Marx supposes Bernadotte to have been in Vienna in 1802-3, and to have ordered this symphony of Beethoven. Schindler's words, when speaking of his conversation with the composer in 1823, on this topic, are,—"Beethoven erinnerte sich lebhaft, dass Bernadotte wirklich zuerst die Idee zur Sinfonie Eroica in ihm rege gemacht hat" (Beethoven remembered distinctly that it really was Bernadotte who first awakened in him the idea of the "Heroic Symphony"). On turning to the article on Bernadotte in the "Conversations-Lexicon," we find that the period of his embassy embraced but a few months of the year 1798.
It seems to us a very suggestive and important fact toward the comprehension of Beethoven's design in this work, that the conception of it had been floating before his mind and slowly assuming definite form during the space of four years, before he put hand to the composition. Six years passed from the date of its conception before it lay complete upon his table, with the single word "Bonaparte" in large letters at the top of the title-page, and "L. Beethoven" at the bottom, with nothing between. And what, according to Marx, is this product of so much study and labor? A musical description of a battle; a funeral march to the memory of the fallen; the gathering of the armies for their homeward march; a description of the blessings of peace. A most lame and impotent interpretation! Marx somewhere says, that Beethoven never wrought twice upon the same idea; hence the funeral march of the Symphony cannot have been originally intended in honor of a hero,—we agree with him so far,—for this task he had once already accomplished in the Sonata, Op. 26. But then, if the first movement of the Symphony be a battle-piece, how came its author to compose another, and one so entirely different, in 1812?
How any one—with the recollection of Beethoven's fondness for describing character in music, even in youth upon the pianoforte,—with the "Coriolanus Overture" before him, and the "Wellington's Victory at Vittoria" at hand,—and, above all, with any knowledge of the composer's love for the universal, the all-embracing, and his contempt for minute musical painting, as shown by his sarcasms upon passages in Haydn's "Creation"—can suppose the first movement of the "Heroic Symphony" to be in the main intended as a battle-picture, passes our comprehension. It may be so. It is but a matter of opinion. We have nothing from Beethoven himself upon the point, unless we may suppose, that, when, four years later, he printed upon the programme, at the first performance of the "Pastoral Symphony," "Rather the expression of feeling than musical painting," he was guarding against a mistake which had been made as to the intent of the "Eroica."
We have no space to waste in following Marx, either through his exposition of his battle theory, his explanations of the other movements of the Symphony, or his polemics against previous writers. His programme seems to us little, if at all, better than those which he controverts. Instead of this, we venture to offer our own to the reader's common sense, which, if it does not satisfy, at least shows that Marx has not put the question forever at rest.
"Rather the expression of feeling than musical painting" seems to us a key to the understanding of this, as well as of the "Pastoral Symphony." Mere musical painting, and the composition of works to order,—as is proved by the "Wellington's Victory," the "Coriolanus Overture," the music to "Prometheus," to the "Ruins of Athens," the "Glorreiche Augenblick," to say nothing of minor works, such as the First and Second Concertos, the Horn Sonata, etc.,—Beethoven could and did despatch with extreme rapidity; but works of a different order, for which he could take his own time, and which were to be the expression of the grand feelings of his own great heart,—the composition of these was no light holiday-task. He could "make music" with all ease and rapidity; and had this been his aim, the extreme productiveness of the first years in Vienna shows that he might, perhaps, have rivalled Father Haydn himself in the number of his instrumental compositions. His difficulty was not in writing music, but in mastering the poetic conception, and finding that tone-speech which should express in epic progress, yet in obedience to the laws of musical form, the emotions, feelings, sentiments to be depicted. Hence the great length of time during which many of his works were subjects of meditation and study. Hence the six years which elapsed between the conception and completion of the "Heroic Symphony."
Beethoven passed his youth near the borders of France, under a government which allowed a republican personal freedom to its subjects. He was himself a strong republican, and old enough, when the crushed people over the border at length arose in their terrible energy against the King, to sympathize with them in their woe, perhaps in their vengeance. What to us is the horrible history of those years was to him the exciting news of the day; and it is not difficult to imagine the changes of feeling with which he would follow the political changes in France, the hopes of humanity now apparently lost in the gloom of the Reign of Terror, and now the rising of the day-star, precursor of a glorious day of republican freedom, in the marvellous successes of the cool, determined, energetic, stoical young conqueror of Italy, living, when Bernadotte fired his imagination by his descriptions of him, with his wife, the widow of Beauharnais, in a small house in an obscure street of the capital.
To us, then, the first movement of the "Heroic Symphony" is a study of character. In the "Coriolanus Overture" we have one side of a hero depicted: here we see lain, in all his aspects; we behold him in sorrow and in joy, in weakness and in strength, in the struggle and in victory,—overcoming opposition, and reducing all elements of discord to harmony and order by the force of his energetic will. It may be either a description of Napoleon, as Beethoven at that time understood his character,—we are inclined to this opinion,—or it may be a more general picture of a hero, to which the career of Napoleon had furnished but the original conception. The second movement is to us the wail of a nation ground to the dust by the iron heel of despotism,—France under the old régime,—France in the Reign of Terror,—France needing, as few nations have needed, the advent of a hero. The scherzo, with its trio, is not a form for minute painting of how the hero comes and saves; nor is this necessary; it has been sufficiently indicated in the first movement. We hear in it the awakening to new life, from the first whispers of hope, uttered mysteriously and with trembling lips, to the bright and cheering expression of a nation's joy,—not loudly and boisterously,—(Beethoven never gives such a language to the depths of happiness,)—in the exquisite passages for the horns in the trio. We agree with Marx in feeling the finale to be a picture of the blessings of that peace and quiet which the hero once more restores,—but peace and quiet where liberty and law, justice and order reign.
One fact in relation to the finale of this symphony has caused Professor Marx no little trouble. The movement is a theme and variations, with a fugue, and was also published by Beethoven as a "Theme and Variations for the Pianoforte," Op. 35, dedicated to Moritz Lichnowsky. The theme is from the finale of the "Prometheus." Now what could induce Beethoven to make this use of so important a work, as such a finale to such a symphony, is to our Professor a puzzle. It troubles him on page 70, (Vol. I.,) again on page 212, and finally on page 274. The same theme three times employed,—he may say four, for it is one of the six "Contredanses" by Beethoven, which appeared about that time,—and the third time so employed! Lenz happens to have overlooked the fact,—and so has Marx,—that the Variations for the Pianoforte, Op. 35, were advertised in the "Leipziger Musikalische Zeitung," already in November, 1803. How long Beethoven had kept them by him, how long it had taken them to make the then slow journey from Vienna to Leipzig, to be engraved, corrected, and made ready for sale, we are not informed. A very simple theory will account for all the phenomena in this case.