BEETHOVEN
(Ludwig van Beethoven: born in Bonn, December 16, 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827)
Allegro con brio.Marcia funèbre: adagio assai.Scherzo: allegro vivace; trio.Finale: allegro molto.
On the score of the MS. of Beethoven's "Eroica Symphony" in the Bibliothek at Vienna appear these words:
"Sinfonia grandeNapoleon Bonaparte...."
and thereby hang many tales.
Anton Schindler,[11]the close friend and biographer of Beethoven, wrote at length in his famous Life of the symphonist concerning the origin of theEroica. In the autumn of 1802, says Schindler, Beethoven resumed a plan which he had formed of doing homage to Napoleon, the hero of the day,"in a grand instrumental work," and set about its execution. "But it was not till the following year that he applied himself in good earnest to that gigantic composition, known by the title ofSinfonia Eroica, which, however, in consequence of various interruptions, was not finished till 1804.... The original idea of that symphony is said to have been suggested by General Bernadotte, who was then French ambassador at Vienna, and had a high esteem for our Beethoven....
"In his political sentiments Beethoven was a republican; the spirit of independence natural to a genuine artist gave him a decided bias that way. Plato'sRepublicwas transfused into his flesh and blood, and upon the principles of that philosopher he reviewed all the constitutions in the world. He wished all institutions to be modelled upon the plan prescribed by Plato. He lived in the firm belief that Napoleon entertained no other design than to republicanize France upon similar principles, and thus, as he conceived, a beginning would be made for the general happiness of the world. Hence his respect and enthusiasm for Napoleon.
"A fair copy of the musical work for the First Consul of the French Republic, the conqueror of Marengo, with the dedication to him, was on the point of being despatched through the French embassy to Paris, when the news arrived in Vienna that Napoleon Bonaparte had caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor of the French. The first thing Beethoven did on receiving this intelligencewas to tear the title-leaf off the symphony (on it were written the words 'Napoleon Bonaparte') and then fling the work itself, with a torrent of execrations against the French Emperor—against the new 'tyrant'—upon the floor, from which he would not allow it to be lifted.[12]
"It was a long time before Beethoven recovered from the shock, and permitted this work to be given to the world.... I shall only add that it was not till the tragic end of the great Emperor at St. Helena that Beethoven was reconciled with him and remarked that, seventeen years before, he had composed appropriate music to the catastrophe, in which it was exactly predicted musically, but unwittingly—alluding to the Dead March in the symphony."
When the symphony was first performed in public under Beethoven's direction, at the Theater an der Wien, April 7, 1805, it was announced on the programme as "A new grand Symphony in D-sharp by Herr Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to his excellence Prince von Lobkowitz." In October of the following year the symphony was published with this title and motto:
Sinfonia Eroica.... Composta per festeggiare il Sovvenire di un grand Uomo
("Heroic Symphony.... Composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.")
Interpreters innumerable have attempted to read the meaning of this baffling symphony, with its funeral march followed perplexingly by a gay scherzo and an energetic and jubilant finale. For Adolph Marx (1799-1866) the dirge pictured a battle-field at night, covered with the silent bodies of the dead; the scherzo told of the rejoicings of the homeward-bound soldiers; in the finale was the consecration of victory by Peace. Berlioz found the scherzo and finale akin to the rites celebrated by Homer's warriors over a dead hero. Still another elucidation, in which the license of the interpreter is more than a little stretched, found the first movement to convey "a grand idea of Napoleon's determination of character." The second movement is "descriptive of the funeral honors paid to one of his favorite generals," the "winding up" of which represents "the faltering steps of the last gazers into the grave"; while the finale offers "a combination of French revolutionary airs"! But no one has viewed this symphony more sympathetically or more consistently than did Wagner in an article contributed to a series of papers "On the poetic contents of Beethoven's tone-works," published in theNeue Zeitschrift für Musik, in 1852.
"The designation 'heroic,'" he wrote, "is to be taken in its widest sense, and in no wise to be conceived as relating merely to a military hero. If we broadly connote by 'hero' ('Held') the whole, the full-fledgedman, in whom are present all thepurely human feelings—of love, of grief, of force—in their highest fill and strength, then we shall rightly grasp the subject which the artist lets appeal to us in the speaking accents of his tone-work. The artistic space of this work is filled with all the varied, inter crossing feelings of a strong, a consummate individuality, to which nothing human is a stranger, but which includes within itself all truly human, and utters it in such a fashion that, after frankly manifesting every noble passion, it reaches a final rounding of its nature, wherein the most feeling softness is wedded with the most energetic force. The heroic tendency of this art work is the progress towards that rounding off."
"The designation 'heroic,'" he wrote, "is to be taken in its widest sense, and in no wise to be conceived as relating merely to a military hero. If we broadly connote by 'hero' ('Held') the whole, the full-fledgedman, in whom are present all thepurely human feelings—of love, of grief, of force—in their highest fill and strength, then we shall rightly grasp the subject which the artist lets appeal to us in the speaking accents of his tone-work. The artistic space of this work is filled with all the varied, inter crossing feelings of a strong, a consummate individuality, to which nothing human is a stranger, but which includes within itself all truly human, and utters it in such a fashion that, after frankly manifesting every noble passion, it reaches a final rounding of its nature, wherein the most feeling softness is wedded with the most energetic force. The heroic tendency of this art work is the progress towards that rounding off."
For him the first movement "embraces, as in a glowing furnace, all the emotions of a richly gifted nature in the heyday of unresting youth ... yet all these feelings spring from one main faculty—and that isForce... we see a Titan wrestling with the Gods."
In the second movement—the Funeral March—"this shattering force" reaches the "tragic crisis" towards which it was rushing. The tone-poet clothes its proclamation in the musical apparel of a Funeral march. Emotion tamed by deep grief, moving in solemn sorrow, tells us its tale in stirring tones.
"Force robbed of its destructive arrogance—by the chastening of its deep sorrow—the Third Movement shows in all its buoyant gaiety. Its wild unruliness has shaped itself to fresh, to blithe activity; we have before us now this lovable, glad man, who paces hale and hearty through the fields of Nature."
The finale shows us the man entire [that is to say, as Wagner somewhat ponderously explains, a combination of the two sides hitherto shown—the "deeply, stoutly suffering man," and the "gladly, blithely doing man"] harmoniously "at one with self, in these emotions where the memory of Sorrow becomes itself the shaping force of noble deeds.... The whole, the total Man now shouts to us the avowal of his Godhood."