Read The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination Online
Authors: Matthew Guerrieri
The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination (39 page)
Such was the atmosphere in which November’s concert proceeded, and it hardly bode
well for Beethoven’s own concert a month later, which would necessitate drawing on
the same pool of musicians. To make matters worse, another benefit concert, this one
benefiting the Widows and Orphans Fund, was
also scheduled for December 22. In a letter to the publishers Breitkopf and Härtel,
Beethoven sensed a conspiracy, led by his onetime teacher:
The promoters of the concert for the widows, out of hatred for me, Herr Salieri being
my most active opponent, played me a horrible trick. They threatened to expel any
musician belonging to their company who would play for my benefit—
7
If the accusation was not mere paranoia, it would give Salieri the distinction of
having intrigued against both Mozart and Beethoven.
Beethoven was writing to Breitkopf and Härtel because he had sold them the Fifth Symphony.
It was the second time he had sold it. The symphony had originally been commissioned
by Franz von Oppersdorff, a Silesian count wealthy enough to maintain his own private
orchestra. For 500 florins, Count Oppersdorff had received the Fourth Symphony—the
score along with exclusive rights to it for six months—and liked it so much that he
commissioned another, for another 500 florins. However, after collecting 350 of those
florins, Beethoven wrote to the Count, “You will look at me in a false light, but
necessity compelled me to sell to someone else the symphony which was written for
you and another as well”—the Fifth and the Sixth, for which Beethoven had already
been negotiating with Breitkopf and Härtel for some months.
8
It was a good thing Beethoven had gotten 350 florins out of the Count, as he came
out on the short end of the negotiations with Breitkopf and Härtel. After initially
proposing a price of 900 florins for “two symphonies, a Mass [in C major], and a sonata
for pianoforte and violoncello [op. 69],” Beethoven eventually settled for 600 florins,
in return for “two symphonies, a sonata with violoncello obbligato, two trios for
pianoforte, violin
and violoncello (since such trios are now rather scarce), or, instead of these last
two trios, a symphony”—plus the Mass for free. (“I pay attention not only to what
is profitable but also to what brings honour and glory,” Beethoven explained, though
he may also have felt the need to repair his ego over the Mass, which its dedicatee,
Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II, had criticized.)
9
So Beethoven went into his
Akademie
with too much music, surly musicians, and the pressure to turn a profit. The result
was about as one would expect. The audience grew restless. The singers were noticeably
shivering in the winter cold. The Choral Fantasy ran off the rails in performance,
and Beethoven was forced to stop the orchestra and start over.
Still, Beethoven convinced himself that the concert had gone over well—“the public
nevertheless applauded the whole performance with enthusiasm”—though he expected the
worst from the critics. “[S]cribblers in Vienna will certainly not fail to send again
to the Musikalische Zeitung some wretched stuff directed against me,” he predicted.
10
The
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
, however, perhaps having caught some glimpse of the Fifth Symphony’s future all-purpose
ubiquity, opted for discretion.
[This] new, grand symphony by Beethoven … in its fashion, in accordance both with
the ideas and with their treatment, once again stands so much apart from all others
that even the trained listener must hear it several times before he can make it his
own and arrive at a definite opinion.
11
Eight Interesting Recordings
BERLIN PHILHARMONIC
Arthur Nikisch, conductor
(HMV 040784/91, recorded 1913)
Originally released on eight single-side 78 rpm discs (and now available on multiple
CD transfers), Nikisch’s complete Fifth is a remarkable glimpse of Romantic extravagance,
alternating between intemperate languor and impetuosity. Phrases ebb and flow; Nikisch
repeatedly draws out the tempo to an organ-like sustain and then slams on the gas.
More indulgence than modern ears might be accustomed to, but more flair, too.
BERLIN PHILHARMONIC
Wilhelm Furtwängler, conductor
(recorded June 30, 1943)
Furtwängler’s live, wartime recording of the Fifth (available on at least six different
labels) is heightened on so many levels that even Furtwängler’s other recordings of
the symphony don’t quite match its overwhelming impact. The fervency of the interpretation,
the brilliance of the playing, and the ominous shadow of the Third Reich troubling
every note: the struggle between Beethoven’s music and the darkest impulses of humanity
is palpable. (Arturo Toscanini’s VE-day performance with the NBC Philharmonic is also
available, on Music & Arts 753: disciplined and astonishingly, relentlessly fast—the
Toscanini style at its most zealous.)
GLENN GOULD
piano
(Columbia MS 7095, 1968)
Gould revived Franz Liszt’s piano solo transcription of the Fifth as, maybe, a wry
play on of his reputation as a hermit, but the result is thrilling and surprising.
The first movement has hammered force, Gould reveling in the heavy crush of the piano’s
bass, while his eccentric exaltation comes to the fore in
the Andante: he takes a tempo far slower than any orchestra could ever hope to sustain,
and both he and we get wondrously lost in it. Worth seeking out on LP for Gould’s
hilarious parody-review liner notes.
THE NEW PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA
Pierre Boulez, conductor
(Columbia M 30085, 1970)
To hear Boulez’s infamous reading of the Fifth requires a bit of searching; it was
left out of Sony Classical’s “Pierre Boulez Edition” of reissues (although a CD reissue
was released in Japan). Often criticized as temperamentally slow and dryly unidiomatic,
Boulez’s long march through the Fifth nonetheless uncovers new shadings, a modern
reading full of modern bleakness, a giant machine both inexorable and imprisoning.
VIENNA PHILHARMONIC
Carlos Kleiber, conductor
(Deutsche Grammophon 2530-518, 1975)
For many years, this was considered the gold standard of the Fifth on record, and
it’s not hard to hear why: the playing is gorgeously plush, the reading is full of
charging momentum. If Beethoven’s Fifth were the golden age of luxury jet travel,
this is what it would sound like, hurtling forth in grand style.
ORCHESTRE RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE ET ROMANTIQUE
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor
(Archiv 447062, 1995)
Gardiner founded this group to explore the musical echoes of the French Revolution
on period instruments; their Fifth is one of the best of the historically informed
performances, being dedicated to speed, élan, and the pursuit of unabashed rabble-rousing.
As a description of the Fifth, “revolutionary” has become a bland commonplace, but
Gardiner and his cadres make you want to go out and guillotine an aristocrat.
ENSEMBLE MODERN
Peter Eötvös, conductor
(BMC Records CD 063, 2001)
A recording that ropes the microphone into its conspiracy; Eötvös and the chamber-sized
Ensemble Modern, new-music specialists, amplify every instrument in close-up, then
remix and balance the sound into a coordinated assault. The rock-style sonic punch
is matched by the interpretation, lean and solidly muscular.
THE PORTSMOUTH SINFONIA
on The Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics
(Columbia KC 33049, 1973)
Formed by students at England’s Portsmouth School of Art in 1970, spearheaded by the
experimental composer Gavin Bryars, the Sinfonia eschewed technical skill: members
were either non-musicians or musicians playing unfamiliar instruments. Their recording
of the Fifth—a medley of all four movements, in 1-4-2-3 order—is a glorious mess of
wrong notes, fudged rhythms, and untrammeled enthusiasm. That it is still recognizably
the Fifth is part of the cheeky point.
The book was Marty Asher’s idea, and he shepherded it through with enthusiasm and
editorial focus. Andrew Carlson and Jeff Alexander conscientiously and thoughtfully
brought the manuscript through the final stages of publication. Alex Ross vouched
for the author, and vouchsafed the author by generously reviewing drafts of the book,
as did Jeremy Eichler, Marti Epstein, Katie Hamill, Phyllis Hoffman, Robert Hoffman,
Rebecca Hunt, Ethan Iverson, Mark Meyer, and Jack Miller; any remaining errors—factual,
interpretive, or stylistic—are mine alone. Moe distracted the author into crucial,
enforced, procrastinatory reflection.
Lucy Kim made the entire book possible, just as she has made possible every other
even remotely worthwhile thing I have ever done. To journey with someone of such beauty,
discernment, and resilience is a joy that the word “love” can only begin to encompass.
F
RAMINGHAM
, M
ASSACHUSETTS
M
ARCH 4, 2012
PREFACE
1
. Jeph Jacques, “Number 1336: Canathesia,”
Questionable Content
,
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1336
.
2
. Robert Haven Schauffler,
Beethoven: The Man Who Freed Music
(New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1944), p. 217.
3
. According to the poet Christoph Kuffner. See Alexander Wheelock Thayer,
Thayer’s Life of Beethoven
, Elliot Forbes, ed. (Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 674. (Hereafter “Thayer-Forbes.”)
4
. James F. Green, “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: A Forgotten Anecdote Discovered,”
The Beethoven Journal
, 25, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 36–37. Upon the death of Albert, King of Saxony, in 1902,
a correspondent to
The Spectator
recalled the ruler telling a similar story: “Beethoven, said the King, was once asked
by a profound thinker the ‘meaning’ of the mysterious opening notes of the C Minor
Symphony. The composer replied in a drastic German phrase (which has its equivalent
in other languages) whose four monosyllables fitted the four quavers, and, at the
same time, were a suitable reply to an asinine question.” (“X.Y.Z.,” “The King of
Saxony. [To the editor of the ‘Spectator.’]”
The Spectator
[London], no. 3861 [June 28, 1902]: 1005–6.)
1. Revolutions
1
. David Cairns,
Berlioz: Volume One: The Making of an Artist 1803–1832
(University of California Press, 2000), p. 268.
2
. Carl Woideck,
Charlie Parker: His Music and Life
(University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 205.
3
. Austin Clarkson, “Lecture on Dada by Stefan Wolpe,”
The Musical Quarterly
72, no. 2 (1986): 213–14.
4
. See, most notably, Edward T. Cone,
Musical Form and Musical Performance
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1968), pp. 11–31.
5
. See, for example, Nicky Lossoff, “Silent Music and the Eternal Silence,” in
Silence, Music, Silent Music
, Nicky Lossoff and Jenny Doctor, eds. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 205–22.
6
. Jacques Derrida,
The Truth in Painting
, Geoffrey Bennington and Ian Macleod, trans. (University of Chicago Press, 1987),
p. 61. See also Robin Marriner, “Derrida and the
Parergon
,” in Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde, eds.,
A Companion to Art Theory
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 349–59. For another musical view, see Richard C. Littlefield,
“The Silence of the Frames,”
Music Theory Online
2.1 (1996),
http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.96.2.1/mto.96.2.1.littlefield.html
. Critic Winthrop Sargeant told this story: “A friend of mine took a Buddhist monk
to hear the Boston Symphony perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. His comment was ‘Not
enough silence!’ ” Sargeant, “Musical Events,”
The New Yorker
47, no. 52 [February 12, 1972]: 73.
7
. Wesley Wehr,
The Eighth Lively Art: Conversations with Painters, Poets, Musicians, & the Wicked
Witch of the West
(University of Washington Press, 2000), p. 236.
8
. See Eric Johnson, “A Composer’s Vision: Photographs by Ernest Bloch,”
Aperture
16, no. 3 (Nov. 1972).
9
. Richard Wagner,
On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren)
, Edward Dannreuther, trans. (London: William Reeves, 1887), p. 30.
10
. Felix Weingartner,
On the Performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies
, Jessie Crosland, trans. (London: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1907), p. 61.
11
. Norman Del Mar,
Conducting Beethoven. Volume I: The Symphonies
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 71.
12
. Gunther Schuller,
The Compleat Conductor
(Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 119.
13
. Del Mar,
Conducting Beethoven
, p. 74.
14
. Emily Anderson, ed.
The Letters of Beethoven, Collected, Translated and Edited with an Introduction, Appendixes,
Notes and Indexes
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 217.
15
. Ibid., p. 60.
16
. Ibid., p. 217.
17
. Quoted in Thayer-Forbes, p. 373.
18
. Ibid., p. 358.
19
. Maynard Solomon,
Beethoven Essays
(Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 93.
20
. A. McCombe et al., “Guidelines for the Grading of Tinnitus Severity, the Results
of a Working Group Commissioned by the British Association of Otolaryngologists, Head
and Neck Surgeons, 1999,”
Clinical Otolaryngology & Applied Sciences
26, no. 5 (Oct. 2001): 388–93.
21
. [Alexander Wheelock Thayer], “From My Diary. No. XVI,”
Dwight’s Journal of Music
, 2, no. 19 (Feb. 12, 1853): 149.
22
. Annette Maria DiMedeo,
Frances McCollin: Her Life and Music
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990), p. 5.
23
. Alessandra Comini,
The Changing Image of Beethoven, A Study in Mythmaking
(Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2008), p. 160.
24
. William McGuffey,
McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader
(American Book Co., 1879), p. 303.
The Crofton Boys
was first published in 1842, only fifteen years after Beethoven’s death, making Hugh’s
mother pretty culturally hip for a London druggist’s wife. Martineau was a pioneering
journalist and sociologist who advocated for feminism, abolitionism, and the positivist
theories of August Comte, whose popular historical “law of three stages” (theocratic,
metaphysical, scientific) was another manifestation of the nineteenth-century fetish
for three-part intellectual structures that also gave us the early-middle-late division
of Beethoven’s career.
25
. For example, on page 27 of Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett’s
Just Curious About History, Jeeves
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), a collection of historical trivia: “[B]y the
time [Beethoven] reached his early thirties his hearing was gone, and he could no
longer play the piano properly.” In a teaching guide called
Breaking Away from the Textbook: The Enlightenment through the 20th Century
(by Ron H. Pahl [Lanham, MD: R&L Education, 2002], p. 90), one reads that “[Beethoven]
called himself a ‘tone poet’ and he was deaf by the time he was thirty, but that did
not stop him from reinventing music.” Another educational workbook,
Editing Skills: Practical Activities Using Text Types, Ages 11+
(Balcatta, Australia: R.I.C. Publications, 2005, p. 83), designed to train students
to spot errors of spelling and grammar, reiterates the trope in a convincingly imitated
semiliterate style: “By the age of 30, Beethoven was profowndly deaf yet he still
managed to compose brilliant music examples of these works are the symphones, ‘Eroica’
and ‘Pastoral.’ ”
26
.
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte
, Band 9, Grita Herre, ed. (VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig, 1988), pp. 290–91.
27
. Owen Jander, “ ‘Let Your Deafness No Longer Be a Secret—Even In Art’: Self-Portraiture
and the Third Movement of the C-Minor Symphony,”
The Beethoven Journal
8 (2000): 25.
28
. Quoted in Rita Steblin,
A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
(University of Rochester Press, 2002), p. 111.
29
. Ibid., p. 231.
30
. Ibid.
31
. Thayer-Forbes, p. 209.
32
. E. T. A. Hoffmann, “Review,” in Wayne M. Senner, translator, and Robin Wallace and
William Meredith, editors.
The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries
, 2 vols. (University of Nebraska Press, 1999 [vol. 1], 2001 [vol. 2]), vol. 2, p.
98.
33
. See Michael C. Tusa, “Beethoven’s ‘C-minor Mood,’ Some Thoughts on the Structural
Implications of Key Choice,”
Beethoven Forum
2 (1993): 6–10.
34
. Leonard Bernstein,
The Joy of Music
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), p. 89.
35
. Steblin,
A History of Key Characteristics
, pp. 232–33.
36
. See Konrad Ulrich, “Mozart’s Sketches,”
Early Music
20, no. 1 (Feb., 1992), for a useful overview.
37
. The best survey of Landsberg 6 is Rachel W. Wade, “Beethoven’s
Eroica
Sketchbook,”
Fontes artis musicae
XXIV, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1977): 254–90. Dating the sketches can be a tricky business,
but the presence of early sketches for
Fidelio
—which Beethoven first turned his attention to at the end of 1803—makes early 1804
a plausible date for the sketches of the Fifth. See also the detailed discussion of
the sketchbook in Douglas Johnson, et al.,
The Beethoven Sketchbooks
(University of California Press, 1985), pp. 137–45.
38
. The catalog of Landsberg’s Beethoven collection is reproduced in Johnson et al.,
The Beethoven Sketchbooks
, p. 32.
39
. See Gustav Nottebohm,
Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803
(Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1880), pp. 70–71.
40
. Robert Haven Schauffler,
The Unknown Brahms
(New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1933), pp. 139–40. Schauffler’s musical biographies
can sometimes rival Schindler for engendering skepticism, but here he is quoting Brahms’s
friend and biographer Max Kalbeck.
41
. Homer,
The Iliad of Homer
, Samuel Butler, trans. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898), p. 76.
42
. Aristotle,
The “Art” of Rhetoric
, J. H. Freese, trans. (Harvard University Press, 1926), pp. 385–86. (The translator
uses the spelling
paean
.)
43
. Quintilian,
Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory
, John Selby Watson, trans. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1876), vol. 2, p. 237.
44
. Edwin E. Gordon,
Tonal and Rhythm Patterns: An Objective Analysis
(State University of New York Press, 1976), pp. 66, 71.
45
. Ibid., p. 123.
46
. Friedrich Kerst,
Der Erinnerungen an Beethoven
(Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1913), Band 1, p. 54. (
“Viele Motive Beethovens entstanden durch zufällige äußere Eindrücke und Ereignisse.
Der Gesang eines Waldvogels
(
der Ammerling
)
gab ihm das Thema zur C-Moll-Sinfonie, und wer ihn fantasieren gehört hat, weiß, was
er aus den unbedeutendsten paar Tönen zu entwickeln wußte.”
) Czerny had contributed his reminiscences of Beethoven to Otto Jahn, an archaeologist
and historian whose 1856 biography of Mozart still remains one of the great monuments
of musical scholarship. Jahn never got around to writing his Beethoven biography,
but Czerny’s notes survived to be published.
47
. Christoph Christian Sturm,
Reflections on the Works of God in Providence and Nature, for Every Day in the Year
, Adam Clarke, trans. (New York: McElrath, Bangs & Herbert, 1833), p. 183.
48
. The conversation books mention an intellectual dispute between Oken and Ignaz Troxler
that was enough to pass for news of the day; see Alexander Wheelock Thayer,
Ludwig van Beethovens Leben
, Vierter Band (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1907), p. 154. Troxler, a doctor and
philosopher, was an acquaintance of Beethoven’s in Vienna.
49
. See Stephen Jay Gould,
The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985), pp. 199–211.
50
. Wilhelm Christian Müller, “Something on Ludwig van Beethoven,” in Senner et al.,
The Critical Reception of Beethoven’s Compositions by His German Contemporaries
, vol. 1, p. 106. Müller knew Beethoven largely through his daughter Elise, a pianist
and composer who corresponded with Beethoven, and, scholarly temptation aside, most
likely was
not
the dedicatee of “Für Elise.”
51
. Olivier Messiaen, the most famous of ornithologically inspired composers, always
placed the yellowhammer’s final note a whole step
higher
than the repeated notes, but dialects vary; see, for instance, Gundula Wonke and
Dieter Wallschläger, “Song dialects in the yellowhammer
Emberiza citrinella:
bioacoustic variation between and within dialects,”
Journal of Ornithology
150, no. 1 (Jan. 2009): 117–26.
52
. See Owen Jander, “The Prophetic Conversation in Beethoven’s ‘Scene by the Brook,’ ”
The Musical Quarterly
77, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 520.
53
. Harvey Grace, “Interludes,”
The Musical Times
, Sept. 1, 1920: p. 595.
54
. As in Haydn’s 104th Symphony, for instance: Adagio
55
. As quoted in Sandra P. Rosenbaum,
Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music
(Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 368.
56
. Richard Wagner,
On Conducting
, William Ashton Ellis, trans., in
Richard Wagner’s Prose Works
, vol. 4 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1912), p. 311.
57
. For a fascinating look at such technology, see George Thomas Ealy, “Of Ear Trumpets
and a Resonance Plate: Early Hearing Aids and Beethoven’s Hearing Perception,”
19th Century Music
17, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 262–73.
58
. Gustav Nottebohm,
Beethoveniana. Aufsätze und Mittheilungen
(Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1872), p. 135.
59
. Felix Weingartner,
On Conducting
, pp. 35–36.
60
. Weingartner,
On the Performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies
, Ernest Newman, trans. (London: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1906), p. 61.
61
. Gunther Schuller,
The Compleat Conductor
, pp. 148–49. (This table seems to be more precise than the one on page 123.)
62
. Quoted in Joseph Horowitz,
Understanding Toscanini
(University of California Press, 1994), p. 339.
63
. Jean Vermeil,
Conversations with Boulez
, Camille Naish, trans. (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), p. 71.
