May 5 Program Notes
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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Overture to "Egmont," Op. 84In 1808, Josef Hartl was named manager of the Vienna Court Theaters, and began running revivals of plays by Schiller and Goethe. To accompany the plays, Hartl asked several composers, including Beethoven, to write incidental music.
Beethoven’s first choice was Schiller’s drama William Tell. Curiously, Hartl assigned that play to a composer named Adalbert Gyrowetz, and instead, invited Beethoven to compose music for Goethe’s Egmont.
Beethoven was not unhappy with the assignment. He read and greatly admired the author, ("I would have gone to my death, yes, ten times to my death, for Goethe") and Egmont’s themes–the defiance of tyranny, the struggle for freedom–appealed to him. Beethoven began writing in October, 1809, and finished the music in time for the play’s opening night, May 24, 1810. The music includes four entr'acts, two songs for the heroine Clarchen, music for the heroine’s death, a ‘melodrama,’ a Triumph Symphony to conclude the work, and tonight’s piece, the overture.
The play is based on the life of Count Egmont (1522-1568), a Netherlandish patriot. When Phillip II of Spain attempted to turn Flanders into a Spanish dependency, Egmont resisted. He was eventually imprisoned and beheaded.
In presenting him on stage, Goethe had to take some poetic license. Egmont was not a pure, unsullied hero. In fact, history indicates he was a bit of a rake. Nevertheless, Goethe overlooked the less pleasant aspects of Egmont's life for the sake of his themes, explaining "what then are poets if they only wish to repeat the accounts of a historian?"
The solemn opening chords, in the key of F major, forecast the ominous events to come. The theme is written in the form of a sarabande, a Spanish dance, perhaps indicating the menacing role that the antagonist, the Duke of Alba, will play.
After some lyric development, a melodic phrase gains momentum before transforming into the main section, introduced by the cellos in a sweeping downward phrase. This theme builds to an orchestral climax, and, after a reprise of the main themes, the orchestra stops dead. Out of this pause, a new vibrancy asserts itself, growing in intensity into an explosion of joyous, victorious power.
Given the tragic nature of the text, why does the overture end in such a cataclysm of joy?
Attribute this to another of Goethe’s poetic adjustments. After his arrest, Egmont dreams of a visit by his love, Clarchen. She tells him that, although he will die, his death will spark rebellion in the Netherlands and eventually bring victory. As Egmont later marches to his martyrdom, he leaves with the following speech: "Friends, take heart. Behind are your parents, your wives, your children. Guard your sacred heritage and to defend all you hold most dear, fall joyfully, as I do now!"
Egmont is transformed, his noble death leads to freedom, the bonds of tyranny are broken. How could Beethoven leave us mourning when Egmont’s death has given his cause and his people new hope?
Piano concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19
I. Allegro con brio
II. Adagio
III. Molto allegroApart from the music cognoscenti, very few people knew the name of Beethoven when he arrived in Vienna in 1792. Matters changed dramatically three years later, when he introduced his Piano Concerto in B-flat.
In 1795, he was asked to compose and perform a concerto for the annual charity concert for Widows and Orphans of the Society of Musicians. He procrastinated until faced with a two day deadline to complete the final movement. Suffering from colic and attended by a doctor who administered painkillers, Beethoven frantically wrote out the score. Four copyists stood by in his apartment snatching pages from him as he completed them and rushed to make orchestral parts.
An amusing anecdote surrounds the first rehearsal. Apparently, Beethoven had thrashed his piano so badly that it was a half-tone below its normal pitch. In rehearsal, he transposed the solo part a half-step up by sight, playing in B natural.
The premiere, on March 29, 1775, was a great success. Czech composer and pianist Vaclav Tomasek was in the audience for the performance and was so overcome he did not touch a piano for days afterward.
What so devastated Tomasek was the work’s severe contrast, its emotional transparency, its unshakable discipline. We may accept such compositional innovations without question, but at the time, these were "daring deviations." Tomasek’s chaos has become our conventionality.
Beethoven was not entirely happy with the work as it stood, however, and revised it considerably. The premiere of the final version–the one we hear today–was first heard in 1798.
The concerto, most likely the first orchestral work of Beethoven’s to be performed–is listed as his second piano concerto, but it is second in name only. It was composed first, published second, and is actually his third essay in the genre. He wrote a concerto in E-flat at age 14, of which only the solo part and piano reductions of the preludes and interludes survives, and he also composed a concerto in D minor, of which the first movement survives.
Beethoven postponed publication of the concerto until 1801 to reserve the work for personal use. He even delayed writing out the solo part until the engraver needed it.
In structure, the work shares many commonalities with Mozart’s piano concertos. Even the purpose of the work (a showcase for pianist and composer) recall Mozart. In style, however, the "daring deviations" are unquestionably Beethoven.
The work begins in Mozartean form, an orchestral exposition with a full cadence leading to the solo entry. The soloist enters with a variation on a subordinate theme, however, before the orchestra comes back in its totality and the soloist launches into the principal theme. After much virtuosic display, we again witness the shadow of Mozart as the orchestra leads to a pause before the cadenza. The movement is vibrant with contrasts–loud and soft, forceful and pliant, staccato and legato–but all in a spirit of elegance and sophistication.
The adagio offers a pensive, broad theme, elaborated and embellished throughout the movement, before returning towards the close in pianissimo. Finally, the concerto concludes with a bouncing, light, optimistic, witty rondo. The syncopated leaps that form the theme begin the work with emphasis on one beat, and conclude with the emphasis on another beat. We hear the same theme with new ears, before the work’s rollicking close.
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, "Eroica."
I. Allegro con brio
II. Marcia funebre: adagio assai
III. Allegro vivace
IV. Allegro molto: Andante. Presto.In 1796, Ludwig van Beethoven received a letter from his publisher urging him to write a sonata taking Napoleon Bonaparte as a theme. At the time Napoleon was pursuing his wars of conquest, and Beethoven had already written several anti-Napoleonic songs. The composer was understandably incredulous at the request.
"Has the devil got a hold of all you gentlemen, that you would suggest such a sonata?" he wrote. "Well, perhaps at the time of the Revolutionary fever such a thing might have been possible, but now, when everything is trying to slip back into the old rut? Ho, ho, there you must leave me out. You will get nothing from me."
One might conclude that Beethoven’s initial reluctance was hardened when Napoleon invaded Austria in 1801. Yet, a mere two years after the invasion, Beethoven began work on his third symphony–a work that was to be a crucial turning point in his development, and a turning point for music in general–and took Napoleon as a theme.
What had changed the composer’s mind about the subject? One suggestion is that Napoleon came to symbolize for Beethoven the modern Prometheus, that Beethoven accepted the French general as the chief military and political defender of the French Revolution and saw him less as a bellicose warrior and more as a defender of "liberty, fraternity, and equality."
Jonathan Kramer offers a less philosophical explanation however. Kramer suggests Beethoven may have begun such a work because he had plans to move to Paris, and a symphony honoring Napoleon would serve as an entry into French artistic circles.
Kramer further suggests that Beethoven hated the patronage system that forced Vienna’s artists to depend upon the aristocracy, and that the dedication of a major work to Napoleon, coupled with a move to the enemy’s capital, would serve as a slap in the face to those who wielded artistic power through their wealth.
From either perspective, the work was completed in 1804, with the title page reading "Grand Symphony: Bonaparte."
And then...
Ferdinand Reis, a student of Beethoven’s, recounts how the third symphony came to be known as the "Eroica."
"I myself had seen this symphony lying on the table," he writes. "At the head of the title page was the word ‘Bonaparte.’ I brought him the news that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor. Thereupon he flew into a rage and cried out, ‘Is he too nothing but an ordinary man!Now he will trample underfoot all the rights of man and only indulge his ambition! He will set himself on high, like all the others, and become a tyrant!’ Beethoven went to the table, seized the title page from the top, tore it up completely, and threw it on the floor. The first page was written out anew, and it was now the symphony received the title, ‘Symphony Eroica.’"
Although the original copy of the title page was torn to bits, the copyist’s manuscript still exists. The name "Napoleon" is scratched out with such vehemence, that a hole is ripped through the manuscript paper.
Despite the change of name, however, the work was finished before Napoleon named himself Emperor, so the work must, for better or worse, be viewed as a character piece.
It is also revolutionary. Paul Henry Lang describes it this way: "The greatest single step ever made by an individual composer in the history of the symphony, and the history of music in general."
The work deepened the emotional range of the form, increased the size of the orchestra, and nearly doubled the length of the average symphonic work of the period. It is a work of dramatic intensity, of great personal expression, of staggering complexity, filled with unprecedented gestures. Many scholars look to this work as the dividing line between the Classical and Romantic eras, as a work of striking originality comparable in our time to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or Schoenberg’s Erwartung.
The first movement is introduced by two powerful chords before embarking on its grave and serious journey. The theme's simple melody introduced by the cellos, drives upwards, gathering intensity throughout its development. The movement climaxes in an explosion of dissonance and syncopation.
This is followed by the solemn tread of a funeral march, the grief-laden theme punctuated by muffled drums. The third movement begins in barely audible chatter before bursting into radiant, robust life.
Finally, the symphony concludes with a series of eleven variations on a theme, with an extended coda. The theme is drawn from Creatures of Prometheus, and was also used in the "Eroica" variations for piano, and in an early kontredanze.
The "Eroica" symphony received its premiere in a private performance for Prince Maximillian Lobkowitz in December 1804. Its public premiere took place in Vienna at the Theater an der Wein, on April 7, 1805, with Beethoven conducting.
How did Beethoven himself rate the symphony? Late in his career, after he had written eight symphonies, he was having coffee with his friend Christine Kuffner. She asked him which of his symphonies was his favorite.
"Ah ha!," he said. "The ‘Eroica.’"
"I should have guessed the C minor (5th)," she said.
"No," he said. "The ‘Eroica.’"