Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (164 page)

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.