PHILIP HALE’S BOSTON SYMPHONY PROGRAMME NOTES

HISTORICAL, CRITICAL, AND DESCRIPTIVE COMMENT ON MUSIC AND COMPOSERS

Edited by
JOHN N. BURK

With an Introduction by
LAWRENCE GILMAN

Garden City, New York
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
MCMXXXV

PRINTED AT THE Country Life Press, GARDEN CITY, N. Y., U. S. A.

COPYRIGHT, 1935
BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FIRST EDITION

EDITOR’S NOTE

This book, assembling the musical writings of Philip Hale, draws principally upon the programme books for which he wrote descriptive notes for thirty-two years of concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since the notes were addressed to audiences approaching the music with, presumably, open minds, the writer judiciously withheld his individual opinion. This opinion he freely expressed in his newspaper reviews of the same concerts, extending over an even longer period, and it has seemed advisable, by combining the two, to bring together the critic and the historian. The editor has found, in the newspaper files, pertinent critical paragraphs which are here used to introduce the programme notes about each particular work. The transition from criticism to descriptive note is indicated by a typographical ornament.

In going through the scrapbooks in the Allen A. Brown Room of the Boston Public Library, wherein the newspaper criticisms of Philip Hale’s forty active years are carefully preserved, the editor came across this observation by him, in the Boston Herald of March 13, 1912: “In 1945 some student in the Brown Room of the Public Library will doubtless be amused by opinions expressed by us all, of works first heard in 1912. Some of us will not then be disturbed by his laughter or by quotations ornamented with exclamation marks of contempt or wonder.”

There is cause for wonder, to a student at a time ten years short of the year Mr. Hale mentioned; wonder, however, at his quick perception of essential values upon first hearing what time has since proved a masterpiece, or considerably less than a masterpiece, as the case may be. Few indeed are the professional judges of music who are not glad to leave undisturbed in the dust of the newspaper files some skeletons of their past—appalling errors of denunciation or proclamation. Again and again, when his fellow critics of another day wrote laughably of a then new tone poem of Richard Strauss or pastel of Claude Debussy, Philip Hale delivered a sane and still quotable judgment.

No attempt has been made to modify by omissions Mr. Hale’s frank expressions of personal preferences among the composers. This writer never spoke as a major prophet, but as one who might be discussing a favorite subject over a demi-tasse. Anyone is privileged to disagree, and those insisting upon their eternal verities are referred to any one of a hundred books where the musical monuments are enshrined in ringing platitudes of praise. When this critic wrote, with the very opposite of solemnity, about Bach, or Brahms, or Wagner, his ridicule was always directed against a certain snobbish element in his public—a genus which sat at the feet of these composers. “There is, it is true, a gospel of Johannes Brahms,” he wrote as long ago as 1896, “but Brahms, to use an old New England phrase, is often a painful preacher of the word.—Brahms is a safe play in Boston. Let me not be unthankful; let me be duly appreciative of my educational opportunities in this town.”

It is a joyful privilege to be the agent of bringing the treasure of Philip Hale’s musical knowledge and commentary within the permanence and general accessibility of two covers. It was at first hoped that the author could assist in the compilation, but, failing in health, he was unable to give more than his whole-hearted assent to the project. His death, November 30, 1934, came before the book was far under way.

The material drawn upon is of vast proportions. From the autumn of 1901 through the spring of 1933, Philip Hale contributed programme notes for everything played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in its regular concerts—upward of a thousand works. As music critic, Mr. Hale commented upon these and many more. He wrote for the Boston Home Journal from 1889 to 1891; the Boston Journal (like the other publication, long since extinct), from 1891 to 1903; and from then until his retirement in 1933 for the Boston Herald. There were also the editorials on various musical topics which he contributed anonymously to the New Music Review for many years. Acknowledgment is due for the quotations made from all of these publications; in particular the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert Bulletins, which have provided the bulk of this book, and the Boston Herald, from which by far the larger number of critical paragraphs are drawn. To these should be added the innumerable writers to whom Mr. Hale himself has referred in the course of his programme notes. The helpful advice of Mrs. Philip Hale in the choice of the frontispiece is gratefully acknowledged.

The problem of selecting from the vast accumulation of Philip Hale’s writings became somewhat less formidable when a large number of works now forgotten, and others still current but of lesser importance, were eliminated. One hundred and twenty-five works have been chosen, with the aim of including those most often encountered upon symphony programmes. The works of recent composers were necessarily limited to those which had been played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and therefore described in its programmes, up to April, 1933. They are still further limited by the exigencies of space. The quoted reviews have been kept clear, for the sake of continuity, of dates and sources; documentation in the programme notes has been minimized. These notes are given in the form in which they most recently appeared. Their partial curtailment is justified by the readiness of their author to adjust them to the space of the programme in hand. To have used each note in its fullest form would have reduced the number of works which the book could contain. As regards the newspaper quotations, they are largely of recent years, and in any case represent the writer’s reconsidered opinion. A disproportion in the space given to a certain composer or certain work may be set down to the fact that in a few instances Mr. Hale did not happen at any time to write one of his inimitable essays in miniature which could be detached from the discussion of the occasion and the performance.

CONTENTS

PAGE [Editor’s Note] v [Introduction by Lawrence Gilman] xvii [BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN] [The Brandenburg Concertos] 2 [The Concertos for Pianoforte] 4 [The Orchestral Suites] 5 [BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN] [Symphony No. 1, in C major] 7 [Symphony No. 2, in D major] 10 [Symphony No. 3, in E flat major] 13 [Symphony No. 4, in B flat major] 18 [Symphony No. 5, in C minor] 22 [Symphony No. 6, in F major] 26 [Symphony No. 7, in A major] 29 [Symphony No. 8, in F major] 34 [Symphony No. 9, in D minor] 38 [Overture to Leonore No. 3] 44 [Overture to Egmont] 47 [Overture to Coriolanus] 49 [Concerto for Pianoforte, No. 4, in G major] 51 [Concerto for Pianoforte, No. 5, in E flat major] 52 [Concerto for Violin, in D major] 54 [BERLIOZ, HECTOR] [Symphonie Fantastique, in C major] 57 [Overture, The Roman Carnival] 64 [BLOCH, ERNEST] [Schelomo, Hebrew Rhapsody for Violoncello and Orchestra] 66 [BORODIN, ALEXANDER] [Symphony No. 2, in B minor] 70 [BRAHMS, JOHANNES] [Symphony No. 1, in C minor] 77 [Symphony No. 2, in D major] 80 [Symphony No. 3, in F major] 83 [Symphony No. 4, in E minor] 86 [Variations on a Theme by Josef Haydn] 88 [Tragic Overture] 90 [Academic Festival Overture] 91 [Concerto for Pianoforte, No. 1, in D minor] 94 [Concerto No. 2, in B flat major, for Pianoforte] 95 [Concerto for Violin, in D major] 97 [BRUCKNER, ANTON] [Symphony No. 7, in E major] 102 [Symphony No. 8, in C minor] 106 [CARPENTER, JOHN ALDEN] [Adventures in a Perambulator, Suite] 114 [DEBUSSY, CLAUDE ACHILLE] [Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune] 119 [Nocturnes] 122 [La Mer] 124 [Ibéria: “Images” for Orchestra, No. 2] 127 [DVOŘÁK, ANTON] [Symphony No. 5, in E minor] 131 [ELGAR, EDWARD] [Variations on an Original Theme, Enigma] 135 [DE FALLA, MANUEL] [Ballet-Pantomime: El Amor Brujo] 140 [Three Dances from El Sombrero de Tres Picos] 142 [FRANCK, CÉSAR] [Symphony in D minor] 146 [HANDEL, GEORG FRIDERIC] [Twelve Concerti Grossi, for String Orchestra] 151 [HAYDN, FRANZ JOSEF] (London Symphonies) [Symphony No. 104, in D major (B. & H. No. 2)] 155 [Symphony No. 94, in G major (“Surprise”) (B. & H. No. 6)] 157 (Paris Symphonies) [Symphony No. 88, in G major (B. & H. No. 13)] 158 [HINDEMITH, PAUL] [Konzertmusik for String and Brass Instruments] 161 [HONEGGER, ARTHUR] [Pacific 231, Orchestral Movement] 164 [D’INDY, VINCENT] [Symphony No. 2, in B flat major] 166 [Istar, Symphonic Variations] 170 [LISZT, FRANZ] [A Faust Symphony] 175 [Symphonic Poem, No. 3, Les Préludes] 181 [Pianoforte Concerto, No. 1, in E flat] 182 [LOEFFLER, CHARLES MARTIN] [A Pagan Poem] 184 [MacDOWELL, EDWARD] [Orchestral Suite, No. 2, in E minor, Indian] 186 [MAHLER, GUSTAV] [The Symphonies] 190 [Symphony No. 5, in C sharp minor] 192 [MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY, FELIX] [Symphony in A major, “Italian”] 195 [Overture and Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream] 199 [Concert Overture, The Hebrides, or Fingal’s Cave] 201 [Concerto for Violin, in E minor] 203 [MOUSSORGSKY, MODESTE] [A Night on Bald Mountain] 206 [MOZART, WOLFGANG AMADEUS] [Symphony in E flat major (Koechel No. 543)] 211 [Symphony in G minor (Koechel No. 550)] 212 [Symphony in C major (“Jupiter”) (Koechel No. 551)] 212 [Overture to The Marriage of Figaro] 217 [Overture to The Magic Flute] 219 [The Concertos for Violin] 221 [Mozart as Pianist] 222 [PROKOFIEFF, SERGE] [Scythian Suite] 225 [Classical Symphony] 227 [RACHMANINOFF, SERGEI] [Symphony No. 2 in E minor] 229 [Concerto No. 2 in C minor, for Pianoforte] 232 [RAVEL, MAURICE] [Ma Mère l’Oye: Five Children’s Pieces] 234 [Daphnis et Chloé, Ballet (Second Series)] 237 [Bolero] 239 [RESPIGHI, OTTERINO] [Symphonic Poem, Pines of Rome] 241 [RIMSKY-KORSAKOV, NICOLAS] [Symphonic Suite, Scheherazade] 244 [Caprice on Spanish Themes] 250 [SAINT-SAËNS, CHARLES CAMILLE] [Symphony No. 3, in C minor (with organ)] 255 [SCHOENBERG, ARNOLD] [Verklärte Nacht, Arranged for String Orchestra] 259 [SCHUBERT, FRANZ] [Symphony No. 8, in B minor (“Unfinished”)] 265 [Symphony No. 7, in C major] 267 [SCHUMANN, ROBERT] [Symphony No. 1, in B flat major] 272 [Symphony No. 2, in C major] 275 [Symphony No. 3, in E flat major] 278 [Symphony No. 4, in D minor] 282 [Concerto in A minor, for Pianoforte] 285 [SCRIABIN, ALEXANDER] [The Poem of Ecstasy (Le Poème de l’Extase)] 288 [SIBELIUS, JEAN] [Symphony No. 1, in E minor] 292 [Symphony No. 2, in D major] 295 [Symphony No. 4, in A minor] 298 [Symphony No. 5, in E flat major] 300 [Symphony No. 7] 301 [Finlandia, Symphonic Poem] 303 [The Swan of Tuonela, Symphonic Poem] 305 [STRAUSS, RICHARD] [Don Juan, Tone Poem] 308 [Tod und Verklärung, Death and Transfiguration, Tone Poem] 310 [Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Tone Poem] 313 [Thus Spake Zarathustra, Tone Poem] 316 [Don Quixote, Variations] 320 [Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), Tone Poem] 327 [STRAVINSKY, IGOR] [Suite from L’Oiseau de Feu (The Fire-Bird)] 331 [Suite from Petrouchka] 333 [Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) Pictures of Pagan Russia] 336 [TAYLOR, DEEMS] [Through the Looking Glass, Suite] 339 [TCHAIKOVSKY, PETER] [Symphony No. 4, in F minor] 344 [Symphony No. 5, in E minor] 346 [Symphony No. 6, in B minor, Pathétique] 350 [Romeo and Juliet, Overture Fantasia] 354 [Concerto for Pianoforte, No. 1, in B flat minor] 356 [Concerto for Violin, in D major] 359 [WAGNER, RICHARD] [Overture to Rienzi] 365 [Overture to Der Fliegende Holländer] 366 [Overture to Tannhäuser] 367 [Prelude to Lohengrin] 368 [Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde] 370 [Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg] 371 [A Siegfried Idyl] 373 [“The Ride of the Valkyries,” from Die Walküre] 375 [Prelude to Parsifal] 376 [Good Friday Spell, from Parsifal] 379 [WEBER, CARL MARIA VON] [Overture to Oberon] 381 [Overture to Der Freischütz] 382 [Overture to Euryanthe] 385 [WILLIAMS, RALPH VAUGHAN] [A London Symphony] 389 [Index] 395

INTRODUCTION

Some day an inquisitive musicologist will consider the part played in the history of musical education and musical taste by that seemingly indispensable adjunct of the symphonic concert room, the Programme Note. When that time comes, the contributions made by Philip Hale to the musical civilization of his time will appear in their true proportions. For more than a generation, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the fifth year of the Great Depression, Hale provided programme notes for everything played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in its regular concerts—“upward of a thousand works”, as Mr. Burk informs us in his valuable note to the present collection. The annual issue by the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the bound volumes containing Philip Hale’s annotations was an event in the musical world of America that exceeded in importance and interest the appearance of the average new symphonic work upon the Orchestra’s programmes. A decade ago, in commenting upon the issue of one of those momentous and liberal tomes (sometimes they included more than two thousand pages), I remarked that it provided a musical education in one volume. Those famous annotations—modestly indicated on the title-page, in small and light-faced type, as “historical and descriptive notes by Philip Hale”—constitute a library of musical information the like of which is not to be found elsewhere on this sufficiently book-congested sphere.

Though Hale was a New Englander by birth, he had not the normal New England suspicion of entertainment as an educational ingredient; and he did not scruple to amuse. He was almost indecently readable. He never hesitated to lighten musical instruction with diversion and with wit. He knew much besides music; and he was able to peptonize for the reader his vast and curious erudition. He could tell you about the maceration of Oriental women, and what action is described by the word “tutupomponeyer”, and who invented the first chess-playing automaton, and how locomotive engines are classified, and what Pliny said concerning the bird called penelope. He knew all about the various editions of the singular Commentaires sur les epistres d’Ovide by Claude Gaspar Bachet, Sieur de Meziriac, in which the parentage of Ulysses is discussed. He could tell you why the river Ebro bears that name; and what Louis XIV ate for supper—which, you may like to be reminded, often consisted of four plates of different soups, the whole of a pheasant, a partridge, a heaped-up plate of salad, two huge slices of ham, mutton stewed with garlic, and a plate of pastries topped off with fruit and hard-boiled eggs. As for all the other things that Hale knew, you must turn to his writings if you would appreciate their range and number.

And all this fantastically varied learning—which not only seemed boundless in extent, but which was also incredibly exact and circumstantial—adorned a general culture that was nourishing and humane, and a specifically musical culture which conceived no relevant fact as inconsiderable, no anecdote unimportant, no human aspect unrevealing. The average programme note is a deadly and a stifling thing; but these amazing annotations, traversing all history and the ceaseless tragi-comedy of life, assure us that a programme note may sometimes, if an artist has contrived it, be more rewarding than the music that occasioned it.

Philip Hale transformed the writing of programme notes from an arid and depressing form of musical pedagogy into an exhilarating variety of literary art. The formidable weight of learning which he bore was employed with an ease and finesse, a lightness of touch, a charm of manner, a wit and conciseness and flexibility, which belong among the achievements of distinguished letters. His predecessor as annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s programmes, the accomplished William Foster Apthorp, had prepared the way for Hale’s achievement. Apthorp’s notes, written between 1892 and 1901, surpassed in brilliance and acumen anything that had come out of Europe or America. But Philip Hale, by reason of his exceptional width of intellectual range, and the well of knowledge which he drew upon, and his insatiable, devouring, delighted curiosity, established himself almost at once as the master of an enlivened order of creative musical scholarship which was a new thing under the tonal sun.

One might justly say of him, as critic, commentator, analyst, what Sir George Grove said of Schubert—a saying that Hale himself was fond of quoting: “There never has been one like him, and there never will be another.” Lawrence Gilman.

PHILIP HALE’S BOSTON SYMPHONY PROGRAMME NOTES

JOHANN SEBASTIAN
BACH

(Born at Eisenach on March 21, 1685; died at Leipsic on July 28, 1750)

No matter how well old music may be performed by chorus, orchestra, virtuoso, many audiences are bored by it today. There is one exception: the music of Bach. “He is the forerunner, the prophet that foresaw our epoch and our tastes.” This speech is often heard, as is the remark: “There is not one ultra-modern harmonic thought that is not to be found somewhere in Bach’s music.” Bach is one of the great fetishes in music. The late John S. Dwight really believed in the plenary inspiration of the indefatigable weaver of counterpoint. No matter how formal, how dull a page of music looked or sounded, Mr. Dwight was in ecstasy the moment he was told the page was signed with Bach’s name.

Mme Wanda Landowska (in Musique ancienne) says entertainingly: “The idea that the Cantor of Eisenach, though dedicating his music to Frederick the Great and princes of his period, composed it solely with a view to a Châtelet audience is so consecrated a commonplace that I hardly dare to dream of combating it.” Von Bülow and others have declared that Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy is an anticipation of modern romanticism; but the composers hinted at in this piece are more modern than Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann. Frescobaldi, Buxtehude, Couperin, and the writers for the lute are more modern because they are less known. And Bach not only knew their works but followed them rather than the advanced ideas of his own epoch; for Bach was a conservative rather than a radical.

THE BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS

No. 1 in F, for two horns, three oboes and bassoon, with strings No. 2 in F, for violin, flute, oboe, trumpet, with strings No. 3 in G, for three string orchestras No. 4 in G, for violin and two flutes, with strings No. 5 in D, for pianoforte, flute, and violin, with strings No. 6 in B, for two viole da braccia, two viole da gamba, violoncello, and bass

The six Brandenburg Concertos, completed on March 24, 1721, were written in answer to the wish of a Prussian prince, Christian Ludwig, Margraf of Brandenburg, the youngest son of the Great Elector by a second wife. This prince was provost of the Cathedral at Halberstadt. He was a bachelor, living now at Berlin and now on his estate at Malchow. Fond of music, and not in an idle way, he was extravagant in his tastes and mode of life, and often went beyond his income of nearly fifty thousand thalers. In May, 1718, Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, at whose court Bach was Kapellmeister, journeyed to Carlsbad to drink the waters. He took with him Bach and a quintet from his orchestra; also his clavicembalo with three “servants to care for it”; he was also thus attended when he visited Carlsbad in 1720. The Margraf may have been at Carlsbad, and as he was very fond of music and had his own orchestra, he undoubtedly attended Leopold’s musical parties. At any rate, he gave Bach a commission. It was on March 24, 1721, that Bach—possibly someone at the Court—wrote a dedication in French:

“A son altesse royale, Monseigneur Crétien Louis, Margraf de Brandenbourg, etc., etc., etc.

“Monseigneur,

“Two years ago, when I had the honor of playing before your Royal Highness, I experienced your condescending interest in the insignificant musical talents with which heaven has gifted me, and understood your Royal Highness’s gracious willingness to accept some pieces of my composition. In accordance with that condescending command, I take the liberty to present my most humble duty to your Royal Highness in these Concerti for various instruments, begging your Highness not to judge them by the standards of your own refined and delicate taste, but to seek in them rather the expression of my profound respect and obedience. In conclusion, Monseigneur, I most respectfully beg your Royal Highness to continue your gracious favor toward me, and to be assured that there is nothing I so much desire as to employ myself more worthily in your service.

“With the utmost fervor, Monseigneur, I subscribe myself,

“Your Royal Highness’s most humble and most obedient servant,

“Jean Sebastian Bach.

“Coethen, 24 March, 1721.”[1]

These concertos—“Concerts avec plusieurs instruments”—were intended as a gift for the Margraf’s birthday in March. Nothing is known about the reception in Berlin, nor is it positively known whether they were ever played at the palace of the Margraf. “The condition of the autograph suggests that, like the parts of the ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Gloria’ of the B minor Mass at Dresden, it was never performed by the recipient.” It was the Margraf’s habit to catalogue his library. The name of Bach was not found in the list, although the names of Vivaldi, Venturini, Valentiri, Brescianello, and other writers of concertos were recorded. After the death of the Margraf in 1734, Bach’s score was put for sale with other manuscripts in a “job lot.” The Brandenburg Concertos came into the possession of J. P. Kirnberger. They were later owned by the Princess Amalie, sister of Frederick the Great and a pupil of Kirnberger. Their next and final home was the Royal Library, Berlin, No. 78 in the Amalienbibliothek. They were edited by S. W. Dehn and published by Peters, Leipsic, in 1850.

THE CONCERTOS FOR PIANOFORTE

D minor (with strings) E major (with strings) D major (with strings) A major (with strings) F minor (with strings) G minor (with strings) F major (with two flutes and strings) A minor (with flute, violin and strings) D major (with flute, violin and strings)

Little is known about these concertos. It is supposed that the seven were formed by putting together various separate movements, or were arrangements or transcriptions for the clavier. “In all the concertos for clavier, whether for one instrument or many, there are passages for the solo instrument unaccompanied which anticipate the procedure of modern concertos, with considerable use of arpeggios, and even occasional cadenza passages. Bach follows the Italian types in the general scheme and easy style of the quick movements, and they are rather homophonic in feeling, with the exception of the last movement of the double concerto in C major, which is a fugue of the most vivacious description.... Bach clearly enjoyed writing in the concerto form and found it congenial. It would be even natural to infer that he found opportunities for performing the works, as in many cases the same concertos appear in versions both for violin and clavier.”[2]

Parry also says: “When Bach writes slow movements for the clavier, he makes them serve as phases of contrast to the quick movements, in which some rather abstract melody is discussed with a certain aloofness of manner, or treated with elaborate ornamentation, such as was more suited to the instrument than passages of sustained melody pure and simple. The alternative presented in the admirable concerto for the clavier in D minor is to give a Siciliano in place of the central slow movement, a course which provides a type of melody well adapted to the limited sustaining power of the harpsichord.... The finest of them [the concertos] is that in D minor, above mentioned, which from its style would appear to have been written at Cöthen.”

It is supposed that there was use of the general bass in these concertos. A second clavier was usually employed; but there is reason to believe that a portable organ, or lutes, theorbos, and the like were also used in accompaniment. Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote in his J. S. Bach (Leipsic, 1905): “The seven concertos for clavier are in effect, and with one exception only, transcriptions made at Leipsic after 1730 at a time when Bach saw himself obliged to write concertos for the performances of the Telemann Society, which he began to conduct in 1729, and for the little family concerts at his own home. These transcriptions are of unequal worth. Some were made carefully and with art, while others betray impatience in the accomplishment of an uninteresting task. Only one of the pianoforte concertos is not derived from a violin concerto.”

THE ORCHESTRAL SUITES

No. 1. Suite in C (for two oboes, and bassoon, with strings) No. 2. Suite in B minor (for flute with strings) No. 3. Suite in D (for two oboes, three trumpets, and drums, with strings) No. 4. Suite in D (for three oboes, bassoon, three trumpets, and drums, with strings)

The term “suite” was not given by Bach to the four compositions that now are so named—the suites in C major, B minor, and two in D major. He used the word “ouverture.” The original parts of these overtures were handed over in 1854 by the Singakademie of Berlin to the Royal (now Stadt) Library of that city.

Bach probably composed the four suites during his stay at Cöthen (1717-23), as Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. The prince was then nearly twenty-four years old, an amiable, well-educated young man, who had traveled and was fond of books and pictures. He played the violin, the viol da gamba, and the harpsichord. Furthermore, he had an agreeable bass voice and was more than an ordinary singer. Bach said of him, “He loved music, he was well acquainted with it, he understood it.” The music at the Court was chiefly chamber music, and here Bach passed happy years.

Under the reign of Leopold’s puritanical father there was no Court orchestra, but in 1707 Gisela, Leopold’s wife, set up to please her husband an establishment of three musicians. When Leopold returned from his grand tour he expanded the orchestra. In 1714 he appointed Augustinus Reinhard Stricker Kapellmeister, and Stricker’s wife Catherine soprano and lutanist. In 1716 the orchestra numbered eighteen players who, “with some omissions and additions,” constituted its membership under Bach. Stricker and his wife retired in August, 1717. Leopold offered the post of Kapellmeister to Bach, “who was known to him since his sister’s wedding at Nienburg in the previous year.” This orchestra, reinforced by visiting players, probably played the Brandenburg music before it was performed elsewhere.

LUDWIG VAN
BEETHOVEN

(Born at Bonn, December 16 (?), 1770; died at Vienna, March 26, 1827)

SYMPHONY NO. 1, IN C MAJOR, OP. 21

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.

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.

A Leipsic critic found that the symphony would gain if certain passages were abbreviated and certain modulations were sacrificed. Another declared that it was too long; that there was an exaggerated use of the wind instruments; that the finale was bizarre, harsh, savage. Yet he added that there was such fire, such richness of new ideas, such an absolutely original disposition of these ideas, that the work would live; “and it will always be heard with renewed pleasure when a thousand things that are today in fashion will have been long buried.”

The sketch of Berlioz may here serve as an analysis: “In this symphony everything is noble, energetic, proud. The introduction (largo) is a masterpiece. The most beautiful effects follow one another without confusion and always in an unexpected manner. The song is of a touching solemnity, and it at once commands respect and puts the hearer in an emotional mood. The rhythm is already bolder, the instrumentation is richer, more sonorous, more varied. An allegro con brio of enchanting dash is joined to this admirable adagio. The gruppetto which is found in the first measure of the theme, given at first to the violas and violoncellos in unison, is taken up again in an isolated form, to establish either progressions in a crescendo or imitative passages between wind instruments and the strings. All these forms have a new and animated physiognomy. A melody enters, the first section of which is played by clarinets, horns, and bassoons. It is completed en tutti by the rest of the orchestra, and the manly energy is enhanced by the happy choice of accompanying chords.

“The andante [larghetto] is not treated after the manner of that of the First symphony: it is not composed of a theme worked out in canonic imitations, but it is a pure and frank song, which at first is sung simply by the strings, and then embroidered with a rare elegance by means of light and fluent figures whose character is never far removed from the sentiment of tenderness which forms the distinctive character of the principal idea. It is a ravishing picture of innocent pleasure which is scarcely shadowed by a few melancholy accents.

“The scherzo is as frankly gay in its fantastic capriciousness as the andante has been wholly and serenely happy; for this symphony is smiling throughout; the warlike bursts of the first allegro are wholly free from violence; there is only the youthful ardor of a noble heart in which the most beautiful illusions of life are preserved untainted. The composer still believes in immortal glory, in love, in devotion. What abandon in his gayety! What wit! What sallies! Hearing these various instruments disputing over fragments of a theme which no one of them plays in its complete form, hearing each fragment thus colored with a thousand nuances as it passes from one to the other, it is as though you were watching the fairy sports of Oberon’s graceful spirits.

“The finale is of like nature. It is a second scherzo in two time, and its playfulness has perhaps something still more delicate, more piquant.”

SYMPHONY NO. 3, IN E FLAT MAJOR “EROICA,” OP. 55

I. Allegro con brio II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace; Trio IV. Finale: Allegro molto

It is interesting to note the difference in the expression of heroism between this symphony and Strauss’s Heldenleben. To be sure, Beethoven had Bonaparte at first in mind, while in Heldenleben the hero is—Richard Strauss, defying his enemies, rejoicing vaingloriously in his immortality as a composer. It is not necessary to accept the theories of Beethoven’s commentators. The excellent Nietzel finds that, in the second theme of the first movement, “the hero, having for the first time exerted his force, turns about to look at the path he has trod.” Wagner sees Man, not merely a triumphant soldier, the hero. Schindler believes the symphony to be the celebration of the French Revolution. And so on and so on. It is enough that the structure and the spirit of the symphony are heroic, that there is the grand gesture, that even in the Funeral March there is no whine of pessimism, no luxury of woe. It is a heroic lamentation over heroes slain in defence of freedom, a lamentation in which there is exultation, even in grief.

At Nussdorf in the summer of 1817, Beethoven, who had then composed eight symphonies, and the poet Christian Kuffner were having a fish dinner at the Tavern Zur Rose. Kuffner asked him which of his symphonies was his favorite.

“Eh! Eh!” said Beethoven. “The Eroica.”

“I should have guessed the C minor,” said Kuffner.

“No, the Eroica.”

Anton Schindler wrote in his life of Beethoven:

“First in the fall of 1802 was his [Beethoven’s] mental condition so much bettered that he could take hold afresh of his long-formulated plan and make some progress: to pay homage with a great instrumental work to the hero of the time, Napoleon. Yet not until 1803 did he set himself seriously to this gigantic work, which we now know under the title of Sinfonia Eroica: on account of many interruptions it was not finished until the following year.... The first idea of this symphony is said to have come from General Bernadotte, who was then French Ambassador at Vienna and highly treasured Beethoven. I heard this from many friends of Beethoven. Count Moritz Lichnowsky, who was often with Beethoven in the company of Bernadotte, ... told me the same story.”[7] Schindler also wrote, with reference to the year 1823: “The correspondence of the King of Sweden led Beethoven’s memory back to the time when the King, then General Bernadotte, Ambassador of the French Republic, was at Vienna, and Beethoven had a lively recollection of the fact that Bernadotte indeed first awakened in him the idea of the Sinfonia Eroica.”

These statements are direct. Unfortunately, Schindler, in the third edition of his book, mentioned Beethoven as a visitor at the house of Bernadotte in 1798, repeated the statement that Bernadotte inspired the idea of the symphony, and added: “Not long afterward the idea blossomed into a deed”; he also laid stress on the fact that Beethoven was a stanch republican and cited, in support of his admiration of Napoleon, passages from Beethoven’s own copy of Schleiermacher’s translation of Plato.

Thayer admits that the thought of Napoleon may have influenced the form and the contents of the symphony; that the composer may have based a system of politics on Plato; “but,” he adds, “Bernadotte had been long absent from Vienna before the Consular form of government was adopted at Paris, and before Schleiermacher’s Plato was published in Berlin.”

The symphony was composed in 1803-04. The story is that the title page of the manuscript bore the word “Buonaparte,” and at the bottom of the page “Luigi van Beethoven”; and “not a word more,” said Ries, who saw the manuscript. “I was the first,” also said Ries, “to bring him the news that Bonaparte had had himself declared emperor, whereat he broke out angrily: ‘Then he’s nothing but an ordinary man. Now he’ll trample on all the rights of men to serve his own ambition; he will put himself higher than all others and turn out a tyrant!’” There is also the story that when the death of Napoleon was announced, Beethoven exclaimed: “Did I not foresee the catastrophe when I wrote the Funeral March in the Eroica?” Vincent d’Indy argues against Schindler’s theory that Beethoven wished to celebrate the French Revolution en bloc. “C’était l’homme de Brumaire” that Beethoven honored by his dedication. The autograph score, sold at auction in Vienna in 1827 for three florins, ten kreutzers, shows the erasure of two words under “Sinfonia grande” on the title page: one is plainly “Bonaparte”; under his own name, Beethoven wrote, in large characters, “Written on Bonaparte.” Paul Bekker, arguing that the Eroica is not the portrait of any one hero, but that the symphony represents his concept of human heroism, believes that the first movement is the only one of direct connection with Napoleon: “The hero’s deeds have resulted in victory, the restless will has achieved fulfilment.”[8]

There can be nothing in the statements that have come down from Czerny, Dr. Bartolini, and others: the first Allegro describes a sea fight; the Funeral March is in memory of Nelson or General Abercrombie, etc. There can be no doubt that Napoleon, the young conqueror, the Consul, the enemy of kings, worked a spell over Beethoven, as over Berlioz, Hazlitt, Victor Hugo; for, according to W. E. Henley’s paradox, although, as despot, Napoleon had “no love for new ideas and no tolerance for intellectual independence,” yet he was “the great First Cause of Romanticism.”

The first performance of the symphony was at a private concert at Prince Lobkowitz’s in December, 1804. The composer conducted, and in the second half of the first Allegro he brought the orchestra to grief, so that a fresh start was made. The first performance in public was at a concert given by Clement at the Theater an der Wien, April 7, 1805. The symphony was announced as “A new grand Symphony in D sharp by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to his Excellence Prince von Lobkowitz.” Beethoven conducted. Czerny remembered that someone shouted from the gallery: “I’d give another kreutzer if they would stop.” Beethoven’s friends declared the work a masterpiece. Some said it would gain if it were shortened, if there were more “light, clearness, and unity.” Others found it a mixture of the good, the grotesque, the tiresome.

The symphony was published in October, 1806. The title in Italian stated that it was to celebrate the memory of a great man. And there was this note: “Since this symphony is longer than an ordinary symphony, it should be performed at the beginning rather than at the end of a concert, either after an overture or an aria, or after a concerto. If it be performed too late, there is the danger that it will not produce on the audience, whose attention will be already wearied by preceding pieces, the effect which the composer purposed in his own mind to attain.”

The theme of the first movement is note for note the same as that of the first measures of the Intrade written by Mozart in 1768, at Vienna, for his one-act operetta, Bastien et Bastienne, performed that year in a Viennese garden house. Beethoven’s theme is finished by the violins and developed at length. There is a subsidiary theme, which begins with a series of detached phrases distributed among wood-wind instruments and then the violins. The second theme, of a plaintive character, is given out alternately by wood-wind and strings. The development is most elaborate, full of striking contrasts, rich in new ideas. The passage in which the horn enters with the first two measures of the first theme in the tonic chord of the key, while the violins keep up a tremolo on A flat and B flat, has given rise to many anecdotes and provoked fierce discussion. The coda is of unusual length.

The Funeral March, Adagio assai, C minor, 2-4, begins, pianissimo e sotto voce, with the theme in the first violins, accompanied by simple chords in the other strings. The theme is repeated by the oboe, accompanied by wood-wind instruments and strings; the strings give the second portion of the theme. A development by full orchestra follows. The second theme is in C major. Phrases are given out by various wood-wind instruments in alternation, accompanied by triplet arpeggios in the strings. This theme, too, is developed; and there is a return to the first theme in C minor in the strings. There is fugal development at length of a figure that is not closely connected with either of the two themes. The first theme reappears for a moment, but strings and brass enter fortissimo in A flat major. This episode is followed by another; and at last the first theme returns in fragmentary form in the first violins, accompanied by a pizzicato bass and chords in oboes and horns.

M. d’Indy,[9] discussing the patriotism of Beethoven as shown in his music, calls attention to the militarisme, the adaptation of a warlike rhythm to melody, that characterizes this march.

Scherzo: allegro vivace, E flat major, 3-4. Strings are pianissimo and staccato, and oboe and first violins play a gay theme which Marx says is taken from an old Austrian folk song. This melody is the basic material of the scherzo. The trio in E flat major includes hunting calls by the horns, which are interrupted by passages in wood-wind instruments or strings.

Finale: allegro molto, E flat major, 2-4. A theme, or, rather, a double theme, with variations. Beethoven was fond of this theme, for he had used it in the finale of his ballet, Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, in the Variations for pianoforte, Op. 35, and in a country dance. After a few measures of introduction, the bass to the melody which is to come is given out, as though it were an independent theme. The first two variations in the strings are contrapuntal. In the third the tuneful second theme is in the wood-wind against runs in the first violins. The fourth is a long fugal development of the first theme against a counter subject found in the first variation. Variations in G minor follow, and the second theme is heard in C major. There is a new fugal development of the inverted first theme. The tempo changes to poco andante, wood-wind instruments play an expressive version of the second theme, which is developed to a coda for full orchestra, and the symphony ends with a joyful glorification of the theme.

First performances: London, 1814. Paris (at a rehearsal in 1815 everybody laughed after the first and second movement; this happened at another attempt some years later), Conservatory Orchestra, 1828. St. Petersburg, 1834. Rome, 1860. Madrid, 1878.

SYMPHONY NO. 4, IN B FLAT MAJOR, OP. 60

I. Adagio; Allegro vivace II. Adagio III. Allegro vivace. Trio. Un poco meno allegro IV. Finale: Allegro, ma non troppo

Of the nine symphonies of Beethoven the Fourth and Sixth are the least impressive. The First is historically interesting, and its finale is delightfully gay. The Second is also interesting as showing the development of Beethoven’s musical mind. After the Eroica, the Fourth seems a droop in the flight of imagination. Yet there are noble and strange things in this symphony, things that only Beethoven could have written: the introduction, the mysterious measures with the crescendo that majestically reëstablishes the chief tonality in the first movement; the superb adagio.

The old theory that the Fourth was inspired by Beethoven’s love for Therese Brunswick; that he was betrothed to her, which made happiness the keynote to the music, has been disproved, if ever it was accepted by students of Beethoven’s life. As a matter of fact, nothing is known about the “origin” of the music. A German commentator has recently spoken of “indecisiveness of mood” as “part of the imaginative scheme of the whole work”; he even sees in the adagio “the stimulus of some tense emotion” such as inspired the love letter, whether aroused by the “Immortal” or some other beloved. Is it not enough to hear the serene, nobly emotional adagio without vain speculation as to why Beethoven was so deeply moved? Nor is it necessary to see Berlioz’s Archangel Michael, who, by the way, was the warlike leader of the angelic hosts, sighing and overcome by melancholy, as “he contemplated the worlds from the threshold of the empyrean.” One might ask why should Michael grow melancholy at the glorious sight? Nor can Beethoven’s adagio be justly characterized as melancholy.

The composition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor was interrupted by work on the Symphony in B flat major, No. 4, a symphony of a very different character. The symphony was probably planned and composed in the summer of 1806. “Having been played in March, 1807, at one of the two subscription concerts at Lobkowitz’s,” Thayer is justified in adding solemnly that “it must have been finished at that time.”

After the performance of the Eroica, Beethoven also worked on his opera, Fidelio. The French army entered Vienna November 13, 1805; on the 15th, Napoleon sent to the Viennese a proclamation dated at Schönbrunn, and on November 20, 1805, Fidelio was performed for the first time, before an audience largely composed of French officers. There were three performances, and the opera was withdrawn until March 29, 1806, when it was reduced from three acts to two. The opera was again coldly received; there were two performances; and there was no revival in Vienna until 1814.

Beethoven, disturbed by the disaster which attended the first performances of his Fidelio in Vienna, during the French invasion, went in 1806 to Hungary to visit his friend, Count Brunswick. He visited the Prince Lichnowsky at Castle Grätz, which was near Troppau in Silesia. It has been said that at Martonvásár, visiting the Brunswicks, he found that he loved Therese and that his love was returned. Some, therefore, account for the postponement of the Fifth symphony, begun before the Fourth, “by the fact that in May, 1806, Beethoven became engaged to the Countess Therese.... The B flat symphony has been mentioned as ‘the most tenderly classical’ of all works of its kind; its keynote is ‘happiness’—a contentment which could have come to the master only through such an incident as the one above set forth—his betrothal.” We do not see the force of this reasoning.

It is better to say with Thayer that nothing is known about the origin of the Fourth beyond the inscription put by the composer on the manuscript which belongs to the Mendelssohn family: “Sinfonia 4^ta 1806. L. v. Bthvn.”

This we do know: that, while Beethoven was visiting Prince Lichnowsky at the latter’s Castle Grätz, the two called on Franz, Count Oppersdorff, who had a castle near Grossglogau. This count, born in 1778, rich and high-born, was fond of music; he had at this castle a well-drilled orchestra, which then played Beethoven’s Symphony in D major in the presence of the composer. In June, 1807, he commissioned Beethoven to compose a symphony, paid him two hundred florins in advance and one hundred and fifty florins more in 1808. Beethoven accepted the offer, and purposed to give the Symphony in C minor to the Count; but he changed his mind, and in November, 1808, the Count received, not the symphony, but a letter of apology, in which Beethoven said that he had been obliged to sell the symphony which he had composed for him, and also another—these were probably the Fifth and the Sixth—but that the Count would receive soon the one intended for him. The Fifth and Sixth were dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz and Count Rasoumowsky. Oppersdorff at last received the Fourth symphony, dedicated to him, a symphony that was begun before he gave the commission; he received it after it had been performed. He was naturally offended, especially as the Fourth symphony at first met with little favor. He did not give Beethoven another commission, nor did he meet him again, although Beethoven visited again the Castle Grätz in 1811. The Count died January 21, 1818.

The Fourth symphony was performed for the first time at one of two concerts given in Vienna about the 15th of March, 1807, at Prince Lobkowitz’s. The concert was for the benefit of the composer. The Journal des Luxus und der Moden published this review early in April of that year:

“Beethoven gave in the dwelling house of Prince L. two concerts in which only his own compositions were performed: the first four symphonies, an overture to the tragedy Coriolanus, a pianoforte concerto, and some arias from Fidelio. Wealth of ideas, bold originality, and fullness of strength, the peculiar characteristics of Beethoven’s Muse, were here plainly in evidence. Yet many took exception to the neglect of noble simplicity, to the excessive amassing thoughts, which on account of their number are not always sufficiently blended and elaborated, and therefore often produce the effect of uncut diamonds.”

Was this “Prince L.” Lobkowitz or Lichnowsky? Thayer decided in favor of the former.

Berlioz writes of this symphony:

“Here Beethoven abandons wholly the ode and the elegy—a reference to the Eroica symphony—to return to the less lofty and somber but perhaps no less difficult style of the Second symphony. The character of this score is generally lively, nimble, joyous, or of a heavenly sweetness. If we except the meditative adagio, which serves as an introduction, the first movement is almost entirely given up to joyfulness. The motive in detached notes, with which the allegro begins, is only a canvas, on which the composer spreads other and more substantial melodies, which thus render the apparently chief idea of the beginning an accessory. This artifice, although it is fertile in curious and interesting results, has already been employed by Mozart and Haydn with equal success. But we find in the second section of this same allegro an idea that is truly new, the first measures of which captivate the attention; this idea, after leading the hearer’s mind through mysterious developments, astonishes it by its unexpected ending.... This astonishing crescendo is one of the most skillfully contrived things we know of in music: you will hardly find its equal except in that which ends the famous scherzo of the Symphony in C minor. And this latter, in spite of its immense effectiveness, is conceived on a less vast scale, for it sets out from piano to arrive at the final explosion without departing from the principal key, while the one whose march we have just described starts from mezzo-forte, is lost for a moment in a pianissimo beneath which are harmonies with vague and undecided coloring, then reappears with chords of a more determined tonality, and bursts out only at the moment when the cloud that veiled this modulation is completely dissipated. You might compare it to a river whose calm waters suddenly disappear and only leave the subterranean bed to plunge with a roar in a foaming waterfall.

“As for the adagio—it escapes analysis. It is so pure in form, the melodic expression is so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness, that the prodigious art of the workmanship disappears completely. You are seized, from the first measure, by an emotion which at the end becomes overwhelming in its intensity; and it is only in the works of one of these giants of poetry that we can find a point of comparison with this sublime page of the giant of music. Nothing, indeed, more resembles the impression produced by this adagio than that which we experience when we read the touching episode of Francesca da Rimini in the Divina Commedia, the recital of which Virgil cannot hear ‘without weeping in sobs,’ and which, at the last verse, makes Dante ‘fall, as falls a dead body.’ This movement seems to have been sighed by the archangel Michael, one day when, overcome by melancholy, he contemplated the worlds from the threshold of the empyrean.

“The scherzo consists almost wholly of phrases in binary rhythm forced to enter into combinations of 3-4 time.... The melody of the trio, given to wind instruments, is of a delicious freshness; the pace is a little slower than that of the rest of the scherzo, and its simplicity stands out in still greater elegance from the opposition of the little phrases which the violins throw across the wind instruments, like so many teasing but charming allurements.

“The finale, gay and lively, returns to ordinary rhythmic forms; it consists of a jingling of sparkling notes, interrupted, however, by some hoarse and savage chords, in which are shown the angry outbursts which we have already had occasion to notice in the composer.”

SYMPHONY NO. 5, IN C MINOR, OP. 67

I. Allegro con brio II. Andante con moto III. Allegro; trio— IV. Allegro

As for the Fifth symphony, what words can be said of its composer more fitting than those of De Quincey’s apostrophe to Shakespeare; “O mighty poet! Thy works are not those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, the frost and the dew, hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that the farther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had nothing but accident!”

In all modern music there is no page more thrilling than that of the mysterious, unearthly transition from the scherzo to the finale, and the preceding pages are the triumph of absolute music over that which needs a programme or is the translation of something into music. Here is music that was not suggested, but it suggests that which can only be imagined, not spoken, not painted, not written in lofty rhyme or passionate prose.

Beethoven sketched motives of the Allegro, Andante, and scherzo of this symphony as early as 1800 and 1801. We know from sketches that while he was at work on Fidelio and the pianoforte concerto in G major—1804-06—he was also busied with this symphony, which he put aside to compose the Fourth symphony, in B flat.

The Symphony in C minor was finished in the neighborhood of Heiligenstadt in 1807. Dedicated to the Prince von Lobkowitz and the Count Rasoumowsky, it was published in April, 1809. It was first performed at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 22, 1808.

Instead of inquiring curiously into the legend invented by Schindler—“and for this reason a statement to be doubted,” as Bülow said—that Beethoven remarked of the first theme, “So knocks Fate on the door!” (it is said that Ferdinand Ries was the author of this explanation and that Beethoven was grimly sarcastic when Ries, his pupil, made it known to him), instead of investigating the statement that the rhythm of this theme was suggested by the note of a bird—oriole or goldfinch—heard during a walk; instead of a long analysis, which is vexation and confusion without the themes and their variants in notation, let us read and ponder the words of the great Hector Berlioz:

“The most celebrated of them all, beyond doubt and peradventure, is also the first, I think, in which Beethoven gave the reins to his vast imagination, without taking for guide or aid a foreign thought. In the First, Second, and Fourth, he more or less enlarged forms already known, and poetized them with all the brilliant and passionate inspirations of his vigorous youth. In the Third, the Eroica, there is a tendency, it is true, to enlarge the form, and the thought is raised to a mighty height; but it is impossible to ignore the influence of one of the divine poets to whom for a long time the great artist had raised a temple in his heart. Beethoven, faithful to the Horatian precept, ‘Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna,’ read Homer constantly, and in his magnificent musical epopee, which, they say, I know not whether it be true or false, was inspired by a modern hero, the recollections of the ancient Iliad play a part that is as evident as admirably beautiful.

“The Symphony in C minor, on the other hand, seems to us to come directly and solely from the genius of Beethoven; he develops in it his own intimate thought; his secret sorrows, his concentrated rage, his reveries charged with a dejection, oh, so sad, his visions at night, his bursts of enthusiasm—these furnish him the subject; and the forms of melody, harmony, rhythm, and orchestration are displayed as essentially individual and new as they are powerful and noble.

“The first movement is devoted to the painting of disordered sentiments which overthrow a great soul, a prey to despair; not the concentrated, calm despair that borrows the shape of resignation; not the dark and voiceless sorrow of Romeo who learns of the death of Juliet; but the terrible rage of Othello when he receives from Iago’s mouth the poisonous slanders which persuade him of Desdemona’s guilt. Now it is a frenetic delirium which explodes in frightful cries; and now it is the prostration that has only accents of regret and profound self-pity. Hear these hiccups of the orchestra, these dialogues in chords between wind instruments and strings, which come and go, always weaker and fainter, like unto the painful breathing of a dying man, and then give way to a phrase full of violence, in which the orchestra seems to rise to its feet, revived by a flash of fury; see this shuddering mass hesitate a moment and then rush headlong, divided in two burning unisons as two streams of lava; ... and then say if this passionate style is not beyond and above everything that had been produced hitherto in instrumental music....

“The adagio” [andante con moto] “has characteristics in common with the allegretto in A minor of the Seventh symphony and the slow movement of the Fourth. It partakes alike of the melancholy soberness of the former and the touching grace of the latter. The theme, at first announced by the united violoncellos and violas, with a simple accompaniment of the double-basses pizzicato, is followed by a phrase for wind instruments, which returns constantly, and in the same tonality throughout the movement, whatever be the successive changes of the first theme. This persistence of the same phrase, represented always in a profoundly sad simplicity, produces little by little on the hearer’s soul an indescribable impression....

“The scherzo is a strange composition. Its first measures, which are not terrible themselves, provoke that inexplicable emotion which you feel when the magnetic gaze of certain persons is fastened on you. Here everything is somber, mysterious; the orchestration, more or less sinister, springs apparently from the state of mind that created the famous scene of the Blocksberg in Goethe’s Faust. Nuances of piano and mezzoforte dominate. The trio is a double-bass figure, executed with the full force of the bow; its savage roughness shakes the orchestral stands and reminds one of the gambols of a frolicsome elephant. But the monster retires, and little by little the noise of his mad course dies away. The theme of the scherzo reappears in pizzicato. Silence is almost established, for you hear only some violin tones lightly plucked and strange little cluckings of bassoons.... At last the strings give gently with the bow the chord of A flat and doze on it. Only the drums preserve the rhythm; light blows struck by sponge-headed drumsticks mark the dull rhythm amid the general stagnation of the orchestra. These drum notes are C’s; the tonality of the movement is C minor; but the chord of A flat sustained for a long time by the other instruments seems to introduce a different tonality, while the isolated hammering of the C on the drums tends to preserve the feeling of the foundation tonality. The ear hesitates—but will this mystery of harmony end?—and the dull pulsations of the drums, growing louder and louder, reach the violins, which now take part in the movement and with a change of harmony, to the chord of the dominant seventh, G, B, D, F, while the drums roll obstinately their tonic C; the whole orchestra, assisted by the trombones, which have not yet been heard, bursts in the major into the theme of a triumphal march, and the finale begins....

“Criticism has tried, however, to diminish the composer’s glory by stating that he employed ordinary means, the brilliance of the major mode pompously following the darkness of a pianissimo in minor; that the triumphal march is without originality, and that the interest wanes even to the end, whereas it should increase. I reply to this: Did it require less genius to create a work like this because the passage from piano to forte and that from minor to major were the means already understood? Many composers have wished to take advantage of the same means; and what result did they obtain comparable to this gigantic chant of victory in which the soul of the poet-musician, henceforth free from earthly shackles, terrestrial sufferings, seems to mount radiantly towards heaven? The first four measures of the theme, it is true, are not highly original, but the forms of a fanfare are inherently restricted, and I do not think it possible to find new forms without departing utterly from the simple, grand, pompous character which is becoming. Beethoven wished only an entrance of the fanfare for the beginning of his finale, and he quickly found in the rest of the movement and even in the conclusion of the chief theme that loftiness and originality of style which never forsook him. And this may be said in answer to the reproach of his not having increased the interest to the very end; music, in the state known at least to us, would not know how to produce a more violent effect than that of this transition from scherzo to triumphal march; it was then impossible to enlarge the effect afterwards.

“To sustain one’s self at such a height is of itself a prodigious effort; yet in spite of the breadth of the developments to which he committed himself, Beethoven was able to do it. But this equality from the beginning to end is enough to make the charge of diminished interest plausible, on account of the terrible shock which the ears receive at the beginning; a shock that, by exciting nervous emotion to its most violent paroxysm, makes the succeeding instant the more difficult. In a long row of columns of equal height, an optical illusion makes the most remote appear the smallest. Perhaps our weak organization would accommodate itself to a more laconic peroration, as that of Gluck’s ‘Notre général vous rappelle.’ Then the audience would not have to grow cold, and the symphony would end before weariness had made impossible further following in the steps of the composer. This remark bears only on the mise en scène of the work; it does not do away with the fact that this finale in itself is rich and magnificent; very few movements can draw near without being crushed by it.”

SYMPHONY NO. 6, IN F MAJOR, “PASTORALE,” OP. 68

I. Awakening of serene impressions on arriving in the country: allegro, ma non troppo II. Scene by the brookside: andante molto moto III. Jolly gathering of country folk: allegro; in tempo d’allegro Thunderstorm; tempest: allegro IV. Shepherd’s song; gladsome and thankful feelings after the storm: allegretto

When justly read, this symphony is indeed pastoral, light-hearted, something more than a fearsome length relieved only by the little ornithological passage in which nightingale, quail, and cuckoo are neatly imitated; at least, it is fair to suppose this; we have never heard the nightingale sing. Jean Cocteau, in his amusing little book full of aphorisms designed to make the bourgeois sit up, says that the nightingale sings badly. So we must not be unduly prejudiced by praise of the bird coming from Milton, Matthew Arnold, and other poetical enthusiasts. Then there is the thunderstorm—the tempest, to use the good country term that has come down from Shakespeare and before him. And how charming the first two movements! To borrow the Host’s characterization of Master Fenton, the symphony smells April and May.

This symphony—Sinfonia pastorale—was composed in the country round about Heiligenstadt in the summer of 1808. It was first performed at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 22, 1808. The descriptive headings were probably an afterthought. In the sketchbook, which contains sketches for the first movement, is a note: “Characteristic Symphony. The recollections of life in the country.” There is also a note: “The hearer is left to find out the situations for himself.”

M. Vincent d’Indy in his Beethoven (Paris, 1911) devotes several pages to Beethoven’s love of nature. “Nature was to Beethoven not only a consoler for his sorrows and disenchantments; she was also a friend with whom he took pleasure in familiar talk, the only intercourse to which his deafness presented no obstacle.” Nor did Beethoven understand Nature in the dryly theoretical manner of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose writings then were in fashion, for there could be no point of contact between the doctrines of this Calvinist of Geneva and the effusions of Beethoven, a Catholic by birth and by education. Nor did Beethoven share the views of many Romantics about Nature. He would never have called her “immense, impenetrable, and haughty,” as Berlioz addressed her through the mouth of his Faust. A little nook, a meadow, a tree—these sufficed for Beethoven. He had so penetrated the beauty of nature that for more than a dozen years all his music was impregnated by it.

His bedside book for many, many years soon after his passion for Giulietta Guicciardi was the Lehr und Erbauungs Buch of Sturm. Passages underscored show the truth of the assertions just made, and he copied these lines that they might always be in his sight: “Nature can be justly called the school of the heart; it shows us beyond all doubt our duty towards God and our Neighbor. I wish therefore to become a disciple of this school, and offer my heart to it. Desirous of self-instruction, I wish to search after the wisdom that no disillusion can reject; I wish to arrive at the knowledge of God, and in this knowledge I shall find a foretaste of celestial joys.”

Nature to Beethoven was the country near by, which he could visit in his daily walks. If he was an indefatigable pedestrian, he was never an excursionist.

M. d’Indy draws a picture of the little Wirthschaften in the suburbs of the large towns, humble inns “not yet ticketed with the pompous barbarism of ‘restaurant.’” They were frequented by the bourgeoisie, who breathed the fresh air and on tables of wood ate the habitual sausage and drank the traditional beer. There was a dance hall with a small orchestra; there was a discreet garden with odorous alleys in which lovers could walk between the dances. Beyond was the forest where the peasant danced and sang and drank, but the songs and dances were here of a ruder nature.

Beethoven, renting a cottage at Döbling, Grinzing, or Heiligenstadt, which then were not official faubourgs, could in a few minutes be in the forest or open country. He did not attempt to reproduce the material, realistic impression of country sounds and noises, but only the spirit of the landscape.

Thus in the Pastoral symphony, to suggest the rustic calm and the tranquillity of the soul in contact with Nature, he did not seek curious harmonic conglomerations, but a simple, restrained melody which embraces only the interval of a sixth (from fa to re). This is enough to create in us the sentiment of repose—as much by its quasi-immobility as by the duration of this immobility. The exposition of this melody based on the interval of a sixth is repeated with different timbres, but musically the same, for fifty-two measures without interruption. In an analogous manner Wagner portrayed the majestic monotony of the river in the introduction to Rheingold. Thus far the landscape is uninhabited. The second musical idea introduces two human beings, man and woman, force and tenderness. The second musical thought is the thematic base of the whole work. In the scherzo the effect of sudden immobility produced by the bagpipe tune of the strolling musician (the oboe solo, followed by the horn), imposing itself on the noisy joy of the peasants, is due to the cause named above; here, with the exception of one note, the melody moves within the interval of a fifth.

The storm does not pretend to frighten the hearer. The insufficient kettledrums are enough to suggest the thunder, but in four movements of the five there is not a fragment of development in the minor mode. The key of F minor, reserved for the darkening of the landscape hitherto sunny and gay, produces a sinking of the heart and the distressing restlessness that accompany the approach of the tempest. Calm returns with the ambitus of the sixth, and then the shepherd’s song leads to a burst of joyfulness. The two themes are the masculine and feminine elements exposed in the first movement.

According to M. d’Indy the andante is the most admirable expression of true nature in musical literature. Only some passages of Siegfried and Parsifal are comparable. Conductors usually take this andante at too slow a pace and thus destroy the alert poetry of the section. The brook furnishes the basic movement, expressive melodies arise, and the feminine theme of the first allegro reappears, alone, disquieted by the absence of its mate. Each section is completed by a pure and prayer-like melody. It is the artist who prays, who loves, who crowns the diverse divisions of his work by a species of Alleluia.

It has been said that several of the themes in this symphony were taken from Styrian and Carinthian folk songs. It is dedicated to Prince von Lobkowitz and Count Rasoumowsky. The work was published in 1809.

SYMPHONY NO. 7, IN A MAJOR, OP. 92

I. Poco sostenuto; vivace II. Allegretto III. Presto; assai meno presto; tempo primo IV. Allegro con brio

The rhapsodists have had their say; the commentators have pried and conjectured; the later symphonies are still sublime in their grandeur. They well-nigh express the inexpressible.

Nor have the legends, fondly believed for years, done injury to the music. It matters not whether the Seventh symphony be a description of Germany exulting in its deliverance from the French yoke, or the apotheosis of the dance; whether the allegretto picture a procession in the catacombs or be the love dream of an odalisque. Whenever the music is played, whenever it comes into the mind, it awakens new thoughts and each one dreams his own dreams.

Each writer in turn publishes in print or by word of mouth his little explanation, but Beethoven broods, mysterious, gigantic, above commentators, above even conductors when they misunderstand him, or plume themselves upon a new and striking interpretation, or in their endeavor to grasp and convey to others the essential greatness of the composer put their trust in din and speed.

The first sketches of this symphony were probably made before 1811 or even 1810. The score of the symphony was dedicated to the Count Moritz von Fries and published in 1816. The edition for the pianoforte was dedicated to the Tsarina Elizabeth Alexievna of All the Russias.

The Seventh and Eighth symphonies were probably played over for the first time at the Archduke Rudolph’s in Vienna on April 20, 1813. Beethoven in the same month vainly endeavored to produce them at a concert. The first performance of the Seventh was at Vienna in the large hall of the university, on December 8, 1813.

Mälzel, the famous maker of automata, exhibited in Vienna during the winter of 1812-13 his automatic trumpeter and panharmonicon. The former played a French cavalry march with calls and tunes; the latter was composed of the instruments used in the ordinary military band of the period—trumpets, drums, flutes, clarinets, oboes, cymbals, triangle, etc. The keys were moved by a cylinder. Overtures by Handel and Cherubini and Haydn’s Military symphony were played with ease and precision. Beethoven planned his Wellington’s Victory, or Battle of Vittoria, for this machine. Mälzel made arrangements for a concert—a concert “for the benefit of Austrian and Bavarian soldiers disabled at the battle of Hanau.”

This Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (Mälzl) was born at Regensburg, August 15, 1772. He was the son of an organ builder. In 1792 he settled at Vienna as a teacher of music, but he soon made a name for himself by inventing mechanical music works. In 1816 he constructed a metronome, though Winkel, of Amsterdam, claimed the idea as his. Mälzel also made ear trumpets, and Beethoven tried them, as he did others. His life was a singular one, and the accounts of it are contradictory. Two leading French biographical dictionaries insist that Mälzel’s “brother Leonhard” invented the mechanical toys attributed to Johann, but they are wholly wrong. Fétis and one or two others state that he took the panharmonicon with him to the United States in 1826 and sold it at Boston to a society for four hundred thousand dollars—an incredible statement. No wonder that the Count de Pontécoulant, in his Organographie, repeating the statement, adds, “I think there is an extra cipher.” But Mälzel did visit America, and he spent several years here. He landed at New York, February 3, 1826, and the Ship News announced the arrival of “Mr. Maelzel, Professor of Music and Mechanics, inventor of the Panharmonicon and the Musical Time Keeper.” He brought with him the famous automata—the Chess Player, the Austrian Trumpeter, and the Rope Dancers—and opened an exhibition of them at the National Hotel, 112 Broadway, April 13, 1826. The Chess Player was invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen. Mälzel bought it at the sale of von Kempelen’s effects after the death of the latter, at Vienna, and made unimportant improvements. The Chess Player had strange adventures. It was owned for a time by Eugène Beauharnais, when he was viceroy of the kingdom of Italy, and Mälzel had much trouble in getting it away from him. Mälzel gave an exhibition in Boston at Julien Hall, on a corner of Milk and Congress streets. The exhibition opened September 13, 1826, and closed October 28 of that year. He visited Boston again in 1828 and 1833. On his second visit he added The Conflagration of Moscow, a panorama, which he sold to three Bostonians for six thousand dollars. Hence, probably, the origin of the panharmonicon legend. He also exhibited an automatic violoncellist. Mälzel died on the brig Otis on his way from Havana to Philadelphia on July 21, 1838, and was buried at sea, off Charleston. The United States Gazette published his eulogy and said, with due caution: “He has gone, we hope, where the music of his harmonicons will be exceeded.” The Chess Player was destroyed by fire in the burning of the Chinese Museum at Philadelphia, July 5, 1854. An interesting and minute account of Mälzel’s life in America, written by George Allen, is published in the Book of the First American Chess Congress, pp. 420-84 (New York, 1859); see also Métronome de Maelzel (Paris, 1833); the History of the Automatic Chess Player, published by George S. Hilliard, Boston, 1826; Mendel’s Musikalisches Conversations-Lexicon; and an article, Beethoven and Chess, by Charles Willing, published in The Good Companion Chess Problem Club of May 11, 1917 (Philadelphia), which contains facsimiles of Mälzel’s programmes in Philadelphia (1845) and Montreal (1847). In Poe’s fantastical “Von Kempelen and His Discovery” the description of his Kempelen, of Utica, N. Y., is said by some to fit Mälzel, but Poe’s story was probably not written before 1848. His article, “Maelzel’s Chess Player,” a remarkable analysis, was first published in the Southern Literary Messenger of April, 1836. Portions of this article other than those pertaining to the analysis were taken by Poe from Sir David Brewster’s Lectures on Natural Magic.

The programme of the Vienna concert was announced: “A brand-new symphony,” the Seventh, in A major, by Beethoven; and also Wellington’s Sieg, oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria. Wellington’s Sieg was completed in October, 1813, to celebrate the victory of Wellington over the French troops in Spain on June 21 of that year. Mälzel had persuaded Beethoven to compose the piece for his panharmonicon. He furnished material for it and gave him the idea of using “God Save the King” as the subject of a lively fugue. He purposed to produce the work at concerts, so as to raise money enough for him and Beethoven to visit London. A shrewd fellow, he said that if the “Battle” symphony were scored for orchestra and played in Vienna with success, an arrangement for his panharmonicon would then be of more value to him. Beethoven dedicated the work to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV, and forwarded a copy to him, but the “First Gentleman in Europe” never acknowledged the compliment. Wellington’s Sieg was not performed in London until February 10, 1815, when it had a great run. The news of this success pleased Beethoven very much. He made a memorandum of it in the notebook which he carried with him to taverns.

The benefit concert was brilliantly successful, and there was a repetition of it December 12 with the same prices of admission, ten and five florins. The net profit of the two performances was four thousand six gulden. Spohr tells us that the new pieces gave “extraordinary pleasure, especially the symphony; the wondrous second movement was repeated at each concert; it made a deep, enduring impression on me. The performance was a masterly one, in spite of the uncertain and often ridiculous conducting by Beethoven.” Glöggl was present at a rehearsal when violinists refused to play a passage in the symphony and declared that it could not be played. “Beethoven told them to take their parts home and practise them; then the passage would surely go.” It was at these rehearsals that Spohr saw the deaf composer crouch lower and lower to indicate a long diminuendo, and rise again and spring into the air when he demanded a climax. And he tells of a pathetic yet ludicrous blunder of Beethoven, who could not hear the soft passages.

Beethoven was delighted with his success, so much so that he wrote a public letter of thanks to all that took part in the two performances. “It is Mälzel especially who merits all our thanks. He was the first to conceive the idea of the concert, and it was he who busied himself actively with the organization and the ensemble in all the details. I owe him special thanks for having given me the opportunity of offering my compositions to the public use and thus fulfilling the ardent vow made by me long ago of putting the fruits of my labor on the altar of the country.”

The first movement opens with an introduction, poco sostenuto, A major, 4-4. The main body is vivace, 6-8. The allegretto is in A minor, 2-4; the third movement, presto, F major, 3-4. The finale, allegro con brio, A major, 2-4, is a wild rondo on two themes. Here, according to Mr. Prod’homme and others, as Beethoven achieved in the scherzo the highest and fullest expression of exuberant joy—“unbuttoned joy,” as the composer himself would have said—so in the finale the joy becomes orgiastic. The furious bacchantic first theme is repeated after the exposition, and there is a sort of coda to it, “as a chorus might follow upon the stanzas of a song.”[10]

SYMPHONY NO. 8, IN F MAJOR, OP. 93

I. Allegro vivace e con brio II. Allegretto scherzando III. Tempo di menuetto IV. Allegro vivace

Beethoven characterized his Eighth symphony as “a little symphony” and in the same letter spoke of the Seventh as a great one; yet if Czerny is to be believed the composer was vexed because the audience was cool when the Eighth was first performed. He said, “because it is much better” than the Seventh, which was played at the same concert. Authors often pronounce strange judgments on their works, as parents often favor a stupid or unpleasant child; but this composer had a right to be proud of the little Benjamin—the colossal Ninth was not then born—for the Eighth symphony is charged with the spirit of the greater Beethoven.

Some commentators have endeavored to read a programme into the symphony, thinking perhaps thus to give it greater importance. One speaks of the symphony as a “military trilogy”; another thinks the allegretto is a parody of Rossini’s manner, but the movement was written in 1812, and Vienna did not go mad over the Olympian Rossini until after that year. We even find Vincent d’Indy citing the Eighth as revealing impressions of Nature made on the composer’s soul; the trio of the pompous minuet is to M. d’Indy a representation in grotesque fashion of a peasant band, and the Hungarian theme in the finale, the hymn of Hunyadi, denotes the arrival of gypsy musicians in the midst of a festival.

The symphony needs not such support to excite extraneous interest. In the music we find Beethoven in reckless mood, whimsical, delighting in abrupt contrasts, shouting his joy, ready to play a practical joke. There is, no doubt, the absence of the “fine taste” which Debussy misses in the case of Beethoven and finds ruling the musical life of Bach and Mozart. No, Beethoven was not Paterian in a struggle after taste. He was an elemental person, coarse in his life, with an enormous capacity for hard work. There are others who have been condemned for a lack of taste: Euripides, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Verdi, Walt Whitman. De Quincey, a stylist, found Goethe lacking in taste when he wrote Wilhelm Meister.

And in this symphony, characterized by mad jollity, and a playfulness that at times approaches buffoonery, there are exquisite musical thoughts; there are passages that for a moment sound the depths and reach the heights.

The Eighth symphony was composed at Linz in the summer of 1812. Beethoven was in poor physical condition in that year, and as Staudenheim, his physician, advised him to try Bohemian baths, he went to Töplitz by way of Prague; to Carlsbad, where a note of the postillion’s horn found its way among the sketches for the Eighth symphony; to Franzensbrunn, and again to Töplitz; and lastly to his brother Johann’s home at Linz, where he remained until into November.

At the beginning of 1812 Beethoven contemplated writing three symphonies at the same time; the key of the third, D minor, was already determined, but he postponed work on this; and as the autograph score of the first of the remaining two, the Symphony in A, No. 7, is dated May 13, it is probable that he contemplated the Seventh before he left Vienna on his summer journey. His sojourn in Linz was not a pleasant one. Johann, a bachelor, lived in a house too large for his needs, and so he rented a part of it to a physician, who had a sister-in-law, Therese Obermeyer, a cheerful and well-proportioned woman of an agreeable if not handsome face. Johann looked on her kindly, made her his housekeeper, and according to the gossips of Linz, there was a closer relationship. Beethoven meddled with his brother’s affairs, and, finding him obdurate, visited the bishop and the police authorities and persuaded them to banish her from the town, to send her to Vienna if she should still be in Linz on a fixed day. Naturally, there was a wild scene between the brothers. Johann played the winning card: he married Therese on November 8. Ludwig, furious, went back to Vienna and took pleasure afterwards in referring to his sister-in-law in both his conversation and his letters as the “Queen of Night.”

This same Johann said that the Eighth symphony was completed from sketches made during walks to and from the Pöstlingberge, but Thayer considered him to be an untrustworthy witness.

The two symphonies were probably played over the first time at the Archduke Rudolph’s in Vienna, April 20, 1813. Beethoven in the same month endeavored to produce them at a concert, but without success. The Seventh was not played until December 8, 1813, at a concert organized by Mälzel. The first performance of the Eighth symphony was at a concert given by Beethoven at Vienna in the Redoutensaal on Sunday, February 27, 1814.

The Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, in a review of this concert, stated that the Seventh symphony was again heartily applauded, and the allegro was repeated. “All were in anxious expectation to hear the new symphony (F major, 3-4), the latest product of Beethoven’s muse; but this expectation after one hearing was not fully satisfied, and the applause which the work received was not of that enthusiastic nature by which a work that pleases universally is distinguished. In short, the symphony did not make, as the Italians say, a furore. I am of the opinion that the cause of this was not in weaker or less artistic workmanship (for in this, as in all of Beethoven’s works of this species, breathes the peculiar genius which always proves his originality), but partly in the mistake of allowing this symphony to follow the one in A major, and partly in the satiety that followed the enjoyment of so much that was beautiful and excellent, whereby natural apathy was the result. If this symphony in future should be given alone, I have no doubt concerning its favorable reception.”

There were in the orchestra at this concert eighteen first violins, eighteen second violins, fourteen violas, twelve violoncellos, seven double basses. The audience numbered about three thousand, although Schindler spoke of five thousand.

We know from his talk noted down that Beethoven originally planned an elaborate introduction to this symphony.

It is often said that the second movement, the celebrated allegretto scherzando, is based on the theme of a “three-voice circular canon, or round, Ta, ta, ta, lieber Mälzel, sung in honor of the inventor of the metronome at a farewell dinner given to Beethoven in July, 1812, before his leaving Vienna for his summer trip into the country.” This story was first told by Schindler, who, however, did not say that the dinner was given to Beethoven alone, and did say that the dinner was in the spring of 1812. Beethoven was about to visit his brother Johann in Linz; Mälzel was going to England to produce there his automaton trumpeter but was obliged to defer this journey. Beethoven, who among intimate friends was customarily “gay, witty, satiric, ‘unbuttoned,’ as he called it,” improvised at this parting meal a canon, which was sung immediately by those present. The allegretto was founded on this canon, suggested by the metronome, according to Schindler. Thayer[11] examined this story with incredible patience, and he drew these conclusions: the machine that we now know as Mälzel’s metronome was at first called a musical chronometer, and not until 1817 could the canon include the word “Metronom.” Schindler, who was seventeen years old in 1812, heard the story from Count Brunswick, who was present at the meal, but was not in Vienna from March, 1810, till the end of February, 1813, four months after the completion of the symphony. Furthermore, Beethoven is reported as having said: “I, too, am in the second movement of the Eighth symphony—ta, ta, ta, ta—the canon on Mälzel. It was a right jolly evening when we sang this canon. Mälzel was the bass. At that time I sang the soprano. I think it was toward the end of December, 1817.” Thayer says: “That Mälzel’s ‘ta, ta, ta’ suggested the allegretto to Beethoven, and that at a parting meal the canon on this theme was sung, are doubtless true; but it is by no means sure that the canon preceded the symphony.... If the canon was written before the symphony, it was not improvised at this meal; if it was then improvised, it was only a repetition of the allegretto theme in canon form.” However this may be, the persistent ticking of a wind instrument in sixteenth notes is heard almost throughout the movement, of which Berlioz said: “It is one of those productions for which neither model nor pendant can be found. This sort of thing falls entire from heaven into the composer’s brain. He writes it at a single dash, and we are amazed at hearing it.”

SYMPHONY NO. 9, IN D MINOR, WITH FINAL CHORUS ON SCHILLER’S “ODE TO JOY,” OP. 125

I. Allegro, ma non troppo, un poco maestoso II. Molto vivace; presto III. Adagio molto e cantabile IV. Presto Allegro assai Presto Baritone recitative Quartet and chorus: allegro assai Tenor solo and chorus: allegro assai vivace, alla marcia Chorus: allegro assai Chorus: andante maestoso Adagio, ma non troppo, ma divoto Allegro energico, sempre ben marcato Quartet and chorus: allegro ma non tanto; prestissimo

Much has been written about the Ninth symphony, a symphony that has been and is a stumbling block to certain conductors and hearers. It is easy to smile at such books as Le Livre de la Genèse de la IX Symphonie de Beethoven, by Ricciotto Canudo, with its fantastical theories and titles given to the leading themes, but the comments of more ordinary mortals have led conductors into singular experiments. Some have rewritten passages. Some, fearing the inherent difficulties in the finale, have transposed this finale a tone lower. There are hearers who, knowing the theory of Wagner—that the Ninth symphony was the logical end of purely instrumental music, and Beethoven introduced singers in the finale to show his impatience with the orchestra as a medium of full expression—look on the symphony as a polemical work and in turn deny all absolute music written after Beethoven’s death.

The music remains, in spite of the commentators and the too anxious conductors. The instrumental movements are among the proudest achievements of man. Mr. Canudo may begin his “explanation” of the opening allegro by saying: “In the beginning was space; and all possibilities were in space; and life was space”; he may find in a certain page the “religious affirmation of Creation”; he may entitle the first theme of the adagio “The rhythm of the blessed cosmic night” and thus take his pleasure.

The music of the first three movements is not the less sublime or beautiful because it has no programme, because it has no text for singers. With the exception of a few stupendous passages in the finale, where Beethoven is among the stars, the finale falls below the movements that precede it. There is more frenzied joy in the scherzo; there is greater, world-embracing humanity, a loftier, nobler spirit in the adagio. The theme of Joy is not in itself one of Beethoven’s most fortunate inventions, and there are pages both for singers and for orchestra that disconcert even if they do not seem to the hearer abnormal and impotent. The answer made by some is that if an ideal performance could be attained the grandeur of the thought would then be overwhelming. Unfortunately, human voices have their limitations.

Yet if the first three movements are performed alone, there is a sense of incompleteness. If the finale is transposed, the effect is diminished. And so the Ninth symphony as a whole is still a stumbling block to many.

Beethoven made sketches for his Ninth symphony as early as 1815. The symphony was completed about February, 1824. The idea of adding a chorus to the last movement probably came to him only in the course of his work, for there are sketches of a purely instrumental finale which Nottebohm says were made in June or July, 1823; but Schiller’s Hymn to Joy had long tempted Beethoven. At Bonn, in 1792, he thought of setting music to it. His Fantaisie for piano, orchestra, and chorus (1800) contains the melodic germ that he afterwards used for Schiller’s words. Perhaps the “mother melody” may be found in a folk song, “Freu’ dich sehr, O meine Selle, und vergiss’ all’ Noth und Qual.” Wasielewski thinks the origin is in a song of Beethoven’s, “Kleine Blümen, kleine Blätter,” with text by Goethe, while the music was composed in 1810.

According to Beethoven’s sketchbooks, he was planning two symphonies; one, for England, was to be purely instrumental; the other was the Sinfonie allemand, either with variations after the chorus when it entered, or without variations; the finale with “Turkish music”—that is, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle—“and choral song.”

In 1817, there was correspondence between the Philharmonic Society of London and Beethoven with reference to the latter’s visiting England. He was offered 300 guineas if he would come to London and superintend the production of two symphonies to be composed for the Society. Beethoven asked for 400 guineas; 150 to be paid in advance (one hundred were for traveling expenses). The previous offer was repeated, but Beethoven abandoned his intention of going to London.

At the first performance of the Ninth symphony in England (March 21, 1825), the programme read: “New Grand Characteristic Sinfonia, MS. with vocal finale, the principal parts to be sung by Madame Caradori, Miss Goodall, Mr. Vaughan, and Mr. Phillips; composed expressly for this Society.” There was also a note in which it was said that in 1822 the directors of the Philharmonic had offered Beethoven £50 for a symphony to be delivered at the stipulated time; and as it had been performed and published at Vienna before the Society could use it, the remuneration was ample. It should be remembered that the Philharmonic Society, learning of Beethoven’s sickness in 1827, sent him £100. Beethoven acknowledged in most grateful terms, eight days before his death, the receipt of the sum given him by these “generous” Englishmen, and spoke of a tenth symphony wholly sketched, also a new overture, that he might send to them. He had written to Ries in 1823 that only his poverty compelled him to write the Ninth symphony for the Philharmonic; he had sent to it the overture The Dedication of the House, and he asked Ries to drive as good a bargain as he could for it. He had been vexed because the Philharmonic Society had characterized three overtures delivered for 75 guineas in 1815: Ruins of Athens, King Stephen, and Zur Namensfeier, as “unworthy” of the composer.

After Beethoven’s death, the Philharmonic Society reclaimed the gift of £100, but was persuaded to withdraw the claim. A portion of the money was applied to the payment of the funeral expenses.

The first performance of the Ninth symphony was at the Kärthnerthor Theater, Vienna, on May 7, 1824. Musicians and wealthy amateurs organized the concert, for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde had refused the undertaking on account of the expense. Beethoven then proposed to give the first performance of the symphony and the great Mass in Berlin, where Count Brühl, the Intendant of the Royal theaters there, was favorably inclined. This led the Viennese patrons and musicians to sign a petition, begging Beethoven to spare Vienna the shame. He reflected, and consented. The programme, approved by the police, was as follows: Grand Overture, Op. 124; Three Grand Hymns for solo voices and chorus; Grand Symphony with a finale in which solo voices and chorus enter, on the text of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” The three “Hymns” were the Kyrie, Credo, Agnus Dei, of the Mass in D. Sedlinsky, the chief of police, acting on the advice of the Archbishop, had forbidden the printing of “Sacred words” on a play-bill, and the church authorities were opposed to the performance of missal music in a theater.

The solo singers were Henriette Sontag, Karolina Unger, Anton Haitzinger, and J. Seipelt. The chorus was composed of amateurs from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Ignaz Schuppanzigh was the concertmaster; Michael Umlauf conducted. Beethoven asked for twenty-four violins, ten violas, twelve violoncellos and double basses, and a doubling of wind instruments. The rehearsals were laborious. The solo singers had great difficulty in learning their parts. Mmes Sontag and Unger begged Beethoven to make changes in their music. He was obdurate. Mme Unger called him to his face “tyrant over all the vocal organs.” When he refused to change the music, she said to Mme Sontag: “Well, then we must go on torturing ourselves in the name of God.” The success of the symphony was great, though the performance was imperfect. “There was lack of homogeneous power, a paucity of nuance, a poor distribution of lights and shades.” When the drum alone beat the scherzo motive, the audience applauded so that a repetition seemed inevitable. (It was of the scherzo that Rossini, hearing the symphony in Paris, exclaimed, “I could not have written that.”) Mme Unger led Beethoven to the edge of the stage that he might see the crowd waving hats and handkerchiefs. He bowed and was calm. Mme Grebner, who had sung in the chorus, told Felix Weingartner that Beethoven sat in the middle of the orchestra and followed the score. Thalberg, the pianist, who was in the audience, told A. W. Thayer that Beethoven was dressed in a black dress-coat, white neckerchief and waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, black silk stockings, shoes with buckles; but Thalberg was mistaken if Schindler’s story is true, for he called on Beethoven just before the concert and said, “O great master, you do not own a black frock-coat! The green one will have to do. The theater will be dark, and no one will notice it. In a few days the black one will be ready.”

The success was unprecedented; the net pecuniary result was a sum equivalent to sixty dollars. Beethoven was angry. Some days after the concert, dining in a restaurant with Schindler and Duport, he accused them of having swindled him; nor would he be persuaded by Schuppanzigh that the charge was absurd, for Beethoven’s brother Johann and nephew Karl had watched the cashiers.

There was a second performance in Vienna on May 23, 1824, in the large Hall of the Redoutes. Duport assumed all the expenses, and guaranteed Beethoven 500 florins. The programme was not the same, but it included the symphony, the Kyrie, and the overture. The hour, noon, was unfavorable. Duport lost some hundreds of florins. These were the only performances at which Beethoven could be present.

Beethoven had purposed to dedicate the symphony to the Tsar Alexander; he finally dedicated it to Friedrich Wilhelm III, the King of Prussia. The King answered, expressing appreciation, and saying that he had sent to him a diamond ring. The gem turned out to be not a diamond, but a reddish stone valued by the court jeweler at 300 florins in paper money. The indignant Beethoven was inclined to return the ring; but he sold it to the jeweler who had appraised it. Some thought that the “reddish stone” had been substituted for the diamond ring on the way to Vienna.

Though Beethoven had long been fond of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” the Ninth symphony was not conceived at first as a celebration of joy. In 1818, he had the plan of introducing voices into a symphony “in the ancient modes,” but the text was to be relating to some Greek myth, or a pious song.

The symphony begins Allegro ma non troppo, D minor, 2-4; but the chief theme, though hinted at, does not appear until after sixteen measures. There is a continuous melodic development which may be divided into several distinct periods, but there is no marked contrast in character between what might be called eight separate themes.

The second movement, molto vivace, D minor, 3-4, is a scherzo, though it is not so called in the score. It is built on three leading themes. The peculiar rhythm of the dotted triplet is maintained either in the melody or in the accompaniment.

The third movement, adagio molto e cantabile, B flat major, 4-4, has been described as a double theme with variations.

The finale begins with several orchestral sections, the first presto, D minor, 3-4. There are recitatives for the lower strings. Finally, the baritone enters with this recitative:

O brothers, these sad tones no longer!

Rather raise we now together our voices,

And joyful be our song!

Allegro assai, D major, 4-5. The baritone “with the encouragement of the basses of the choruses at the beginning,” sings the first theme. Then follow passages for chorus, quartet, until the tempo changes to allegro assai vivace alla marcia, B flat major, 6-8. There are later changes in tempo until the final prestissimo, “in which the chorus goes stark mad with joy.”

The following translation of Schiller’s ode is by the late Henry G. Chapman:

TO JOY

Joy, thou spark from flame immortal

Daughter of Elysium!

Drunk with fire, O heav’n-born Goddess,

We invade thy halidom!

Let thy magic bring together

All whom earth-born laws divide;

All mankind shall be as brothers

’Neath thy tender wings and wide.

He that’s had that best good fortune,

To his friend a friend to be,

He that’s won a noble woman,

Let him join our Jubilee!

Ay, and who a single other

Soul on earth can call his own;

But let him who ne’er achieved it

Steal away in tears alone.

Joy doth every living creature

Draw from Nature’s ample breast;

All the good and all the evil

Follow on her roseate quest.

Kisses doth she give, and vintage,

Friends who firm in death have stood;

Joy of life the worm receiveth,

And the Angels dwell with God!

Glad as burning suns that glorious

Through the heavenly spaces sway,

Haste ye brothers, on your way,

Joyous as a knight victorious.

Love toward countless millions swelling,

Wafts one kiss to all the world!

Surely, o’er yon stars unfurl’d,

Some kind Father has his dwelling!

Fall ye prostrate, O ye millions!

Dost thy Maker feel, O world?

Seek Him o’er yon stars unfurl’d,

O’er the stars rise His pavilions!

OVERTURE TO “LEONORE NO. 3,” OP. 72

The overture is in itself a condensation of what is dramatic in an opera that has commonplace, yes, bourgeois pages. Hearing the overture, one is spared the sight of a bulbous and shrieking prima donna; of a tenor whose throat had been seriously affected by a long confinement in a “dem’d moist” dungeon; of the operetta young man and woman chatting with a flatiron among the stage properties; of four persons, each with an individual sentiment, singing the same tune in an approved scholastic form.

It might be well to play in the same concert the three Leonore overtures in the order in which they were probably written: Nos. 2, 3, 1. A programme composed exclusively of piano sonatas by Beethoven is an invention of the Adversary, and it deserves the attention of the police as a deliberate act against public morals. Nor is an orchestral programme devoted exclusively to the works of any composer to be encouraged, except possibly when the Ninth symphony is given. But with these overtures the case is different, for here is a revelation of Beethoven’s processes of musical and dramatic thought when he was mightily interested in the same subject.... How many composers, after the achievement of a Leonore No. 2, would have the courage or the ability to shape from it a Leonore No. 3? After the three were attentively heard and thoughtfully considered, then No. 3 might be reasonably reserved for concert use and the other two put away ready but surely on the shelf.

In the year that saw the production of Fidelio (November 20, 1805), Napoleon’s army was hastening toward Vienna. There was an exodus from the town of the nobility, merchants, and other residents. The vanguard of the French army entered on November 13. Those of the Viennese who would have appreciated the opera had fled the town. The theater was not well filled. Many in the audience were or had been officers in Napoleon’s army. The success of the opera was small. Only two performances followed the first. At the first and at the second the overture Leonore No. 2 was performed. Anna Pauline Milder, afterwards Mme Hauptmann, was the heroine. “The opera was hastily put upon the stage, and the inadequacy of the singers thus increased by the lack of sufficient rehearsals.” Beethoven had received the text in 1804. He worked on the music the following summer at Hetzendorf. On his return to Vienna, rehearsals were begun. In later years Fidelio was one of Anna Milder’s great parts: “Judging from the contemporary criticism, it was now [1805] somewhat defective, simply from lack of stage experience.”

Leonore No. 2 was the overture played at the first performance in Vienna. The opera was withdrawn, revised, and produced again on March 29, 1806, when Leonore No. 3, a remodeled form of No. 2, was the overture. There was talk of a performance at Prague in 1807. Beethoven wrote for it a new overture, retaining the theme derived from Florestan’s air, “In des Lebens Frülingstagen.” The other material in Nos. 2 and 3 was not used. The opera was not performed; the autograph of the overture disappeared. Fidelio was revived at Vienna in 1814. For this performance Beethoven wrote the Fidelio overture. We know from his diary that he “rewrote and bettered” the opera by working on it from March to May 15 of that year.

The dress rehearsal was on May 22, but the promised overture was not ready. On the 20th or 21st, Beethoven was dining at a tavern with his friend Bartolini. After the meal was over, Beethoven took a bill of fare, drew lines on the back of it, and began to write. “Come, let us go,” said Bartolini. “No, wait a while: I have the scheme of my overture,” answered Beethoven, and he sat until he had finished his sketches. Nor was he at the dress rehearsal. They waited for him a long time, then went to his lodgings. He was fast asleep in bed. A cup of wine and biscuits were near him, and sheets of the overture were on the bed and the floor. The candle was burnt out. It was impossible to use the new overture, which was not even finished. Schindler said a Leonore overture was played. According to Seyfried, the overture used was that to The Ruins of Athens.

The order, then, of these overtures, according to the time of composition, is now supposed to be Leonore No. 2, Leonore No. 3, Leonore No. 1, Fidelio. It was said that Leonore No. 2 was rewritten because certain passages given to the wood-wind troubled the players. Others say it was too difficult for the strings and too long. In No. 2, as well as in No. 3, the chief dramatic stroke is the trumpet signal, which announces the arrival of the Minister of Justice, confounds Pizarro, and saves Florestan and Leonore.

The Fidelio overture is the one generally played before performances of the opera in Germany, although Weingartner has tried earnestly to restore Leonore No. 2 to that position. Leonore No. 3 is sometimes played between the acts of the opera. The objection to this is that the trumpet episode of the prison will then discount the dramatic ending of the overture when it comes in the following act, nor does the joyous ending of the overture prepare the hearer for the lugubrious scene with the Florestan soliloquy. Bülow therefore performed the overture at the end of the opera. Zumpe did likewise in Munich. They argued with Wagner that this overture is the quintessence of the opera, “the complete and definite synthesis of the drama that Beethoven had dreamed of writing.” There has been a tradition that the overture should be played between the scenes of the second act.

The key of the Leonore Overture No. 3 is C major. A short fortissimo is struck. It is diminished by wood-wind and horns, then taken up, piano, by the strings. From this G there is a descent down the scale of C major to a mysterious F sharp. The key of B minor is reached, finally A flat major, when the opening measures of Florenstan’s air, “In des Lebens Frülingstagen” (Act II of the opera), is played. The theme of the allegro, C major, begins pianissimo, first violins and violoncellos, and waxes impetuously. The second theme has been described as “woven out of sobs and pitying sighs.” The working out consists in alternating a pathetic figure, taken from the second theme and played by the wood-wind over a nervous string accompaniment, with furious outbursts from the whole orchestra. Then comes the trumpet call off stage. The twice-repeated call is answered in each instance by the short song of thanksgiving from the same scene. Leonore’s words are: “Ach! du bist gerettet! Grosser Gott!” A gradual transition leads from this to the return of the first theme at the beginning of the third part (flute solo). The third part is developed in general as the first part and leads to a wildly jubilant coda.

OVERTURE TO “EGMONT,” OP. 84

Strange things have been done by conductors to Beethoven’s overture. We remember Franz Wüllner in Berlin slackening the pace in the allegro section when he came to the heavy chords that are supposed by some commentators, finders of sunbeams in cucumbers, to represent Alva, and then playing the chords with brutal emphasis and a long pause between them. Another conductor, no less a person than Arthur Nikisch, made a long hold on the short, incisive violin stroke just before the coda, and then brought the figure slowly down portamento. We doubt if he did this in later years.

This overture was composed in 1810; it was published in 1811. The music to Goethe’s play—overture, four entr’actes, two songs sung by Clärchen, “Clärchen’s Death,” “Melodrama,” and “Triumph Symphony” (identical with the coda of the overture), for the end of the play, nine numbers in all—was performed for the first time with the tragedy at the Hofburg Theater, Vienna, May 24, 1810. Antonie Adamberger was the Clärchen.

When Hartl took the management of the two Vienna Court theaters, January 1, 1808, he produced plays by Schiller. He finally determined to produce plays by Goethe and Schiller with music, and he chose Schiller’s Tell and Goethe’s Egmont. Beethoven and Gyrowetz were asked to write the music. The former was anxious to compose the music for Tell; but, as Czerny tells the story, there were intrigues, and, as Egmont was thought to be less suggestive to a composer, the music for that play was assigned to Beethoven. Gyrowetz’s music to Tell was performed June 14, 1810. It was described by a correspondent of a Leipsic journal of music as “characteristic and written with intelligence.” No allusion was made at the time anywhere to Beethoven’s Egmont.

The overture has a short, slow introduction, sostenuto ma non troppo, F minor, 3-2. The main body of the overture is an allegro, F minor, 3-4. The first theme is in the strings; each phrase is a descending arpeggio in the violoncellos, closing with a sigh in the first violins; the antithesis begins with a “sort of sigh” in the wood-wind, then in the strings; then there is a development into passage work. The second theme has for its thesis a version of the first two measures of the sarabande theme of the introduction, fortissimo (strings), in A flat major, and the antithesis is a triplet in the wood-wind. The coda, allegro con brio, F major, 4-4, begins pianissimo. The full orchestra at last has a brilliant fanfare figure, which ends in a shouting climax, with a famous shrillness of the piccolo against fanfares of bassoons and brass and between crashes of the full orchestra.

Long and curious commentaries have been written in explanation of this overture. As though the masterpiece needed an explanation! We remember one in which a subtle meaning was given to at least every half-dozen measures: The Netherlanders are under the crushing weight of Spanish oppression; Egmont is melancholy, his blood is stagnant, but at last he shakes off his melancholy (violins), answers the cries of his country-people, rouses himself for action; his death is portrayed by a descent of the violins from C to G; but his countrymen triumph. Spain is typified by the sarabande movement; the heavy, recurring chords portray the lean-bodied, lean-visaged Duke of Alva; “the violin theme in D flat, to which the clarinet brings the under-third, is a picture of Clärchen,” etc. One might as well illustrate word for word the solemn ending of Thomas Fuller’s life of Alva in The Profane State: “But as his life was a mirror of cruelty, so was his death of God’s patience. It was admirable that his tragical acts should have a comical end; that he that sent so many to the grave should go to his own, and die in peace. But God’s justice on offenders goes not always in the same path, nor the same pace; and he is not pardoned for the fault who is for a while reprieved from the punishment; yea, sometimes the guest in the inn goes quietly to bed before the reckoning for his supper is brought to him to discharge.” The overture is at first a mighty lamentation. There are voices of an aroused and angry people, and there is at the last tumultuous rejoicing. The “Triumph Symphony” at the end of the play forms the end of the overture.

OVERTURE TO “CORIOLANUS,” OP. 62

Someone said—was it A. W. Thayer?—of this overture that he could not understand it—until he read Collin’s tragedy; that he could not reconcile the music with Shakespeare’s text. Pray, what would the gentleman have had? It is immaterial whether Beethoven had Collin or Shakespeare in mind. The name Coriolanus was enough, even if he knew it only from some schoolboy history of Rome; for in this music we hear the proud voice, we hear the haughty, inexorable bearing of the soldier-patrician. Nor does it matter whether the lyrical theme is the entreating voice of wife or mother. Possibly if one should read Collin’s play he would wonder that Beethoven should have written an overture for it. There it is—one of Beethoven’s greatest works. From his own disdain of the mob, from his own contempt of what the public thought of his music, he recognizes in Coriolanus a kindred spirit.

The original manuscript of the overture bears this inscription: Overtura (zum Trauerspiel Coriolan) composta da L. v. Beethoven, 1807. The words in parentheses are crossed out. The overture was published in 1808. The tragedy by Heinrich Joseph von Collin, in which the hero kills himself, was produced in Vienna on November 24, 1802. Collin (1771-1811) was jurist and poet. In 1803 he was ennobled. In 1809 he became court councillor. Other tragedies by him were Regulus and Polyxena. In 1807 Beethoven was expecting a libretto from him. Collin tried Macbeth, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and a Bradamante to which J. F. Reichardt set music. But Beethoven wrote to Collin:

“Great irate poet, give up Reichardt. Take my music for your poetry; I promise that you will not thereby suffer. As soon as my concert is over ... I will come to you, and then we will at once take in hand the opera—and it shall soon sound. For the rest you can ring out your just complaints about me by word of mouth.” The libretto before this had seemed to Beethoven “too venturesome” in respect of its use of the supernatural. Collin’s biographer, Laban, says that the Macbeth libretto was left unfinished in the middle of the second act “because it threatened to become too gloomy.” At various times Beethoven thought of Grillparzer’s Melusine, Körner’s Return of Ulysses, Treitschke’s Romulus and Remus, Berger’s Bacchus, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Schiller’s Fiesco, Grillparzer’s Dragomira, Voltaire’s tragedies, and Goethe’s Faust, as operatic subjects. He told Rellstab that the material must be attractive to him; that it must be something he could take up with sincerity and love. “I could not compose operas like Don Juan and Figaro. They are repugnant to me. I could not have chosen such subjects; they are too frivolous for me!”

It is in one movement, allegro con brio, in C minor, 4-4, as written, alla breve as played. It begins with a succession of three long-held fortissimo C’s in the strings, each one of which is followed by a resounding chord in the full orchestra. The agitated first theme in C minor soon gives place to the second lyrically passionate theme in E flat major. The development of this theme is also short. The free fantasia is practically passage-work on the conclusion theme. The tendency to shorten the academic sonata form is seen also in the third part, or recapitulation. The first theme returns in F minor with curtailed development. The second theme is now in C major. The coda begins with this theme; passage-work follows; there is a repetition of the C’s and the chords of the beginning; and the purely dramatic close in C minor may be suggestive of the hero’s death.

CONCERTO FOR PIANOFORTE, NO. 4, IN G MAJOR, OP. 58

I. Allegro moderato II. Andante con moto III. Rondo: vivace

This concerto was probably composed for the most part, and it was surely completed, in 1806, although Schindler, on advice from Ries, named 1804 as the year, and an edition of the concerto published by Breitkopf & Härtel states that the year 1805 saw the completion.

The concerto was performed by Beethoven in one of two private subscription concerts of his works given in the dwelling house of Prince Lobkowitz, Vienna, in March, 1807. The first public performance was in the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 22, 1808.

The score was dedicated “humbly” by Beethoven to “his Imperial Highness, the Archduke Rudolph of Austria.”

I. Allegro moderato, G major, 4-4. The first movement, contrary to the tradition that prevailed at the time, begins with the pianoforte alone. The pianoforte announces the first four measures of the first theme, five measures if an introductory chord be counted. (These measures are to be found in a sketchbook of Beethoven which is dated 1803, but in this book they end in the tonic, and not in the dominant.) The orchestra then enters in B major, but soon returns to G major, and develops the theme, until after a short climax with a modulation a second theme appears, which is given to the first violins. There is a third theme fortissimo in G major, with a supplement for the wood-wind instruments, and still another new theme, an expressive melody in B flat major.

II. Andante con moto, E minor, 2-4. This movement is free in form. Beethoven put a footnote in the full score to this effect: “During the whole andante, the pianist must use the soft pedal (una corda) unintermittently; the sign ‘Ped’ refers to the occasional use of the ordinary pedal.” This footnote is contradicted at one point in the score by the marking “tre corde” for five measures near the end of the movement. A stern and powerful recitative for strings alternates with gentle and melodic passages for the pianoforte. “The strings of the orchestra keep repeating a forbidding figure of strongly marked rhythm in staccato octaves; this figure continues at intervals in stern, unchanging forte through about half the movement and then gradually dies away. In the intervals of this harsh theme the pianoforte as it were improvises little scraps of the tenderest, sweetest harmony and melody, rising for a moment into the wildest frenzied exultation after its enemy, the orchestra, has been silenced by its soft pleading, then falling back into hushed sadness as the orchestra comes in once more with a whispered recollection of its once so cruel phrase; saying as plainly as an orchestra can say it, ‘The rest is silence!’”[12]

III. Rondo: vivace. The first theme, of a sunny and gay character, is announced immediately by the strings. The pianoforte follows with a variation. A short but more melodic phrase for the strings is also taken up by the pianoforte. A third theme, of a bolder character, is announced by the orchestra. The fourth theme is given to the pianoforte. The rondo, “of a reckless, devil-may-care spirit in its jollity,” is based on this thematic material. At the end the tempo becomes presto.

CONCERTO FOR PIANOFORTE, NO. 5, IN E FLAT MAJOR, OP. 73

I. Allegro II. Adagio un poco mosso III. Rondo: allegro ma non tanto

There are noble pages, also moments of tenderness, in the first movement; there is a majestic, compelling sweep. In the second movement there is simplicity, serenity of contemplation, Buddhistic music of singular detachment, found only in certain measures of Beethoven and Handel; but the finale with the endless repetitions of a Kangaroo theme leads one to long for the end.

Beethoven, having made some sketches in 1808, wrote this concerto in 1809 at Vienna. The town was occupied by the French from May 12 to October 14.

It is said that the first public performance of which there is any record was at Leipsic on November 28, 1811. It is also stated that this performance was late in 1810. The pianist was Friedrich Schneider. The Allgemeine Musik Zeitung described the concerto as “without doubt one of the most original, imaginative, effective, but most difficult of all existing concertos.” Schneider, it seems, played “with soul” as well as force, and the orchestra accompanied remarkably, for “it respected and admired composer, composition, and pianist.”

The first performance with which Beethoven was concerned was at Vienna on February 12, 1812, when Karl Czerny (1791-1857) was the pianist. The occasion was a singular sort of entertainment. Theodor Körner, who had been a looker-on in Vienna only for a short time, wrote home on February 15: “Wednesday there took place for the benefit of the Charitable Society of Noble Ladies a concert and a representation of three pictures after Raphael, Poussin, and Troyes, as Goethe describes them in his Elective Affinities. A new concerto by Beethoven for the pianoforte did not succeed”; but Castelli’s Thalia gave as the reason of this failure the unwillingness of Beethoven, “full of proud self-confidence,” to write for the crowd. “He can be understood and appreciated only by the connoisseurs, and one cannot reckon on their being in a majority at such an affair.” Thayer moralizes on this statement. “The trills of Miss Sessi and Mr. Siboni and Mayseder’s Variations on the March from Aline were appropriate to the occasion and the audience.”

The Vienna correspondent of the Allgemeine Musik Zeitung wrote that the extravagant length of the concerto diminished the total effect which the “noble production of the mind” would otherwise have made. As for Czerny, “he played with much accuracy and fluency, and showed that he has it in his power to conquer the greatest difficulties.” But the correspondent wished that there had been greater purity in his performance, a finer contour.

The tableaux pleased mightily, and each one was repeated.

The first movement, allegro, in E flat, 4-4, opens with a strong chord for full orchestra, which is followed by a cadenza for the solo instrument.

The first theme is given out by the strings and afterward taken up by the clarinets. The second theme soon follows, first in E flat minor, softly and staccato by the strings, then legato and in E flat major by the horns. It was usual at that time for the pianist to extemporize his cadenza, but Beethoven inserted his own with the remark, “non si fa, una cadenza ma s’attacca subito il seguente” (that is to say, “Do not insert a cadenza, but attack the following immediately”); and he then went so far as to accompany with the orchestra the latter portion of his cadenza.

The second movement, adagio un poco moto, in B major, 2-2, is in the form of “quasi-variations,” developed chiefly from the theme given at the beginning by muted strings. This movement goes, with a suggestion hinted by the pianoforte of the coming first theme of the rondo, into the rondo, the finale, allegro, in E flat, 6-8. Both the themes are announced by the pianoforte and developed elaborately. The end of the coda is distinguished by a descending long series of pianoforte chords which steadily diminish in force, while the kettledrums keep marking the rhythm of the opening theme.

CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN, IN D MAJOR, OP. 61

I. Allegro ma non troppo II. Larghetto III. Rondo

Beethoven composed this concerto in 1806 for the violinist, Franz Clement, who played it for the first time at the latter’s concert in the Theater an der Wien, December 23 of that year.

Beethoven, often behindhand in finishing compositions for solo players—according to the testimony of Dr. Bartolini and others—did not have the concerto ready for rehearsal. Clement played it at the concert a vista.

The first movement, allegro ma non troppo, in D major, 4-4, begins with a long orchestral ritornello. The first theme is announced by oboes, clarinets, and bassoons. It is introduced by four taps of the kettledrums on D. (There is a story that these tones were suggested to the composer by his hearing a neighbor knocking at the door of his house for admission late at night.) The wind instruments go on with the second phrase. Then come the famous and problematical four D sharps in the first violins. The short second theme is given out by wood-wind and horns in D major, repeated in D minor, and developed at length. The solo violin enters after a half cadence on the dominant. The first part of the movement is repeated. The solo violin plays the themes or embroiders them. The working out is long and elaborate. A cadenza is introduced at the climax of the conclusion theme. There is a short coda.

The second movement, Larghetto, in G major, 4-4, is a romance in free form. The accompaniment is lightly scored. The theme is almost wholly confined to the orchestra, while the solo violin embroiders with elaborate figuration until the end, when it brings in the theme, but soon abandons it to continue the embroidery. A cadenza leads to the finale.

The third movement, rondo, in D major, 6-8, is based on a theme that has the character of a folk dance. The second theme is a sort of hunting call for the horns. There is place for the insertion of a free cadenza near the end.

Beethoven’s great development of the symphony was in his use of the instruments—not in their number. For the most part, he called for virtually the same orchestra which his predecessors, Mozart and Haydn, evolved: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, kettledrums and strings. This applies to Beethoven’s First, Second, Third, Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth symphonies (exceptions: the addition of a third horn in the Eroica symphony, and use of a single flute in the Fourth).

In the Fifth symphony, he gave greater sonority to his finale with three trombones, double bassoon, and piccolo.

In the Sixth, he added a piccolo for the storm, two trombones for the storm and finale.

In the Ninth, he increased his horns to four, added three trombones, and the following instruments in the alla marcia of the finale: piccolo, double bassoon, cymbals, triangle, and bass drum.

In the overtures here listed, Beethoven added to the above essential orchestration as follows: Egmont—two additional horns, piccolo; Leonore—two additional horns and three trombones. The concertos call for the minimum orchestration, “in twos.”—EDITOR.

HECTOR
BERLIOZ

(Born at La Côte Saint-André, December 11, 1803; died at Paris, March 9, 1869)

The more Berlioz is studied, the more the wonder grows at his colossal originality. Yet there are some who still insist that he had little melodic invention. They have ears, and they do not hear. They should read the essay of Romain Rolland, and the essay of Felix Weingartner in his Akkorde, for there are many, unfortunately, who do not trust their own judgment and are eager to accept the sayings of others who are considered men of authority.

Berlioz wrote his Fantastic symphony in a high-strung, hotly romantic period. Romanticism was in the air. Much that seems fantastic to us, living in a commercial and material period, was natural then. It was as natural to be extravagant in belief, theories, speech, manner of life, dress, as it was to breathe. And Berlioz was a revolutionary of revolutionaries. His “antediluvian hair” that rose from his forehead was as much of a symbol as was the flaming waistcoat worn by Théophile on the memorable first night of Hernani. We smile now at the eccentricities and the extravagancies of the period, but we owe the perpetrators a heavy debt of gratitude. They made the art of today possible.

It is easy to call Berlioz a poseur, but the young man was terribly in earnest. He put his own love tragedy into his Fantastic symphony; he was a man; he suffered; he was there; and so the music did not pass away with the outward badges of romanticism, with much of Byron’s poetry, with plays and novels of the time. The emotions he expressed are still universal and elemental.

SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE, IN C MAJOR, OP. 14 a

I. Dreams, Passions: Largo: Allegro agitato e appassionato assai II. A Ball: Waltz: allegro non troppo III. Scene in the Meadows: Adagio IV. March to the Scaffold: Allegretto non troppo V. A Witches’ Sabbath: Larghetto: allegro