Beethoven's Eroica

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  All the same, it is too simple to take at face value Beethoven’s intention to dedicate his Third Symphony to Bonaparte, as it overlooks the muddle of complex and even conflicting motives that lay behind it. A century and a half of programme notes has led audiences to search the music for expressions of various portentous abstract nouns such as Triumph, Will, Humanity, Freedom and even Revolutionary Fervour, dating back to the fateful events in Paris of 1789. Humanity in particular was a quality many intellectual children of the Enlightenment loosely associated with Bonapartism, in ironic disregard of the Terror and the subsequent battlefield slaughters that actually made Napoleon’s name. It supposedly betokened sacrifice, service and social loyalty towards a mankind whose most abject guttersnipe was theoretically of equal value to a prince. Wordsworth, who as a young man initially fell beneath the Bonapartist spell, famously wrote of the ‘still, sad music of humanity’ in his 1798 poem on Tintern Abbey. (Cynics will note how very much easier it is to shed a tear over Humanity in the abstract than it can be to sustain devotion to an individual through thick and thin.) Yet such grand nouns are often hard for a modern audience to associate with a particular work of art, whether a poem such as The Prelude or a symphony such as the ‘Eroica’, even though Beethoven himself frequently thought in such terms. It is perfectly reasonable to hear the ‘Eroica’ simply as an extraordinary aesthetic achievement whose true revolutionary nature was entirely musical. Yet understanding some of its Bonapartist antecedents adds much interest.

  None knew better than the composer himself just how ground-breaking his new symphony was, and he realized it ought to be performed in Vienna before he took it with him to France as he was still planning. Given the length of its first movement, in particular, he needed to reassure himself that his intuition about matters of timing and balance was correct. A trial run was essential, and Prince Lobkowitz’s excellent private orchestra would be ideal for the purpose. On 22 October 1803 Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries wrote once more to the publisher Nikolaus Simrock saying that Beethoven very much wanted to dedicate the symphony to Bonaparte. However, Lobkowitz had already offered the composer 400 ducats for the symphony’s rights for half a year: a munificent offer that Beethoven could not afford to turn down. The snag was that the prince was a deeply patriotic Austrian and in the circumstances it would have been fatal for Beethoven to stick to his original plan of making Napoleon its dedicatee with the Corsican’s name prominent on the title page.

  Beethoven was quite capable of making pragmatic business decisions, which is why he judiciously dedicated the ‘Eroica’ to Prince Lobkowitz while retaining its general title of ‘Bonaparte’. Between the work’s completion in the late summer of 1803 and the score’s publication in October 1806 Austria’s Francophobia was further intensified by external political events such as the series of crushing defeats the Austrian army suffered in 1806 that led to Napoleon himself taking up residence in Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace in November that year after Francis II and his court had fled. By then, too, Beethoven’s original Bonapartist leanings had evaporated, particularly after the news reached Vienna in May 1804 that France’s self-appointed first consul had now declared himself emperor. Ferdinand Ries recorded this celebrated incident:

  In this symphony Beethoven had Bonaparte in mind, but as he was when he was First Consul. Beethoven esteemed him greatly at the time and likened him to the greatest Roman consuls. I as well as several of his more intimate friends saw a copy of the score lying upon his table with the word ‘Buonaparte’ at the extreme top of the title page, and at the extreme bottom ‘Luigi van Beethoven’, but not another word. Whether and with what the space between was to be filled out, I do not know. I was the first to bring him the intelligence that Buonaparte had proclaimed himself emperor, whereupon he flew into a rage and cried out: ‘Is he then, too, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!’ Beethoven went to the table, took hold of the title page by the top, tore it in two, and threw it on the floor. The page was rewritten and only then did the symphony receive the title Sinfonia eroica.2

  No doubt at this moment the disillusioned Beethoven would have agreed with his contemporary, William Blake, that

  The strongest poison ever known

  Came from Caesar’s laurel crown

  as he would with Blake’s ‘I will not Reason & Compare; my business is to Create.’

  Barely a month after this outburst the first, semi-public trial run of the symphony by Lobkowitz’s palace orchestra took place at an overlong ‘Academy’ with a programme of other challenging Beethoven works and after gruelling all-day rehearsals. Opinions were mixed, but on balance they were favourable even if, as the audience staggered out punch drunk into the warm Viennese night, a good many probably felt they would rather like not to hear another note of new music for quite some time. Two months later, in August, Beethoven told the publisher Härtel that the symphony’s actual title was ‘Bonaparte’. Did this mean his fit of rage in May over the self-proclaimed new emperor had been no more than a typically Beethovenish fury of the moment, or was it part of an increasingly ambivalent attitude towards Napoleon that was shared by many others?

  We know that by the time Beethoven was at work on the symphony in Oberdöbling in the early summer of 1803, his adolescent enthusiasm for the French Revolution had considerably ebbed.* Nor was he alone in his pessimism. Those early years of the nineteenth century witnessed a painful reassessment of Napoleon and post-revolutionary France by many in Europe and particularly by German-speaking intellectuals. The Enlightenment had been enormously influential, and in terms of its complex interleaving of meaning and ideas, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ can be viewed as having something in common with certain German non-musical works of the time, such as Goethe’s Faust, Jean Paul’s proto-Romantic novels (that were to so entrance Schumann as a youth), Hegel’s philosophy (the section entitled ‘Absolute Freedom and Terror’ in The Phenomenology of Mind) and even Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings. But in the face of Bonaparte’s military conquests, pragmatic deals and his army’s increasing threat to German-speaking territory, much of the Germans’ former idealism had vanished to be replaced by an upsurge in nationalism. By 1805 Beethoven, in common with many intellectuals (including Jean Paul, Hegel and Caspar David Friedrich), had become more of a German patriot and even somewhat Francophobic. By March 1806 when a revised version of Fidelio was successfully launched in Vienna, the opera was widely understood by audiences as having an anti-French message, with Florestan in his lowest dungeon representing a Germanic world in dire need of rescue by a faithful Leonora, whether or not cross-dressed as ‘Fidelio’.

  With all this in mind, how are we to construe the wording of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony’s title page when it was finally published in October 1806? The Italian inscription ran Sinfonia eroica / composta per festiggiare il souvenir di un grand Uomo, and it is nearly always taken for granted that the ‘grand Uomo’ is Napoleon. Certainly the surviving and much amended title page of the original manuscript bears Beethoven’s own inscription in pencil: ‘geschrieben auf Bonaparte’, although this has its own ambiguity. The ‘auf’ could imply something done in someone’s name or in their honour, or it could just mean ‘on’ as in the title of an essay or a poem (Montaigne’s ‘On Solitude’ or Auden’s ‘On Sunday Walks’). Beethoven’s ‘On Napoleon’, then?

  A fresh theory has emerged that proposes a quite different and plausible identity for the grand Uomo.3 After Napoleon’s resounding defeat of the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz in December 1805 the Prussian army came in for heavy criticism for having abandoned its allies to their fate. Those closest to the Prussian king, Frederick William III, pleaded with him to avenge Austerlitz. They argued that the Prussian army should confront the upstart Napoleon anywhere on German territory. Foremost among those putting this case was the young Prince Louis Ferdinand.

&
nbsp; Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) as painted by an unknown artist around 1814. He was a composer and virtuoso pianist who had been a pupil of Mozart. In Vienna he was considered Beethoven’s only real rival as an improviser until Beethoven’s deafness overtook him. In 1810 Hummel fell out with Beethoven over a disparaging remark about that composer’s Mass in C but paid a visit to the great man’s sickbed in 1827.

  CREDIT: GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK

  Louis Ferdinand was a quite exceptional character. A nephew of Frederick the Great, he was a hopeless spendthrift and an authentic military hero in his own right, having already fought the French in several engagements and won widespread acclaim for his fearless leadership on the battlefield. At the same time he was also a first-rate musician and virtuoso pianist who had studied under Jan Ladislav Dussek. Beethoven had first met him on a visit to Berlin in 1796. The two had become friends, and Beethoven, the prince’s elder by two years and probably at the peak of his own brilliance as a pianist, reckoned Louis Ferdinand a better pianist even than Hummel: by implication second only to himself. The prince was also a composer of considerable originality and Beethoven evidently felt he had found a kindred spirit.

  Quite how original a musician Louis Ferdinand was can best be gauged by the way his music would be championed by a later generation. Perhaps the composition that made the biggest impact was his Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 6 (1806), his last work. Schumann’s diaries reveal an abiding interest in both the prince, whose music he studied in depth, and this piece. He wrote a set of piano variations for four hands on a theme from the quartet, now unfortunately lost. Schumann was also inspired by Louis Ferdinand’s exploration of unusual combinations of instruments such as in his Notturno, Op. 8, for piano, flute, violin, cello and two French horns. Clara Wieck, Schumann’s pianist wife, took part in a performance of the F minor Piano Quartet at which Mendelssohn was present and all agreed that Louis Ferdinand had been a composer before his time, a true proto-Romantic. The markings on the score of this piece were far more numerous and expressive than was customary at the turn of the nineteenth century: con anima, dolcissimo, smorzando, con passione, con molta forca [sic], con duolo: very much the sort of indications that were to become fashionable only later. Nor was it until the Romantic era that composers felt free to end their pieces on a hushed note. The prince had no qualms about letting the music of his piano quartet, already very dark and turbulent, die away (morendo) in shadows, ending with two soft pizzicato chords for strings alone. Not for him an upbeat Classical ending. Like Schumann, the arch-Romantic Franz Liszt was also deeply impressed by this piano quartet and in 1847 wrote an Elégie sur des motifs du Prince Ferdinand de Prusse.

  But such accolades and homage lay far in the future. In 1804, while en route to Italy, Prince Louis Ferdinand stayed with Beethoven’s patron Prince Lobkowitz at his castle in Raudnitz (today’s Roudnice) north of Prague. Louis Ferdinand must have asked what Beethoven had been writing lately, and as the proud dedicatee of the ‘Eroica’ Lobkowitz had his orchestra play the new symphony. By now the players knew the music well, having already given its first performances. At the end Louis Ferdinand excitedly asked to hear the ‘Eroica’ a second time, and Lobkowitz happily obliged. When that was over the young prince wanted to hear it yet again. Lobkowitz insisted his orchestra should be given a rest and dinner before the tired players embarked on a third consecutive performance of the entire symphony, which they duly gave. It is unclear whether Beethoven was also present on this occasion but it seems likely that he was. Whatever else, the episode was eloquent testimony to Louis Ferdinand’s seriousness both as a musician and an admirer of Beethoven. What is certain is that both men renewed their friendship at this time and at least on one occasion the prince wined and dined Beethoven on terms of absolute equality, seated next to him at table (in those days an unthinkable solecism for a scruffy commoner like Beethoven). That his Third Piano Concerto had been dedicated to Louis Ferdinand is surely a mark of Beethoven’s esteem for this sensitive and accomplished prince.

  Meanwhile, Napoleon Bonaparte was once again making himself impossible to ignore in Austria, and on 19 October 1805 the Austrian general Karl Mack lost his entire army to Napoleon at Ulm, after which nothing stood in the way of the French advance into central Europe. French troops captured Vienna in November 1805 and a month later achieved a crushing defeat of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Austerlitz. Under acute pressure the following August Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and abdicated. That same month in 1806 Beethoven was staying with his friend and patron Prince Lichnowsky at his family’s castle at Grätz, 150 miles from Vienna in today’s Czech Republic. One night the prince asked him to play the piano for some visiting French officers and Beethoven truculently refused, saying that he wasn’t a servant to obey orders. Whether this was because the officers were French or it was just another flare-up in his often stormy relationship with Lichnowsky is not clear, but it escalated into a shouting match and allegedly a Count Oppersdorff only just managed to prevent Beethoven breaking a chair over his princely patron’s head. Beethoven left the castle in a fury there and then, arriving back ill in Vienna after a miserable three-day journey in carts and coaches, during which he and his trunk were soaked in a rainstorm, the water damage still clearly visible on the manuscript of the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata he was carrying with him.

  The significance of this episode in the autumn of 1806 is that it was most likely at Grätz that Beethoven learned that his friend and fellow musician Prince Louis Ferdinand had been killed a few days earlier on 10 October at the Battle of Saalfeld, a preliminary skirmish before yet another crushing French victory at nearby Jena. On the last evening of his life the prince had performed his friend Dussek’s Double Piano Concerto, Op. 63. On the battlefield next day he spurned a French soldier’s offer of surrender and was duly run through. He was thirty-four. On 29 October in an article of deep mourning the Wiener Zeitung announced a forthcoming tribute edition of practically all the prince’s music. In the same issue the newspaper also gave notice of the first publication of the ‘Eroica’ Symphony and included the wording of Beethoven’s final Italian inscription on the title page. By then Beethoven was back in Vienna, no doubt still furious with Lichnowsky and the French and grieving for his heroic and talented friend. He could judge better than anyone the loss to music. The theory advanced by the German musicologist Peter Schleuning is that the ‘grand Uomo’ of his symphony’s new inscription is not Bonaparte at all but the gifted musician and dashing warrior slain by Napoleon’s troops, thus turning the ‘Eroica’ into a musical expression of German patriotism.4 If so, Beethoven could never have made this public. It would have compromised the symphony’s existing dedication to Prince Lobkowitz by implying that it honoured a greater man than the patron who had loyally stood by Beethoven with financial support. And revealing the great man to have been a Prussian prince rather than Napoleon could ruin the chances of the symphony ever selling in French-dominated Europe.

  Whatever the truth, it is clear that Beethoven’s feelings about Napoleon were as mixed as everybody else’s and, like theirs, could border on the obsessive. However, when it comes to appreciating the ‘Eroica’, it is probably best not to attach too much importance to the connection with Bonaparte and certainly not to imagine the French emperor’s shadowy figure looming behind the score in his white waistcoat and braided coat and bicorne hat. It was still unclear what Beethoven really felt when he learned of his erstwhile hero’s death on St Helena in May 1821. Asked whether he might perhaps write some sort of requiem for him, Beethoven merely replied, ‘I have already composed the proper music for that catastrophe.’5 Presumably this referred to the Funeral March of the ‘Eroica’, but it might equally well have meant the entire symphony or, indeed, his own life’s work. In 1824 he remarked to his ex-pupil and friend Carl Czerny, ‘Once upon a time I couldn’t bear Napoleon. Now I think quite differently.’

  * See Chapter 3
.

  7

  THE RECEPTION OF THE ‘EROICA’

  As we have seen, Beethoven’s new symphony was launched with a handful of semi-public performances by the private orchestra of its dedicatee, Prince Lobkowitz. It is certain that by today’s standards these would have been fairly painful affairs for the hearers. Neither of Beethoven’s previous two symphonies had proved easy to play, but the challenges of the ‘Eroica’ were in a league of their own. This was no average eighteenth-century chamber work, which would have been well within the players’ scope by being shorter, with fewer excursions into unfamiliar keys, with more musical clichés giving opportunities for playing on autopilot, and generally more predictable in every sense. That being said, the number of instruments needed for the ‘Eroica’ was not much greater than was required for Mozart’s late G minor Symphony, a performance of which in Baron van Swieten’s house with the composer present was so distressingly bad that Mozart reportedly had to leave the room. The raggedness of an orchestra naturally tended to increase with the number of instruments and the difficulty of the music, and it was really only in the second decade of the nineteenth century, when symphonists such as Beethoven had nourished a fashion for ever-larger ensembles, that the role of a separate conductor for an orchestra became established as a matter of course and out of real necessity. With few exceptions the tradition of a continuo player leading from a keyboard had barely outlived the eighteenth century, and a member of the orchestra—usually the Konzertmeister (the leader of the first violins)—would indicate the time in the trickier places by waving his bow. Beethoven’s own interventions as a conductor in the rehearsals for the ‘Eroica’ were disastrous and muddled still further players already at sea in his difficult work. Complete breakdowns and restarts were frequent.