Retreat from Moscow 1812, painting by Prianishnikov
And here we go, continuing our three part survey of the Beethoven Symphony #7, which we began last week with Part 1 about the first movement.
And so the DailyKos Beethoven Festival of 2011 continues!
The painting above is about events contemporaneous with the Symphony #7, Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, trudging home in defeat through the bitter snow. The events of the Napoleonic Wars dominated much of the time of Beethoven's most prolific period of composition. His Third Symphony, which we'll get to this January, was at first dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he saw, at that time, as Europe's savior, some one at last come to break down the aristocratic class structure of Europe that Beethoven hated. Beethoven later changed his mind about Napoleon and renamed his Third Symphony, but his antipathy for the nobility endured and is a key part of what made him tick.
Take his name, for instance: Ludwig Von Beethoven. Where did that Von come from? It was an affectation, an attempt to make himself sound as if he came from a higher station. Nuh uh. Beethoven came from common stock, son of a violent drunken lout who tried to exploit him as a child prodigy.
My favorite clip from the film Immortal Beloved, Gary Oldman as Beethoven:
The film Immortal Beloved takes its name from a famous love letter of Beethoven's that was written contemporaneously with the first performances of the Seventh. Just who Beethoven's Immortal Beloved was has long been a matter of speculation.
As I noted last week, the Seventh Symphony comes at a time right around the end of Beethoven's prolific Middle Period, before his less prolific but more creative Late Period. What was happening in Beethoven's life at this time that was threatening his talent? The answer seems to be chick problems.
From the Immortal Beloved letter:
6th July, 1812
My angel, my everything, my very self. – only a few words today, and in pencil (with yours) - I shall not be certain of my rooms here until tomorrow – what an unnecessary waste of time - why this deep grief, where necessity speaks - can our love exist but by sacrifices, by not demanding everything. Can you change it, that you are not completely mine, that I am not completely yours? Oh God, look upon beautiful Nature and calm your mind about what must be – love demands everything and completely with good reason, that is how it is for me with you, and for you with me - only you forget too easily, that I must live for myself and for you as well, if we were wholly united, you would not feel this as painfully, just as little as I would [...]
"Can you change it that you are not completely mine?"
The Hungarian Countesses Josephine and Theresa Brunsvik
There were many suspects as to whom the letter of 1812 was addressed. Much of it focused on these two women. The one on the left is Theresa Brunsvick, to whom Beethoven dedicated his Piano Sonata #24, titled "A Therese." She was a devoted Beethoven camp follower and wrote worshipful letters to him, and he was publicly affectionate with her. But since the 1957 republication of a cache of love correspondence to and from Josephine, some of it very, er, personal, the weight of the evidence has come down more solidly on the Immortal Beloved being Theresa's married sister in the above drawing. The correspondence suggested that they had an on-again, off-again relationship of many years.
Beethoven was a musician at a time when musicians were lackeys, even great composer musicians. Beethoven repeatedly ran headfirst into the problem of his taste in women being unequal to his class.
Wikipedia on Josephine Brunsvick"
Beethoven later admitted that he had to suppress his love of Josephine,[3], and she felt “enthusiastic” about him,[4]. However, it was to the much older Joseph Count Deym (born 1752) to whom she was given in marriage – her mother needed a wealthy son-in-law of equal social standing.
Beethoven continued to be her piano instructor after she married Count Deym.
Here's a piece that Beethoven wrote and dedicated to Josephine during this time period, the Andante Favori. We have enough time to indulge ourselves before going back to Beethoven's Seventh, right?
Andante Favori by Beethoven, performed by Sviatoslav Richter
Josephine's second marriage was apparently unhappy almost from the beginning. In 1812...
1812 [...] Josephine’s main concern was to retain the custodianship of her four children by Deym, and she managed to find a new modus vivendi with her estranged [second] husband in August 1812.[20] The main point of this new marriage contract was that Stackelberg had it in writing that he could leave her any time – which he subsequently did when a daughter, Minona, was born on 8 April 1813 (it is possible that he suspected that she could not have been his child).
Now here we have a puzzle, don't we? If Minona was suspected to NOT be her husband's daughter, well, let's do a little bit of mathematics here... Who could the father be? There is some suspicion, but unconfirmable, that Minona was Beethoven's child.
Late Update: I found a site with a picture of Minona. I photoshopped it to set it next to a portrait of the young Ludwig von B. for comparison's sake.
Separation
In 1814, Stackelberg turned up again to pick up “his” children (including Minona). Josephine refused, so he called the police to remove the three toddlers forcefully. However, as it turned out, Stackelberg did not take the children to his home in Estonia – instead he went to travel the world again, having dumped them at a deacon’s place in Bohemia.[21]
How nice of him.
Josephine's life moved on, and much of the rest of it is dismal and doesn't seem to include Beethoven.
And so I come back to my question which is less about Beethoven's love life and more about his music. What happened to deflate Beethoven after the Seventh Symphony, which is so amazingly energetic and buoyant? One interpretation is that the muddle of events that the Immortal Beloved letter hints at may have been a turning point for him that affected not just his life, but his musical output. It wasn't just his deafness, which we all know about -- he'd been dealing with that for some time.
The Allegretto movement of Beethoven's Seventh
The second movement, marked Allegretto (Italian for a little fast), has always been the most popular movement of the symphony. At the premiere in 1812, when many of the above events also transpired, the audience stood up in applause for the second movement and demanded an immediate encore before they could go on to the other movements. It's also the movement of the Seventh you're probably most familiar with from film, used in films like The King's Speech, Knowing, The Fall, and Zardoz, and probably others I don't know about. The first time I heard it was in the soundtrack of Zardoz (1974). Now, Zardoz is admittedly a crappy sci fi movie, but the music stood out, and I fell in love with it, not knowing if it was classical, and not knowing it was Beethoven. It's a very haunting work, the only really sober movement of the four in the symphony.
It's probably easist to describe it as a Variations on a Theme type movement, like the Andante of the Fifth, although simpler. A persistent Dum. dada DAH DAH rhythm carries through the whole movement.
Allegretto. A little fast. But just how fast? Some conductors interpret Allegretto as meaning just that, a little fast, and they try not to dilly-dally. Others play it more slowly. According to Sir Grove, Beethoven himself later regretted labeling it Allegretto and thought of relabeling it at a slower tempo. Did he? There is room for interpretation on that score.
My own preference is for a slower interpretation. I hear feet trudging through the snow, like our painting at the top. But, hey, that's me. For today, I chose to use an old mono recording of Toscanini that has a little bit of both the slow and the fast to it, beginning very slowly, and speeding up in the more sprightly middle part. It's one of the most extreme interpretations I have heard of the Allegretto.
Beethoven Symphony #7, Second Movement Allegretto, Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Live from Carnegie Hall, 1951
Main theme (0:00)
The movement begins in A minor on a bleak fanfare of woodwinds playing an inverted chord. You might notice that this chord, like many of the others to come, have an unusual feeling. What Beethoven does in this movement is actually very simple. An inverted chord is just a chord that has the notes moved around so that the top and bottom aren't the root note. It's not rocket science, until you have to explain it.
The bass strings of the orchestra pick up the main melody with its trudging, DUM. da da DAH DAH rhythm. It feels a little bit incomplete, as if it's missing something.
Second Statement of Main Theme (0:49)
The violins join the cellos in the DUM dada DAH DAH rhythm. But a new, eerie countermelody emerges from the violas to accompany it. Emerges seems to be the right word, because it was there all along, buried and waiting to come out.Lyrical and chromatic, sliding through the wrong notes.
Third Statement of the Main Theme (1:33)
The cellos now contribute another line to the theme, one with more ornamentation. The volume swells as we reach...
Fourth Statement of the Main Theme (2:16)
The brass join in now, carrying the weight of the Dum dada DAH DAH motif. The basses(?) have added yet another line to the theme, an ornamentation in triplets (waltz-type time), giving a theme that started out very simply now a complex tapestry of contrasting rhythms and dissonant chromaticism. This is one place where I wish I had chosen a better audio quality recording, because in high quality audio, you can hear more clearly all the things that are going on.
A New Second Theme (but based on the old one) (3:02)
The relentless marching ends, temporarily. In the respite, we get a new, more optimistic major key melody, led by the woodwinds. Listen closely and you will see that it's based on the original theme, and the Dum dada DAH DAH rhythm still continues in the bass accompaniment.
And notice how the conductor, Toscanini, speeds up the music here. At 3:39, we have a series of little swells in the music, and he really brings them to life.
At 4:01, it looks like the woodwinds are getting set to make a variation on this optimistic major key theme. BUT NO! At 4:11, Beethoven throws it against the wall, interrupting it with a brusque thumping conclusion. It's as if Beethoven says of this cheerful interlude, "Bullshit!"
Fourth Statement of the Main Theme (4:18)
With a rude series of thumps, we are back to the main theme. The Dum dada DAH DAH rhythm persists in the basses as the oboes restate and spotight just the chromatic part of the theme.
Fugue on the Main Theme (5:13)
The Fourth statement merges into what becomes a fugue on the main theme. It is subdued, but there is a sense of great energy beneath it. At 5:57, that energy can't be contained and we get
Fifth Statement of the Main Theme (5:57)
The full orchestra emerges in unison out of this fugue in a short but climactic restatement of the Dum dada DAH DAH part of the theme.
Second Theme (again) (6:19)
The second theme again, as before but shortened. It begins to taper off, though, almost fade away. At 6:50, it merges submissively with the minor key Dum da da DAH DAH motif
Sixth Statement of the Main Theme (7:10)
The theme is reduced to just a few instruments at a time, taking bits and parts of it, fragmented, as it works its way to the end. The Dum dada DAH DAH is still there, pizzicatto (Italian for plucked strings) in the background. And we finally end the movement with that same unsettling inverted chord in the woodwinds with which we began.
And now ON! To the Third Movement!
For the third movement, I'm going to switch to a recording with better audio quality because the crescendo in the third movement is so impressive it should be appreciated that way.
The third movement, a scherzo, is marked Presto (Italian for quick). It's in ABABA form, and since the A and B both have their own ABA form, it's a little more complicated.
Conductor Thomas Beecham hates this movement. He said of it, "What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about." Well, I went looking for pictures of yaks to commemorate his comment, but from what I saw, they looked rather clumsy. Personally, I prefer to hear Thompson Gazelles "jumping about." And I applaud Thomas Beecham for agreeing with what I said in the first diary, that this is a symphony of "animal motion!"
Thompson Gazells in Kenya leaping for JOY as if they were listening to the Beethoven Symphony #7 third movement.
Beethoven, Symphony #7, Third Movement Presto assai meno presto, Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic
First A section (0:08)
The main theme, the "leaping yaks/gazelles" theme begins in F#, but it suddenly takes an unexpected mid-air U turn to E major after only the second bar (0:17). This is part of what makes the movement so tricky. It looks like you're going one way and then, WOOPS -- you're going that way now!
First B section (1:26)
After much fast leaping about and bouncing off the walls, we suddenly reach a kind of stable plateau at 1:26.
The music slows dramatically. The woodwinds carry the main theme, something stately and graceful. A high note, long sustained in the strings, throughout, helps to create an air of suspense.
At 2:20, it suddenly breaks out in crescendo, like some glorious sunrise, with brass blaring out the stately theme atop the rumble of kettle drums. Then a hush, as it passes control back to the woodwinds. And yet another heart-stopping crescendo. At 3:32, after this second powerful climax, the theme settles down peacefully, gracefully, like it's time to smoke a cigarette.
Second A Section (3:53)
We're back to the leaping, key-changing, U-turning music, and it sounds very similar to the first time. But pay attention and you'll notice that it's a little softer than the first time and it keeps getting softer before rebounding back.
Second B section (5:11)
Just like before. But with only one climax at 6:12.
Third A Section (6:59)
Just like the second A section, but shortened. And with more drums.
Third B section?? (8:04)
And here's the last trick in the bag. As the previous A section ends, it sounds as though it's preparing for the B part again. Nope. It's just another Beethoven head fake. He's done, and he tells you so with a somewhat comically abrupt ending.
Next week:
We'll have the final movement of the Seventh Symphony. All things being copacetic, the week after, on 11/17, Lone1c will guest-host a diary on the Beethoven Fourth Symphony, and on Thanksgiving 11/24, Zenbassoon will guest-host a diary on the Beethoven Eighth Symphony. Following that, I'll be back in December to begin the Beethoven Ninth, and that will be a four-parter. Because it's one very complicated behemoth.
If you're finding these diaries by following ME, yours truly, Dumbo, may I suggest that instead you follow the CMOPUS tag, which is what we use for these diaries? That way you won't miss the other ones in the Thursday series that I don't write. And you'll also get the Monday Music Meditation diaries of ProudTobeLiberal, who has been a frequent Thursday guest-host. That's the logical way to do things!