After the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Beethoven let several years pass
without giving the world another, though he continued to compose
diligently in spite of uncertain health and ever-increasing deafness. At
length, in 1812, he finished two symphonies, which were probably played
in private for the first time at the house of the Archduke Rudolph in
Vienna on April 20, 1813. He was unable, however, to obtain a public
performance for either of them till the Seventh Symphony was given in
the great hall of the University of Vienna on December 8 of the same
year.
Beethoven himself spoke of this work as his “most excellent” symphony,
an opinion that not a few have echoed. He composed it in all the
exuberance of his creative maturity, and each of its four movements
brims over with the fiery essence of his inspiration. The listener is
overpowered by the very lavishness of its beauty. In this symphony you
feel Beethoven’s genius as something inexhaustible, glorying in its own
titanic power, as of a high god ignoring lesser breeds, proud in the
knowledge of invincible strength, unfettered, carefree, save where the
Allegretto acknowledges a divine melancholy.
Coming after the “Pastoral” with its avowed meaning, does this symphony
“mean” anything in the sense in which that work and the “Eroica” do?
Beethoven has not helped us with the clue of a title. However, there are
students of the Seventh to whom it has yielded a quite definite meaning.
Two of the most eminent are Richard Wagner and the French composer
Vincent d’Indy. To Wagner the Seventh Symphony is the “apotheosis of the
dance.” To d’Indy it is a second “Pastoral” Symphony, full of bird-calls
and other country sounds. Of course Wagner’s definition recognizes the
great part played in it by rhythm.
The Seventh Symphony begins in its title key of A major with a long
introduction (“Poco sostenuto”), which almost has the importance of a
separate movement. The second theme of this introduction—a capricious,
tripping melody, first given out by a solo oboe—is not only one of the
most captivating that Beethoven ever invented, but might very well be
taken for an invitation to the dance or, perhaps equally well, for the
caroling of a bird:
[Illustration: play music]
The principal theme of the main body of the movement (Vivace in A
major), first announced by the flute, dominates the whole movement with
its dotted dactylic rhythm. This theme, in its turn, might be a further
invitation to the dance or again the piping of a bird.
[Illustration: play music]
The second movement, an Allegretto opening in A minor on a long-held,
mysterious 6-4 chord of the tonic, is one of the most remarkable pages
in all Beethoven. Here, if the dance simile is to be preserved, it must
be a solemn, ritual dance. Thus the movement has been likened to a
procession in the catacombs. But it has been likened as well to the love
dream of an odalisque!
The third movement is a brilliant Scherzo, though marked only “Presto”
(in F major). Twice it is interrupted by the fascinating strains of the
somewhat less rapid Trio (“Assai meno presto” in D major), enshrining a
melody that is said to be taken from a pilgrims’ hymn of Lower Austria:
[Illustration: play music]
The Finale is an Allegro of enormous energy and rhythmic incisiveness,
whose tumultuous measures have been specifically compared to widely
diverse dances. Some have heard here the rough jollity of dancing
peasants, a “Bauertanz” or “Dance of Peasants,” while to others it is
nothing less than the ceremonial dance of those priests of Cybele, the
Corybantes, around the cradle of the infant Zeus.