Symphonies no. 7 & 8
Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna
Bertrand de Billy, conductor
The RSO Vienna’s Beethoven cycle under Bertrand de
Billy is continually developing. These carefully illuminated
recordings do not rely on external sensational
effects but on fidelity to the score, careful disposition
of the formal sections and highly precise musical
cooperation, i.e. chamber music culture in a great
symphony orchestra. And as is so often the case, the
music has the most direct effect when it is allowed to
speak for itself and not forced into channels of subjective
or even eccentric “interpretation”.
The fact that a characteristic Beethoven sound is
nonetheless possible under Billy’s direction is proven
by the two preceding CD recordings of the 3rd, 5th
and 6th symphonies.
"Fit for the madhouse?"
Observations and thoughts on Beethoven’s
Seventh Symphony in A major.
Beethoven let three years elapse between
the completion of his Sixth, to become
famous as his “Pastoral” Symphony, and
his first ideas for the Seventh Symphony in
A major, for we find that his first sketches
for the work date from the autumn of 1812.
The previous four symphonies were written
more or less in succession between 1805 and
1808, after which Beethoven turned to other
forms before writing his Seventh, perhaps his
most often performed symphony today. It has
always enjoyed success, being free from the
familiar stereotypes of the Third, Fifth and
Sixth. The label that has been attached to it
longest is Richard Wagner’s “apotheosis
of the
dance”. As we shall see, this may present one
aspect in too strong a light but does not fatally
misrepresent the symphony’s character as
does the image of Bonaparte the Third, “Fate
knocking at the door” the Fifth, or a simple
programmatic “portrait of nature” the Sixth.
Rhythm, movement and in the outer
movements exuberant high spirits are true
characteristics of the Seventh. They come
out all the better, the more the executants
take into account the composer’s own tempo
and performance markings. It is particularly
important to observe Beethoven’s instructions
for repeats. They are unquestionably an
integral part of the overall architecture of the
work. To ignore them, in whole or in part,
represents a serious interference with and
alteration of the work’s structure.
That repeats in the Seventh Symphony
should have been handled in such different
ways in the past has much to do with the
keenly pursued debate on Beethoven’s metronome
markings. The interpretation that
emerged from 19th-century Romanticism
entailed a substantial retardation of the
specified tempos. Beethoven’s metronome
numbers were either considered wrong or
wrongly understood. This must be seen in
connection with the tradition of eliminating
repeats from the exposition sections of the
outer movements in particular. Repeats at
slow tempo turn an already long symphony
into an even more extended work!
The experiences of the past years and
decades arising from the search for the original
sound, the greater understanding of what
instruments of the period could do, and
in particular the certainty that Beethoven’s
metronome markings were meant exactly as
he noted them and not otherwise, have led
to wide-ranging reappraisal.
After two symphonies that “went straight
into action” (and for the last time in his
symphonic oeuvre), Beethoven prefaces this
first movement with a slow introduction.
Not that this can very well be compared with
the customary form still in evidence in the
Fourth Symphony, even if the device has been
variously interpreted in the past. The views
of conductors range from the assertion that
the slow introduction to the first movement
of the Seventh Symphony amounts to a selfcontained
element – like the thunderstorm
that represents the fourth movement of the
Pastoral – to the conclusion that it is simply
the slowed-down rhythmical preparation for
the movement that will follow.
Now, right from the start, Beethoven
works with two themes as in a true exposition.
The ideas themselves are rich in potential.
After being presented in the woodwinds,
they are expounded in a wide variety of
dynamic variants and held from the very
beginning in a fixed rhythmical embrace
of heavy orchestral beats. All the same, one
gains the impression in this poco sostenuto
that the melody keeps asserting itself against
the threat of rhythmic domination; as things
continue, one is tempted to make out a secondary
subject, but suddenly Beethoven cuts
short the discussion: the decidedly melodious
introduction ends on the dominant, settles
more and more firmly into E and within
several bars is the pure rhythm that is then
almost fanatically taken over by the whole
orchestra in the following Vivace.
This sequence of events gives the listener
the spontaneous impression of an
opposition of the thesis of this symphony,
“rhythm”, with the antithesis that precedes
it. Alternatively, one deciphers the music – as
so often with Beethoven – on the principle
“per aspera ad astra”, though here the stairway
to the stars is portrayed in the smallest
confines, with the light embodied in the
primacy of rhythm.
Rhythm is then, more than in any of
Beethoven’s other symphonies to that date,
the determining theme of the work. That is
why Richard Wagner’s sobriquet “Apotheosis
of the Dance” does reflect the intention of
the symphony and probably explains its continuing
fascination throughout its history.
The radicalism with which Beethoven makes
his subsequent commitment to rhythm is
not to be encountered again till the great
works of the 20th century.
Immediately after the rhythm of the
Vivace has emerged from the transition out
of the Poco sostenuto, Beethoven introduces
the first subject in the flutes: dancing, light,
animated. Before it can be transported into
the introductory rhythm, it is halted at a
fermata, and suddenly returns in the full
orchestra with a peremptory gesture of the
sort that only Beethoven could make, now
almost thumping and triumphal.
This is neither the time or the place to
complement the many existing analyses of
this symphony with yet another; instead, the
aim is to allude to a number of interesting
aspects in the development of Beethoven’s
symphonic technique. In his slow introduction,
Beethoven did not resort to an earlier
formal scheme as we might readily assume,
but assumed the structure formed by Haydn
only to successively transform it; in the same
way, he now sets out to push the individual
parts of the typical sonata-form movement
to their limits and to change them at the
same time. For our generations, which have
so easily taken this music for granted, it is
simply impossible to imagine what it must
have meant for its original audiences to
hear Beethoven shaping the whole exposition
with a single theme and the absolute
imperative of rhythm, then casting aside
every hitherto conceivable form of development,
which surely explains why the coda
– instead of being a pleasant restatement and
well-mannered conclusion to the whole – is
an autonomous formal element that serves to
underline the whole movement, reinforcing
it and radically summing it up.
The second movement had to be repeated
at the first two performances of the
symphony Beethoven conducted. The first
question to ask is, what did the evidently
well-informed audience of those turbulent
times find so new and exciting? The second
movement of the A major symphony is
frequently compared with the corresponding
movement of the Eroica. However, the
second movement of the Third Symphony
is headed Marcia funebre, and its tempo is
accordingly named as Adagio assai. Here
in the Seventh, the heading is Allegretto,
a striking contrast in itself and still more
so in conjunction with Beethoven’s drastically
different metronome marking. Both
movements are in two-four time, but in
the Eroica, Beethoven gives a metronome
setting of Quaver=80 (anticipating a necessary
subdivision into four). In the Seventh
Symphony, on the other hand, where the
indication is Crotchet=76. Beethoven clearly
identifies an underlying two beats to the bar,
taken appreciably faster than we are used to
hearing it played. It is the very disregard for
this tempo indication that has led in the past
to this movement acquiring a completely
different character and prompted the oftquoted
comparison with the Eroica.
A further element determining the character
of this second movement is the use
of the pilgrim song Sancta Maria, ora pro
nobis, which shapes the rhythmic structure
of the movement. Only an elementary
knowledge of music is needed to appreciate
that a change of tempo can drastically alter
the music’s character. Conductors in the
Romantic Beethoven tradition base their
slow speed in this movement on the pilgrim
song, as does Otto Klemperer, justly
acknowledged to this day as one of the great
Beethoven experts. His criticism of tempos
he judges too fast draws on this song to the
Virgin, criticizing his then much younger
but no less famous colleague Herbert von
Karajan, who himself was not in favour
of extreme tempos. This example makes it
clear how much one’s interpretation and
thus one’s understanding of the character
of a piece of music depends on period and
fashion – and on the available extent of
musical knowledge. Today we no longer tend
to take Beethoven’s tempo markings in contradiction
to the Marian melody, particularly
considering that the movement is then set
in the context of the whole symphony and
does not acquire the character of an elegiac
island. The conductor of the present recording,
Bertrand de Billy, does not mark a break
in performance between the first and second
movements, or between the third and fourth.
Once the movements are taken at the speed
prescribed by Beethoven, the question of
thesis and antithesis can again be addressed:
not only in the superficial sense that according
to tradition the second movement is not
in A major but A minor, but also because
the rhythmic element merely accompanies
the melodic line here. Its almost threatening
beat shows it has not given up, with a few
warning outbursts to remind us who the
symphony takes its character from.
Beethoven may seem to uphold the conventional
pattern taking the middle section
back into A major, but the mood lacks any
real major-key character, with the underlying
character of the movement remaining minor
throughout. Beethoven mainly uses variation
form in this movement, later resorting to a
fugato. The five-part form (A-B-A-B-A) is
evident, with the major-key section returning
with changes, and dynamics are as crucial to
the plot as they were in the first movement.
Even early analyses emphasize the slowly waxing
and then waning crescendo-decrescendo
that suggests a procession approaching and
disappearing into the distance. Another particular
feature of this movement is the way it
is book-ended by 6
4 chords. At the start, this
chord seems to say “And so:”; at the end, the
unresolved chord indicates an end to hitherto
steady progress.
It is this very lack of resolution, or if
you like lack of solution to the second
movement, that lends force to the thunderous
start of the following Presto. Though
Beethoven tends to put his scherzos into the
home key, he moves here “on paper” into F
major, having stayed very close to the home
key in the second movement with A minor
and A major. As subsequently becomes clear,
the new key does not hold his attention very
long. Just as this symphony is dominated
by rhythm, so the home key of A major
stays insistent almost throughout, and the
start of the third movement forms a bridge
to the slow introduction, specifically to the
oboe theme, whose transformation we here
encounter (cf. research by J.K. Knowles).
Like most third movements in this phase of
Beethoven’s creative development, this too
is in five-part form, and the theme of the
D major trio is based (according to Abbé
Stadler) on a Lower Austrian pilgrim song,
played by woodwinds and horns over a
pedal point of A derived from the scherzo. A
fine specimen of Beethoven’s dry humour is
offered at the end of the movement, where
he seems to be returning to the trio for a
third time, only to bring the movement to
an abrupt end with five rapid strokes from
the orchestra.
Practically every symphony of Beethoven’s
since the Eroica is directed towards the
final movement, where the sense of the
whole is likely to be revealed. Thus the
finale of the Seventh gives us a motif that
not only provides food for thought but
has been used by Beethoven many times
before. It has often been remarked that
the Seventh was composed at the time of
Napoleon’s decline and fall. By the time of
the premiere, the Emperor of France was
already defeated, the second piece of the
evening being Beethoven’s musical account
of Wellington’s victory at Vittoria. Of all the
tunes which might have inspired the main
theme of the fourth movement, with its
characteristic sforzati on the second part of
the bar, the revolutionary march Le triomphe
de la République by F.J. Gossec seems the
most likely. It would not be the first time
that Beethoven had used Gallic music (cf.
the finale of the Fifth Symphony), and we
know how intensively Beethoven followed
Napoleon’s rise and fall. The whole movement
is pervaded by a headlong fury almost
unequalled in Beethoven’s symphonic oeuvre,
but this furious mood cannot conceal the
care with which Beethoven has interwoven
the subject-matter with the preceding movements,
the way he expands sonata form by
again opening up the coda and lifting it far
above its former function. The dominance
of the main theme over the much weaker
secondary theme gives the impression of a
monothematic treatment. Here too there is a
bridge back to the slow introduction of the
first movement: the extensive coda is again
dominated by a ground of E, the dominant.
The punch packed by this Allegro con
brio must have positively alarmed Beethoven’s
contemporaries. Carl Maria von Weber is
reported to have declared the composer
“fit for the madhouse”. Robert Schumann’s
father-in-law Friedrich Wieck, for his part,
thought Beethoven must have written the
movement when he was drunk. So much for
the symphony’s effect on contemporaries,
even if they were part of the well-educated
musical establishment. The fact is, nevertheless,
that the symphony has been received
with general acclaim in the concert hall ever
since its premiere, its impact and language
having proved themselves truly universal and
timeless.
“… because it is much better ”
Observations on Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony
The Eighth Symphony, a work from
Beethoven’s most productive period, is
found relatively infrequently on the programmes
of international concert halls.
Almost contemporary with the highly popular
Seventh and written as Beethoven was
already planning the D minor Symphony, his
Ninth, it forms the link between these symphonic
monuments and risks being eclipsed
by them. The very key of F major has sometimes
led to its being described as the “little
F major symphony”, in contrast to the much
more famous Pastoral in that key, given that
with the possible exception of the First, it is
the shortest symphony Beethoven ever composed.
These superficial features do play a
significant part in the history of the work.
The symphony was not as well received at
its premiere as Beethoven’s other new works,
as a contemporary review indicates. At that
concert, the Seventh was repeated, a work
that has always been among Beethoven’s
most successful pieces. According to his
pupil Czerny, Beethoven accounted for the
poor success of his new work in comparison
with the Seventh by drily observing that the
new symphony was not so successful “because
it is much better”.
At least the reviewer of the premiere was
intelligent enough to note that the Eighth
must have as many beauties and specialities
as Beethoven’s earlier symphonies and would
profit from being considered and heard on
its own account. Let us, then, attend to some
of the special features which characterize this
masterpiece.
At least three epithets are regularly applied
to this symphony. The first is “humorous”
(whatever that may mean). The second is
“Classicist”, by which “backward-looking”
is implied. And the third is “idyllic”. Labels,
once applied, tend to stick. But perhaps we
should for once take a really close look at
the beginning of the symphony. As in his
Third, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Beethoven
dispenses with a slow introduction. Here,
however, he would seem to go one step further.
Whether we look at the two orchestral
chords at the start of the Third that seem to
sum up the work, or the repeated “knocking”
motif in the Fifth, or the self-contained
opening phrase of the Sixth: they are all
introductions, albeit in encapsulated and
minimized form.
Not so in the Eighth Symphony. With
brute force and triumphant tone, the main
theme bursts in Allegro vivace e con brio;
Beethoven has arrived. There is nothing
comfortable, classicist or “funny” about that.
This is an altogether self-possessed opening
statement without regard to tradition or
expectation. As in every Beethoven symphony,
the first movement is in sonata
form. Not content with the usual two,
however, Beethoven introduces three themes
into what may be the shortest of his symphonies.
That alone shifts the centre of
gravity in the overall formal layout. As
in the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven gives
the coda a far greater weight; indeed, the
boundaries between development and recapitulation
are growing ever more fluid. The
movement at first had a different ending.
After a private performance in the palace
of Archduke Rudolph, Beethoven rewrote a
rather abrupt, almost prosaic ending into the
version we have today. (What Beethoven did
for the symphony in general was to create an
awareness, which grew firmer and broader
through Schubert, Brahms and Bruckner to
Mahler, that form must be adapted to content,
leading to Mahler’s gigantic works that
threatened to burst the bounds of symphonic
form itself.)
This symphony is even further from
a proper slow movement than any of
Beethoven’s others. The Allegretto scherzando
second movement has done much to
reinforce the preconceptions of a “smaller”
F major symphony. The old claims based
on Beethoven biographer Anton Schindler’s
false assumptions of an underlying canon for
metronome inventor Mälzel, presenting and
caricaturing Mälzel’s revolutionary device,
have long since been refuted. All the same:
the seemingly regular ticking of the background
rhythm and its concealed rhythmic
traps remain unmistakable characteristics of
this work.
Like Beethoven’s compositional innovations
in the formal sphere, this second
movement offers a masterly example of the
composer’s art of subtle shifts in rhythm
and experiments in beat and metre. All this
artifice is likely to escape the listener at first
hearing. Closer study, however, increasingly
reveals why Beethoven held the Eighth to be
among his best works to date.
The third movement too earned the
labels of comfort and classicism more from
its tempo marking than from its content.
Beethoven headed it “Tempo di Minuetto”,
an anachronistic description that he had
last used in his First Symphony. Here, too,
one must beware. If there is such a thing
as Beethovenian humour, it is the bitterly
cynical humour of a man who takes pleasure
in deliberately misleading his listeners, welleducated
and knowledgeable as such premiere
audiences were likely to be. If the third
movement has anything whatever to do with
the tradition of the minuet, it is likely to be
more of a parody, if the exaggerated accents
at the start are anything to go by. The trio,
with its Austrian Ländler air, rather suggests
the future development of the symphony by
Schubert and Bruckner.
The fourth movement, Allegro vivace,
offers similar surprises to the first in the
refinement of its formal experiments within
such a short compass, being a hybrid of
sonata and rondo form of the sort Beethoven
had introduced in earlier symphonies. Like
the opening movement, this finale shows
Beethoven shifting the proportions of introduction,
development and recapitulation in
favour of the latter.
The more or less equal weight of the two
outer movements gives the symphony its
symmetry, aided by the appearance in the
finale of motivic references to the first movement,
and also to the second. The movements
of this symphony may seem disparate
and self-contained, but ultimately the Eighth
is just as much a “final-goal” symphony as
the Eroica and Beethoven’s symphonies since
then.
However we may regard the symphony,
we should not be distracted by superficially
apt labels. This work, relatively short in
duration, deserves its place between the two
towers of the Seventh and Ninth; one could
even say that after his Seventh, Beethoven
found it necessary to write the Eighth, in
order to be able to compose the Ninth.
Michael Lewin
Translation: Janet and Michael Berridge