(An answer to Schindler’s question as to what poetical conceit underlay
the sonatas in F minor. Beethoven used playfully to call the little son
of Breuning, the friend of his youth, A&Z, because he employed him often
as a messenger.)
[“Schindler relates that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what
the F minor and D minor (op. 31, No. 2) meant, he received for an answer
only the enigmatical remark: ‘Read Shakespeare’s “Tempest.”’ Many a
student and commentator has since read the ‘Tempest’ in the hope of
finding a clew to the emotional contents which Beethoven believed to
be in the two works, so singularly associated, only to find himself
baffled. It is a fancy, which rests, perhaps, too much on outward
things, but still one full of suggestion, that had Beethoven said: ‘Hear
my C minor symphony,’ he would have given a better starting-point to
the imagination of those who are seeking to know what the F minor sonata
means. Most obviously it means music, but it means music that is an
expression of one of those psychological struggles which Beethoven felt
called upon more and more to delineate as he was more and more shut out
from the companionship of the external world. Such struggles are in the
truest sense of the word tempests. The motive, which, according to the
story, Beethoven himself said, indicates, in the symphony, the rappings
of Fate at the door of human existence, is common to two works which
are also related in their spiritual contents. Singularly enough, too,
in both cases the struggle which is begun in the first movement and
continued in the third, is interrupted by a period of calm, reassuring,
soul-fortifying aspiration, which, in the symphony as well as in the
sonata, takes the form of a theme with variations.”--“How to Listen to
Music,” page 29. H. E. K.]
88. “Sinfonia Pastorella. He who has ever had a notion of country life
can imagine for himself without many superscriptions what the composer
is after. Even without a description the whole, which is more sentiment
than tone painting, will be recognized.”
(A note among the sketches for the “Pastoral” symphony preserved in the
Royal Library at Berlin.)
[There are other notes of similar import among the sketches referred to
which can profitably be introduced here:
“The hearer should be allowed to discover the situations;”
“Sinfonia caracteristica, or a recollection of country life;”
“Pastoral Symphony: No picture, but something in which the emotions are
expressed which are aroused in men by the pleasure of the country (or)
in which some feelings of country life are set forth.”
When, finally, the work was given to the publisher, Beethoven included
in the title an admonitory explanation which should have everlasting
validity: “Pastoral Symphony: more expression of feeling than painting.”
H. E. K.]
89. “My ‘Fidelio’ was not understood by the public, but I know that it
will yet be appreciated; for though I am well aware of the value of my
‘Fidelio’ I know just as well that the symphony is my real element. When
sounds ring in me I always hear the full orchestra; I can ask anything
of instrumentalists, but when writing for the voice I must continually
ask myself: ‘Can that be sung?’
(A remark made in 1823 or 1824 to Griesinger.)