Beethoven's Eroica

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  In the course of the nineteenth century, dead composers began to crowd out the living on concert programmes, and a canon of masterpieces materialized with Beethoven front and centre. As the scholar William Weber has established,4 this fetishizing of the past can be tracked with mathematical precision as a rising line on a graph. In Leipzig, for instance, the percentage of works by deceased composers went from 11 per cent in 1782 to 76 per cent in 1870. Weber sees an 1807 Leipzig performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the titanic, turbulent ‘Eroica’, as a turning point: the work was brought back a week later, ‘by demand’, taking a place of honour at the end of the programme.5

  (Given that in 1807 Beethoven was still very much alive and would remain so for the next twenty years, Weber is presumably indicating that all trends must start well before they are recognized as such.)

  It was the spiritual legacy of Beethoven’s ‘symphonic ideal’—the appeal to heroism and the brotherhood of man—that exercised an almost paralysing power over the future of much Western music. Had Beethoven fallen under a brewer’s dray in 1802 it is debatable whether so many later composers would have felt obliged to choose the symphony as the vehicle for their grandest thoughts and likeliest bids for immortality. Those nine symphonies loomed their Parnassian bulk on his successors’ horizons, their rarefied peaks glittering, at once unclimbable yet demanding to be tackled. Poor Brahms was practically paralysed by the awful anxiety of influence. He was forty-three before he summoned up the courage to write his first, very Beethovenian, symphony in 1876.

  It is equally debatable whether the symphony as a form would ever have acquired the self-importance of sheer size favoured by certain late Romantic composers had not works such as the ‘Eroica’ and the Ninth greatly expanded the limits—both formal and aesthetic—of what a symphony might contain. Saint-Saëns’s grandiose Third (1886), for example, has a prodigious finale with organ and two pianos. It is well written, of course: at once impressive and quite impossible to take seriously, being most easily read as camp parody. (Remember Berlioz’s brilliant put-down of the young Saint-Saëns: ‘He lacks inexperience.’) In the symphonies of other composers it became apparent that the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth had much to answer for. Mahler’s Third, with its six movements, two choirs and average playing time of 1 hour 40 minutes, is probably the longest in the regular repertoire. His Eighth, the very epitome of gruelling high seriousness, is often called the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, even though it generally scrapes by with a mere four hundred players and singers.

  The idea that of all musical forms it was the symphony that might best express uttermost grandeur was no doubt behind Charles Ives’s unfinished Universe Symphony. The composer described this as ‘not music as such’ but an attempt to depict the whole of Creation (a task Haydn had undertaken rather successfully way back in the 1790s). This has now been ‘realized’ from Ives’s copious sketches and performed with his prescribed orchestra of 74 players, 14 of whom are percussionists. If it sounds like nothing on earth it must presumably meet the composer’s original intentions.

  It would be downright harsh to hold Beethoven in any way responsible for that behemoth of all symphonies, Havergal Brian’s First. Known as the ‘Gothic’, it was written in 1919 and can last two or more hours by the clock or upwards of a week subjectively. It requires five choirs, solo singers and the biggest orchestra ever assembled. The percussion section alone calls for fifteen different kinds of instrument including a thunder machine and a bird-scarer. This writer was privileged (if that is the word) to have been at the premiere of the ‘Gothic’, given in 1966 in the Albert Hall under Sir Adrian Boult. It was an ordeal by decibels at the end of which the composer, aged ninety, made rickety bows to a cheering audience rendered ecstatic by sheer relief.

  If the ‘Eroica’ established the symphony as a form of public music capable of exercising a kind of moral therapy and stimulating larger audiences to fill the new, purpose-built concert halls, it represented the democratization of ‘serious’ music, and it can be argued that this idea of music for the people had its roots in post-revolutionary France. Beethoven never made any bones about his music being designed for an audience far more global and enduring than that of a handful of Viennese princelings. In fact he was probably the first composer to be completely confident that his music would last. So it would not have surprised him that his highly political ‘Eroica’, as well as the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, would be used promiscuously to set the tone of great national events. Between 1848 and 1849 his symphonies were played everywhere in the so-called ‘People’s Spring’ series of uprisings in Europe. The ‘Eroica’ in particular was seen as enshrining the same spirit of heroic democracy that was inspiring new revolutions.

  In 1880 the eminent conductor Hans von Bülow famously said, ‘I believe in Bach the father, Beethoven the son and Brahms the Holy Ghost of music.’ By the end of the nineteenth century Beethoven’s music in general, but the symphonies in particular, managed to transcend even the use to which they were put to foster Teutonic nationalism. In the Second World War the Nazis cheerfully exploited Beethoven’s music, just as the dot-dot-dot-dash opening of the Fifth Symphony was read and used by the Allies as the Morse code letter ‘V’ for Victory, showing that Beethoven easily eclipsed mere German nationalism, his inspiration and recognition being universal. Later still, in this spirit the last movement of the Ninth has been shamelessly co-opted to serve as the European Union’s ‘national anthem’, the ‘Ode to Joy’ turned into the theme song of a remarkably joyless institution.

  Such is the universal fallout from a summer’s work in an Austrian farmhouse over two hundred years ago.

  James Hamilton-Paterson is one of Britain’s most distinguished writers. A travel writer, memoirist, poet, and award-winning novelist, Hamilton-Paterson is also an accomplished musician. He lives in Austria.

  APPENDIX

  CHAPTER 2

  The theme in the C major Piano Quartet WoO 36 referred to is practically a minor-key version of the ‘Prometheus’ tune. The rhythm is certainly right:

  In the Rondo last movement of the Piano Quartet No. 2 in D major there is a hint of the same tune in embryonic form, now in a major key but in jaunty 6/8 time:

  CHAPTER 5

  The reduced music score used here is Liszt’s version of the ‘Eroica’ (he transcribed all Beethoven’s symphonies for solo piano), and it is of interest that he was to use exactly the same device as Beethoven when in 1832 he sketched the opening of what was to be his first piano concerto—also in E flat—the only difference being that he went on to repeat it a step further downwards:

  Over these first two bars Liszt wrote Das versteht ihr alle nicht, haha! (‘None of you will understand this’—the ‘ha-ha’ is sounded by the brass and winds where the strings have a rest in the second half of bar 2). It is very tempting to see this as a teasing homage to the ‘Eroica’ and the composer he most revered.

  CHAPTER 5

  See Claude V. Palisca, ‘French Revolutionary Models for Beethoven’s Eroica Funeral March’, in Ann Dhu Shapiro (ed.), Music and Context (Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 202.

  a: Gossec, Marche lugubre

  b: Beethoven, Marcia funebre

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 2  THE BOY FROM BONN

  1 Quoted in Marion M. Scott, Beethoven (J. M. Dent, 1951), p. 18.

  2 Quoted in Joseph Kerman and Alan Tyson, The New Grove Beethoven (Macmillan, 1987), p. 3.

  3 Scott, pp. 22–3.

  4 See Alexander L. Ringer, ‘Clementi and the Eroica’, Musical Quarterly 47/4 (October 1961).

  5 Katharine Thomson, ‘Mozart and Freemasonry’, Music and Letters 57/1 (January 1976), p. 25.

  6 Scott, p. 31.

  7 H. C. Robbins Landon, Beethoven: A Documentary Study (Thames and Hudson, 1970), p. 57.

  8 Ludwig van Beethoven’s Stammbuch, facsimile edition with comments by Dr Hans Gerstinger (Bielefeld-Leipzig, 1927).

  CHAPTER 3  VIENNA
>
  1 Scott, p. 112.

  2 See Fan S. Noli, Beethoven and the French Revolution (Tirana, 1991), p. 110.

  3 H. C. Robbins Landon, The Mozart Compendium (Schirmer, 1990), p. 68.

  4 ‘Verflucht, verdammt, vermaledeites, elendes Wienerpack!’ (Letter to Joseph Carl Bernard, 15 September 1819).

  5 ‘Elender Schuft und gemeiner Lumpenkerl!’ (quoted in Noli, p. 92).

  6 Anton Schindler, Biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, 2nd edition (Aschendorff, 1845), p. 56.

  7 Noli, p. 77.

  8 Jan Swafford, Beethoven (Faber & Faber, 2014), p. 204.

  9 For a comprehensive collection of this music, see Constant Pierre, Musique des fêtes et cérémonies de la révolution française (Paris, 1899).

  10 Letter to Franz Anton Hoffmeister, 15 January 1801.

  CHAPTER 4  PROMETHEUS

  1 Quoted in H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: The Late Years, 1801–1809 (Thames & Hudson, 1977), p. 32.

  2 Ibid., p. 33.

  3 Slightly edited from Wayne M. Senner, The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by his German Contemporaries (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), pp. 190–95.

  CHAPTER 5  CONSTRUCTING A SYMPHONY

  1 Hoffman, ‘Beethoven’s Instrumental-Musik’, in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s sämtliche Werke, vol. 1, edited by C. G. von Maassen, translated by Bryan R. Simms (G. Müller, 1908).

  2 Scott, p. 99.

  3 F. G. Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Biographische Notizen über Beethoven (K. Bädeker, Koblenz, 1838), pp. 77ff.

  4 George Grove, Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies (Novello and Co., London, 1896), p. 77.

  CHAPTER 6  WHO WAS THE REAL HERO OF THE ‘EROICA’?

  1 John Clubbe, ‘Beethoven, Byron, and Bonaparte’ (n.d.), www.napoleon.org/en/reading_room/articles/files/clubbe_beethoven_byron.asp (accessed 27 April 2016).

  2 Quoted in Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (Schirmer Trade Books, New York, 1998), p. 173.

  3 See Peter Schleuning, Beethoven 1800–1806 (Frankfurt/Main 1989), pp. 66–79.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Grove, p. 54

  CHAPTER 7  THE RECEPTION OF THE ‘EROICA’

  1 Scott, p. 52.

  2 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, vol. VII (13 February 1805), p. 321.

  3 Joseph d’Ortigue, ‘George Onslow’, Révue de Paris, 1ère série, LVI (Novembre 1833), p. 154.

  4 Quoted in Grove, p. 93.

  5 The Glenn Gould Reader, edited by Tim Page (Vintage, 1988), p. 50.

  6 Quoted in Ned Rorem, The Nantucket Diary (North Point Press, 1987), p. 580.

  7 Tim Page, Music from the Road (OUP, 1992), p. 102.

  8 Murray Schafer, British Composers in Interview (Faber & Faber, 1963).

  9 Harrison Birtwistle, Wild Tracks, edited by Fiona Maddocks (Faber & Faber, 2014), p. 21.

  CHAPTER 8  THE SYMPHONIC IDEAL

  1 Kerman and Tyson, pp. 109–10.

  2 Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (Faber & Faber, 1971), p. 98.

  CHAPTER 9  AFTER ‘EROICA’

  1 Thomas Hardy, The Dynasts, Part 3, Act Seventh, Scene IX.

  2 See Alex Ross, ‘Deus ex Musica’, The New Yorker, 20 October 2014.

  3 Hoffmann, op. cit.

  4 See William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms (CUP, 2009).

  5 Ross, op. cit.

  INDEX

  Austerlitz, Battle of, 116, 120

  Bach, Johann Sebastian, 83, 131, 165

  48 Preludes and Fugues, 18–19, 24

  The Art of Fugue, 8

  and Baroque, 7, 12

  canons/counterpoint, 7, 106

  Goldberg Variations, 4

  influence on Beethoven, 24, 161

  St. Matthew and other Passions, 19, 104–105

  Baroque, 7–8, 11, 12, 18

  Beethoven, Carl van and Johann van (brothers), 16, 37, 76

  Beethoven, Johann van (father), 15, 16–17, 21, 30, 37, 40, 51, 76, 153

  Beethoven, Karl van (nephew), 40

  Beethoven, Ludwig van

  3 Piano Quartets WoO 36, 23–24, 133, 136, 167

  9 Variations on a March by Dressler WoO 63, 19

  15 Variations and a Fugue on an Original Theme in E flat major Eroica Variations Op. 35, 70–71, 74, 79–80, 90, 107

  33 Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli in C major Diabelli Variations Op. 120, 72, 157

  and aristocracy/patrons, 28–29, 39, 41, 50, 52, 54–55, 61, 139, 142, 152 (see also Lichnowsky; Lobkowitz; Maximilian Francis; Rudolph of Austria)

  bagatelles, 70

  The Battle Symphony/Wellington’s Victory/The Battle of Vittoria Op. 91, 143–144, 157

  Beethoven’s orchestra, 2, 65–66, 125, 145

  birth/childhood, 15–18

  canons/fugues, 7, 8–9, 71, 107, 128

  Cantata on the Accession of Emperor Leopold II WoO 88, 33

  Christus am Oelberge Op. 85, 80, 127

  Classical and Romantic, 1, 12–13, 109

  as conductor, 126, 128

  Contre-dance for Small Orchestra No. 7 in E flat major WoO 14, 70, 72, 107

  as controversialist, 50–52

  The Creatures of Prometheus, 64, 66–67, 70–72, 73

  and critics, 66, 72–73, 127–134, 138, 143, 144, 157, 160–161

  deafness, 59, 64, 74, 76–81, 108, 128, 132, 151

  death (and after), 153–165

  and drink, 50, 51, 153, 156

  early period, 23–57, 136

  Fidelio/Lénore, 58–59, 74, 115

  finances (and lack of them), 37, 40–41, 46, 54–55, 61, 143, 152

  Funeral Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II WoO 87, 33, 35

  and genius, 15–16, 40, 65–66, 79, 86–87, 90, 109

  contemporary assessment, 18, 19, 73, 129

  ‘The Grand Mogul,’ 39, 67

  Grosse Fuge in B flat major Op. 133, 147, 149, 157

  ‘Heiligenstadt Testament,’ 76–80, 108, 131

  improvisation, 21, 23, 44–45, 142

  influence on instrument-makers, 46

  keyboard skill, 28–29, 31, 34, 41, 44–46, 70–71, 118, 127, 136

  Mass in C major Op. 86, 154

  middle period, 131

  Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major Op. 15, 138

  Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major Op. 19, 138

  Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor Op. 37, 119–120, 127, 138

  Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor Op. 2 No. 1, 24

  Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor Pathétique Op. 13, 60, 99, 138

  Piano Sonata No. 11 in B flat major Op. 22, 133

  Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat major Maria funebre sulla morte d’un eroe Op. 26, 99, 154

  Piano Sonata No. 13 in F flat major quasi una fantasia Op. 27 No. 1, 139, 142

  Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor quasi una fantasia Moonlight Op. 27 No. 2, 139, 142

  Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major Pastoral Op. 28, 157

  Piano Sonata Nos. 16–18 Op. 31, 80

  Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major Waldstein Op. 53, 31

  Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor Appassionata Op. 57, 121

  Piano Sonata No. 26 in E flat major Les adieux/Das Lebewohl Op. 81a, 145–146

  Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major Hammerklavier Op. 106, 133, 147, 149

  Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major Op. 109, 134, 157

  Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major Op. 110, 157

  Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor Op. 111, 132, 157

  piano teaching, 28–29, 30–31, 41, 54–55, 139

  precocity/‘Wunderkind,’ 15–16, 76

  puritanism, 51

  quoted, 50, 51, 60, 66, 77, 78, 123

  republicanism, 52, 59, 109

  self-belief (and sometime lack of it), 23, 40, 65, 112, 127, 135, 139, 164–165

  Septet Op. 20, 136, 138

  String Quartet Nos. 1–6 Op. 18, 136, 138, 157

  String Quartet No. 12 in E flat major Op. 127, 157

  String Quartet No. 13 in B flat
major Op. 130, 147, 149, 157

  String Quartet Nos. 14–16 Op. 131, 157

  Symphonies

  No. 1 in C major, 37, 57, 98, 101, 125, 127–128, 138

  No. 2 in D major, 57, 80, 125, 127, 138

  No. 5 in C minor, 2, 26, 84–86, 130–131, 145, 160–161, 164–165

  No. 6 in F major, 76

  No. 7 in A major, 130, 145

  No. 8 in F major, 26, 146

  No. 9 in D minor, 2, 28, 53, 78, 130–131, 144, 145, 163, 164–165

  syncopation, 65–66, 102–103, 104

  temper, 50, 76, 77, 113, 114, 121

  Three Piano Sonatas

  Kurfürstensonaten WoO 47, 19

  viola skill, 21, 96–97

  violin skill, 34

  Violin Sonata Nos. 6–8 Op. 30, 80

  wordplay, 66–67, 79

  See also Bonn; French Revolution; Mozart; Vienna

  Beethoven, Ludwig van (grandfather), 16

  Beethoven, Maria van (mother), 17–18, 29–30

  Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E flat major Eroica

  1st movement: Allegro con brio, 89–96, 128, 130–131

  2nd movement: Marcia funebre–Adagio assai, 19, 87, 89, 96–100, 107, 123, 128, 154, 168

  3rd movement: Scherzo: Allegro vivace, 65–66, 100–104

  4th movement: Finale: Allegro molto, 71–72, 80, 104–108

  composition, 57–58, 65–66, 80–81

  dedication, 112, 118

  Eroica title, 112–113, 114

  French influences, 65–66, 96–100

  heroicism, 81, 89

  ‘Humanity,’ 111

  influence, 130, 145–146, 162, 163

  innovatory

  in emotion, 1, 74, 145

  in form, 4–5, 13, 71–72, 89–91, 94, 111–112, 135–136, 147, 149

  in politics, 1, 46–47, 59, 112–114, 164–165

  key, 80, 89–90

  ‘morally depraved’/morally uplifting, 129, 144–145, 164

  and Napoleon, 2, 87, 89, 108, 110–116

  ambivalence, 73, 110, 114, 122–123, 145