Yet More Syndication, Day 3 – Symphony N0. 3 “Eroica” by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Yet More Syndication!  I’m hard at work on more great content for the weeks ahead.  Until then, enjoy just a few more of my favorite episodes in rerun 🙂

Yet More Syndication, Day 3 – Symphony N0. 3 “Eroica” by Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven could never do anything small, could he?  Practically his entire significance is ensconced in the way he expanded the musical forms inherited from the Classical era.  Beethoven was an artist who made what he found larger and considerably deeper, and then left as it a challenge for those who came after him .  He was larger than life.  His passions, his temper, his ambitions, his superhuman willpower, his opinion of his artistry (not entirely undeserved).  He dreamed big dreams, thought big thoughts, achieved big goals, and wrote big tunes.

And he loved his coffee in a big way.  Have you ever heard about Beethoven’s taste for coffee?  Let me tell you!  Each and every day, Beethoven would brew himself a cup of coffee made with exactly 60 beans.  Exactly.  Does that seem like a lot?  That’s the commentary I most often find about Beethoven’s coffee formula, that it sounds like a strong cup.  At first I thought it did, too, but once I counted it out and measured it I discovered that 60 beans amounts to a little less than a heaping tablespoon, which is about the strength I brew at home.  

60 coffee beans, believe it or not…

And I’ve had a hard time finding out exactly how big his cup would have been, so I can’t speak to the precise strength of Beethoven’s brew.  I also don’t know what the general strength would have been among his contemporary coffee hounds, so again, not sure how his would compare.  But it seems fair to say that the strength wasn’t so phenomenal.  It must have been good though.  I have read that his guests spoke highly of his coffee preparation and that he became extra-exacting about the recipe with company present.  And actually, his neurosis for counting out exactly 60 coffee beans per cup speaks more to OCD, which some people speculate that he was, than caffeine dependence.  I also don’t know how much he drank throughout the day, a statistic which is recorded for other figures such as Voltaire (40 – 50 cups of a coffee and chocolate mixture), Balzac (50 cups a day, and later on in life he just ate the grounds) and Theodore Roosevelt (a gallon per day), but as Beethoven’s consumption not written about in such figures I suspect it was moderate.

Anyway, let’s just say Beethoven loved coffee, and in a big way.  I think we can agree on that.  The method and attention to detail he lavished upon its preparation suggests to me that it was an inextricably significant component of the daily ritual that allowed him, and so many other artists, to create as they did.  And, interestingly enough, he wrote one of his biggest, grandest, and most-admired musical works in honor of another larger than life-kind of guy who also loved his coffee, Napoleon Bonaparte.  I bet you’ve heard of him.  He figured prominently in the history of France.  And he loved his coffee.  I guess a guy doesn’t wake up and set out to conquer the world without a good slug of morning joe.  

Napoleon is recorded to have made statements which indicate more than a passing interest in the beloved liquor, and they range from glib and practical to waxing most poetically.  Statements like:

“I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.”

and

“Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure.”

Still not quite sure what that last one means.  But, whatever.  He liked coffee.  So, behind every great man is his coffee.  I think that’s how the saying goes, right?  Well, pretty sure.  Anyway, those two larger-than-life coffee-lovers, Ludwig van Beethoven and Napoleon Bonaparte, are metaphysically entangled through the pages of one of Beethoven’s greatest works, the Third Symphony in E-flat major.  Most people know it today by Beethoven’s imposed nickname “Eroica”, which means “heroic” in Italian.  And it certainly fits.  But the moniker “Eroica” actually replaced Beethoven’s previous nickname for the symphony, which was “Bonaparte”.  That’s right.  Beethoven’s Third Symphony, which many would call his greatest, and even more would call his most influential, was originally named after, and dedicated to, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Beethoven, in the customarily idealistic manner of a true artist, was a fan of the liberal democracies that were popping up in the Western world during his day as a result of the Enlightenment (which some speculate was fueled in large part by coffee-drinking and the exchange of ideas that resulted from coffee house culture).  His life coincided with the revolutions of both America and France, and the long wake of France’s tumultuous political upheaval rippled through the events of Beethoven’s later life.  He observed the rise of the Napoleon, first shrewdly stabilizing the turbulence of France’s disarrayed government while bolstering his own political power in the process, and then crowning himself Emperor of the new French Empire, before setting about conquer as much of Europe as he could.

Napoleon’s self-styled coronation infuriated and disillusioned the idealistic Beethoven, who removed the dedication upon learning of the ambitious Corsican’s true motivations for seeking political power.  

The title page of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, upon which can be seen the dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte scratched out

He redubbed the symphony “Eroica” with the subtitle “Dedicated to the memory of a great man”.  15 years later, when Napoleon died, Beethoven remembered the dedication, noting that he had already written a funeral march (the Third Symphony’s dour second movement) for the occasion.  I think you could also interpret the subtitle as Beethoven’s continued dedication to the man he once thought Napoleon was, standing for the ideals of equality, liberty and democracy.

The Eroica Symphony is Beethoven’s shot across the bow, launching the Romantic era of music in one fell swoop.  It was the longest symphony to date, and by far the most powerful.  Beethoven is the first musician in recorded history to so unabashedly express his idealistic nature in his works and the Eroica Symphony seems to convey that clash of civilizations, especially the titanic opening movement.  It is Beethoven’s telling of the benevolent forces he once believed to animate Napoleon and the endeavor of the French Revolution.  While both of those complicated forces have major skeletons in their closets, existing as they do in our real and imperfect world, Beethoven never lost his sight of the ideals that purported to animate them.  Indeed it seemed to grow stronger the longer he lived, culminating in his most idealistic statement of all, the Ode to Joy of his final symphony.

 

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Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 1 – Wellington’s Victory by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Them’s fightin’ words!  Since time immemorial humans have found reasons to fight one another.  The images of combat and war fill our stories, our art, and yes, our music.  This week we listen to music colored by the din of combat.

Them’s fightin’ words!, Day 1 – Wellington’s Victory by Ludwig van Beethoven

In Wausau, Wisconsin, the city where I grew up, there is a historical museum called the Yawkey House.  The Yawkeys were lumber magnates (I believe) and had quite an impact on the nature and development of the city and its culture, given their economic influence and philanthropy.  Their family name still graces landmarks and organizations throughout Wausau.  The two most famous are the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, with its annual exhibit featuring birds in art, and the Yawkey House Historical Museum downtown.

The magnificent residence and grounds of the Yawkey House have been preserved to give visitors a taste of life in the nineteenth century, and the museum also features exhibits related to the lumber and logging industry which figured so prominently into the early economy of Wausau and so many similar communities of the northwoods.  It’s been awhile since I’ve been inside the Yawkey House, but I remember visiting as a part of some kind of class trip.  It was a long time ago, and I must have been in kindergarten or daycare, either of which would have been within walking distance.  I have vague memories of some of the things inside – exhibits about logging, eerily staged scenes in various rooms complete with mannequins (these would actually haunt my dreams, literally) roped off from human disturbance, and, most fascinating of all, a real, working nickelodeon.  This is without a doubt the most appealing and enduring memory that I have from this experience.  In some room of the Yawkey House there was, and perhaps still is, a working nickelodeon.

This word is known to most of us, I would wager, for the children’s television station which borrowed its name, at the time of my visit to the Yawkey House full of zany cartoons and even zanier game shows in which adolescent contestants would get filthy with manufactured slime.  But here was an object with the same name.  What?  I thought it was just a television station.  What could this be?  As it turns out, something wonderful.  A nickelodeon is like a player piano mixed with a one-man band.  It typically plays a paper roll punched with holes to control the mechanical motions, usually featuring numerous instruments built into a tight contraption.  The nickelodeon will play songs from the rolls incorporating all of the different instruments in its ensemble into the orchestration.  As was the rage during the heyday of mechanical instruments, they mostly played peppy rags.  Here’s an example:

Here’s another:

 

Delightful, isn’t it?  It features a few more instruments and textures than your typical player piano.  Can you imagine our fascination as the machine came to life and played crisp, up-tempo ragtime music before our very eyes?  That memory has stayed with me.

The nickname “nickelodeon” refers to the tendency for these machines to cost a nickel to operate.  The technical name is actually orchestrion and, as it turns out, they have a bit of a history, even boasting some of the weakest music from one of the world’s greatest composers ever to live in their repertoire.

The first model on record of an automatic mechanical orchestra was created by a cantankerous but brilliant German who settled in Vienna, the musician and inventor Johann Nepomuk Maelzel.  He was friends (mostly) with another cantankerous but brilliant German who had also settled in Vienna, a genius in the estimation of most, Ludwig van Beethoven.  Maelzel and Beethoven shared a relationship that was rocky at times and prosperous at others.  Maelzel seemed to have a knack for inventing gadgets that Beethoven found useful.  One was an ear trumpet that was better than anything on the market at that time, which Beethoven used for the rest of his life as his hearing progressively worsened (see this post).  Another was the metronome, a new and improved musical time keeper based on pendula he observed in Amsterdam, which Beethoven also adopted for his own use.

In the early 1800s, Maelzel invented an orchestrion which he called the panharmonicon, an elaborate gizmo packed with pipes, horns, drums, and in later models, even violins and cellos.  It was capable of simulating an entire symphony orchestra, and could also imitate sound effects like gunfire and cannon shots.  

In addition to his knack for inventing things, Maelzel had a similar knack for promoting his inventions, and his idea for the panharmonicon involved Beethoven’s talent.  He sketched out something of a musical storyboard outlining the Battle of Vitoria of 1813 in which the British Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon Bonaparte’s older brother, Joseph.  Just two years later he performed a similar feat against Napoleon himself, soundly defeating the French dictator at the Battle of Waterloo and sealing his legacy of exemplary military success.  Beethoven’s ambivalence toward Napoleon is widely known and forms much of the mystique surrounding his seminal Eroica Symphony (see this post) which launched his phenomenal middle period compositions.  Beethoven accepted Maelzel’s commission, crafting a sublimely silly piece of musical cheese, one that many critics identify as Beethoven’s weakest work, a rare example of the transcendent master pandering to make a quick buck.  (Beethoven is known to have responded to this criticism during his lifetime, snarkily remarking something to the effect of “Even my shit is better than anything you could write!”).

The resulting work, Wellington’s Victory Op. 91, is packed with zany dramatics including marches from the French and British sides, a most melodramatic battle scene, and an incredibly over-the-top victory coda.  But it did its job and made both Maelzel and Beethoven money (probably more for Maelzel – there was a reported falling out between them over Beethoven’s suspicion that the inventor gave him the short end of the proceeds).  Maelzel encouraged Beethoven to create a version for full orchestra, and that is the version we most often hear today, sometimes beefed up with actual musket and cannon fire as in this ludicrous classic from Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra:

Maelzel’s early inventions were the first hint of a mechanical musical revolution that would take the western world by storm.  Today, everyone has heard a player piano at least once, but these mechanical orchestras had a great heyday, playing their crisp-edged music to bemused and astounded audiences before recorded music allowed the human touch to be reproduced with ease.  This may be a weak work by Beethoven when compared to those which he wrote for human performers, but can we fault him for taking the opportunity to pander to his audiences with a bit of showmanship in league with Maelzel’s Panharmonicon?  I think not.  Incidentally, this is not the only work Beethoven is recorded to have composed for an automatic mechanical instrument – see this post – just the most famous.

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Thunder and Lightning, Day 2 – Symphony No. 6 “Pastorale” by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Thunder and Lightning!  The awesome and wonderful phenomena of lightning and thunder, always companions in the natural world, has mystified, terrified, and amazed human observers as long as they have inhabited the Earth.  As our scientific understanding of the universe has sharpened our understanding of lighting and thunder has improved, but they still inspire vivid depictions in art and music.  This week we explore examples of this.

Thunder and Lightning, Day 2 – Symphony No. 6 “Pastorale” by Ludwig van Beethoven

There is some conventional wisdom among musicians and music lovers about Beethoven’s nine fantastic symphonies.  The sense is that the odd-numbered symphonies are turbulent, intense, highly Romantic, monumental and the even-numbered ones are placid, gentle, serene, Classically pure.  It’s pretty well true.  And it’s important to note that this classification begins after the first two, both of which were written essentially in imitation of the Classical models of Haydn and Mozart (for more about Haydn’s symphonies, see this post, this one, this one, this one, and this one).  The elegant, balanced symphonies of Haydn and Mozart represented the culmination of the form during both of their lifetimes and that is the form of the symphony that Beethoven inherited.  Had you met him for an interview, he may very well have told you that he was working within their boundaries.  But listen to any of Beethoven’s middle and late symphonies and you will quickly discover that his process significantly deepened and expanded the classical symphony.  Still, they all operate essentially within the Haydnesque framework of 4 movements, the first a quick sonata allegro which sometimes feature a slow, ponderous introduction, a slow lyrical second movement, a minuet for the third (which Beethoven almost always turned into a scherzo – see this post) and a rapid, blustery finale.  There are really only two exceptions to this plan – the Ninth Symphony transforms the finale into a massive choral cantata (his “Ode to Joy” features prominently – see this post) and the Sixth Symphony has five movements instead of the typical four.

But within that framework, starting with the transformative Third Symphony, called “Eroica” (for more about that symphony see this post), Beethoven proceeded to expand the proportions and deepen the drama of the symphony he had inherited to unprecedented levels.  The Eroica Symphony is still regarded as a great watershed of Romanticism, giving all subsequent composers of symphonies a major inheritance to be reckoned with.  The Eroica was the first of Beethoven’s formidable and dramatic odd-numbered symphonies, in some ways his true first true symphony, or at least the first one in the mature voice of his middle period.  It set an impressive precedent for more equally powerful and dramatic symphonic utterances down the road and all of its fellow odd numbered symphonies measure up to its great power.

But just after Eroica it seems Beethoven was in the mood to relax his listeners, and the result was the bright an infectiously sunny Fourth Symphony, night and day compared with Eroica.  After the Fourth came the stormy Fifth, featuring the most famous opening bars by Beethoven or any other classical composer in history.  Is there a soul in the Western-influenced world who cannot sing, or at least recognize, the opening fate motive of the Fifth Symphony?

 

I wager not!  What are less known however are the other three movements, each of them as powerful and amazing as the relentless first movement, but communicating different things.  It is a symphony that should really be experienced from beginning to end, so I recommend you take an afternoon to do that sometime if you never have.

As Beethoven was writing the iconic Fifth Symphony with its undercurrents of fatalism, he was also working on the lovely and idyllic Sixth Symphony.  In fact, both of them premiered on the same concert in December of 1808, an extraordinary all-Beethoven event that lasted four hours and featured, in addition to the symphonies, his Fourth Piano Concerto, the Choral Fantasy, some movements of his Mass in C, a concert aria for soprano called Ah! Perfido (“O traitor”) and some improvisation; all the piano parts were performed by Beethoven himself.  Given the simultaneous composition of the symphonies, it seems that Beethoven had a natural instinct for pairing intense drama with idyllic serenity as he worked.

The Sixth Symphony is as different from the stormy Fifth (well, almost – we’ll get to that) as can be.  Where the Fifth opens with that unforgettable knock of fate played in unison by the whole orchestra, the Sixths whispers into existence.  It is subtitled Pastoral, which means it seeks to evoke the serene, peaceful feelings of the countryside, often suggesting images of shepherding.  Pastoral music had its heyday during the Baroque era, especially in religious works which reference the shepherds who were witness to the nativity of Christ.  The most famous is an instrument movement from Handel’s Messiah…

 

…but there are countless others from his contemporaries, including J.S. Bach and bunches of lesser-known composers.  Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is not religious; it merely reflects his love for spending time in the peace and quiet of the countryside, which he would often do to recreate and find inspiration, retreating from the hustle and bustle of Vienna.

You can hear echoes of Beethoven’s great love for nature in many of his other works as well; even if not explicitly stated as such, it is clear that the magic of the woods was under Beethoven’s skin often as he developed his musical ideas.

The Pastoral Symphony is extraordinary in that it is one of his only forays into program music, that is music that is based on a story or image (for more about programmatic music see this post).  A couple decades after Beethoven’s Pastoral program music would become all the rage, fueled by the influence of works such as Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique (see this post) and the tone poems of Franz Liszt (for more about Liszt, see this post).  But this early statement of Beethoven’s is lovely, evoking a different image in each of its five movements.  The first is called “Happy thoughts upon arriving in the country”.  The second is “Scene by the stream” and features a notable and famous cadenza of woodwinds at the end which imitate birdsong.  The scherzo third movement (for more about Beethoven’s scherzi see this post) depicts peasants dancing lustily.  The final movement is about shepherds giving thanks after a passing storm, and the storm is depicted quite graphically in the fourth movement.

The Pastoral Symphony is Beethoven’s only symphony to have five movements (this would be more common later with composers like Gustav Mahler – for more on that, see this post), and that fourth movement is kind of a bonus as it’s not exactly analogous to any of the movements of a typical symphony.  The explosive little movement is densely written, illustrating one aspect of a violent thunderstorm after another, from the opening drops to the strong winds, from the torrents of rain to the thunder and lightning, it’s some of the most concentrated music Beethoven ever wrote:

 

Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony stays true to the trend of his mature symphonies sorting themselves by character in accordance with their number.  It is true that the odd numbered symphonies have a dramatic intensity that the even numbered typically don’t.  But the storm in the Pastoral is a special exception, echoing the drama of the odd numbered symphonies.  But it makes sense I guess, since the generally peaceful Pastoral boasts an odd number of movements, so Beethoven couldn’t let it go without some of the odd number drama sneaking in 😉

 

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Triple Compound Toe Tappers, Day 5 – Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Opus 111, movement II Arietta by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Triple Compound Toe Tappers!  4/4 time is so prevalent in music of all styles that it has a nickname, “common time”.  If you say “common time” to a musician, you can bet they will understand that you intend each measure to have four beats, and each beat to divide in half.  Given its nickname, you may sometimes find a letter “C” written at the beginning of a musical score to indicate this.  There is another meter that I am tempted to nickname “rare time” and may start representing it with a letter  “R”.  It is compound triple, meaning there are three beats per measure and each beat is divided into 3.  Always written with a 9 on top of the time signature, the super lilty compound triple, like a waltz within a waltz, is, in my experience, the rarest of all of the meter types.  But there’s enough notable examples to fill a week with great music, so enjoy!

Triple Compound Toe Tappers, Day 5 – Piano Sonata No. 32 in c minor, Opus 111, movement II Arietta by Ludwig van Beethoven

 

I can’t even imagine it, and I don’t know how he did it.  A painter going blind, a chef losing his sense of taste and smell, a fashion designer losing his sense of touch.  Ludwig van Beethoven, the greatest musician in Europe during his lifetime, lost his hearing.  He could hear none of the music he wrote beyond age 40, and the process began more than a decade prior to that.  He realized the episodes of faintness and tinnitus he was experiencing more and more often were not flukes and would not go away.  Naturally, he despaired.  He poured out his sorrow in a letter to his brothers written in 1802 called the Heiligenstadt Testament, named for the town where he penned it, and he contemplated suicide, most certainly on numerous occasions.  Beethoven sensed his destiny and he found the will to persevere in spite of what seemed to be the most devastating possible handicap, given his ambitions.

It undoubtedly would have seemed that the universe was playing a cruel trick on poor Beethoven, but in retrospect perhaps it was the only path to growth.  Many people may tell you that they feel Beethoven’s deafness forced a level of introspection and inner conviction, obvious in his final works, that he simply would not have realized aside from his complete deafness.  His years of total deafness correspond rather tidily with those of his final stylistic period.  Beethoven’s mature music is usually grouped into three style periods.  The earliest phase, called “imitation” consists of the music he wrote based on the models of Haydn and Mozart.  The middle phase, called “externalization”, consists of the music he created as he dramatically expanded its forms and deepened its emotional impact, all the while grappling with his worsening deafness.  And the final phase, called “introspection” consists of the extraordinarily personal music composed during his last years, when he was totally deaf and cut off from the world around him.

The music of Beethoven’s late period is amazing, bizarre, astounding, incomparable to any other music.  Comparisons are sometimes made to the music of the twentieth century, but even that does not quite capture it.  Commentators use words like “transcendent”, and it spans a spectrum of otherworldly images from sublimity, to deep gratitude, to astonishing majesty.  Harold Schoenberg puts it well when he writes:

“Here we are on a rarefied plane of music.  Nothing like it has been composed, nothing like it can ever again be.  It is the music of a man who has seen all and experienced all, a man drawn into his silent, suffering world, no longer writing to please anybody else but writing to justify his artistic and intellectual existence.  Faced with this music, the temptation is to read things into it in some sort of metaphysical exegesis.  The music is not pretty or even attractive.  It is merely sublime.  At this state of his career, Beethoven seemed to be dealing as much in concepts and symbols as in notes.”

The Ninth Symphony, with its famous Ode to Joy finale (see this post) is the best known work from this time, with its uncompromising legacy, but others include the Solemn Mass for chorus, soloists and orchestra, the late string quartets (see this post), including the Great Fugue, and the late piano sonatas.  All of these are cherished; the Ninth Symphony and the Solemn Mass for their awesome grandeur, the string quartets for their subtle intimacy, and the piano sonatas for their grace and remarkably varied palette of colors.  I can’t recommend highly enough that you become acquainted with his last three piano sonatas; they so exquisitely balance the challenging abstraction of Beethoven’s late sensibility with a beguiling mass appeal which stems from their surprising tunefulness.  But there are mysterious and unexpected places to be discovered.

One of the most unusual movements Beethoven ever composed is the second and final movement of his final piano sonata, No. 32, Opus 111 (for more about the opus system, see this post).  The fact that the sonata has only two movements is unusual enough.  Beethoven begins the sonata with drama in his preferred key for turbulence, c minor, shared with the great Fifth Symphony.  After the stormy first movement, the second movement, a patchwork of joys and reflections, sprawls, or rather expands into space, for almost twenty minutes.  But Beethoven fills it with plenty that is worth hearing.

 

The arietta, the theme upon which the variations are based, is an almost intentionally naive chorale cast in the parallel major, C.  Many intermediate pianists could play this after just a few hours of practice, although the delicate touch it demands requires great maturity.  The time signature is either a joke, a hipster move, or a very deliberate artistic decision.  Triple compound meters are rare enough, and when you do find them you will see an “8” or a “4” on the bottom at least 90% of the time.  Beethoven almost writes this theme in miniature, putting “16” on the bottom so that the dotted eighth note gets the beat.  It reminds me a little of Telemann’s play with time signatures in his clever Gulliver Suite, using both diminutive and enormous rhythmic values to illustrate the races Gulliver encounters, a little joke known to the performer alone and not evident from listening (for more about Telemann, see this post):

 

Excerpts from Teleman’s Gulliver Suite, showing pages from the Lilliput Chaconne in 3/32 time and the Brobdingnag Gigue in 24/1 time

 

While the arietta begins simply enough, the movement certainly doesn’t stay there, with some very exacting rhythmic sophistication.  As the complexity gradually ramps up, Beethoven uses other strange time signatures, first going through 6/16, the duple version of 9/16, for an variation that is unexpectedly rousing yet gentle, written in an almost swing-like style.  What follows is truly extraordinary – a variation that feels almost like ragtime or boogie-woogie – cast in an even stranger diminutive time signature, the quadruple compound signature of 12/32!  This highly unconventional time signature ensures panic in anyone reading the score for the first time, so black with beams.  This is most certainly emblematic of the strange but wonderful places that Beethoven was only able to access upon losing his hearing and becoming forced inside as he was.  And we are not finished with the extraordinary exploration of Beethoven’s psyche.  After the jazzy variations, Beethoven returns to the original time signature of 9/16 for the final variations, expansive, and murmuring with wonder and retrospection.  The glow surrounding the end of this movement has been described as an “aura”.  Beethoven, constantly wrapped up deep in his inner journey, was the only one who could have unlocked this spellbinding and captivating color from the piano’s palette.
Beethoven’s final piano sonata is a rich summary of the bizarre and wonderful places he unwittingly traversed as his deafness forced him to find his music within.  How many of us have similar places that we do not touch simply because we are not forced to?  While Beethoven was pushed to his limits by this experience, it is fortunate for us that he was given the unequaled levels of introspective and metaphysical art that he found in the process.  All of the forms he touched in his final years are alive with this mysterious and quiet energy, but the piano sonatas speak it with the most mellifluous poetry of all.

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Sublime Stillness, Day 2 – String Quartet No. 15 in a minor Op. 132, “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit” by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Sublime Stillness!  The mysterious art we call music refers merely to frequencies that fill the air around us, controlled in a specific way by its performers.  Technically this may be true, but we sense feelings and motions of intense clarity.  Sometimes the incredibly high density of musical events creates furious, busy textures.  And at other times achingly long-breathed sustained notes create a sublime impression of meditative stillness that seems to suspend time itself.  This week we look at some examples of this.

Sublime Stillness, Day 2 – String Quartet No. 15 in a minor Op. 132, “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit” by Ludwig van Beethoven

 

I’ve noticed a few similarities between The Beatles and Ludwig van Beethoven.  Maybe I’m reaching here, but I think there are some apt comparisons to be made.  Generally, both have made a considerable splash within their respective styles, setting the pace for countless musicians to follow in their footsteps.

And the outputs of both of these immortal artists fall into roughly three rather clear creative periods, early, middle, and late.  Well, that’s more debatable for the Beatles, but I have heard of their music referred to as having early, middle, and late periods in more than a few places.  While the boundaries of the middle period are a little soft, and may vary by listener, the outline generally fits.  Imagine their early stuff, the upbeat, poppy hits that took the world by storm.  They are still charming and exceptionally well-constructed pop songs; not terribly deep or thought-provoking, but always delightful when they show up in the rotation in oldies station playlists.  Tell me you don’t start tapping your toes and singing along when you hear “Love, love me do!”  And some of those early ballads are quite touching, full of melodic invention.  Then there’s the middle stuff, created as they were experimenting with various techniques and substances in order to expand their consciousness.  Perhaps you could mark the beginning of this phase with Revolver?  This colorful period includes beloved albums such as Sergeant Pepper and the Magical Mystery Tour, lush with production value, strange but intriguing ideas for songs, and impressive concepts that unified the music, album art, spinoff films, etc.  And then there was the late period which featured a gritty and eccentric manner of songwriting largely free of the lushness and wild imagination of the middle period, but essential and solid, and not entirely free of big ideas and an affinity for experimentation, as exemplified by the White Album and Abbey Road.  

What is marvelous about the Beatles’ different periods as that, while all three of them are widely acknowledged to be driven by different philosophies and artistic sensibilities, they are all full of terrific music that is unmistakably Beatles.  The quality is more or less equal, and most Beatles fans can easily find examples from all the periods that they would gladly bring to a desert island, even if their listening choices from day to day are largely determined by their mood or other mitigating factors (i.e., you have your Help days and you have your Abbey Road days).  But the point is that all three periods boast great music that is well-written and well-performed.  In this respect, the Beatles compare to Beethoven more closely than any other classical musician I can think of.

In Beethoven studies scholars often identify three broad periods of creative activity that outlined his three decades of mature musical production:

1. The first period, sometimes labelled “Imitation”, lasted from about 1795 to 1802.  The music written during this time exudes a purity, balance and clarity that resembles the models of his teachers and musical idols, Haydn and Mozart.  Even with this strong imitation, the writing in Beethoven’s early symphonies, piano concertos, piano sonatas and string quartets also exhibits an intense vitality and integrity that foreshadowed the amazing music ahead.
2. In the second period, sometimes labelled “externalization”, the grandeur and intensity of Beethoven’s mature artistic vision revealed itself in music of heroic scale and character, creating experiences for his listeners that transcended the strength of anything they had heard before.  Many of Beethoven’s greatest hits and best-loved musical masterpieces hail from this incredibly prolific time of his life, roughly 1803 to 1814.  It can be seen to begin with his 3rd symphony, Eroica, (for more on the Eroica symphony, see this post) and proceed through his 8th and penultimate symphony.  The middle period also boasts beloved piano sonatas, string quartets, an opera, and concertos, all of which demonstrate his intense feelings and tendency toward epic formal expansion.  This is also the time during which Beethoven was coming to terms with his impending deafness, which would eventually become total and debilitating, and most formative to the music during written during his…
3. …third period, from 1815 until his death in 1827, which is sometimes called “introspection”.  With his deafness having completely denied him of his sense of hearing, Beethoven found himself psychologically withdrawn into his mind and imagination.  I can’t imagine the process that played out over the course of this time during Beethoven’s life.  It would have been challenging enough to forge those bold, heroic essays of his middle period that singlehandedly ushered in the Romantic age with his deteriorating sense of sound.  But what would it have been like to be completely isolated from the sounds of the outside world, probing the depths of your psyche, and turning that into music?  The works of Beethoven’s last years are still mystifying beyond belief, even to listeners today who have had their ears bent by two intervening centuries of harmonic development.  Beethoven’s detailed and intimate music reaches a level of stupefying imagination equaled by few other composers in the history of the world.  It is music for which the description “beautiful” is simply not sufficient.  It is transcendence itself, yet with an unspeakable intimacy – it is written by a human, but a human who has probed his depths of thought and feeling.  The music of the 9th Symphony, the Solemn Mass, the final string quartets and the final piano sonatas work according to their own laws, stretching through time with unprecedented scale in order to weave their psychic and philosophic webs.

One of the strangest and also most exquisite pieces found in Beethoven’s late output is a movement of his penultimate string quartet, No. 15 in a minor, Opus 132 (for more about the opus numbering system, see this post).  The middle movement of five is subtitled “Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity”, and may be an autobiographical reference to his recovery from a digestive affliction that plagued him during the winter of 1824 and ’25.  But it has a universal humanity that emanates from the sublime, glacial textures of its incredibly broad and slow-moving phrases.  It is, with the possible exception of the finale of the Ninth Symphony (which I would call a collection of shorter movements), tied with the second movement of his final piano sonata for the longest single movement by Beethoven, which is saying something given that much of his later music was characterized by expanding formal outlines to their limits.

The placid sections, such as that in the beginning, feel like breath itself, gathering strength, vitality, and also contemplating the nature of life.  Even the quicker, jauntier parts, are animated by an energy that is subdued and only inwardly vigorous.  

 

The entire movement is profoundly spiritual, almost to the point that the unprecendented length does not matter so long as you find the meditative center which it seeks and are thus able to live in the sublime world.  It is astounding to me that Beethoven thought audiences would ever have the patience to sit through and process music such as this, so far beyond the prim and compact classical sensibility it is.

As the Beatles would do a century and a half later, Beethoven embarked upon a great voyage, albeit with much significance, singlehandedly bridging the gap between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even pioneering beyond that in his own remarkable way.  Some say that his loss of hearing was a greater blessing than he ever could have understood at the time, forcing him to scour his soul and imagination and in the process discovering the most remarkable music that had ever existed.  Whether or not he could have appreciated this during his lifetime, the unspeakably sublime nature of his late music makes that sentiment difficult to dismiss.

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Classic Haikus, Day 5 – Ode to Joy from Symphony No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Classic Haikus!

Folks, I’m on Spring Break.

Enjoy these concise poems

On great classic hits…

Classic Haikus, Day 5 – Ode to Joy from Symphony No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven

He couldn’t hear his

simple hymn to brotherhood.

Naive but belov’d.

 

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Stormy Scherzi, Day 4 – Symphony No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Stormy Scherzi!  A scherzo is traditionally defined as a “musical joke”, that is, a light-hearted movement that lacks the weight of a good sonata form essay.  And often that’s how they feel.  But, have you ever listened to a “scherzo” that seemed to fit the description of a musical joke, but darkly?  Some scherzi paradoxically combine lightness with intensely determined feelings, sometimes even bordering on malice and despair.  This week we examine some such examples.

Stormy Scherzi, Day 4 – Symphony No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven

Anyone who devotes any measure of their time and intelligence to studying and understanding Beethoven’s story and contributions to the history of Western music, world music even, inevitably comes away a bit stunned and overwhelmed at times.  I have always found him to be one of those artists who is very difficult to sum up given the extent of the dynamic forces which flowed through, from, and around him.  How can one man’s vision be so powerful and deep?  How can a mortal, limited in power, strength, and emotional resilience, create on such a divine plane, forging music that seems at times to shake the foundations of the universe with its beauty, clarity and proportion?  How can a man do all this while grappling with the loss of the very sense that is necessary to validate the choices made in his chosen medium?  Was Beethoven an actor, himself driving the progress of musical artistry, or was he acted upon, his forceful stylistic innovations an inevitable response to the change that was in the air?  Or both?

During his lifetime, music, society, and the nature of the artistic economy were changing in dramatic ways that many who had come to rely on the ancient social order found most unsettling.  It is possible to speculate about the reasons for such things, but will always lead to infinite regress, eventually going all the way back to the beginning of the universe (whatever caused that), if you truly follow the trail back to its origin.  What we can say is that the winds of revolution were blowing across imperial Europe quite heavily during Beethoven’s years.  He would have followed with interest and fascination the turbulent and unpredictably brutal unfolding of the French Revolution, which happened on the cusp of his 20th year, and his opinion of Napoleon Bonaparte was subject to extensive revision as the charismatic but mysterious despot gradually revealed his true inner workings to an exasperated Europe (for more about Beethoven’s turbulent relationship with Napoleon, see this post).  Beethoven’s life began with the American Revolution, proceeded through the French, and concluded shortly after the Congress of Vienna, which sought to contain the Napoleonic mess that had spilled out of the aftermath of the French Revolution.  And revolutions played out over the succeeding decades, during the time of Beethoven’s strongest influence on the following generation (for more about a composer involved in one such revolution in 1848, see this post).

The ancient structures of power, the powerful figures who propagated them, and the economic system by which they had supported artists, all began to shake upon their foundations, and Beethoven managed to competently navigate the resulting tenuous social and economic landscape, forging a career that was lucrative, creative, incalculably influential on succeeding generations, and socially graceful in spite of what you often hear about his personality (for more on an unexpected friendship with a representative of the increasingly outdated social order, see this post).

None of Beethoven’s music is better known than his nine astounding symphonies, and it is amazing to me that they were composed over the course of only two decades.  He did not turn to the genre until his thirties, by which point the effects of the recent revolutions were becoming most apparent.  His symphonies, even from the very beginning, take the models of his teacher Haydn, quite comfortable in the old order and economic system, and quickly depart, infusing them with unprecedented intensity of feeling.

We can see this effect acutely in his symphonic third movements, which tended to be scherzos, that is, highly energized versions of Haydn’s elegant but stodgy old minuets (for more about Haydn’s symphonic minuets, see this post).  Here is the minuet from Haydn’s final symphony, No. 104, also known as the “London” symphony after the city for which it was written to premiere in 1795 (Beethoven was 25 years old at the time):

 

Lovely, bold, and stately, isn’t it?  Music that you can listen to with pleasure, even dance to.  Now, here is the analogous movement of Beethoven’s 1st Symphony, premiered just 5 years after Haydn’s 104th, and quite possibly begun around the same time as the elder’s premiere:

 

A bit different, isn’t it?  Beethoven calls this a “minuet” but, c’mon!  Would you dance to this?  Not like Haydn’s.  It’s a scherzo in all but name.  And I would say that every single symphony by Beethoven, with the possible exception of the mighty 5th, contains a movement that is either titled with “scherzo” (in the 2nd Symphony he began to call them what they were) or essentially functions like one.  If you wish, you can trace the development of his symphonic scherzi by listening to them right now, or just scroll to the next paragraph to keep reading:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we culminate with the scherzo of the 9th Symphony, best-known for its inclusion of the choral “Ode to Joy” in its finale.  But it has three movements before that, all incredible in their own way.  The scherzo is the second, but I would recommend that you become acquainted with the agitated first movement and inexpressibly sublime third movement as well if you are not already:

 

 

This transparent blustery scherzo, written when Beethoven was completely deaf and locked in his own psychological and philosophical world, seems to crown all of his previous scherzos with its intricacy and forcefulness of gesture.  After the surprising and unexpected timpani strokes of the beginning, we are treated to a bubbling cauldron of sound, constantly threatening to boil over.  What a masterful mix of agitation and playfulness from Beethoven!

It is evident that subsequent composers looked to this great scherzo for inspiration.  Many have noted the resemblance between the opening bars of Beethoven’s scherzo and that of Dvorak’s New World Symphony (for more about Dvorak’s symphony, see this post):

 

I also notice a distinct resemblance between the prevailing frothy texture of Beethoven’s scherzo and that of this orchestral suite from a young Robert Schumann:

 

Why did the scherzo become so profound and prevalent a vehicle for Beethoven’s musical expression?  Of course it’s difficult to psychoanalyze someone from two centuries out, but the paradox that intrigues me is that in the midst of social dissolution Beethoven gravitated toward a humorous genre (that he filled with angst), in contrast to Haydn, who kept his minuets straight-laced (and filled them with humor).  Was it a way for him to blow off the steam of his uncertainty?  Beethoven learned much from his teacher Haydn, but the economic structure that had nurtured and fed the master so well must have appeared increasingly outdated and useless to Beethoven, who in many ways became the first truly successful freelancer in the history of Western music.  Perhaps this lifestyle, as so many freelancers know so well, never truly provided a sense of security, even if he did prosper, and the musical jokes he told to relieve his tension are never ultimately able to avoid this angst.

 

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Musical Farewells, Day 3 – Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat, Opus 81a by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Musical Farewells! Parting is such sweet sorrow, but it’s always inevitable.  Musicians have explored the rich feelings of saying goodbye for as long as there has been music.  This week we examine examples of this from all across history.

Musical Farewells, Day 3 – Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat, Opus 81a by Ludwig van Beethoven

Have you ever played the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”?  It’s a modern American “parlour game”, that is a group game that can be played indoors to pass the time.  In the Kevin Bacon game the challenge is to link a given actor to Kevin Bacon through their co-stars in 6 movies or less.  

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is something I have always take  for granted.  I don’t know when I first heard of it, but it’s one of those things that I’ve just always had in my construct of the world, and so I never really gave much thought to how old it is or how it originated, even though it must have had a beginning, and couldn’t be that old.  It’s actually newer than I thought, and has a very precise story of origin.  It was invented by a few bored and clever college students in Pennsylvania in 1994, and began to go viral just as I was going through high school, which explains why it has been a part of my consciousness throughout my entire adult life.  Notably, it was also invented just as another human invention based on the idea of unlimited connectivity was taking off: the internet.  Is it a coincidence?  Maybe, but the internet and the Kevin Bacon game share some notable parallels in the way they reflect the nature of our human network.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is, of course, based a theory called “six degrees of separation”, which postulates that we are connected by acquaintance no more than six degrees from any other person on the face of the Earth.  Have you ever thought about that?  On one hand it seems impossible given the abundance of essentially anonymous people which seem to populate the earth, at least to our subjective view, but intuitively I imagine that most of us suspect there is some truth to this, and we find our limited degrees of separation springing up in the most surprising of places.

And in addition to that, the degrees of separation get much smaller if you impose a limitation on the data set, like restricting the geographical area, interest, or profession.  I often suspect that, worldwide, professional musicians are separated by no more than 3 degrees, and…maybe…only 2.  I’m fairly certain I could link practically any other professional musician through one mutual acquaintance most of the time, and a maximum of two in other cases.  Of course, as you go back in time the chain grows, but I bet it still wouldn’t be all that much.

If you impose two or more limitations the connectedness skyrockets.  As an example of this, I am a professional musician in Central Wisconsin.  If I postulated about the degrees of separation within that community, my guess is it would be no more than one, and, as often as not, zero.  What this means is that I either know every other professional musician in Central Wisconsin or know them through no more than one other person.

What fascinates me about the Kevin Bacon game is that, in spite of the restrictions placed on that data set (Hollywood Actors), sometimes it is still not easy to link him to others without expanding to fourth and fifth degrees.  If you want to play with this a little bit, this website is fun:

https://oracleofbacon.org/help.php

Kevin Bacon used to be offended by the game, suspecting he was the butt of a malicious joke, but has since embraced it for the cultural enrichment it provides.  It also works only because he has been so prolific.  He has even leveraged its popularity to launch philanthropic organizations and speaks touchingly of his history with the game in this interesting and enjoyable TED Talk:

 

And, he eventually became comfortable enough with Six Degrees to make this amusing commercial, which I remember seeing on television:

 

 

Anyway, I bring up Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon because it reminds me of something I came across doing research for the featured music of this post, Beethoven’s Farewell Piano Sonata.  Bear with me here…

Have you ever watched the film JFK?  It’s Oliver Stone’s conspiracy theory about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  Based largely on the controversial work of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, who ended up making a considerable investigation into people and events which he suspected were related to a conspiracy centered in his jurisdiction, the movie is correspondingly controversial.

I was fascinated by the film when I first saw it in college, and it’s still a film I can watch with pleasure.  I don’t tend to sit around and think about conspiracy theories that much, but the film usually manages to convince me there may be something to the various theories about Kennedy’s death.  As a film it boasts many merits, however you feel about the implications of its content.  It’s the kind of movie that you sit down to start and end up glued to the couch for the entire 3-hour running time because it’s so absorbing and compelling.  Siskel and Ebert agreed at its time of release, and I still remember seeing the articles in the Newsweek magazines that were delivered to our house, analyzing its veracity:

 

Part of what makes the film fun to watch is that it is essentially an ensemble cast, packed from beginning to end with colorful cameos brought to life by notable Hollywood figures.  Kevin Costner plays Garrison, and he is certainly the protagonist who holds the film together, but as his investigation unfolds he meets one colorful lowlife after another, and Stone’s casting reflects the color of the characters.  You just don’t know who will fill the screen next.  I’m not going to spoil it if you haven’t seen it, because I recommend that you do.  But I will tell you that one of the cameos is played by none other than…Kevin Bacon.  It is for this reason that one of my friends, in discussing JFK, once called it “solid gold for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”.  I might even go so far as to say that you could understandably disqualify it from the pool if you were playing a serious game.

In researching the history of classical music I have been struck by how small of a world it really was.  It seems that all the great composers and performers knew each other, and crossed paths often,with very few degrees of separation between them.  Everyone studied with someone, taught someone, met someone, encouraged someone, criticized someone, collaborated with someone, heard someone in performance, danced with someone, etc. etc. etc.  This is a truth I had not fully grasped before, even loving classical music as much as I have for so much of my life.  It was an incredibly small and tightly-knit world, and reading the stories of Western composers drives this point home.  And, ladies and gentlemen, I believe I have discerned classical music’s JFK.  It is the Diabelli Variations, published in the 1820s.  And here is the story behind that…

Anton Diabelli was a priest until Bavaria closed its monasteries in 1803, and then he went into music publishing.  He and his Italian business partner, Pietro Cappi, created a very successful music publishing company in Vienna.  Part of what made it work so well was Diabelli’s keen sense of promotion and providing music to the public that he knew would go over well.  It is this sensibility that motivated him to extend a commision to 50 of the most notable composers of the day, requesting variations composed on a little waltz that he wrote.  

 

The submitted variations were published together as a collection.  Well, actually two collections, since Beethoven went above and beyond the call of duty, generating more than 30 himself.  This collection is often performed and recorded all on its own under the title of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, and considered one of the strongest masterpieces of variation technique.

Variations were submitted by these folks, among others: Beethoven, Czerny, Schubert, Hummel, Moscheles, Gelinek, Kalkbrenner.  If you’ve read at all about Beethoven’s time you probably recognize a bunch of those names.  Most have been lost to history, but you can see the complete list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaterl%C3%A4ndischer_K%C3%BCnstlerverein

Three other composers are notable:

1. Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, son of Wolfgang Amadeus, submitted one.

2. An 11 year-old Franz Liszt submitted one.  Liszt almost singlehandedly formed a hub around which all the Romantic composers of Europe orbited.  If you played Six Degrees of Franz Liszt, you could probably do everything at zero or one degree.  He was a true connector – read more about that here.

3. “S.R.D.”, a mysterious composer who has been identified as the cardinal archduke Rudolf of Austria.  Here’s his variation:

 

Well done isn’t it?  It reminds me of a cross between Bach and Beethoven.  And that makes sense, because Beethoven taught him piano and composition for many years.  They became close friends and remained so for decades, which I imagine was somewhat rare for Beethoven.  In Archduke Rudolf Beethoven found a companion and champion who used his power and influence to stand up for and help the composer in spite of his unorthodox disregard for decorum, helping to arrange important opportunities and financial support for the brilliant and often socially misfit musical genius.  In return, Beethoven dedicated 14 of his compositions to the Archduke, including the great Missa Solemnis.

One such dedication goes beyond the conventional framework of the dedication process, bordering on the territory of a personal letter.  It is the Piano Sonata in E flat major, opus 81a (for more on the opus numbering system, especially as it relates to Beethoven, see this post).  Cast in three movements, the sonata is thought to summarize Beethoven’s feelings regarding the Archduke leaving Vienna in response to Napoleon’s attack.  In an uncharacteristically transparent expression of inner landscape, Beethoven actually wrote “Le-be-wohl” over the first three chords of the sonata.  

 

Beethoven must have sympathized with the misfortunes of his patron, adding to his already conflicted feelings about Napoleon Bonaparte (for more on that story, see this post).
In a fascinating little corner of music history, Beethoven and his patron, Archduke Rudolf, share a connection in the pages of Diabelli’s clever commission, and connections with so many other musical luminaries as well, making their colorful cameos in the pages of the publication.  If you wanted to play six degrees of separation with classical composers, you would never be all that far away from anyone else.  But the Diabelli Variations would be solid gold for anyone seeking to reduce the magnitude of degrees.  Like JFK in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, savvy players may find it fair to disqualify it from their game.

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Rondos Old & New, Day 4 – Rage Over a Lost Penny by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Rondos Old & New!  When we hear music, our minds are constantly, and subconsciously, asking a very simple but important question: “is what I’m hearing right now the same or different than what I’ve heard before?”  Musicians understand this important principle and so strive to balance the opposing forces of familiarity and contrast throughout their works.  Too much of the same will get boring; too little of the same will become incoherent.  The traditional forms that have governed music for centuries reflect this, most especially the rondo with its distinctive refrain that keeps coming back after we hear contrasting sections.  The rondo has given musicians a basic but powerful and effective way to organize their musical materials in time for almost a millennium.  This week we listen to examples from all across history.

Rondos Old & New, Day 4 – Rage Over a Lost Penny by Ludwig van Beethoven

The Germanic music of the 1700s can be seen as a process of formal expansion which played out over the course of a century (and kept going after that).  At the beginning of the century composers created mostly short movements, relegated to succinct forms with very clear boundaries between their sections.  You could expect to hear da capo arias in vocal music – opera, oratorio and cantata – with a very clear ABA form.  You could expect to hear binary forms in ballets and dance suites, sticking to an AB scheme that is hard to confuse.  Those are really the big ones.  There are also movements which would be called “through-composed”, that is there is no clearly delineated formal scheme – Handel’s oratorio choruses are a good example of this.  You will be able to identify different themes and motives in a piece written that way, but they don’t exactly stick to a formal scheme and there are typically no clear boundaries between sections.  One other thing you might see is ritornello form, for example in the violin concertos of Vivaldi or the concerti grossi of Corelli, in which orchestral forces contrast with soloistic ones, bandying back and forth over the course of a few minutes.  Again, you will hear the same motives and themes, but not in any way that can be so easily mapped out in a few letters of the alphabet.

Eighteenth century composers worked with all of these forms and, for some reason, saw fit to make them longer, more intricate, and, well, just a little blurrier.  The rounded binary form of Baroque music, ABA, morphed into a very dramatic and detailed presentation and development of themes that came to be known as sonata form.  This doesn’t necessarily refer to sonatas as you might find for solo instruments like piano, although most sonatas written during the 1700s or later have a sonata form movement or two.  Sonata form is found in symphonies, concertos, string quartets, really any instrumental genre.  It became a most reliable and solid form to present as a first movement in order to open a large, multi movement piece of music, and the shape presents a most satisfying dramatic progression, even today.  

Sonata form works like this: the main themes of the movement, usually twofold, are presented clearly at the beginning in what is called the exposition.  These themes may be memorable and interesting, but the real heart of a sonata form movement is the middle, called the development.  In this section the composer takes the themes apart, rearranges them, puts them through their paces, and just generally transforms them in novel and interesting ways.  After that we hear the themes again, more or less in their original basic forms, although they feel a little different after being developed.  Most anyone can write a theme, but the true skill of a sonata movement is in the development – that’s the tricky part.  A great development will seem to do everything possible with one or both of the themes, and will feel well-paced, bringing the exposition back when it feels exactly right.  Here’s a very straightforward sonata form movement  that I bet you have heard before to help you understand how it works.  “Textbook” sonata form is actually rather rare – composers were constantly tinkering with it and putting novel twists on the form to make it interesting and unexpected, so while you may sense the basic outline, the details tend to vary from piece to piece:

 

Sonata form became one of the mainstays of Western composition starting around the 1730s and remained so through the end of the 1800s.  It was so effective that it was sometimes combined with other forms, most often the rondo, which was undergoing a similar expansion from its  own baroque predecessor.  Popularized by the French composer Lully (see this post), his stately and elegant rondeaux were incredibly concise and clear, generally adhering to a no-frills ABACA form, usually lasting no more than 2 minutes.  Many Baroque composers imitated this and then, later, in the hands of Bach’s sons, Haydn, Mozart, and others, it began to lengthen, the edges of its sections blurring, and deviating from the textbook form in interesting ways.  And it was sometimes blended with sonata form, yielding a hybrid sometimes known as sonata-rondo form, which somehow exhibited the distinctive dramatic characters of both, combining the strengths of the recurring refrain with the depth and rigor of development.

In the hands of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, whose game consisted largely of complicating the old, stiff forms in clever and ingenious ways, the rondo took on countless varied appearances with all the modifications that were made.  You never quite know what you will hear next, and that’s part of the fun!  Under Haydn and Mozart the forms became most varied, and once Beethoven got ahold of them, even in his vigorous youthful phase, he couldn’t resist making the rondo his own, just like he did with everything else he touched.  At his best, rondo and sonata form mesh together seamlessly, yielding music of strength and dramatic thrust with infectious themes that are developed with meticulous intensity.  Here is one such example, that Beethoven called Rondo alla ingharese quasi un capriccio, which translates to something along the lines of “Gypsy/Hungarian rondo, all in light-hearted fun”.  The super-catchy first theme calls to mind Mozart’s Turkish rondo, perhaps a worthy companion to this one, but in major and considerably more manic.  It bears a late opus number, 129, (the Ninth Symphony is opus 125), but this is merely due to its posthumous publication; the piece was actually written during his 20s, and effectively illustrates the incredibly vivacity of the ambitious young musician, poised at that point to take Europe by storm with his forceful music.

 

The rondo starts clearly enough with its themes, but by the middle Beethoven more or less drops any pretense of a clear rondo and just does his Beethoven thing, which includes a coda roughly 25% of the length of the total work, and a very absorbing development section from 2:26 – 2:49.  And immediately after that, Beethoven throws in a long, lyrical variation on the main theme, drawing from yet another popular form, the theme and variations.  Beethoven always gives you more than you expect!  Even without the development section, extended coda, and lyrical variation, the divisions between the different sections are less discreet that they would have been a century ago and the transitions are much more artfully done.  Certainly no two of Beethoven’s rondos (and there are quite a few) are the same, but this one is particularly complex.

And it has an interesting story.  Beethoven is said to have misplaced a small coin and torn around his apartment the entire night trying to find it.  One of the nicknames of this rondo is “Rage Over a Lost Penny”, and I think it really does capture the ridiculous urgency of searching for a valueless item.  Did I mention that Beethoven may have had OCD?  Oh yeah, in this post 🙂

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Caffeinated Music, Day 3 – Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” by Ludwig van Beethoven

This week’s theme is…Caffeinated Music!  The satisfying and enormously popular beverage known as coffee migrated to Europe from the Middle East through Venetian trade routes late in the 1500s.  Initially met with suspicion for its origins, coffee nonetheless wasted no time in winning over Western culture, boasting countless devotees within a century and inspiring plant after plant of coffee house establishments, which remain centers of philosophy and culture to this day.  Numerous artists, authors, philosophers, theologians, and other influential Europeans consumed coffee in awe-inspiring quantities, often prepared through elaborate and eccentric rituals.  Every piece this week was written by or inspired by a great coffee drinker.

Caffeinated Music, Day 3 – Symphony N0. 3 “Eroica” by Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven could never do anything small, could he?  Practically his entire significance is ensconced in the way he expanded the musical forms inherited from the Classical era.  Beethoven was an artist who made what he found larger and considerably deeper, and then left as it a challenge for those who came after him .  He was larger than life.  His passions, his temper, his ambitions, his superhuman willpower, his opinion of his artistry (not entirely undeserved).  He dreamed big dreams, thought big thoughts, achieved big goals, and wrote big tunes.

And he loved his coffee in a big way.  Have you ever heard about Beethoven’s taste for coffee?  Let me tell you!  Each and every day, Beethoven would brew himself a cup of coffee made with exactly 60 beans.  Exactly.  Does that seem like a lot?  That’s the commentary I most often find about Beethoven’s coffee formula, that it sounds like a strong cup.  At first I thought it did, too, but once I counted it out and measured it I discovered that 60 beans amounts to a little less than a heaping tablespoon, which is about the strength I brew at home.  

60 coffee beans, believe it or not…

And I’ve had a hard time finding out exactly how big his cup would have been, so I can’t speak to the precise strength of Beethoven’s brew.  I also don’t know what the general strength would have been among his contemporary coffee hounds, so again, not sure how his would compare.  But it seems fair to say that the strength wasn’t so phenomenal.  It must have been good though.  I have read that his guests spoke highly of his coffee preparation and that he became extra-exacting about the recipe with company present.  And actually, his neurosis for counting out exactly 60 coffee beans per cup speaks more to OCD, which some people speculate that he was, than caffeine dependence.  I also don’t know how much he drank throughout the day, a statistic which is recorded for other figures such as Voltaire (40 – 50 cups of a coffee and chocolate mixture), Balzac (50 cups a day, and later on in life he just ate the grounds) and Theodore Roosevelt (a gallon per day), but as Beethoven’s consumption not written about in such figures I suspect it was moderate.

Anyway, let’s just say Beethoven loved coffee, and in a big way.  I think we can agree on that.  The method and attention to detail he lavished upon its preparation suggests to me that it was an inextricably significant component of the daily ritual that allowed him, and so many other artists, to create as they did.  And, interestingly enough, he wrote one of his biggest, grandest, and most-admired musical works in honor of another larger than life-kind of guy who also loved his coffee, Napoleon Bonaparte.  I bet you’ve heard of him.  He figured prominently in the history of France.  And he loved his coffee.  I guess a guy doesn’t wake up and set out to conquer the world without a good slug of morning joe.  

Napoleon is recorded to have made statements which indicate more than a passing interest in the beloved liquor, and they range from glib and practical to waxing most poetically.  Statements like:

“I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.”

and

“Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure.”

Still not quite sure what that last one means.  But, whatever.  He liked coffee.  So, behind every great man is his coffee.  I think that’s how the saying goes, right?  Well, pretty sure.  Anyway, those two larger-than-life coffee-lovers, Ludwig van Beethoven and Napoleon Bonaparte, are metaphysically entangled through the pages of one of Beethoven’s greatest works, the Third Symphony in E-flat major.  Most people know it today by Beethoven’s imposed nickname “Eroica”, which means “heroic” in Italian.  And it certainly fits.  But the moniker “Eroica” actually replaced Beethoven’s previous nickname for the symphony, which was “Bonaparte”.  That’s right.  Beethoven’s Third Symphony, which many would call his greatest, and even more would call his most influential, was originally named after, and dedicated to, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Beethoven, in the customarily idealistic manner of a true artist, was a fan of the liberal democracies that were popping up in the Western world during his day as a result of the Enlightenment (which some speculate was fueled in large part by coffee-drinking and the exchange of ideas that resulted from coffee house culture).  His life coincided with the revolutions of both America and France, and the long wake of France’s tumultuous political upheaval rippled through the events of Beethoven’s later life.  He observed the rise of the Napoleon, first shrewdly stabilizing the turbulence of France’s disarrayed government while bolstering his own political power in the process, and then crowning himself Emperor of the new French Empire, before setting about conquer as much of Europe as he could.

Napoleon’s self-styled coronation infuriated and disillusioned the idealistic Beethoven, who removed the dedication upon learning of the ambitious Corsican’s true motivations for seeking political power.  

The title page of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, upon which can be seen the dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte scratched out

He redubbed the symphony “Eroica” with the subtitle “Dedicated to the memory of a great man”.  15 years later, when Napoleon died, Beethoven remembered the dedication, noting that he had already written a funeral march (the Third Symphony’s dour second movement) for the occasion.  I think you could also interpret the subtitle as Beethoven’s continued dedication to the man he once thought Napoleon was, standing for the ideals of equality, liberty and democracy.

The Eroica Symphony is Beethoven’s shot across the bow, launching the Romantic era of music in one fell swoop.  It was the longest symphony to date, and by far the most powerful.  Beethoven is the first musician in recorded history to so unabashedly express his idealistic nature in his works and the Eroica Symphony seems to convey that clash of civilizations, especially the titanic opening movement.  It is Beethoven’s telling of the benevolent forces he once believed to animate Napoleon and the endeavor of the French Revolution.  While both of those complicated forces have major skeletons in their closets, existing as they do in our real and imperfect world, Beethoven never lost his sight of the ideals that purported to animate them.  Indeed it seemed to grow stronger the longer he lived, culminating in his most idealistic statement of all, the Ode to Joy of his final symphony.

 

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