Sunrise, as seen from the International Space Station. h/t NASA
Some weeks back, when I needed to manufacture a quick, lazy diary, I posted a POST YOUR FAVORITE MUSICAL SUNRISE diary. The opening of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was one of the first pieces that came to my mind. There's nothing in Beethoven's Seventh that says it's about sunrise, or anything else. It's just that it has always struck me so, like some great dawning.
This is the first of a three-part diary about Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. I'm going to work on the assumption that most of you are already familiar with it to a small degree, some of you know it by heart, and for a few, this may be the first time you have ever been exposed to it at all.
The Great DailyKos Beethoven Festival of 2011 continues, below the squiggly line!
Dawn isn't the only image that I associate with the Beethoven Seventh. I could have gone with an image like the above, for instance, of stampeding horses. It might be more apt, because the most striking characteristic of the Seventh to me is one of animal motion. As in the Fifth Symphony first movement, Beethoven pounds the crap out of specific rhythmic figures, albeit a different one in each movement.
Wagner described the Seventh Symphony as "The Apotheosis of the Dance," because of Beethoven's use of rhythms in the Seventh. Whatever. As you may know from a certain previous diary, I'm inclined to see "animal motion" in Rorschach Tests. Tell me what you hear.
The above picture of horses is a rather old one:
ANTIQUITY
The forms of animals in movement are discovered on the walls of caves throughout the world. One of the world's most noted caves for this is the Grotte de Lascaux in France.
Motion has often been depicted in early cave art. When the subject (mostly animals) has been that which can provide movement, we often see it in that state. These two examples show us the stationary bull or ox (above) , and what appear to be four horses [From Chavet Cave] (left) perhaps in a race.
The Chavet cave paintings have been dated to as far back as 32000 BC, fifteen thousand years older than the cave paintings of Lacaux of which Picasso, upon seeing them, declared, "We have invented nothing."
I present these two images for their deliberate contrast. In the first, we have a striking vision: new light over the earth, seen through highly advanced technology. In the second, raw animal motion as seen through the eyes of primitive man, in its earliest known artistic presentation. To me, the Seventh manages to convey the sense of both of these things.
The Timing of the Seventh Symphony
As we explained before, Beethoven's music is broken up into three periods, Early, Middle, and Late, with most of his greatest works coming from the productive Middle Period. The Middle Period began with the Third Symphony. When we get to the Seventh and Eighth (both composed simultaneously) we are near the end of the Middle Period, a phase of Beethoven's life that saw him knocking out masterpiece after masterpiece, unique game-changers. There was still some resistance to his music, but he had overcome much of it. Beethoven was respected and seen as an important figure.
The Seventh Symphony was first performed in 1813 in a benefit concert for Austrian soldiers wounded in the Napoleonic Wars which were ravaging Europe. The orchestra was an all-star affair:
[The orchestra] included some of the finest musicians of the day: violinist Louis Spohr,[3] Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Antonio Salieri, Anton Romberg, and the Italian double bass virtuoso, Domenico Dragonetti, whom Beethoven himself described as playing "with great fire and expressive power". It is also said that the Italian guitar virtuoso Mauro Giuliani played cello at the premiere. The piece was very well received, and the second movement, the allegretto, had to be encored immediately.[3] Spohr made particular mention of Beethoven's antics on the rostrum ("as a sforzando occurred, he tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder ... at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air"), and the concert was repeated due to its immense success.
How very different this is from the cold reception that the Fifth Symphony had received, eh? Or the openly hostile reception that the Third received. You may not recognize any of these names, but these were luminaries of music at the time. For instance, Hummel, an important Classical period composer in his own right, but one since totally eclipsed. And Salieri? Yup. That Salieri. Mozart long dead. Hummel is interesting in another way, because Hummel and Beethoven despised each other, and there are suspicions regarding Beethoven and Hummel's wife.
One name not mentioned in the above is a fifteen year old boy in the audience, Franz Schubert.
The Overall Form of the Seventh Symphony
The Seventh Symphony is simpler than the Fifth. There is no mixing of the peas with the jello in this one -- just four separate movements, no thematic linkage between them other than the emphasis on repetitive rhythm. There is no sense of an overall storyline, as the fifth had; no story of victory achieved through adversity. Just four movements of music, but four very well done uplifting movements.
The first movement is complicated enough that I'm not going to try to do more than that today. In fact, the introduction part of the first movement is so long that it can almost be considered a separate movement.
This is basic Sonata-allegro form, a graphic I made to save myself from typing it every week. It describes both the first and the last movement of the Seventh (and most of his other symphonies, too).
Most Sonata-form movements don't have an introduction, or if they do, have a very short one. Like, eight notes of Da-da-da-DAH, for example. The Intro of the Seventh is complicated enough to dissect. It's based on a rhythm very different from the fox-hunt/galloping-horses rhythm of the main movement, a ticking stair-step rhythm of upward-rising scales. It's marked Poco Sostenuto, Italian for A Little Sustained, which really means a little slow and with some drawn-out moments.
Beethoven does an interesting thing starting from the Intro, and carries it on through the other movements as well. The traditional Sonata-allegro form, as practiced before him, and as usually practiced AFTER him, too, was to contrast music in two different keys: the tonic key (the key the symphony is named after), and either the dominant or the relative major key for the second theme. When I took Music Appreciation long, loooong ago, they made a point of emphasizing this.
Beethoven, in the Seventh, basically says, why stop at two? The dominant key of A major would be E major. but Beethoven scorns E major and gives his attention to the keys of F and C in this and the other movements.
Okay, wait. I know, you can't tell one key from another just by my naming it, and maybe this kind of detail bores you, but it will help explain some things.
Later Romantic composers like Wagner were very free in their modulations from one key to another, but where they wander willy-nilly, Beethoven sets up little plateaus in these new keys. It will make more sense when you hear it -- a sudden dramatic change in the sound of the music as it establishes a new baseline.
After the Introduction, there is a funny little segue to the main first movement proper. The stair-step rhythm breaks up, falls apart, and is reassembled as a totally different rhythm, the one that propels the rest of the movement forward.
Near the end of the movement, in the coda (Italian for tail), Beethoven does something that baffled his peers, like Carl Maria von Weber (the composer famous for Invitation to the Dance). There is a repeating chromatic, "grinding" sound in the basses that builds up tension for the final race to the finish line. Weber said of it (and not kindly) "...the extravagances of this genius have reached the ne plus ultra, and Beethoven is quite ripe for the madhouse."
Hmmm... Interesting discovery just now. When you type "Ripe for the Madhouse" into Google, it autocompletes with "Beethoven"!
Let's go to the music!
Beethoven Symphony #7 in A Major, Opus 92, First movement, Poco Sostenuto -- Vivace. Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. (first part)
Introduction -- Poco Sostenuto (0:00)
(0:00) And here is my sunrise! The orchestra strikes a chord, and as it fades, you can hear a single oboe, which was drowned out before, holding a long note, spinning out the beginning of the Intro's main melody.
(0:47) We hear the first tentative tiptoes of the Stair-step rhythm. And at 1:06, it announces itself boldly and takes control. The same intro theme repeats now, with this extra accompaniment.
(1:34) We reach the first of those plateaus, I mentioned, this one in C major. And I told you it would be easier to understand once you hear it. You can feel that we've moved to a new place, set up a new base camp. A new, graceful melody, emerges from the woodwinds to mark this occasion.
(2:22) The graceful melody is gone, and we are back to the rising stair-steps. There is a new urgency to it, as it begins changing key again.
(2:52) The stair steps fade away, as we have achieved a new stable base camp in the key of F major. The graceful melody is repeated, this time led by the flutes.
But there is no relaxation here. At 3:26, the stair-step melody begins to intrude. And intrusion really is the word for it, I think. This is one of the fun and lively things about Beethoven, that things like this are so capable of animated characterization. The stair-step rhythm is coming back in, prematurely, impatiently crowding out the elegant melody.
At 3:38, now in the key of E, the music begins to disassemble itself. At 3:56, it breaks down to just one repeated note (E). We know something mysterious is about to happen here. At 4:10, it finally congeals around a new rhythmic figure, da-DUM dada DUM dada DUM... And we are ready launch into the beginning of the main first movement, the exposition.
Exposition First Theme (4:20)
The first theme makes its initial appearance. Based on that da-DUM dada DUM rhythm, it has a kind of peasant dance character to it, very different from the majesty of the Intro. At first very light in the woodwinds, at 4:49 it is taken up by the full orchestra in a loud, triumphant, full gallop, full of energy.
At 5:04, driven by the same rhythm, we begin the transition to a new key for the second theme. At 5:26, we find ourselves in F major. Not E major, where we SHOULD be if this were any other symphony. And, why not? That transition to F major sounded pretty damn good, didn't it? Screw tradition.
Exposition, second theme:
The orchestra hushes. Setting up a seam line, to separate us from the first theme, announce the second theme as a separate entity in this new key at 6:06. And it's hardly a "theme" at all, just a primal shriek of joy.
Exposition codetta (6:20)
... And then we have a few bars to announce the end of the exposition, obviously cribbed from the first theme. At 6:28, just as it ends, we have a rising stairstep galumphing rhythm, sort of a hybrid between the da-DUM dada DUM and the Stairsteps of the Intro. And that's the end of the exposition. Now on, to...
The Repeat of the Exposition!
Da Capo! (Italian for From the Top.) Beethoven simply repeats the whole exposition here. That's a normal part of Sonata-allegro form. Some conductors choose to skip the repeats and go straight to the development section.
With the repeat of the "galumphing stairsteps." at 6:49, we suddenly reach an awkward moment at 8:49.
"Oh Lucy, what will Fred and Ricky think?" "Oh Ethel, what they don't know won't hurt them. Besides, what could possibly go wrong?"
Thus the development begins!
Beethoven Symphony #7 in A Major, Opus 92, First movement, Poco Sostenuto -- Vivace. Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic. (2/2)
Develoment section (0:00)
Having established our cast of characters, the basic premises of our story, Beethoven gets to make them do stuff.
Beethoven has used his awkward galumphing moment to transition us to C major, one of the keys previously mentioned. It sounds at first as if we are going to repeat the first theme again, very softly in the woodwinds. But at 0:26, a new theme emerges out of the thick stew of dum dada dums with a little animal motion rhythmic twist of its own. This theme goes through some changes before exiting the arena. In F major.
At 0:51, a new theme emerges in the flutes, this one based on a small section chopped out of of the middle of the first theme. We have the sense of traveling, as the key changes come, many of them, quickly now.
At 1:14, it begins rising, the volume increasing with each repetition, and with an ominous bass line. We're coming to the climax.
At 1:30, we reach the climax of the first movement. The drums have joined the fray! The brass section lets loose! It's worth watching the actual video of the clip at this point, to see all those hands sawing together in the same DUM-dada-DUM rhythm together. It really punctuates the point, doesn't it?
At 1:46, as the climax subsides, there is awkwardness at first, unclear and troubled, and then... At 1:54 we can feel the sunny return of A major, the home key. And after the long bumpy ride, it is a sunny return, isn't it?
Recapitulation First theme (1:58)
Now we're solidly back in A major, back in the recapitulation, back in the first theme. However, in this recapitulation, Beethoven doesn't repeat his prior material exactly the same way.
As the first theme returns, it's more manic. We hear a more complicated bass line, and we hear seemingly random discordant spikes every once in a while (Piccolos with drums, I think?)
At 2:30, the woodwinds seize the first theme, and repeat it, but they do it soberly, in stark contrast. "Hey, settle down."
At 3:08 we have the transition to the second theme, which before took us to F major but now circles right back to A major, the key of the symphony, and the key it's supposed to end in.
Exposition second theme (3:40)
Just like before, but now in A.
Coda (4:14)
And now we are ready to finish the symphony. But as I've indicated in the last two diaries, Beethoven tends to weight his music more towards the end, so that the codas are usually big, big deals. "The best for last."
After the galumphing stair steps of before, we reach a sudden quiet air pocket. Suspense!
There is an air of relaxation at first. But now, the grinding chromatic basses that drove Weber nuts begin. Building, building, with the strings trying to wedge their way in, somewhere.
5:01. Full blast. DUM-dada-DUM dada DUM pounding its little heart out. And the brass come in with their hunting-call-like refrain one last time at 5:23.
... And it's done!
On to the second movement -- next week! And the third.
The second movement is by far the most popular movement of the Seventh. At the first performance, the audience stood up in applause for the second movement and insisted on (and got) from Beethoven an encore repeat of it before they could go on.
The final movement, the most complicated movement, will be two weeks from now. And after that, it will be either Lone1c with a diary on the Beethoven Symphony #4 if he's ready, or I'll launch right into the Beethoven Symphony #9. And we WILL have Clockwork Orange clips!
Do not miss ProudtobeLiberal's Monday Music Meditations series this coming Monday, when he will have a Halloween-themed classical music diary.
(Note: My guitar might be out of tune, so it's not impossible some of my calls of F major might really be E major.)
One last question. Animal motion. Right or wrong? How would you describe it?