I. Awakening of serene impressions on arriving in the country:
allegro, ma non troppo
II. Scene by the brookside: andante molto moto
III. Jolly gathering of country folk: allegro; in tempo d’allegro
Thunderstorm; tempest: allegro
IV. Shepherd’s song; gladsome and thankful feelings after the storm:
allegretto
When justly read, this symphony is indeed pastoral, light-hearted,
something more than a fearsome length relieved only by the little
ornithological passage in which nightingale, quail, and cuckoo are
neatly imitated; at least, it is fair to suppose this; we have never
heard the nightingale sing. Jean Cocteau, in his amusing little book
full of aphorisms designed to make the bourgeois sit up, says that the
nightingale sings badly. So we must not be unduly prejudiced by praise
of the bird coming from Milton, Matthew Arnold, and other poetical
enthusiasts. Then there is the thunderstorm—the tempest, to use the good
country term that has come down from Shakespeare and before him. And how
charming the first two movements! To borrow the Host’s characterization
of Master Fenton, the symphony smells April and May.
* * *
This symphony—_Sinfonia pastorale_—was composed in the country round
about Heiligenstadt in the summer of 1808. It was first performed at the
Theater an der Wien, Vienna, December 22, 1808. The descriptive headings
were probably an afterthought. In the sketchbook, which contains
sketches for the first movement, is a note: “_Characteristic Symphony.
The recollections of life in the country._” There is also a note: “_The
hearer is left to find out the situations for himself._”
M. Vincent d’Indy in his _Beethoven_ (Paris, 1911) devotes several pages
to Beethoven’s love of nature. “Nature was to Beethoven not only a
consoler for his sorrows and disenchantments; she was also a friend with
whom he took pleasure in familiar talk, the only intercourse to which
his deafness presented no obstacle.” Nor did Beethoven understand Nature
in the dryly theoretical manner of Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose writings
then were in fashion, for there could be no point of contact between the
doctrines of this Calvinist of Geneva and the effusions of Beethoven, a
Catholic by birth and by education. Nor did Beethoven share the views of
many Romantics about Nature. He would never have called her “immense,
impenetrable, and haughty,” as Berlioz addressed her through the mouth
of his Faust. A little nook, a meadow, a tree—these sufficed for
Beethoven. He had so penetrated the beauty of nature that for more than
a dozen years all his music was impregnated by it.
His bedside book for many, many years soon after his passion for
Giulietta Guicciardi was the _Lehr und Erbauungs Buch_ of Sturm.
Passages underscored show the truth of the assertions just made, and he
copied these lines that they might always be in his sight: “Nature can
be justly called the school of the heart; it shows us beyond all doubt
our duty towards God and our Neighbor. I wish therefore to become a
disciple of this school, and offer my heart to it. Desirous of
self-instruction, I wish to search after the wisdom that no disillusion
can reject; I wish to arrive at the knowledge of God, and in this
knowledge I shall find a foretaste of celestial joys.”
Nature to Beethoven was the country near by, which he could visit in his
daily walks. If he was an indefatigable pedestrian, he was never an
excursionist.
M. d’Indy draws a picture of the little _Wirthschaften_ in the suburbs
of the large towns, humble inns “not yet ticketed with the pompous
barbarism of ‘restaurant.’” They were frequented by the bourgeoisie, who
breathed the fresh air and on tables of wood ate the habitual sausage
and drank the traditional beer. There was a dance hall with a small
orchestra; there was a discreet garden with odorous alleys in which
lovers could walk between the dances. Beyond was the forest where the
peasant danced and sang and drank, but the songs and dances were here of
a ruder nature.
Beethoven, renting a cottage at Döbling, Grinzing, or Heiligenstadt,
which then were not official faubourgs, could in a few minutes be in the
forest or open country. He did not attempt to reproduce the material,
realistic impression of country sounds and noises, but only the spirit
of the landscape.
Thus in the _Pastoral_ symphony, to suggest the rustic calm and the
tranquillity of the soul in contact with Nature, he did not seek curious
harmonic conglomerations, but a simple, restrained melody which embraces
only the interval of a sixth (from _fa_ to _re_). This is enough to
create in us the sentiment of repose—as much by its quasi-immobility as
by the duration of this immobility. The exposition of this melody based
on the interval of a sixth is repeated with different timbres, but
musically the same, for fifty-two measures without interruption. In an
analogous manner Wagner portrayed the majestic monotony of the river in
the introduction to _Rheingold_. Thus far the landscape is uninhabited.
The second musical idea introduces two human beings, man and woman,
force and tenderness. The second musical thought is the thematic base of
the whole work. In the _scherzo_ the effect of sudden immobility
produced by the bagpipe tune of the strolling musician (the oboe solo,
followed by the horn), imposing itself on the noisy joy of the peasants,
is due to the cause named above; here, with the exception of one note,
the melody moves within the interval of a fifth.
The storm does not pretend to frighten the hearer. The insufficient
kettledrums are enough to suggest the thunder, but in four movements of
the five there is not a fragment of development in the minor mode. The
key of F minor, reserved for the darkening of the landscape hitherto
sunny and gay, produces a sinking of the heart and the distressing
restlessness that accompany the approach of the tempest. Calm returns
with the _ambitus_ of the sixth, and then the shepherd’s song leads to a
burst of joyfulness. The two themes are the masculine and feminine
elements exposed in the first movement.
According to M. d’Indy the _andante_ is the most admirable expression of
true nature in musical literature. Only some passages of _Siegfried_ and
_Parsifal_ are comparable. Conductors usually take this _andante_ at too
slow a pace and thus destroy the alert poetry of the section. The brook
furnishes the basic movement, expressive melodies arise, and the
feminine theme of the first _allegro_ reappears, alone, disquieted by
the absence of its mate. Each section is completed by a pure and
prayer-like melody. It is the artist who prays, who loves, who crowns
the diverse divisions of his work by a species of Alleluia.
It has been said that several of the themes in this symphony were taken
from Styrian and Carinthian folk songs. It is dedicated to Prince von
Lobkowitz and Count Rasoumowsky. The work was published in 1809.