In the three symphonies that successively precede the Sixth, Beethoven,
as we have seen, is concerned with man as lover or as hero, for the
spiritual conflict of the Fifth Symphony is no less heroic than are the
exploits and lamentations of the Third. The Sixth Symphony, however,
though quite as personal, treats of man from a totally different angle.
This symphony, which the composer himself called “Pastoral,” is
Beethoven’s monument to Nature. It expresses his personal devotion to
the country and to what life in the country meant to him. He spent a
great deal of time in the lovely Viennese countryside, especially at
Heiligenstadt, but here the country is no battlefield as it had been in
the summer of 1802, the summer of the “Heiligenstadt Will”; it is rather
the cheerful, sunlit province of Nature’s healing power.
Copious and quaint is the verbal testimony to Beethoven’s pleasure in
Nature. A lodging had once been bespoken for him at the coppersmith’s at
Baden (near Vienna). When he saw there were no trees around the house,
he exclaimed, “This house won’t do for me. I love a tree more than a
man.” According to the Countess Therese von Brunswick, his one-time
betrothed, “he loved to be alone with Nature, to make her his only
_confidante_. When his brain was seething with confused ideas, Nature at
all times comforted him. Often when his friends visited him in the
country in summer, he would rush away from them.” Charles Neate, one of
the founders of the London Philharmonic Society, who was on intimate
terms with Beethoven in Vienna in 1815, assures us that he had “never
met anyone who so delighted in Nature, or so thoroughly enjoyed flowers
or clouds or other natural objects. Nature was almost meat and drink to
him; he seemed positively to exist upon it.” Michael Krenn, Beethoven’s
body-servant during the last summer of his life when he was staying at
his brother’s house at Gneixendorf, relates that Beethoven spent most of
his time in the open air from six in the morning till ten at night,
ranging over the fields, often hatless, shouting (he had long been
completely deaf), gesticulating, and in general quite beside himself
from the torrent of ideas in his mind.
The character of the Sixth Symphony Beethoven immediately makes plain on
the dedicatory page. “Pastoral Symphony,” he calls it, “or a
recollection of country life. More an expression of feeling than a
painting.” The word “more” is important, for actually the symphony is in
part a painting in tone, even if not for the greater part. Instead of
keeping to the traditional four movements, this symphony rejoices in
five, each carrying an identifying title. The first, “Allegro ma non
troppo” in F major, explains itself thus: “The cheerful impressions
excited on arriving in the country.” It begins immediately with this
theme:
[Illustration: play music]
which really holds the germ of the entire movement and, as Beethoven
develops it, becomes as the whole countryside in Maytime bloom.
The second movement, “Andante molto moto” in B-flat major, is more
definite in its treatment of Nature. Beethoven calls it “Scene by the
brookside,” and from the very first note you hear the purling of the
water in the lower strings.
[Illustration: play music]
Against this murmurous background lovely melodies bud and flower and the
whole orchestra seems filled with the tiny, numberless noises of summer.
Near the end occurs a specific imitation of the call of birds,
nightingale, cuckoo, and quail. Beethoven himself said that he meant
these measures as a joke, and others have termed them parody or
caricature. But, joke or parody, the unconquerable artist in Beethoven
has made them of one substance with the heavenly summer light and shade
that pervade this interlude of leisure by the brook.
Though not entitled Scherzo, the third movement, Allegro in F major, is
one in fact. Here the human beings that people this countryside possess
the picture. Beethoven labels the movement “Jolly gathering of country
folk.” Its downright gayety brings in its train an amusing takeoff on a
village band, especially the befuddled bassoon. The middle part of the
movement, “In tempo d’allegro,” corresponding to the usual trio, has
been construed by some as a quarrel among the dancers, by others as just
a rude episode in the dance. The jolly character of the movement is
evident in these consecutive tunes, in the contrasting keys of F and D,
that start it off:
[Illustration: play music]
The last three movements of the symphony are continuous. A dominant
seventh of F ends the “Jolly Gathering,” but, instead of its resolving,
an ominous drum roll on D flat immediately ushers in the fourth
movement, “Thunderstorm; Tempest” (Allegro in D minor), the storm
without which no country scene is perfect. In spite of the formidable
title, this is by no means a devastating outburst, though quite
sufficient to postpone festivities. Memorable is the feeling of tension
in the opening measures, the distant grumbling of the thunder, the first
staccato raindrops. The disappearing tempest is followed directly by the
last movement: “Shepherd’s Song; joyous and thankful feelings after the
storm.” Happiness settles on the landscape once more, as this
light-hearted tune abundantly proves:
[Illustration: play music]
Some of the melodies in this symphony are said to be derived from
Carinthian or Styrian folk songs. As we have observed, the work was
originally brought out at the same concert in Vienna (December 22, 1808)
with the Fifth Symphony. Since it had an earlier place on the program,
it was known for a while as the Fifth and the Fifth as the Sixth, but
the mistake was soon rectified.
_Fidelio_ and the “Leonore” Overtures
The period of Beethoven’s Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies covers,
roughly speaking, a number of other compositions, some of them
relatively trifling, others of greater moment, still others of
altogether sovereign importance. Among the first type we can mention the
Romances in G and F for violin and orchestra, composed in 1802; the
oratorio “Christ on the Mount of Olives,” from the same year; and the
Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and cello, which dates from 1805. The
two Romances are fluent, lyrical movements, but without special depth or
originality. The “Mount of Olives,” a sort of dramatic cantata which at
first enjoyed an almost incredible popularity, for which it has paid
with speedy and wholesale neglect, is a score of extremely uneven value,
which handles a religious subject in a superficial, operatic fashion
scarcely in keeping. Here and there it is possible to find in it
interesting details but the chances for a revival of this work (which
Beethoven’s intelligent contemporary, Rochlitz, criticized in spots as
“comic”) are remote. The Triple Concerto, though not a masterwork of the
first order, has been somewhat too harshly dismissed by many and
therefore seldom visits our concert halls.
Otherwise the principal productions of these years include a quantity of
the brightest jewels in Beethoven’s crown. Leaving aside the chamber
music, which we prefer to consider by itself, they comprise the opera
_Fidelio_ and the three “Leonore” Overtures written in connection with
it; the Violin Concerto (which the composer also arranged as a sort of
piano concerto); and the “Coriolanus” Overture.
_Fidelio_, which Beethoven originally called _Leonore_, was begun in
1804. A child of sorrow to its composer, it was not to achieve the form
in which we now know it till 1814. In the odd century and a half of its
existence it has been attacked for countless reasons in spite of which
it lives on with an incredible tenacity and obstinately refuses to die.
It has been reproached for being poor theater, undramatic, unvocal,
patchy, and countless other things. The book, originally adapted from
_Leonore, ou l’amour conjugale_, by the Frenchman, Bouilly, and
translated into German by Joseph Sonnleithner, was cast into its
definitive form by Friedrich Treitschke. For a variety of reasons the
work failed when it was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in
November 1805. A bold attempt at revision the following season did not
manage to keep it afloat and it was not till eight years later that the
composer, with the clever dramatic surgery of Treitschke, made a final
attempt to salvage it. Just how drastic were the alterations that the
composer and librettist made in the piece can best be appreciated by
those who have had the opportunity to examine the reconstruction of the
original version which Erich Prieger published in 1905 on the occasion
of the centenary of the work. From this it can be seen that not only
have entirely new musical numbers supplanted the old but the opera (or
rather _Singspiel_) has been reduced from its original three acts to two
and that the dramaturgy betrays a vastly more experienced hand. The
musical changes and condensations of Beethoven have, in their way, been
no less thorough.
Far from being bad theater or unoperatic as sometimes charged, _Fidelio_
is basically one of the most dramatic and profoundly moving masterpieces
the lyric theater can show. The 1805 version lacked a number of its most
striking musical features. The original, for example, shows no trace of
the great outburst, _Abscheulicher_, which introduces Leonore’s
tremendous _scena_ in the first act; and in the second, Florestan’s
dungeon air lacks its present “Und spür ich nicht holde, sanft säuselnde
Duft,” which took the place of the long-winded bravura phrases the
composer originally gave the presumably starving prisoner to sing. Even
the present touching close of the dungeon episode was originally quite
different.
It has often been claimed that the previous “failure” of the work so
discouraged the composer that his operatic achievements ended then and
there. As a matter of fact, Beethoven to the end of his days never gave
up his search for another libretto. That he never found it was due to
the very special slant of his requirements. As for the “unvocal”
character of his writing for voices, it is necessary to remember that,
for all the opera’s undeniable exactions, generations of great dramatic
singers have repeatedly triumphed in the chief roles of _Fidelio_.
Beethoven composed four overtures to his opera—the three so-called
“Leonore” Overtures in C and the one in E major, known as the “Fidelio”
Overture. The last-named was written in 1814 for Treitschke’s new
version of the piece. It is the slightest of them all and is the one
that invariably prefaces performances of the opera. For years
controversies have raged as to the order in which the “Leonore”
Overtures were written and for what reason one supplanted the other. The
Second Leonore was the first used to preface the drama at its 1805
hearing; the Third introduced the 1806 revision. Theories have been
bandied about for generations to account for the First Overture, which
was issued as Opus 138 only some years after the composer’s death. The
researches of Dr. Joseph Braunstein in his exhaustive study _Beethovens
Leonore-Ouvertüren, eine historischstilkritische Untersuchung_ have
settled the problem for us. The overtures were composed in the order of
their numbering. “Leonore” No. 1 was found too light for its purpose
and, after a private try-out, was discarded before being publicly
performed. “Leonore” No. 2, less polished and formally perfect than the
more structural and popular No. 3, ranks if anything as more dramatic,
modern, and powerful, even if it does lack the brilliantly jubilant coda
that is the particular glory of No. 3. Neither of these two, however, is
a wholly well-conceived introduction to _Fidelio_, for the reason that
both overpower the opera as a whole and might almost be said to render
the drama superfluous. Actually, a _Fidelio_ representation profits by
the omission of all the “Leonore” Overtures, though practically every
audience these days expects the “Leonore” No. 3 quite as a matter of
course and ordinarily gets it as a sort of interlude between the dungeon
and the concluding scenes.
A word as to the “Fidelio” Overture of 1814, which has none of the
features of the “Leonore” tone poems, either thematically or otherwise.
It is more in the character of a _Singspiel_ overture and has as good as
no dramatic connection with the opera itself—no reference to Florestan’s
dungeon song nor to the off-stage fanfare of the rescue scene; yet it
leads quite properly into the light moods of the opening episodes of the
chattering Marzelline and Jacquino in the first scene and does not, like
the Second and Third “Leonore,” completely overweight the remainder of
the score. At that, it is structurally and otherwise fully worthy of its
composer and is a more logical adjunct to _Fidelio_ than any one of the
“Leonore” Overtures. Actually, it is a good deal more interesting in its
own right than the average person imagines and merits far closer study
than it ordinarily receives.
The “Coriolanus” Overture virtually coincides, in point of time, with
the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies. One of its creator’s most
striking, yet economically fashioned works, it is in no way related to
Shakespeare’s _Coriolanus_ as has frequently been imagined, but was
derived from a Coriolanus tragedy by Heinrich von Collin. Yet many
(including Richard Wagner) have interpreted it in terms of Shakespeare’s
drama, the basic emotional pattern of which it can suggest.