Strange things have been done by conductors to Beethoven’s overture. We
remember Franz Wüllner in Berlin slackening the pace in the _allegro_
section when he came to the heavy chords that are supposed by some
commentators, finders of sunbeams in cucumbers, to represent Alva, and
then playing the chords with brutal emphasis and a long pause between
them. Another conductor, no less a person than Arthur Nikisch, made a
long hold on the short, incisive violin stroke just before the _coda_,
and then brought the figure slowly down _portamento_. We doubt if he did
this in later years.
* * *
This overture was composed in 1810; it was published in 1811. The music
to Goethe’s play—overture, four entr’actes, two songs sung by Clärchen,
“Clärchen’s Death,” “Melodrama,” and “Triumph Symphony” (identical with
the coda of the overture), for the end of the play, nine numbers in
all—was performed for the first time with the tragedy at the Hofburg
Theater, Vienna, May 24, 1810. Antonie Adamberger was the Clärchen.
When Hartl took the management of the two Vienna Court theaters, January
1, 1808, he produced plays by Schiller. He finally determined to produce
plays by Goethe and Schiller with music, and he chose Schiller’s _Tell_
and Goethe’s _Egmont_. Beethoven and Gyrowetz were asked to write the
music. The former was anxious to compose the music for _Tell_; but, as
Czerny tells the story, there were intrigues, and, as _Egmont_ was
thought to be less suggestive to a composer, the music for that play was
assigned to Beethoven. Gyrowetz’s music to _Tell_ was performed June 14,
1810. It was described by a correspondent of a Leipsic journal of music
as “characteristic and written with intelligence.” No allusion was made
at the time anywhere to Beethoven’s _Egmont_.
The overture has a short, slow introduction, _sostenuto ma non troppo_,
F minor, 3-2. The main body of the overture is an _allegro_, F minor,
3-4. The first theme is in the strings; each phrase is a descending
_arpeggio_ in the violoncellos, closing with a sigh in the first
violins; the antithesis begins with a “sort of sigh” in the wood-wind,
then in the strings; then there is a development into passage work. The
second theme has for its thesis a version of the first two measures of
the sarabande theme of the introduction, _fortissimo_ (strings), in A
flat major, and the antithesis is a triplet in the wood-wind. The coda,
_allegro con brio_, F major, 4-4, begins _pianissimo_. The full
orchestra at last has a brilliant fanfare figure, which ends in a
shouting climax, with a famous shrillness of the piccolo against
fanfares of bassoons and brass and between crashes of the full
orchestra.
Long and curious commentaries have been written in explanation of this
overture. As though the masterpiece needed an explanation! We remember
one in which a subtle meaning was given to at least every half-dozen
measures: The Netherlanders are under the crushing weight of Spanish
oppression; Egmont is melancholy, his blood is stagnant, but at last he
shakes off his melancholy (violins), answers the cries of his
country-people, rouses himself for action; his death is portrayed by a
descent of the violins from C to G; but his countrymen triumph. Spain is
typified by the sarabande movement; the heavy, recurring chords portray
the lean-bodied, lean-visaged Duke of Alva; “the violin theme in D flat,
to which the clarinet brings the under-third, is a picture of Clärchen,”
etc. One might as well illustrate word for word the solemn ending of
Thomas Fuller’s life of Alva in _The Profane State_: “But as his life
was a mirror of cruelty, so was his death of God’s patience. It was
admirable that his tragical acts should have a comical end; that he that
sent so many to the grave should go to his own, and die in peace. But
God’s justice on offenders goes not always in the same path, nor the
same pace; and he is not pardoned for the fault who is for a while
reprieved from the punishment; yea, sometimes the guest in the inn goes
quietly to bed before the reckoning for his supper is brought to him to
discharge.” The overture is at first a mighty lamentation. There are
voices of an aroused and angry people, and there is at the last
tumultuous rejoicing. The “Triumph Symphony” at the end of the play
forms the end of the overture.