49. Nottebohm, Two Beethoven Sketchbooks, 94. I believe Beethoven’s key choices (and for that matter Haydn’s and Mozart’s) have an internal reason as part of the overall structure of a work, so here are some ideas about why he begins the introduction of the finale in G minor (quickly modulating to E-flat). G minor has an important place in the development of the first movement and turns up in the scherzo. More immediately, the introduction of the finale foreshadows the G-minor military march in the middle of the finale. There may be more, if rather arcane, reasons. The C-sharp on the first page of the symphony resolves as if it were part of a German sixth on E-flat (that note is missing), to a G-minor chord. More significantly, the added note that makes the Prometheus theme into the Hero theme is G. The A-flat–G figure heard from the first page of the symphony forward may play a part as well. Meanwhile A-flat turns up as an emphasized key or chord several times in the finale (it is the dominant of D-flat); starting in m. 231, Beethoven makes a repeated point of A-flat as the Neapolitan chord of G minor.
50. The dit-dit-dit figure that serves as the refrain of the basso in the finale is another model of how Beethoven handles a rhythmic motif. It is a diminution of the three-quarter-note figure in bars 5 and 6 of the englische. Later he augments the figure to half notes.
51. Sipe, Beethoven, calls the C-major version of the englische a “false recapitulation” (111). It rather sounds that way, but things get unusual when the following section sets off in a return of the tonic E-flat (undercut by starting on I6) in a fugato that sounds nothing like a recapitulation.
52. In Beethoven Hero, Scott Burnham, like generations of scholars—Donald Francis Tovey among them—is skeptical of the kind of long-range thematic and tonal relationships I’m talking about here, on the grounds that a listener who has not studied the score will never perceive them. I don’t think that’s an outlandish argument, though Tovey carries it to the extreme of avoiding most intermovement motivic relationships, and Heinrich Schenker ignores motifs altogether. But there’s no question that Beethoven thought in these kinds of long-range terms; it is clear on the page, in his sketches, and in the stories of his improvisations on themes. Put another way, artists before the postmodern age had a horror of the arbitrary, and in composing music one holds the arbitrary at bay by having the piece feed on itself as it goes. To repeat a point made before, in the Classical period a piece mainly fed on its beginning: das Thema, the theme, as young Beethoven read in Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie. (If the end comes first, as in the Eroica and the Kreutzer, Beethoven arranges for the piece to seem as if it feeds on its beginning.) As I say in the text, Beethoven composed his works based mainly on the governing theme in the same way an essayist or orator develops a theme or, as Sulzer says, a preacher expounds on a verse of scripture. I argue that the familiar sense of rightness in Beethoven’s music—rightness even when he is being surprising or eccentric—has much to do, among other things, with underlying relationships that listeners sense but don’t understand consciously. And by the time one has heard a work a few times, its web of relationships is embedded in one’s perception of it as a sense of rightness. By motif, meanwhile, I mean not only melodic motifs but the whole range of thematic possibilities: a single pitch, a chord, a chord sequence, a silence, a texture, a color, and more—all the elements that Beethoven uses motivically in the direction of, as I call it, motivizing everything. It should not be forgotten, however, that a work can have elaborate patterns of relationships and still be entirely ineffective, boring, even incompetent. Again, a piece of music is not a logical or mathematical construction. A composer still has to make the music live and breathe, and that requires inspiration, not just calculation.
53. The apotheosis of the basso theme, a long fortissimo in a glorious E-flat major ringing with horns, would seem to be the climax of the movement, but Beethoven undercuts it with a long dominant pedal that points to the next section.
54. Here are some of the ways the finale’s poco andante recalls the Marcia funèbre, which have to do not only with motifs but also with resemblances and analogies of color, texture, and mood. First, it begins, as in the second period of the second movement, with poignant wind music, the oboe as leading instrument. The answering string phrase at m. 357 is scored in the same color of low strings as the answering phrase in m. 17 of movement 2. The poignant accented appoggiaturas starting in m. 273 recall similar ones throughout the Funeral March. The arpeggio triplets in m. 365 recall the C section of movement 2 (m. 69)—and even more, the music at m. 397 recalls the C section of the Funeral March. The turn to a gentle, hopeful theme in A-flat at m. 404 recalls in key, color, and mood the beginning of the coda in the Funeral March (m. 209). The tremolos and quiet wind tattoos from m. 417 in the finale constitute a virtual quotation of the Funeral March from m. 160. Meanwhile the bass creeping up stepwise in triadic figures from m. 408 in the finale recalls the Hero theme doing likewise in much of the first movement. I note that there are no exact recalls of earlier movements in the finale—only similarities, analogies, subtle connections of motif, color, and shape. Beethoven at this point did not want literal intermovement returns; that attitude would change in his late music. I believe, though, that such relationships by analogy and underlying form are true to the way we perceive things. Nearly every new face we see reminds us of another face, and reflexively we categorize every new face by a row of criteria aesthetic, formal, racial, sexual, social, economic, and so on; but often we don’t remember what that other face was. I suspect, in other words, that we tend to perceive things in analogies, and Classical thematic relations proceed as well not by literal repetition but by underlying similarities and analogies.
55. Again, another thematic element of the symphony has to do with its consistent tendency, starting with the first pages of the first movement, and seen in the third and fourth movements, to build a theme step by step from a quiet statement to what I call “the theme in glory.” From beginning to end, the thematic treatment in the symphony is a forward-directed process of becoming. Only in the coda of the finale is there a sense of a final climax being reached.
56. The journey of Beethoven’s vision of the Hero to Beethoven Hero is the main theme of Burnham’s study.
57. To the clause “a new scope and ambition had entered the genre, and it would stay there” needs to be added a corollary: the model of the symphony Beethoven established may have done more harm than good to the symphony for generations after him. A new generation of great symphonists did not spring up—though there were certainly some worthy ones, including Schumann and Mendelssohn. After Beethoven, many composers avoided symphonies altogether. It was not until Brahms’s symphonies decades later, which revived a genre by then nearly moribund, that the implications of what Beethoven made of the symphony truly took off. Schumann’s symphonies, for one example, stand as the work of a composer trying to follow Beethoven’s lead without being quite up to the job. Schubert came close with his Ninth and, if he had lived, might have fully inherited Beethoven’s symphonic mantle. Berlioz never wrote a symphony in a truly Viennese-Classical spirit. The composer who followed up Beethoven’s lead first, most deliberately, and most grandly was Wagner, on the stage.
58. Kerman makes this point about the intensified individuality of the New Path works in Beethoven Quartets. Interestingly, after writing my paragraph concerning Beethoven as a radical evolutionary, I ran across Kerman’s reference to “the radical evolutionary curve of the corpus” (96)—a passing point in his case, but one that clearly grew in my mind since I had read it years before. Kerman is talking, however, about Beethoven’s own oeuvre, while I use the phrase “radical evolutionist” to describe Beethoven’s relationship to the whole of musical tradition.
59. This is a point elaborated in the “New Path” chapter of Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven. He calls the technique “less a ‘theme’ than a ‘thematic configuration,’ a grouping of elements . . . which are in effect ‘pre-thematic’ at the opening” (171). I call it “using
a motif as a theme,” the most distilled example being the Fifth Symphony first movement. Dahlhaus makes this a central marker of the New Path, but I’m not so sure. It is certainly a feature of the Eroica, The Tempest, the Fifth Symphony, and other works. At the same time, Beethoven does not abandon traditionally tuneful openings from which he extracts ideas for development, like the extended cello song that begins the first Razumovsky Quartet. Also I don’t see this special use of motif-as-theme as being entirely new in the Second Period; it is what happens, for example, in the first movement of the op. 18, no. 1 Quartet, dominated by its little turn figure. As Dahlhaus notes, pieces using this technique tend to be “processual,” an ongoing process of developing protean bits of material taking the place of the usual exposition of themes. Like Dahlhaus, I see the first movement of the Eroica in those terms: more constant evolution and development than exposition.
60. Quoted in ibid., 26.
61. To say that Beethoven is the real hero behind the Eroica has been commonplace since his own lifetime. Commonplaces are not always wrong, but I stress that I think this is true only in part. As the text elaborates, there was a good deal more to the Second Period than that. The Eroica is not just about Beethoven himself; it is also about Napoleon, and about heroes and heroism in general; it is no less about form, development, innovation, ambition; it no less marks his discovery of how to embody his humanistic ideals in his music. As for his spiritual ideals, by and large that would be the concern of the late music.
62. Lockwood, Beethoven: Music, 156.
63. Barry Cooper makes this point in Beethoven Compendium (145) and in his biography.
64. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 71. In addition to the 400 gulden (the equivalent of florins) that Lobkowitz donated to have the Third Symphony for six months, Beethoven offered the symphony to Simrock for 100 florins (a shockingly modest fee—he knew publishers’ profit was much less for an orchestral piece). Symphonies in those days were published only in parts, not in a score, though Beethoven militated for scores and eventually got them.
18. Geschrieben auf Bonaparte
1. Thayer/Forbes, 1:336–37.
2. Czerny, Proper Performance, 16.
3. Landon, Beethoven, 8.
4. Skowroneck, Beethoven the Pianist, 113. Skowroneck notes that the Waldstein finale is the first sonata movement of Beethoven with extensive pedal markings. Though others have questioned it, Skowroneck believes the Érard did influence the Waldstein and Appassionata. I certainly agree.
5. Ibid., 99, quoting G. A. Griesinger. Given Beethoven’s later disenchantment with the Érard, Skowroneck wonders whether his initial enchantment was due to his enthusiasm at the time for “matters French” (101). Perhaps that contributed, but also it was in Beethoven’s nature to end up disenchanted with nearly everything and everybody. In any case, as Skowroneck notes, pianos were not very robust in those days, and after a few years Beethoven had probably worn it out.
6. From Anton Kuerti’s note in his recording of the complete sonatas.
7. The sense of instant restless energy in the beginning of the Waldstein is created by several devices working together: The harmony hardly establishes C major before it deflects in the third bar to G major, then drops to B-flat immediately moving to F (this a function of the chromatically falling bass line). The rhythm is equally restless in its pounding energy, the right hand figure in sixteenths raising the tension in the first two lines. Finally in the second line there is a crescendo that rises not to a fortissimo but to a decrescendo. Here is the dynamic pattern of the movement in a nutshell: The primary dynamic level of the exposition is piano to pianissimo, and there are several passages of a crescendo to a subito piano. The only fortissimo in the exposition starts in m. 62—and that is a transition, not a point of arrival. The whole of the first movement demonstrates Beethoven’s skill at managing a forward-driving rhythmic momentum: from the sudden slowing of the second theme, for example, there is a sustained rhythmic crescendo that stretches to the closing section at m. 74. Two motivic elements are notable. First, the little rise of E–F-sharp–G in the second measure is diminished and inverted in m. 3, then extended to a falling fifth in m. 4; that falling fifth, stretched out, is the essence of the E-major second theme in m. 35. The rhythm of the second theme (already in place from the first sketches), 1- 3 4, 1- 3-, is already implied in the way mm. 2–3 articulate the meter. Meanwhile the E major of the second theme is foreshadowed in the top-voice E of the first two measures. Beethoven was increasingly interested in mediant keys, but he did not throw them around arbitrarily. He prepares and justifies his keys in the context of the piece.
8. Wegeler/Ries, 89; Kinderman, “Piano Music,” 106.
9. In Beethoven the Pianist, Skowroneck notes that in the Waldstein the effect of a trill in the last two fingers combined with a melody in the lower fingers (some of it having to be faked because the stretch is too big) goes back to figuration studies Beethoven did in Bonn: “[T]here survive at least ten pages of sketches that contain around eighteen examples of material with simultaneous trills and melodies for one hand . . . and cadential triple trills” (68).
10. Thayer/Forbes, 1:340; Wyn Jones, Symphony, 122.
11. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 74.
12. Ibid., no. 75.
13. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 88.
14. Wegeler/Ries, 89–90.
15. Ibid., 101–3.
16. Ibid., 79–80.
17. Quoted in Grove Music Online, s.v. “Haydn, Franz Joseph.”
18. Geiringer, Haydn, 338–39. Many of the later “Haydn” folk-song arrangements for Thomson were done by a pupil. These arrangements nominally from his pen totaled nearly 350.
19. Dean, “Beethoven and Opera,” 26.
20. Robinson, Ludwig van Beethoven, 2.
21. Dean, “Beethoven and Opera,” 29.
22. Thayer/Forbes, 1:346.
23. The influence of Cherubini on Beethoven’s theatrical style was noted by critics of the time, including E. T. A. Hoffmann.
24. Dean, “Beethoven and Opera,” 32–33.
25. Thayer/Forbes, 1:381.
26. Wyn Jones, Symphony, 164.
27. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 342; Thayer/Forbes, 1:345.
28. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 88.
29. Thayer/Forbes, 1:352.
30. Senner, Critical Reception, 1:190–92; Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics, 11.
31. B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 137.
32. Wegeler/Ries, 68.
33. Solomon, Beethoven, 176.
34. The article “Napoleon’s Coronation as Emperor of the French,” on the Georgian Index, at http://www.georgianindex.net/Napoleon/coronation/coronation.html, notes that Charlemagne’s actual crown had been destroyed in the Revolution, so a new one was made in medieval style for the coronation.
35. Nicholls, Napoleon, 271–72.
36. Ibid., 58–60.
37. Thayer/Forbes, 1:355–56. Sketches for opp. 54 and 57 are shuffled into work on the opera.
38. Scholars have tended to brush aside the Triple Concerto, or to lavish on it assorted patronizing japes. Leon Plantinga calls it “an interlude in the French manner,” Lewis Lockwood a “curiously passive work,” Joseph Kerman a “Cinderella and ugly duckling.” There is little question that it is uneven, discursive, and stylistically anomalous. It is also too attractive, expressive, and generally interesting to deserve its neglect. Recall that when seen in a good light, Cinderella was also attractive, expressive, and interesting. The reliably unreliable Schindler said that the concerto was written for and premiered by Archduke Rudolph, but that Beethoven pupil was only sixteen when it was written and probably had not yet started taking lessons.
39. Thayer/Forbes, 1:352.
40. The two letters quoted are Anderson, vol. 1, nos. 93 and 94.
41. Ibid., no. 98.
42. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 90.
43. Thayer/Forbes, 1:356–57.
44. Wyn Jones, Symphony, 167. Senner, Critical Reception, 2:16n3, ha
s a different chronology.
45. Thayer/Forbes, 1:350n9.
46. Ibid., 373.
47. Wegeler/Ries, 68–69.
48. Ibid., 104–6.
49. Rolland, Beethoven the Creator, 264.
50. Marek, Beethoven, 95.
51. Klapproth, Beethoven’s Only Beloved, 22–23.
52. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 62; Anderson, vol. 1, no. 97n4.
53. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 97.
54. Thayer/Forbes, 1:358.
55. Quoted in Klapproth, Beethoven’s Only Beloved, 21. Klapproth points out that Therese was in fact not beautiful and knew it; her “we” probably shows her intense closeness to Josephine, to whom she devoted herself.
56. Thayer/Forbes, 1:359.
57. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 103.
58. MacArdle, “Family van Beethoven,” 537.
59. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 146–47.
60. Thayer/Forbes, 1:377.
Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph Page 117
