Beethoven’s next symphony, though begun in the summer of 1803, was not
completed till the following year. As long before as 1802 Beethoven had
declared his dissatisfaction with his works up to that time: “From today
I mean to take a new road.” This symphony boldly takes that road. The
Second Symphony still belongs largely to the eighteenth century. The
Third embodies the developments with which Beethoven revolutionized the
symphony. In amplitude and opulence no previous symphonic movement had
ever equalled or even approached the initial “Allegro con brio,” and it
may be doubted whether any has subsequently surpassed it. Sensitive
listeners hearing it for the first time may well have cried out with
Miranda: “O brave new world!”
There ensues a Funeral March that is one of the most tremendous
lamentations conceived in any art. The Scherzo is not only the first but
one of Beethoven’s symphonic scherzos, it is also among the greatest.
For the Finale Beethoven provides a theme and variations of astonishing
diversity and splendor.
The first and dominating theme of the “Allegro con brio”
[Illustration: play music]
Beethoven very likely remembered from Mozart’s little _Bastien und
Bastienne_ overture, but he uses it here in the grand manner. The
Funeral March begins with a striking phrase in C minor. A tender lyric
passage in C major introduces an elegiac element into the sternness of
the dirge. The Scherzo (“Allegro vivace” in E-flat major) is an
enormously energetic movement and is interrupted by a Trio, prophetic in
its turn of the Ninth Symphony and including a particularly brilliant
and difficult passage for the horns.
The theme of the concluding variations (“Allegro molto” in E flat major)
Beethoven had previously employed in his ballet, _The Creatures of
Prometheus_. This theme, simple as it appears, contains the germ of one
of the most remarkable sets of variations ever put down on paper.
[Illustration: play music]
The Third Symphony is universally known today less by its number and its
key than by the title “Eroica” (“Heroic”). Everybody is familiar with
the story of the relation of this symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Beethoven, sympathetic toward the republican ideals of the French
Revolution, originally hailed General Bonaparte as the Great Liberator,
but when in May 1804 he accepted the imperial crown of France, Beethoven
saw him in an entirely different light. Such was his rage that he was on
the point of destroying this symphony, which he had intended to dedicate
to Bonaparte as a tribute to his services to mankind. Fortunately he
desisted, tore Bonaparte’s name from the inscription, and entitled the
work “Eroica.” It should not be forgotten, though, that when seventeen
years later he heard of the death of Napoleon at St. Helena, he
remarked, “I have already composed the proper music for that
catastrophe,” which was an allusion to the Funeral March.
The meaning of the symphony as a heroic work is clear enough to anyone
who hears the first movement and the Funeral March. Perhaps only Anton
Rubinstein has ever questioned the heroic quality of the first movement
and nobody has or could doubt the heroism of the mighty threnody that
follows. But to fit the brilliant Scherzo and the dazzling set of
variations into the picture has occasioned any amount of controversy. To
go at length into the various theories is impossible here, but one might
point out that the Scherzo has been interpreted as a scene in the hero’s
camp, as an excited crowd waiting for the hero’s return and his
triumphant address in the Trio, and as a picture of funeral games at the
grave of the hero, such as one finds in the epic poems of Homer and
Virgil, this last theory being that of Berlioz. The variations of the
Finale have been plausibly explained as the nations of the earth
bringing each its tribute of flowers to deck the hero’s monument. The
first performance of this transcendent symphony took place in Vienna on
April 7, 1805.