Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (52 page)

None of this is to say that
Christus am Ölberge
was a failure with the public. Mounted in Vienna in 1803 and again in 1804 with some revisions (not the last ones), it found considerable popularity in the next decades. For Beethoven's audiences, its operatic style was simply normal. It was the usual mode for second-rate religious works, for that matter not so far from the sacred style of Haydn and Mozart. A critic of the
AMZ
wrote, “[I]t confirms my long-held opinion that Beethoven in time can effect a revolution in music like Mozart's. He is hastening toward this goal with great strides.”
²⁸

Beethoven himself never had any illusions about
Christus
. His admissions and excuses were issued piecemeal over the next decade before it was published: I was rushed, my brother was sick, the libretto is bad. All true. But he was quite prepared to make money from the piece, if a publisher would take it on. In any case,
Christus
did him a great service in at least two directions. For one thing it was a step, however faltering, in the direction of opera. At the same time, if he did not yet know what he wanted for a sacred style, now he knew what he did
not
want. Once and for all, he swore off writing a religious work in conventional operatic mode: “What is certain,” he wrote later, “is that now I should compose an absolutely different oratorio from what I composed then.”
²⁹
Which left the question: if not operatic, what? That question would occupy him for much of the next two decades.

 

The Second Symphony in D Major, op. 36, was a different matter: ambitious, carefully crafted, well digested. If when he began it in 1800 Beethoven did not quite know what he wanted a symphony to be, he leaped into this one with both feet. The First Symphony had been something of a rush job like
Christus
, to provide a big finish to a concert, but in that case he had been tinkering for years with ideas for a C-major symphony—in other words, grappling with the genre. The First Symphony amounted to a clearing of the throat, if still more satisfying than
Christus
. The Second has a much richer and fresher treatment of the orchestra, adding up to high comedy on a grand canvas. The D Major may be, in fact, the longest symphony written to that date.

More specifically, as the expansive and kaleidoscopic introduction lays out, the tone of the work is of an operatic comedy.
Christus
was a kind of trial run at opera seria, the Second Symphony perhaps a warm-up for buffa. Call it Mozart intensified: more brash, rollicking, and youthfully raw than Mozart's time would have found decorous. The introduction lays out a series of contrasting ideas like a collection of characters: a pouncing
fortissimo
unison, a tender moment, a comic tripping figure, and so on. There is a sense of breadth in the ideas and in the orchestral sound quite different from the rather generically eighteenth-century character and orchestra of the First Symphony. In the introduction we seem to hear a story being laid out, the essential character jovial but with hints of intrigue and romance, in a palette of offbeat accents and
subito
eruptions that will mark the whole symphony. An Allegro con brio breaks out with a dashing theme that gathers energy toward a racing climax. The second theme strikes an ironic military note, say, Beethoven's version of Mozart's Cherubino, off to war. The whole of the movement is muscular, leaping, explosive,
brillante
, its engine less melodic than rhythmic.

Grace and charm were not constant qualities with Beethoven as they had been with Mozart. In his earlier opuses, when he was aiming for charm he often resorted, as in the First Symphony, to the
galant
mode of the previous century. But in this second movement he was beginning to discover his own kind of charm. It is a long movement in full-scale sonata form, wistful and nostalgic, lyrically lovely despite a moment of operatic
tristesse
and hand-wringing in the development—when, say, our heroine does not find her lover at the masked ball. All ends well, if with a final sigh.

Once again, for the third movement Beethoven takes up the scherzo form. This time he labeled it as such and made it driving and pouncing, with nimble banter between the orchestral choirs. Its trio alternates a phrase of warmly eighteenth-century elegance with faux-
furioso
interruptions.

The finale begins with an absurd giant hiccup that dissolves into skittering comedy. Before long, astute listeners would have realized that, believe it or not, this is actually the rondo theme; the hiccup is developed diligently. The second part of the opening section is flowing, more of an A theme proper, but the hiccup cannot be forsworn. The qualms and shadows that have turned up periodically in this summery romp make a final appearance in the coda, which begins with a tone of whispering intrigue. Here as in Mozart and Shakespeare, comedy and sorrow are close companions. But the spirit of fun wins the day, and the curtain comes down on a scene of laughter with troubles resolved and glasses raised.
³⁰

And that was the end of that train of thought. Beethoven never wrote another piece that much resembles the Second Symphony, not even in his theater music, where he had to find a way to escape from Mozart. For him the D Major was a way station en route to somewhere he did not know when he began it, but perhaps had begun to understand by the time he finished it.

Ferdinand Ries, watching Beethoven at work, was always astonished at how his mentor's compositions reached the heights they did, given what he knew of their inception. “This
Larghetto
,” Ries recalled of the second movement, “is so beautifully, so purely and happily conceived and the melodic line so natural that one can hardly imagine anything in it was ever changed.” But Ries had seen the manuscript with the accompaniment revised so heavily that the final version could hardly be made out in the splotch of notes. Hoping for a lesson in craft, Ries asked about the changes. “It's better this way,” was all Beethoven had to say about it.
³¹
“Better” was all he or anyone needed to know.

 

If the premiere of the Concerto No. 3 in C Minor got mixed reviews, that was in part because, in contrast to the relatively conventional first two concertos, this one summarized the past in the stream of Beethoven's music while no less pointing to the future. If he began extricating himself from the looming shadow of Mozart in the violin sonatas of op. 30, here is where he made a broad step toward the same with concertos.

He had been thinking about the piece since at least 1796, when during his Berlin stay he jotted on a sketch, “For the Concerto in C minor kettledrum at the cadenza.” At that point he had been near the height of his piano career, and for him concertos were as much a matter of practicality as of aesthetics: a repertoire of concertos by oneself and by others was required to establish a reputation as a virtuoso. Now his virtuoso career was winding down. He began working on the C Minor intensively perhaps in 1800, perhaps sometime in the next two years.
³²
It was still in flux at its premiere, as one observes from the absence of a written solo part.

Beethoven's only minor-key concerto does not exactly have the driving and demonic tone of the
Pathétique
and other examples of his C-minor mood; neither is it the full-blown “heroic” style of the coming New Path. The quiet stride of the beginning sets a tone stern and dramatic. Its military-march aspect was familiar in concertos by Mozart and many others, including Beethoven. The atmosphere, scoring, and opening emphasis on a rising figure involving C, E-flat, and A-flat all suggest Mozart's C Minor Concerto hovering in the background. At the same time, the concerto is full of fresh ideas.
³³

He made the music taut and the material tight, beginning with a rising figure in the first measure, a down-striding scale in the second. The third measure introduces a dotted drumbeat figure; the concerto will turn steadily around that essential rhythmic idea, as well as the melodic and harmonic ones from the previous two measures.
³⁴
The most important motif, as it turns out, is the drumbeat. The opening string phrase is echoed a step higher by the winds, which add another fundamental idea with their line rising up to a piercing dissonance on A-flat. In various guises, that A-flat (and its equivalent G-sharp) will resonate throughout the concerto.

The second theme of the orchestral exposition is the expected lyrical contrast to the sternly militant opening. After a couple of subthemes, we arrive at the end of the first exposition and the piano's first entrance on an explosive, uprushing scale (an idea that marks the solo voice throughout). Rather than entering with a new and distinctive theme as Mozart tended to, the soloist takes up the main theme, establishing a commanding personality in the dialogue with the orchestra. It is as if the music has found its leader. With piano and orchestra in close dialogue, the effect is as much symphonic as concerto-like.

Much of the music from the solo entrance on, especially the development section, is dominated by the drumbeat figure in constantly new forms. After the piano's concluding cadenza, the rhythmic motif turns up in the timpani, as if emerging in its true guise as a drumbeat, in a duet with the piano. As Beethoven jotted down in 1796, “For the Concerto in C minor kettledrum at the cadenza.” That striking moment involving timpani was one of the germs from which the concerto grew.

The second-movement Largo arrives with a sense of something otherworldly, both because of its exquisite theme and because it is in E major, about as distant from C minor as a key can be. The unforgettable first E-major chord in the rich lower register of the piano arrives magically out of nowhere and lingers for two slow beats. The main connection between C minor and E major is A-flat/G-sharp, the note singled out by the winds at the beginning of the concerto. Beethoven had been experimenting with extended key relations for years, but rarely so strikingly as here. These sorts of forays into wide-ranging key relations were to be a thumbprint of much of his music to come.
³⁵

The form of the middle movement is a simple ABA, the piano still the commanding presence, now with an air of rapturous improvisation. Carl Czerny recalled that Beethoven played the entire opening with the sustain pedal down, giving it a kind of acoustic halo. The piano figures are like breezes, garlands, butterfly wings. From his memory of Beethoven's playing, Czerny said the slow movement should evoke “a holy, distant, and celestial harmony.” Here was a moment when in a stretch of sublime beauty Beethoven floated free of the past in one more genre. His trajectory as a composer coming fully into his own was still sharply rising in those months of early 1803. And with his most innovative music, he was beginning to earn extraordinary critical superlatives. Already in 1805, a critic of the
Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung
called the concerto's second movement “one of the most expressive and richly sensitive instrumental pieces ever written.”
³⁶

The final chord of the second movement places G-sharp on the top in strings. The piano picks up that note and turns it back into A-flat to begin what will be a lilting and playful rondo, despite the C minor. Again the piano leads the symphonic dialogue; we hear echoes of the first movement in dotted rhythms, down-striding figures, uprushing scales from the soloist. A couple of times, the piano interrupts with mini-cadenzas before the middle section in A-flat major—the starring note now with its own key. As a kind of musical pun, Beethoven turns the A-flat back into G-sharp and on that pivot thrusts us for a moment into E major, the key of the slow movement, and for that moment the music recalls that movement. In the expansive coda, the 2/4 main theme is transformed into a
presto
6/8, driving to the end in C-major high spirits. The main feature of this new incarnation of the rondo theme is a wry flip on G-sharp–A, the last disguise of the leading pitch, finally resolving into C major.

In the aftermath of his benefit concert, Beethoven had much to be pleased about. The music had gone well enough, and after expenses were settled he pocketed the inspiring sum of 1,800 florins. Publications were steady, and Prince Lichnowsky added his annual stipend of 600 florins. In the year after the worst crisis of his life, this was a most gratifying kind of success. Beethoven probably understood what his audience of April 1803 could not know, that with this slate of pieces he had cleared the decks, drawn a line in his life and art between the old, wandering paths and the New Path.

 

After those exhausting months of production around the beginning of 1803, Beethoven's energy did not flag. A couple of weeks after the concert, Prague physician Johann Held met him on the street and was invited to a soiree at the flat of violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh. They were rehearsing string-quartet arrangements of Beethoven's piano music. “His piquant conceits,” the doctor recalled of Beethoven, “modified the gloominess, I might say, the lugubriousness, of his countenance. His criticisms were very keen.”
³⁷
There Dr. Held met Beethoven's violinist disciple Wenzel Krumpholz and a visiting violinist and composer named George Polgreen Bridgetower.

This twenty-four-year-old former prodigy had made a sensation in Vienna. Prince Lichnowsky introduced him to Beethoven, who was suitably impressed. In childhood, Bridgetower may have lived in the Esterházy Palace, and he claimed to have studied there with Haydn. Years later, as a rising young virtuoso living in England, he appeared in Haydn's London concerts. Among his mentors and admirers was Giovanni Battista Viotti, which connects Bridgetower with the heart of the French violin school and its kaleidoscopic effects based on the new “Viotti” bow.
³⁸
Besides the brilliance of his playing, Bridgetower came with a multicultural and mixed-race background that gave him an exotic cachet. His father was West Indian, his mother European. Happy to exploit his background for publicity, he billed himself as “son of the African Prince” (probably not strictly true). A triumph in Dresden, where he was visiting his mother, gained Bridgetower connections to the musical aristocracy in Vienna, thus to Lichnowsky, thereby to Beethoven.