If I've put off covering Beethoven's Fifth for more than a year, it's not because it's not great music or because it's difficult to discuss. It's just hard to find something to say that hasn't already been said better elsewhere.
This is the first of a two-parter. Why? Because we're going to cover all four movements, not just the catchy da-da-da-DAH first movement that everybody knows so well. If you ever took a high school or college Music Appreciation Class, the semester probably started with Beethoven's Fifth, using it to explain a basic symphony first movement. We covered the basic first movement form LAST week, in a separate diary, to try to give us space to talk about more interesting things today. Sounds fun, eh?
To get us started, here's a clip of the early Beethoven, the Moonlight Sonata, played by Vladimir Horowitz. Something to listen to while you read all my prep for Beethoven's Fifth... What? You don't like the Moonlight Sonata? What kind of sick bastard are you?
We're going to cover not just the first, but also the second movement today. The second movement usually gets a screwjob because it's analyzed after the breathtaking first movement, and it is so layback in comparison that it becomes a commercial break. It's not. It's the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth, and it's a masterpiece. Jeez! (And next week we'll hear the third and the fourth/finale movements).
This is the first in a series of diaries that will take us through the end of the year and into January, covering most of or even all of Beethoven's symphonies, wall-to-wall Beethoven, a DailyKos Beethoven Festival.
Now about that Da-da-da-DAAHH thing...
Writing about Beethoven symphonies is actually easier than it sounds because so much of the work is already done for me. The first movement of the Fifth, for instance, is probably the most analyzed piece of classical music ever composed. When you talk about "the symphony" as a form, though, you're talking about Beethoven, because despite all the innovations that came before him, it was Beethoven that transformed the symphony into a powerful story-telling device of complex and changing emotions and ideas.
As much as I love Mozart, whom we beat to death for the last few months, Mozart wasn't the magnificent architect that Beethoven was. He wasn't the rebel that Beethoven was, ready to piss on conventions and sneer while doing it. Where Mozart's music was beautiful, elegant, clean, and mostly abstract, Beethoven's music was turbulent and full of drama. It was no accident that in last week's diary, explaining Sonata-allegro form, I decided to compare it to the basic principles of narrative story-telling. Even when we can't put the narrative of the symphony into real world terms (as we can't, with the Fifth), we still SENSE the continuous narrative, of something happening. The basic symphony, as it existed up until Beethoven, wasn't big enough for all the things he wanted to say. So he EXPANDED it.
And this is what I mean when I say he was a great architect, because of each of his nine symphonies, from #3 on, aren't just dramas -- they are each unique formal constructions that vary from the way things had been done before, and from the way Beethoven had done things before.
The first performance
For instance, the Fifth symphony confused its first audiences. The gripping da-da-da-DAAH first movement by itself, was fairly easy to understand, albeit somewhat overpowering. Before the Fifth, the normal symphony was a four course meal -- salad, appetizer, entree, dessert. Four separate plates, and no mixing up the peas with the jello. With the Fifth Symphony, though, Beethoven mixed the peas with the jello.
The first movement is an exercise in monomania with its repetition of the same four note motif. But the first audience could get that. What confused them was when the same four-note motif showed up in the later movements in different disguises. This isn't anything new to us, because we've talked about a host of symphonies in this series that used that idea, what we call thematic linkage, but the precedent of the thematically linked symphony goes back to what Beethoven did in the Fifth. Uh, well, there are even earlier examples of thematic linkage too, but they didn't have the same impact on musical history. And those earlier thematically linked works (like the Moonlight Sonata) didn't set out to BITCHSLAP the audience with it.
After beating da-da-da-DAH to death in the first movements, in the second, something subtle shows up, some kind of little four note repeated pattern in the bass at moments, (three short, one long). That first audience for Beethoven's Fifth would have been well justified in hearing that and thinking, "Nah, just a coincidence."
But then the third comes, and there's little subtle about it. Three short, one long, bearing down on you. That same first audience might have thought, "Oh, is he doing that on purpose? Clever? Too cute? Annoying? What is this shit?"
And then a remarkable thing happens in the fourth movement. The third movement doesn't stop! It comes to a long, rumbling anticipation, three shorts and a long beaten out in the drums, the strings sustained on a tense seventh chord. The orchestra doesn't take the usual breather to stretch and change their sheet music. Out of this tense, rumbling anticipation, the fourth movement EMERGES straight out of it, explosively, with blaring bass leading the charge. A heroic charge! A triumphant charge! That first audience again: "Huh? Is this still the third movement? What's going on?"
Anybody, at that time, would have been confused. Now, I personally take the position that there are no real surprises in classical music because great music is music that you listen to a hundred times and "get it" more with
each hearing. But this was a real surprise.
That first audience still listened to the final movement. "Oh, I get it now, this is the fourth movement. Right?" And then Beethoven pulls another trick. In the middle of the final movement, just when things are getting good, suddenly the main theme of the fourth movement (based on da-da-da-DAH, of course) shows up again, intact. Now, this was definitely peas in the jello! They must have nudged each other and whispered, "Uh, I don't get it. Is this still the third movement?"
A cheap dramatic trick, some might have said. Well, if the music hadn't held up so well for two hundred years, that might have been true, but it has held up very well for the last two hundred years. That merging of the two movements together, the emergence of the finale out of the third movement, the reuse of previous musical material across all movements, created an aesthetic organic wholeness. Rather than four SNL skits, this was a drama with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Beethoven's reinvention of the symphony. An architectural masterpiece, above and beyond the actual content of the music itself.
This poses a dilemma for somebody like me. Do you focus on the architecture (the musical form)? Or on the drama? From a teaching perspective, it's much easier to focus on the form as I just did because the meaning of the music that fills that form is still in an abstract language, not English, and its debatable what any of it really means. We can argue all day whether the first movement is "Fate knocking on the door," or (as I suggested last year, "Beethoven pounding on my door to tell me he's going to sue because my dog got out and pissed on his rosebushes." I'M GOING TO SUUUUE! I'M GOING TO SUUUUE!
We might have a lively debate about what any of it means... but I think we all get the sense that it means something, that something is happening, that one things leads to another, and it evokes our emotional response.
The first public performance in 1808 was a disaster, for a number of reasons. But a year and a half later, E. Hoffman described the second performance thusly:
Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing—a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits.[7]
I take from that that he liked it.
Early sketches of the Fifth
The image, above, is of a page from Beethoven's original sketch book for the Fifth Symphony. See the big X in the middle?
Consider one more contrast between Mozart and Beethoven, and then we'll shut up about Mozart. Mozart composed his last three symphonies, which includes, remember, the godawfully complex Jupiter finale, in the space of six weeks. Three of the greatest symphonies ever composed, six weeks. And he didn't break a sweat. Mozart just heard the music in his head and wrote it straight to paper, with no eraser necessary.
Beethoven labored over his music. The sketches for his music went through many iterations over the years, much of it crossed out (with big X's, like above), and with incomprehensible scribbling in the corners, little second thoughts. It's something of a relief to us Salieri types who admire Mozart but hate him for making it seem so effortless.
A young Leonard Bernstein made a famous show of the classic TV era where he discussed Beethoven's early sketches and why he rejected them, actually performing them with an orchestra. Here's a short excerpt of it:
(Wow, Bernstein was just an awkward kid!)
In choosing which Youtube clip to use for the Beethoven Fifth... well, jeez. Recordings of the Beethoven Fifth stretch back into the early days of recording technology. As you go back in time, through the different performances by different conductors, a pattern emerges of two different styles of conducting the Fifth: There are the eccentric, interpretive performances, which play loosely with the timing and tempo for dramatic effect, and there are those that come from the school that the music is Beethoven's, so just play it right. I'm going to treat you with two different performances of the Fifth first movement, to let you make up your own mind which you prefer.
The following clip, with Arturo Toscanini conducting, is from a black and white film performance. I like that. Beethoven's Fifth really is a black and white symphony. The Toscanini performance is so far into the Just-Play-It-Right camp that it's eccentric in its own right. For a less eccentric (and damn near perfect) performance of the Just-Get-It-Right style, buy the von Karajan performance from Itunes.
Symphony #5 in C minor by Ludwig von Beethoven, Opus 67, first movement, Allegro con Brio, performed by Arturo Toscanini, 1952
Introduction (0:20) (Da-da-da-DAH!)
Exposition:
First theme (0:30)
Second theme (1:06)
Development (1:48)
Recapitulation:
First theme again (3:16)
Second theme again (4:00)
Coda (4:44 to end)
Now let's compare that to a more interpretive performance. The more interpretive style is very prevalent in older recordings, for instance the ones by Mengelberg. Sometime after World War II, the Just-Get-It-Right style came into ascendance.
One of the most important of the interpretive performers of Beethoven was Wilhelm Furtwangler, somebody we're probably going to talk about quite a bit more in future diaries. Furtwangler is a controversial figure still, because he was the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra throughout World War II and the Nazis weren't shy about seeing propaganda value in broadcasting his radio performances of Beethoven. After WWII, he became enmeshed in the De-Nazification trials and hearings and squeaked through, but not without becoming a pariah in much of the music world. For all that, though, Furtwangler was one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century. There are many surviving mono recordings of his Berlin radio performances, and they are stunning. His tendency, right or wrong, as you prefer, is to brashly reinvent the music through eccentric interpretation of the music.
I'd rather go, here, with his 1954 studio recording than with one of the WWII recordings, which, though often superior, are quite scratchy.
Beethoven Symphony #5, first movement, Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Furtwangler, 1954.
I'm not going to break it down again, like I did with the Toscanini performance. This one repeats the exposition, which Toscanini didn't.
Things to notice: Listen at about 0:17, as he comes to the end of the first statement of the first theme, as the music ends abruptly on a long, sustained violin note. Furtwangler uses this for dramatic effect. And it's quite proper that he should, because Beethoven clearly intended it to be a dramatic moment. The argument, from a conductor-versus-conductor style POV, is whether it is better this way or better "just played right." The Furtwangler approach is to emphasize these kinds of things
Notice (2:30) when the first theme comes to an end, and the horns announce the beginning the second theme. Furtwangler slows the tempo, emphasizes the seam in the music separating these two parts, the entrance of the new theme, the dramatic entrance of a new character onto the stage.
These aren't things that you would never hear from other conductors, but if you've heard the Beethoven Fifth a million times, you start to really appreciate it as it brings it to life. And he does it exceptionally well.
I could try to get further under the hood of the first movement, but I'm not going to bother trying. It's been done before, better than I can do it. I'll just quote one more Beethoven Fifth first movement, this one the Schickele version, a comedy skit which DOES an excellent job of breaking it down, radio sports announcer style.
Peter Schickele explains Beethoven Fifth Symphony, first movement
... And on! To the second movement, the Andante!
As I said, the second movement often gets screwed in these analysis gigs. Peter Schickele never made a skit explaining the Andante (Italian for walking speed.) Nobody ever made a Disney cartoon out of it.
I think it gets lost for another reason. It's sweet. It's adorable. After the intense life-is-a-struggle musical battering of the first movement, the Andante is... a hug.
I'm going back in time to address this to myself, to me the first time I heard the whole Symphony #5. And I was bored by it, because I wanted more fucking da-da-da-DAH! This seemed so wrong.
Ah, but I didn't quite fully understand that symphonies are a four course meal. Of course a grim struggle for life like the Allegro is followed by a warm hug like the Andante. So clear your mind of expectations and approach this as a separate piece. (For now.) They are meant to bookend and complement each other.
I'll talk about this one at greater length, below, and we'll use the Furtwangler 1954 performance again, because this is much more interesting than his performance of the Allegro. Perhaps the best Beethoven Andante that I've ever heard.
Let's talk about the music first. The second movement is in a familiar form called Variations on a Theme, quite common in symphonies before and after Beethoven. The same melody is repeated a few times, but each time is a different variation on the same theme (duh), tweaking it in creative ways, sometimes in ways that make it difficult to recognize.
The main theme, itself, has a clever little harmonic twist in the middle that gives it its flavor. (A I-III chord progression It's one of Beethoven's tics, e.g., Piano Concerto #3's Adagio.) I'll point out what I'm talking about.
Here's an excerpt I made of Bernstein talking about the early sketches of the Andante's main theme and its evolution.
Notice that rather than the hard driving of the first movement, it lilts, gracefully. In fact, if you want to understand it better (this works with a lot of musical things), try acting it out yourself, air-conducting.
This is the theme that will go through Beethoven's variations (actually quite simple variations compared to some of his nastier stuff). As we will hear it, we can break down the whole theme into three parts. There is the lilting part that Bernstein talks about above, the one with the cute I-III twist in it that all subsequent variations will keep. Then there is a rising triumphant procession. And then there is a mysterious and tense section. Those three parts make up the entire theme, which will go through eight (my count) variations.
Beethoven Symphony #5, second movement Andante con Molto, Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Furtwangler, 1954.
First variation of the theme. (0:00)
Very simple. The cellos sweep their way through it. A warm hug, graceful, layback. At 1:04, the procession section begins, at first gently, and then, with a BANG (at 1:22) (Wow!), with greater pomposity.
Furtwangler does a fantastic job here of bringing out the grace of the main theme, and then the dramatic switch to (what I'm calling) the procession part of the theme.
At 1:50 the third section of the theme, the mysterious section, is stated, very simply. This section will serve as a kind of curtain separating the different acts of the play.
Second variation of the theme (2:22)
This variation is very simple. All he's done that we can notice, at first, is cut the note lengths in half, giving it a bit of a tick tock sound. But, oh, what a beautiful clarinet part in the accompaniment, isn't it?
At 3:21, the second, processional part of the theme is repeated. Again Furtwangler gives it a very dramatic bang in the middle. At 4:07, the mysterious section, the curtain call, repeats.
Third variation of the theme (4:07)
The length of the cello notes has been cut again, quadrupling them. The mood is peaceful, tranquil.
And then at 5:20, a sub-varation, within the variation, as as the higher strings hammer down a hard beat accompaniment to the cellos, drowning them out. When I listen to this, I close my eyes and shake my fists in time with it. It climaxes at 5:48, the strings sweeping, reaching forward.... into suddenly empty air space.
This is quite magical, now. We faintly hear soft, plucked strings in the background. A faint weak section here, which if you pay attention, is the (what I am calling) procession part of the theme. But where it was somewhat bold and braggadocious before (fucking Firefox spellcheck can't spell braggadocious right, sheesh) before, now it's humbled. Softly. With bowed head. You, please interpret this as you like, but for me, I hear it as a cute change in the power relationship between these two parts! At 6:10, the woodwinds seize a part of the procession theme and play with it, lovingly. But they become a little saucy at the end there. (Furtwangler does this so goddam good), and... with a sudden key change, TADA! (6:45) The procession comes back BALLSIER than ever, with long drum rolls, like a king making an entrance.
Fifth variation on the theme (7:26).
And now the tone of the theme changes completely, as the lilting theme changes to a minor key, the rhythm to a 6/8 type march, somber (and yet perky).
As this variation comes to an end, the woodwinds return with that playful version of the procession theme, building it up, building it up, sharing it with the strings, building for the grand return of the main theme again...
Sixth variation on the theme
This can't last forever, not in this sweet movement.
Sixth variation on the theme (8:25)
And our lilting theme is back, but now it is grand, too, played by full orchestra, with complex and majestic ornamentation in all the parts. The woodwinds close off the lilting theme as they have all previous times, but there is a sense of finality to it this time in the harmony,
No, it's not over yet, but you wouldn't know that from the way it sounds. Beethoven is giving us a long goodbye.
Seventh variation on the theme (9:22)
The tempo speeds up. The bassoon takes over the lilting theme. Again, we feel that we're hastening towards the exit. As we reach the end of the theme, it becomes even more nostalgic.
Eighth variation on the theme (10:25)
This is more of a coda to the movement. Slow, wistful, nostalgic. And then the double basses beat their way in, combining elements of the procession theme with the lilting theme. And it slams the door shut as it leaves.
THE END
Now, a question. Where was da-da-da-DAH in all of this? Wasn't this an exercise in four-note motif monomania? Well, yes, it's in there, but it's subtle, maybe too subtle. It will be bluntly obvious when we continue this next week with the third and fourth movement.
But let's go back to the processional part of the theme. dum de DA DA DA DAAAAH. dum de DA DA DA DAAAAH.
And there are other instances as well. It's hard to hear it on this particular recording, but at 3:36, for instance. You smarter people reading this, you can point out the ones I missed.
Next week: We'll cover the last two movements of the Beethoven Symphony #5, the scherzo, and the emergent heroic final movement that made the Beethoven Fifth symphony the model for all future "Triumph" symphonies.