Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph
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59. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 34.
60. Alsop, Congress Dances, 33.
61. Brion, Daily Life, 172.
62. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 159.
63. Ibid., 161.
64. Alsop, Congress Dances, 140.
65. Alexander’s father, Tsar Paul I, was legendarily erratic. Alexander came to power when a group of officers murdered his father while Alexander sat downstairs listening to the screams. The old regimes were full of such stories, though the Russian ones tend to be more extreme.
66. Hofmann, Viennese, 97.
67. Alsop, Congress Dances, 124.
68. Ibid., 12.
69. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 177.
70. Anderson, vol. 2, nos. 493, 495n1.
71. Kolodin, Interior Beethoven, 224.
72. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 498.
73. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 123.
74. The main secondary key in the new Fidelio overture is C major, the key the opera ends in.
75. The eerie effect of the timpani A–E-flats in the dungeon has much to do with the tuning. Timpani in those days were almost invariably tuned on the tonic and dominant of the current key. Tuning them to a tritone was deliberately aberrational, also echt Beethoven in creating a powerful effect with simple means.
76. As B. Cooper notes in Beethoven, the imprisoned Florestan’s vision of Leonore as the angel of freedom echoes the end of Goethe’s Egmont—perhaps deliberately on the part of Treitschke, who conceived this new end of Florestan’s aria.
77. The end of Fidelio is yet another of Beethoven’s joyful endings, which for him meant mostly tonic and dominant harmonies, fortissimo, in simple textures and usually open keys between three flats and two sharps. I think here, as in the end of the Egmont Overture and even the Fifth Symphony, listeners by the end are left a bit battered. These endings lack, in a word, subtlety. For me the most successful and truly hair-raising of all Beethoven’s joyful endings is the Eroica’s.
78. Robinson (Ludwig van Beethoven) and others note that the theme of “O namenlose Freude” comes from the sketches for the abortive Vestas Feuer and from a theme in the F-major Andante from the Joseph Cantata.
79. Tusa notes in “Music as Drama,” 101, that Beethoven studied Mozart’s operatic ensembles in preparing for Fidelio and copied out excerpts including ones from Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. The canon Mir ist so wunderbar echoes one in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte.
80. Robinson, Ludwig van Beethoven, 69.
81. Georg Friedrich Treitschke, quoted in Thayer/Forbes, 1:573.
82. Alois Wiessenbach, quoted in ibid., 1:595.
83. Wenzel Tomaschek, quoted in ibid., 1:599. Once again, like most recollections of Beethoven, Tomaschek’s was written years after the event, so it has the inevitable distortions of memory—as well as the distortions of the character and convictions of the person recollecting.
84. Scherman and Biancolli, 782.
85. Landon, Beethoven, 150.
86. Thayer/Forbes, 1:603.
87. Ibid., 2:645.
88. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 523.
89. Musulin, Vienna, 173.
90. Cook, “Unfinished Piano Concerto.”
91. Thayer/Forbes, 1:611–12.
92. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 531.
93. B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 24.
94. Thayer/Forbes, 1:551.
95. Knight, Beethoven, 101.
96. Thayer/Forbes, 1:602.
97. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 200.
98. Thayer/Forbes, 2:618. The sketches are in Nottebohm’s second volume of Beethoveniana.
99. B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 24.
100. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 134–36.
101. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 546. Apparently the prince regent gave the score of Wellington’s Victory Beethoven had sent to the Smart brothers, who performed it at the Drury Lane Theater.
102. Ibid., no. 778.
103. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 234.
104. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 683.
105. Marek, Beethoven, 534.
106. Thayer/Forbes, 2:637–40.
107. May, Age of Metternich, 14.
108. Ibid., 79.
109. Musulin, Vienna, 259.
110. Yates, “Cultural Life,” 12.
111. Stendhal, quoted in Knight, Beethoven, 103.
112. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 208.
113. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 563.
114. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 211.
27. The Queen of the Night
1. Kolodin (Interior Beethoven, 219n16) notes that Karl van Beethoven’s death notice cites his age as thirty-eight, when in fact he was forty-one. That suggests Karl was as uncertain of his real age as Ludwig was.
2. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 213.
3. Solomon, Beethoven, 314.
4. Thayer/Forbes, 2:624–25. The note is a handwritten fragment, perhaps a draft for a legal statement.
5. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 572.
6. Thayer/Forbes, 2:626.
7. Ibid., 2:625.
8. Wyn Jones, Life of Beethoven, 132.
9. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 607.
10. Ibid., no. 598.
11. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 4–6.
12. Ibid., 12–13.
13. Sterba and Sterba, Beethoven and His Nephew, 60. The Sterbas’ thesis that Beethoven’s attraction to Karl was homosexual is possible, because many things are possible. What is undoubtedly true of their thesis is that there is no evidence for it, and it is not necessary to explain Beethoven’s obsession with Karl.
14. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 220.
15. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 611.
16. Solomon, Beethoven, 300–301.
17. Sterba and Sterba, Beethoven and His Nephew, 46.
18. Ibid., 54.
19. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 14; B. Cooper, Beethoven, 213.
20. Solomon, Beethoven, 301.
21. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 612.
22. Sterba and Sterba, Beethoven and His Nephew, 55.
23. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 644.
24. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 967.
25. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 87.
26. The excuse for the Carlsbad Decrees was the murder of reactionary playwright August Kotzebue—with whom Beethoven had worked on The Ruins of Athens—by a member of a radical student group.
27. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 577.
28. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 62. Despite their mutual disappointments, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde gave twenty performances of Beethoven’s symphonies between 1819 and 1827, including two movements of the Ninth (Wyn Jones, Symphony, 185).
29. Nohl, Unrequited Love, “Confessions.”
30. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 718.
31. These quotations from Fanny’s diary in 1816 are from Nohl, Unrequited Love, “Confessions.”
32. Ibid., 77.
33. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 632.
34. Ibid., no. 648.
35. Ibid., no. 874.
36. Landon, Beethoven, 153–54. Unlike the usual memories of Beethoven from years later, Bursy’s account is a diary entry, so it is probably more accurate than most.
37. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 340.
38. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 667.
39. Ibid., no. 710.
40. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 78.
41. Ibid., 96. As I noted in chapter 25, one has to remember that Fanny Giannatasio’s account of Beethoven’s love from “five years ago” is secondhand—or even thirdhand, since it was gleaned from a conversation she overheard between Beethoven and her father, or from her father’s report. That means her account is likely inaccurate in some way or other. It is not certain that Beethoven said, for example, that he had met the woman five years before; he may have meant that was the time of their closeness. If that part of Fanny’s memory is correct, other parts will not be. That is why, for a biographer, firsthand accounts are the most reliable—though hardly completely reliable. We do not remember our own lives accurately or compl
etely truthfully. A prime example is Beethoven, whose understanding of himself and his actions was sometimes astute, other times delusional. In any case, Fanny’s recollection, which figures heavily in some Immortal Beloved theories, can’t be assumed to be accurate.
42. The key sequence in An die ferne Geliebte is as patterned and interlocked as a Beethoven instrumental piece: 1. E-flat; 2. G (C) G; 3. A-flat–a-flat; 4. A-flat; 5. C (c F) C c; 6. E-flat (c B-flat) E-flat. The end of the last song returns to the melody and the concluding lines of the first song, like a recapitulation, and there is an extended coda. In other words, Beethoven applied aspects of instrumental composition to a song cycle—as he had done in smaller scale in Adelaide. If An die ferne Geliebte has not found the popularity of Schubert’s lieder, the reason is mainly Schubert’s phenomenal melodic gift, which was more fluid than Beethoven’s, and which Schubert was able to give in to without being afflicted by Beethoven’s incessant concern for form and logic. It insults neither man’s achievement to say that Schubert was the more natural melodist—as Schiller would say, a “naive” creator, rather than a more self-conscious, laborious, “sentimental” one like Beethoven.
43. For Beethoven, folk music and poetry were not attached to nationalism in the way they became among Romantic artists and philosophers—in Germany, part of the ultimately destructive mythology of das Volk.
44. Kerman, “An die ferne Geliebte,” 133.
45. Some sources say Jeitteles’s An die ferne Geliebte poems were never in print. Leslie Orrey in Arnold and Fortune, Beethoven Reader, 434, says they appeared in the journal Selam. Reid, in The Beethoven Song Companion, 47, leaves the question a bit vague.
46. Translations are from Reid, Beethoven Song Companion.
47. Ibid., 8.
48. Ibid., 48.
49. Kerman, “An die ferne Geliebte,” 157. A quotation from Beethoven in Glauert (“Beethoven’s Songs”) shows his discomfort with vocal music in general: “I know what to expect of instrumentalists, who are capable of almost everything, but with vocal compositions I must always be asking myself: can this be sung?” (192). In his later vocal music, he largely, and unfortunately, stopped worrying about what was singable.
50. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 129–30.
51. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 673.
52. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 235; B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 24; Thayer/Forbes, 2:654.
53. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 624.
54. B. Cooper, Beethoven Compendium, 25.
55. Thayer/Forbes, 2:641.
56. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 172–74.
57. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 651.
58. Ibid., no. 675.
59. Ibid., no. 653.
60. Ibid., no. 846.
61. Thayer/Forbes, 2:664–65.
62. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 148.
63. Ibid., 165–66.
64. Ibid., 152, 156.
65. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 754.
66. Sterba and Sterba, Beethoven and His Nephew, 123.
67. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 242.
68. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 802.
69. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 245.
70. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 881.
71. Ibid., no. 884.
72. Ibid., no. 871.
73. Ibid., no. 904.
74. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 239.
75. Thayer/Forbes, 2:672.
76. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 793.
77. Ibid., no. 783.
78. Ibid., no. 758.
79. Knight, Beethoven, 117.
80. Drake, Beethoven Sonatas, 135. Drake is quoting Anton Schindler on “impressions and reveries,” so whether they were Beethoven’s terms is suspect. But to repeat: even when Schindler put his own ideas into Beethoven’s mouth, he was often astute.
81. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 103–4.
82. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 845.
83. Even Rudolph Kolisch, in his classic defense of Beethoven’s tempos (“Tempo and Character”), can’t quite believe Beethoven’s Hammerklavier tempo.
84. My suggestion of two to four metronome clicks downward that should be applied to Beethoven’s consistently hyperbolic tempo markings comes partly from the scores, partly from my experience as a composer, which I find echoed in the experience of other composers. Among others, I’ve found Brahms and Bartók disavowing their metronome marks. For some time I assumed that my own carefully done tempo markings were accurate. Then it occurred to me to check the tempos I had coached in my chamber and orchestral performances against my metronome markings on the scores. I found my score markings to be consistently two to four metronome clicks too fast. I soon realized why: it was the difference between hearing music in one’s head and hearing it in actual acoustic space. Thus my suggestion in the text about Beethoven’s markings. All that, however (as Beethoven realized), is subject to the need for a nuanced and flexible tempo in performance, which (as Beethoven perhaps did not realize) is also subject to the acoustics of each hall. A “wet” room tends to require slower tempos, a “dry” room faster ones.
85. The information about Beethoven’s tempo variations comes from the unreliable Schindler, but this point was seconded by the more reliable Ignaz Moscheles, who heard Beethoven conduct (Cook, Beethoven, 51).
86. Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 45.
28. What Is Difficult
1. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 885.
2. Nohl, Unrequited Love, 178–79.
3. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 887.
4. Ibid., no. 886.
5. Beethoven, Konversationshefte, 1:415n34.
6. The background on Bernard, Peters, and Oliva is from Clive, Beethoven and His World.
7. M. Cooper, Beethoven, 123.
8. Thayer/Forbes, 2:801.
9. Beethoven, Konversationshefte, 1:182.
10. Ibid., 1:184.
11. Ibid., 1:84.
12. Ibid., 1:100.
13. Ibid., 1:148.
14. Ibid., 1:146.
15. Ibid., 1:120.
16. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 58.
17. Ehrlich, Piano, 18.
18. Thayer/Forbes, 2:694–95. Beethoven’s Broadwood ended up in the possession of Liszt.
19. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 891.
20. Thayer/Forbes, 2:696.
21. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 817.
22. Ibid., no. 818.
23. Thayer/Forbes, 2:682–83.
24. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 903.
25. Clive, Beethoven and His World, 29.
26. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 255n3.
27. Ibid., no. 249.
28. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 904.
29. Thayer/Forbes, 2:700–701.
30. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 905.
31. Solomon, Beethoven, 333.
32. M. Cooper, Beethoven, 36n1.
33. Landon, Beethoven, 159–61.
34. Thayer/Forbes, 2:703.
35. Levy, Beethoven, 28.
36. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 976n4.
37. Ibid., no. 749.
38. B. Cooper, Beethoven, 261.
39. Much of my sense of the structure of the Hammerklavier, like that of most contemporary musicians, is founded on Charles Rosen’s discussion of it in The Classical Style. As Rosen notes, the main key areas in the first movement run downward in thirds: B-flat, G, E-flat, B, all of them major keys. There is also a dialectic and/or struggle between the pitches and tonalities B and B-flat throughout the sonata; at the end of the scherzo, Beethoven spells out that idea with comical four-octave thumps back and forth on the two pitches. (As I have noted, he often “explains” his leading ideas like this.) B minor, which Beethoven called a “black key,” turns up in each movement. Kinderman (Beethoven) writes, “B minor functions . . . like a focus of negative energy pitted against the B♭ major tonic” (202). The main elements I have added to Rosen’s ideas are expressive descriptions, and my feeling that the Hammerklavier is not so much a departure for Beethoven as a condensation and intensification of things he had been doing all along. I
add that another motif of the piece from the first measures onward is the contrast of full textures spanning the keyboard and sparse, usually contrapuntal textures. In regard to this and other works, thanks to friend Andrew Rangell, one of my favorite performers of Beethoven, who traded ideas with me.
The Hammerklavier and other late Beethoven works remind me of a survey exhibition of Cézanne I once saw. It struck me that the painter’s mature work, a precursor of cubism, was pictures of things built up from rectangles made with up-and-down squiggles of the brush. In the late paintings those squiggles grew broader and rougher, to the point that the painting became less a picture of something made with particular strokes of the brush than strokes of the brush suggesting a picture of something. In other words, what had once been a characteristic gesture making up a figurative painting had become, to some degree, the substance of the painting itself. In the Hammerklavier the kinds of small gestures—themes, motifs, chains of thirds—that Beethoven had always used to build pieces have become so pervasive at every level that they are no longer a means of helping achieve logic and unity but rather the substance of the logic and unity. (For example, the openings of the first movement and finale of the Kreutzer Sonata are based on a motif of chains of thirds, and they appear in the second movement; but they are not constantly present, not the overall substance of the music.)
40. As Rosen says in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, the Hammerklavier was conceived as “an act of violence that sought paradoxically to reconquer a tradition in a time of revolution by making it radically new” (220). To add my own term, here again we find Beethoven not as a revolutionary but as a radical evolutionary.
41. Rosen in Classical Style shows that the main theme of the slow movement is also based on a scaffolding of descending thirds. The main secondary key is D major, a third down from F-sharp, though there are also the magical moments of G major.
42. As Rosen points out in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, 225, modern pianos do not have an una corda but only a two-string soft pedal, which does not achieve the intimacy of Beethoven’s one-string pedal—though that effect might not project in a large modern concert hall.
43. Ibid., 227.
44. I find that Kinderman makes the same point about the introduction of the finale “rejecting” Bach-style counterpoint: the past is “transcended by the creation of a new contrapuntal idiom embodied in the revolutionary fugal finale of the sonata” (Beethoven, 207). Here is music that queries music. That in turn leads to Karl Dahlhaus’s idea that late Beethoven has become “music about music,” an idea that will come up in the text in due course.