“It’s a pity that I don’t understand the art of war as well as that of music. I would destroy him.” Beethoven on Napoleon
We have just concluded the inaugural ACO ’07 tour performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto Op. 61, his Eroica symphony Op. 55 and Turnage’s Lullaby for Hans.
In 2006 we performed Beethoven’s rather more succinct 5th symphony, and hence it is interesting to touch on the differences between this and his more verbose and unwieldy 3rd.
Interpreting arguably the world’s most famous piece of music – the knockout c minor 5th, one is struck by the clarity of its structure. The metronome markings as prescribed by the composer are immutable – one ignores them at one’s peril, and the work builds to an irrepressible big bang conclusion in the bright key of C. The 3rd symphony, on the other hand, throws up more uncertainty. Many stylistic issues arise relating to the metronome marks by Beethoven. For e.g. the provocatively lengthy first movement drives for 16 min’s with one tempo indication (at one bar per second), making it 10 min’s longer than the first mov’t of the 5th. There are no indications for rubato (the give and take of time) and not even a fermata (pause) in sight– interesting to note that within the first 4 bars of the first mov’t of the 5th symphony we are already asked to pause.
Yet Beethoven has infused this colossal first movement with so much musical information; arguing his complex philosophical ideas with such powerful developmental treatment so wilfully that in studying its structure one could assign a different tempo to mark each of the movements strongly varying characters.
And many interpreters do, arguing for grandiloquence by over-gunning dynamics and under-gunning tempo and prescribing rubato to enhance dramatic gesture and assuming articulation markings not in the score.
When one considers and accepts Beethoven’s tempo as a purposeful call to move with force and Napoleonic energy into battle, it demands of the listener and performer a speed of reflexes and stamina required for such a task.
No wonder Beethoven summons the need to repeat the exposition, (he toyed with the idea of removing the repeat, but was convinced of its necessity) in order that our mind’s ear has the chance to be properly acquainted with the rich fabric of strongly distinct ideas before launching headlong into the development.
And so after the longest 1st mov’t written to that date, we are faced with the longest slow movement. No wonder many find this symphony the most exhausting. Spohr was heard to claim during the first performance: I’d pay money for this to stop.
A substantial amount of 19th-century critical opinion of the Eroica touched on the concept of the symphony as a psychological portrait of Bonaparte; or else discussed whether the work is underlaid by a programmatic narrative of Napoleon’s life, or even perhaps the Iliad. The broader point was that Napoleon was merely one example of the contemporary fascination with all things heroic.
Thus, if the first movement represented the heroic warrior in action, the funeral march of the second movement could easily be read as the hero mourning the loss of his friend and comrade-in-arms. The expression of such serious and deeply felt emotion is not incongruous with the energetic soldier, but rather enhances the listener’s mental image of such a man.
The last two movements were often considered by contemporary critics to be weaker than the first two, leading some to place the funeral march last in performance, as something more profound – but also more neatly programmatic. ‘Having portrayed the tiger in the first movement, and the profoundly suffering human soul behind it in the second, Beethoven turned to what he believed would be Bonaparte’s more lasting accomplishments in the final two,’ suggested Adolph Marx, who didn’t share the disparaging view of Beethoven’s original design. ‘The Scherzo represents peace, and the troops breaking off for their dear homeland.’ Marx also put forward a provocative theory that one of the principal themes of the Scherzo is based on a student drinking song, notated by a German folksong expert as being popular in the period 1810-1826, and probably originating in the field with the troops of the Napoleonic wars. The song was intended to be sung in canon, which is how Beethoven treats it. In support of this alcohol-related theory, an anonymous Viennese reviewer described the Scherzo as ‘Raging rapture. Pleasure is the goal of life; every joy wants to be tasted, every sensual pleasure put to the test. Away with wisdom, with its foresight!’
The contradanse which appears in the Finale also attracts attention for its close relationship with English musical models of that dance (as opposed to French or German). Sarah Bennett Reichart has proposed that Beethoven’s contradanse here was chosen to represent a newly democratic age – the English contradanse being popular at the time of Emperor Joseph’s enlightened reforms, to the extent that in some cases masters would find themselves dancing with servants.
Performing the “Carrodus” 1743 del Gesso for the first time in big halls around the country was a rather intense experience, given that it attracted so much attention and hadn’t been played in public since 1953. Please feel free to offer comments.
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