Kinderman - Beethoven 2nd Ed

beethoven
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Beethoven
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second edition
William Kinderman
3 2009
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kinderman, William.
Beethoven / William Kinderman. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–532825–7; 978–0–19–532836–3 (pbk.)
1. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
ML410.B4K56 2008
780.92—dc22
[B]
2007038279
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
R Preface
R
This book examines the main lines of Beethoven’s creative development, from his
formative years at Bonn to the last string quartets written near the end of his life.
The investigation is set in the context of Beethoven’s biography, but gives priority
to representative musical works in the major genres: the piano sonata and variation
set; the duo sonata, trio, string quartet, and other types of chamber music; the
concerto, overture, and symphony; and the forms of vocal music such as the art
song, opera, cantata, and sacred mass. Not to be overlooked is his contribution
to patriotic program music, of which the “Battle Symphony,” Wellingtons Sieg, is
the best-known example.
The introductory chapter, “Overture,” sets out the main philosophical and aes-
thetic argument. Like Beethoven’s second and third Leonore overtures, this one
presents important themes that are later exemplified in detail. Since the primary
focus is aesthetic rather than biographical, some familiarity with the musical
works is presupposed; the discussions of pieces aim toward an integrated ap-
proach that avoids sacrificing artistic sensibility to systematic method. Analysis at
its best is not an end in itself but a means to an end: it enables us to hear more in
the music. In this sense, an analysis resembles an inward performance. It depends
vitally on our imagination of the sound, and it needs to be verified by the reader:
how does it feel?
The book was first published in 1995, and the chance to expand it for this
new edition is a precious opportunity. I have used the available space to extend
the discussions of several subjects and works: Beethoven’s “first love,” Jeannette
d’Honrath; his response to Mozart as revealed through their quintets for piano
and winds; the Eroica Symphony and its mythic background; the cultural and po-
litical importance of Fidelio; a new source for the Hammerklavier Sonata;
transfiguration of the Arietta in the last sonata, op. 111; and structure and expres-
sion in the Quartet in A minor op. 132. The discussions of op. 16 and op. 111
overlap with my contributions to Variations on the Canon, edited by Robert
Curry, David Gable, and Robert L. Marshall, and Verwandlungsmusik: Studien
zur Wertungsforschung 48, edited by Andreas Dorschel, respectively; the discus-
vi preface
sion of op. 132 intersects with my contribution to The String Quartets of Beetho-
ven (University of Illinois Press, 2006). Many other additions have been made, and
the bibliographical sections updated to include recent studies and interpretations.
During the last decade, the many debts I have incurred and acknowledged in
earlier editions of this book have continued to grow. I hope that my own devel-
opment in recent years will have a positive impact on this new edition. To my re-
search assistant during the final stages of preparation, Joseph Jones, I am most
grateful. From the large field of Beethoven literature, I am indebted both to works
with which I agree and to those with which I do not. I have tried to take account
of sources and scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and express par-
ticular thanks to the several institutions that have supported my extended periods
of research in Europe: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, the Killam Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
R Contents
R
List of Plates ix
List of Figures and Music Examples xi
Overture 3
1. The Bonn Years 16
2. The Path to Mastery: 1792–1798 32
3. Crisis and Creativity: 1799–1802 61
4. The Heroic Style I: 1803–1806 93
5. The Heroic Style II: 1806–1809 132
6. Consolidation: 1810–1812 162
7. The Congress of Vienna Period: 1813–1815 189
8. The Hammerklavier Sonata: 1816–1818 210
9. Struggle: 1819–1822 233
10. Triumph: 1822–1824 266
11. The Galitzin Quartets: 1824–1825 308
12. The Last Phase: 1826–1827 342
Selected Bibliography 371

Works Cited 383
Index of Beethoven’s Compositions 397
General Index 403
R Plates
R
Between pages 93 and 94
Plate 1. View of Bonn from the Kreuzberg
Plate 2. Christian Gottlob Neefe, unsigned painting
Plate 3. Beethoven and Jeannette d’Honrath, by Wilhelm von Lindenschmit
Plate 4. Engraving of Beethoven by Johann Neidl
Plate 5. Colored engraving of Vienna: Graben, toward Kohlmarkt
Plate 6. Autograph score of the Third Piano Concerto
Plate 7. Beethoven, miniature on ivory, 1803
Plate 8. Title page of Léonore (Bouilly)
Plate 9. A page from the Mendelssohn 15 Sketchbook
Plate 10. Drawing of the Palais Kinsky in Vienna
Plate 11. Fidelio, finale of Act II, Metropolitan Opera production
Plate 12. Title page of the first edition of the three Goethe songs
op. 83, 1811
Plate 13. Miniature on ivory, presumably of Antonie Brentano
Between pages 189 and 190

Plate 14. Bronze bust of Beethoven, aged 42, by Franz Klein
Plate 15. Title page of the piano arrangement of Wellingtons Sieg
Plate 16. Beethoven’s response to a negative critique of Wellingtons Sieg
ix
x plates
Plates 17–18. The first edition of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata op.
106, September 1819
Plates 19–20. Sketchleaf for the slow movement of Beethoven’s Hammer-
klavier Sonata op. 106
Plate 21. Beethoven’s draft of 1819 for one of the Diabelli Variations
Plates 22–23. The first edition of the Piano Sonata in E major op. 109,
November 1821
Plates 24–25. Autograph score of the Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis
Plate 26. Oil portrait on canvas of Beethoven, 1823
Plate 27. Autograph score of the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony
Plates 28–29. Two pages from a sketchbook used by Beethoven in
1824
Page 369
Drawing of Beethoven seen from behind by Joseph Daniel Böhm,
c. 1820
R
Figures and Music Examples
R
Figures
Figure 1. The disposition of characters in Fidelio 117

Figure 2. Overview of the formal design of Fidelio, Act II 129
Figure 3. Rhythmic structure of the slow introduction to the first movement of
the Seventh Symphony, bars 15–22 179
Figure 4. Descending thirds in the fugue subject of the Credo of the Missa
solemnis 272
Figure 5. Formal outline of the Credo in the Missa solemnis 276
Figure 6. Rhythmic patterns in the String Quartet op. 127 311
Figure 7. The F-E semitone in the Presto and finale theme of op. 132 325
Figure 8. Motivic relations in the Quartet in A Minor, op. 132 326
Figure 9. Motives in the String Quartet op. 135 366
Music Examples
Example 1. Joseph Cantata WoO 87 26

Example 2. Fidelio, Act II, no. 11 27
Example 3. Waldstein Sonata op. 53 30
Examples 4–8. Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1 35–39
Example 9. Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 2 40
xi
xii figures and music examples
Example 15. Mozart, Quintet for Piano and Winds K. 452 50
Example 16. Beethoven, Quintet for Piano and Winds op. 16 51
Example 17. Mozart, Piano Concerto in E-flat Major K. 482 52
Example 18. Beethoven, Quintet for Piano and Winds op. 16 53
Example 19. Pathétique Sonata op. 13 59
Example 20. String Quartet op. 18 no. 4 67
Examples 22–24. Piano Concerto no. 3 op. 37 75–80
Examples 28–29. Second Symphony op. 36 90–92
Examples 30–32. Eroica Symphony op. 55 97–102
Example 33. Waldstein Sonata op. 53 110
Examples 34–35. Appassionata Sonata op. 57 111–12
Example 36. Fidelio, Act II, no. 2 120–21
Example 37. Fidelio, Act II, Quartet 127
Examples 40–41. Fourth Piano Concerto op. 58 138–39
Examples 42–43. Violin Concerto op. 61 141–42
Example 44. Coriolan Overture op. 62 145
Example 45. Pastoral Symphony op. 68 149
Examples 46–47. Fifth Symphony op. 67 151–54
Example 48. Piano Sonata op. 81a 160
Example 49. Wonne der Wehmut op. 83 no. 1 164–65
Examples 50–51. Archduke Trio op. 97 173–75
Examples 52–54. Seventh Symphony op. 92 178–82
Examples 55–57. Violin Sonata op. 96 185–87
Examples 58–59. Wellington’s Victory op. 91 194–97
Example 60. Der glorreiche Augenblick op. 136, quartet (no. 5) 199–200
figures and music examples xiii
Example 61. Piano Sonata op. 90 203

Examples 62–64. Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 2 205–9
Example 65a. An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 no. 6 213
Example 65b. Schumann, Fantasy in C op. 17 213
Example 66. An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 no. 6 214–15
Examples 68–72. Hammerklavier Sonata op. 106 225–31
Examples 73–75. Diabelli Variations op. 120 235–37
Examples 76–79. Piano Sonata op. 109 241–45
Example 80a. Piano Sonata op. 110 247
Example 80b. Song, Ich bin lüderlich 247
Example 81a. Missa solemnis op. 123 248
Examples 81b–82b. Piano Sonata op. 110 248–50
Example 84. Piano Sonata op. 111/II, bars 100–121 256
Example 85. Piano Sonata op. 111/II, bars 153–77 259–60
Examples 86–91. Missa solemnis op. 123 269–77
Examples 92–95. Diabelli Variations op. 120 282–84
Example 96a. Diabelli Variations op. 120, Variation 33 286
Example 96b. Piano Sonata op. 111 286
Examples 97–98. Bagatelle op. 126 no. 6 288–89
Examples 99–102. Ninth Symphony op. 125 294–306
Examples 103–5. String Quartet op. 127 310–16
v 319
Example 106a. Autograph 11/2, fol. 5
Example 106b. String Quartet op. 127 319
Example 107a. String Quartet op. 132, beginning 322
Example 107b. String Quartet op. 132, transition to beginning of finale 323
Example 108. String Quartet op. 132/III, bars 179–95 327
Example 109. Piano Sonata op. 110/III 330
Example 110. String Quartet op. 132 334
Example 113a. String Quartet op. 130 340
xiv figures and music examples
Example 113b. Grosse Fuge op. 133 340
beethoven
R Overture
R
No composer occupies a more central position in musical life than Beethoven.
Changes in taste and in the role of art in society have in no way blunted the ap-
peal of his music on many levels—from ubiquitous popularization in television
advertising to the most exemplary professional performances. If the fascination
Beethoven exerted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was tied to his
heroic, revolutionary image, the last half century has increasingly demonstrated
the universal scope of his legacy. Beethoven’s deep roots in the Enlightenment lent
qualities to his art that cannot be adequately understood in terms of a merely per-
sonal or national style. His restless, open vision of the work of art reflects a mod-
ern and essentially cosmopolitan aesthetic attitude. Flexible principles and not
fixed preconceptions guided Beethoven’s artistic process, as is minutely docu-
mented in the thousands of pages of his surviving musical sketches.
There is no shortcut to discerning these principles: only detailed critical en-
gagement with the music offers a tenable basis for interpretation. Still, it is help-
ful to recall Beethoven’s own professed convictions about his general artistic aims.
In a letter of 29 July 1819 to his patron and student the Archduke Rudolph, he
wrote characteristically about the need for “freedom and progress . . . in the
world of art as in the whole of creation.”1 To refer to his own artistic goal in this
context Beethoven coined the term Kunstvereinigung, or “artistic unification,” a
notion that is connected to the aging composer’s intense assimilation of Handel
and Bach during his last decade. A striving toward Kunstvereinigung is in no way
confined to his later years, however, and Beethoven’s entire career may be viewed
as embodying just such a progressive unification of artistic means.
The central task of the present study is to trace the formation and evolution of
this process through analysis of works from all periods of Beethoven’s life. A nec-
essary prerequisite of any such undertaking is the examination of the historical,
aesthetic, and biographical context of Beethoven’s style. Great works of art may
seem to transcend their historical setting, absorbing its conventions into an aesthetic
object in which, in Friedrich Schiller’s words, “the idea of self-determination
shines back to us.” But it would be a serious error to confuse the apparent auton-
1 My translation. For a translation of the entire letter and a brief commentary, see
Thayer-Forbes, pp. 741–42.
3
4 beethoven
omy of the “absolute music” of the Viennese Classics with modern notions of a
merely abstract structural matrix, lifted out of history. For Beethoven, as for
Schiller, the idea of artistic self-determination meant something quite different,
whereby the autonomy manifested in the work by no means insulates it from the
world according to the ideal of l’art pour l’art, but, on the contrary, enables the
work to display a “representation of freedom” as a goal for human striving.2 A
proper consideration of Beethoven’s musical legacy thus entails not only an assess-
ment of his impact on the musical traditions and characteristic styles of his day,
but also an evaluation of the latent symbolism investing so many of his works.
Susanne Langer once described the successful artwork as presenting “an un-
consummated symbol” through a “process of articulation.”3 Crucial to her for-
mulation is the word “unconsummated”, which points to the capability of the
work to transcend the bounds of direct representation, so encasing the symbol
within the artistic medium that its full meaning cannot be unpacked or reduced
through analysis. It is revealing in this respect that many works of a superficial,
conventional cast are all too explicit or unmediated in their symbolic content.
In Beethoven’s music, this principle is illustrated by the series of patriotic com-
positions written around 1813–14, the Congress of Vienna period. Beethoven’s
“Battle Symphony,” Wellingtons Sieg (Wellington’s Victory), and his cantata Der
glorreiche Augenblick (The Glorious Moment) marked a summit of his outward,
public acclaim but a nadir of his artistic achievement.
What the bundle of processional anthems and cannonades in Wellington’s Vic-
tory lacks is a compelling internal artistic context. In this work a literal, external
programme assumes priority, whereas in the Eroica Symphony or the Lebewohl
Sonata, by contrast, symbolic elements are absorbed into new and original musi-
cal designs, creating a whole greater than the sum of the parts. To express the same
point differently, we could say that in Wellington’s Victory Langer’s requirement
of a “process of articulation” is inadequately developed; as in most popular and
commercial music, the symbolic content is not truly integrated into an artistic
structure. This touches in turn on the problem of “absolute music” that has been so
much debated in connection with Beethoven’s works since the nineteenth century.
As some insightful earlier critics from E. T. A. Hoffmann to Walter Riezler have
argued, Beethoven’s music represents a supreme embodiment of an art that had
finally emancipated itself, through a long historical process, from its traditional
dependence on words, dance, or ritual. Its status as “absolute music” was thus
bound up with a sense of autonomy whereby the work seemed to follow not con-
vention or external models but its own inner laws, achieving a qualitatively new
realization of the tonal language in works of highly individualized character. Bee-
thoven increasingly transformed the rhetorical models and conventional formal
gestures of the music of his day. He was prepared thereby to strain the expecta-
tions of the aristocratic patrons who nourished his career but toward whom he
2 This and the preceding quotation are from Schiller’s correspondence with Körner, cited
in Chytry, The Aesthetic State, pp. 81, 82.

3
Philosophy in a New Key, p. 204.
overture 5
showed a fierce independence. More than any previous composer Beethoven con-
tributed to a reversal of the perceived relation between artist and society: instead
of supplying commodities for use, like a skilled tradesman, the successful artist
could now be regarded as an original genius in the Kantian sense, revealing an un-
suspected higher order in nature, and giving voice thereby to the unconditioned,
or even paradoxically to the infinite or the inexpressible.
This idealistic outlook, which reinforced the myth of Beethoven as revolution-
ary prophet or “deaf seer,” in Wagner’s words, risks obscuring some essential as-
pects of the music and must be complemented by a dose of empirical realism. We
are now more aware of the problematic character of evolutionary historicism, as
well as the pitfalls of overemphasizing the allegedly unconditioned nature of
the aesthetic object. In fact, a popularized version of the new aesthetic of expres-
sion, together with the cult of genius and a strong appetite for programmatic
interpretations and titles, were all associated with a change in taste that was al-
ready becoming evident in Vienna during Beethoven’s lifetime, a change that in
some important respects must be reckoned a decline. The palaces where Beetho-
ven established himself in the 1790s and Mozart worked just a few years earlier
supported a more refined audience than the general concert public that came into
existence a few decades later. Lost to the new aesthetic, for instance, was the
dry, rationalistic spirit that inspired the comic instrumental works of Haydn and
Beethoven—music with few parallels before the twentieth century. The Romantic
composers tended to take themselves too seriously to partake in the ironic play of
incongruity that remained a lifelong interest of Beethoven.
Beethoven’s legacy cast a long shadow over the nineteenth century, a shadow
covering both sides of the famous aesthetic controversies that raged around Liszt
and Wagner on the one hand, and Brahms and Hanslick on the other. These con-
troversies illustrate how difficult it was to maintain the Beethovenian balance be-
tween tradition and innovation. For many, it seemed unavoidable to take sides for
or against the “Music of the Future” through commitment to either the expres-
sive or the formalistic aesthetic, and the duality has continued to exert influence
up to the present. Yet the choice is invidious and unnecessary, since neither per-
spective rules out the other.
A major challenge to criticism of Beethoven’s music consists precisely in the
need to sustain a balance between these dimensions, which have been described
as “the two classic elements that rub against one another in every work: expres-
sive, fallible substance on the one hand, and determined, inexorable structure on
the other.”4 Critics and analysts have often emphasized one or other of these as-
pects without grasping the synthesis on which Beethoven’s art vitally depends.
The danger of a programmatic approach is that an objective, verifiable relation-
ship with the work may be shortchanged in favor of the impressionistic response
of the critic. Many such interpretations have been offered: two examples are Arnold
Schering’s Beethoven und die Dichtung and Wilfrid Mellers’s Beethoven and the
Voice of God. Schering saw the key to interpretation in dramas by Shakespeare,
4 Richard Kramer, “Ambiguities in La Malinconia,” p. 29.

6 beethoven
Schiller, and Goethe, and freely underlaid themes from Beethoven’s works with
texts by these authors. Mellers, on the other hand, discerned in the emergent lyri-
cism of Beethoven’s music a “hidden song” with divine connotations. Despite oc-
casional insights, the work of both authors is compromised by their tendency to
oversimplify the artistic phenomenon, interpreting its symbolism in a too explicit
and arbitrary fashion. Consequently, the dialogue of the critic with the artwork
and its historical context often collapses into a monologue, revealing far more
about the writer than about the object of discourse.
Equally serious difficulties undermine approaches based narrowly on aspects
of musical structure whose aesthetic qualities are ignored. In Allen Forte’s book
The Compositional Matrix, devoted to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E major op.
109, for instance, any reference to the aesthetic character of the music is conspic-
uously avoided as if unworthy of consideration. Some analyses, especially in
English-speaking countries, continue to reflect inhibitions or even embarrassment
about those aspects of the artistic experience that seem less accessible to system-
atic methodologies. Just as in Anglo-American philosophy of the postwar period,
in which perennial issues of ethics and metaphysics were cast aside in favor of an
intense yet often myopic probing of the logic of language, so has musical analysis
too frequently limited its attention to quantifiable entities, cutting short the in-
quiry into artistic meaning.
How, then, can we address Beethoven’s music in its proper aesthetic terms,
while maintaining the necessary balance between subjectivity and objectivity? It
is helpful in this connection to reassess some of the aesthetic ideas that emerged
out of Enlightenment thought. To be sure, the leading thinkers of the age, such as
Kant, Schiller, and Goethe, often showed insufficient awareness of the potential of
musical art, and it is usually not their explicit pronouncements about music but
their more comprehensive insights that most richly reward our attention. Most
crucial is the concept of human experience as a synthesis of sense perception and
understanding regulated by the faculty of reason (Vernunft). The classic statement
of this argument, which has been reformulated and elaborated many times up to
the present day, is the first of Kant’s three great critiques, the Kritik der reinen Ver-
nunft (Critique of Pure Reason), first published in 1781. Beethoven’s enthusiasm
for one of Kant’s dictums is recorded in his conversation-book notation of Febru-
ary 1820: “‘The moral law within us, and the starry heavens above us’ Kant!!!”5
By the same token, Beethoven declined to attend lectures on Kant held at the Uni-
versity of Vienna, and it is unlikely that he studied many of Kant’s works at first
hand. Maynard Solomon has described Beethoven’s position as “superficial Kant-
ianism.”6 It is possible, however, that Beethoven’s affinity with Kant lies not in any
direct philosophical engagement but rather in his response, through his art, to the
same underlying experiential issues.
Still more important are the ideas of another creative artist who strove to inte-
grate Kant’s theory with an elevated concept of the artwork—Schiller, whose let-
5 Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, p. 235.

6 Beethoven, p. 38.
overture 7
ters Über die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen (On the Aesthetic Education
of Mankind) first appeared in 1795, to be warmly if not uncritically appreciated
by the philosopher at Königsberg. Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters are underestimated
today, but the core of his argument remains viable and provocative. One difficulty
lies in his reliance on the term “beauty” (Schönheit) instead of “work of art,”
since beauty is clearly not a necessary or sufficient criterion for art, as Schiller
sometimes implies. His basic argument nevertheless allows for the substitution of
“artwork” for “beauty,” a substitution which strengthens the connection between
the ontological and ethical aspects of his theory. For Schiller, the inborn faculty of
the senses, comprising our perception of manifold impressions in a temporal con-
tinuity, is regarded as a “sensuous drive” (Sinntrieb). Our rational nature, on the
other hand, which seeks to annul time by imposing categories on experience, is the
“form drive” (Formtrieb). The profound significance accorded to art in Schiller’s
theory derives from its synthesis of the sensuous and rational in the “play drive”
(Spieltrieb), which brings “life” and form (Gestalt) into conjunction as “living
shape” (lebende Gestalt).7
This tensional synthesis of sensuous intuition and rational understanding
should be distinguished from the dialectical speculations of Hegel and later ideal-
istic thinkers. For Schiller or Kant, unlike the Romantic idealists, the recognition
of limits is crucial. The limits imposed by the “critique of reason” hold ideologi-
cal speculation in check, while moral and ethical issues emerge through the idea
of freedom. Hegel’s philosophy of spirit oversteps, but does not escape, the Kant-
ian critique by systematically dissolving fixity of thought. The rhythm of Hegel’s
speculative dialectic strives to overcome the gap between subjectivity and objec-
tivity by means of an “expressive pantheism,” infusing philosophy with aesthet-
ics, just as art in turn, in his view, can transcend its own sphere by becoming reli-
gion or Kunstreligion. Hegel ultimately elevates speculative thought to a kind of
mysticism that supersedes religion while allegedly preserving its essential content.
His closest musical counterpart is Wagner, who embraced Hegel’s commitment to
a sweeping, evolutionary historicism and whose final work became the most con-
troversial modern embodiment of Kunstreligion: Parsifal.
If Beethoven was no Hegelian, some of his aesthetic convictions do parallel
those of Friedrich Schelling, a pivotal figure in the circle at Jena in the 1790s that
included both Hölderlin and Hegel. As Joseph Chytry recently observed, these
three colleagues pursued a “philosophical quest for an intuition prior to the dis-
tinction between subject and object,” a project with strong social, political, and
religious implications, since what was sought was a unity with all being (Vereini-
gung).8 The attempt to advance beyond Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of
Judgment) of 1790 and Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters was a perilous one, and Schelling
ultimately succumbed to the dismal attractions of political romanticism. The
Schellingian position in his System of Transcendental Idealism of 1800, however,
deserves attention for the exalted role it grants the artwork in displaying this
7 Cf. Chytry, The Aesthetic State, p. 82.

8 The Aesthetic State, pp. 109–10, 135–47.
8 beethoven
original harmony of object and subject, unconscious and conscious, nature and
freedom. Schelling’s concept of the natural world, like Goethe’s, was organicist;
for him, mind itself was seen as emanating from the unending activity of nature.
We are reminded here of Beethoven’s own nature worship, so richly documented
in his heavily annotated copy of Christian Sturm’s Reflections on the Works of
God in Nature. That Beethoven’s feelings had a philosophical core is implied as
well by the inscriptions from ancient Egyptian monuments that he kept under
glass on his work table. The second of these appeared as a footnote in Kant’s Cri-
tique of Judgment together with the following commentary:
Perhaps nothing more sublime was ever said and no sublimer thought ever ex-
pressed than on the Temple of Isis (Mother Nature): “I am all that is and that was
and that shall be, and no mortal hath lifted my veil.”
The dictum characterizes nature as infinite, timeless and beyond comprehension,

much the same message as conveyed in the Kantian quotation about the “starry
heavens above”—an image Beethoven absorbed into an entire series of musical
works. Noteworthy in this connection is Schelling’s argument that since philosophy
is reflection, it must wait for art to produce a consciousness of the unity of nature
and freedom. In effect, Schelling offered a philosophical justification for the claim,
attributed apocryphally to Beethoven, that the revelation of art was “higher
than all wisdom and philosophy.” And it is perhaps in light of the struggle of the
Jena circle to transcend the limits of Kantian and Schillerian aesthetics that we
may best view the artistic enterprise that Beethoven himself provocatively dubbed
Kunstvereinigung.
What is the character of this unity of object and subject, or nature and free-
dom? The subsequent history of aesthetics shows clearly the temptation to over-
simplify the issue, or even whiten it into abstraction. Sensationist or formalistic
theories of art, for instance, isolate one side of Schiller’s triadic configuration, giv-
ing too little attention to the interaction of the sensuous and rational. Analogous
problems underlie the shortcomings of many musical analyses, as we have seen.
Ultimately, the meaning of a pair of concepts such as “subjective” and “objective”
proves provisionary if not vague when tested against concrete experience. The po-
larity of nature and freedom, however, touches abiding issues that were tackled in
different ways by all the thinkers we have mentioned, and have lost none of their
relevance in the ongoing philosophical debate.9 One pole centers on the “sublime”
in nature, our experience of the infinite and awe-inspiring in the phenomenal
world; the other revolves around the possibility of “freedom,” that autonomy of
the individual that is the prerequisite of moral action or creativity.
The philosophical dilemma that has often impoverished aesthetics is lodged
precisely at the nexus prior to the distinction between subject and object that
Schelling contemplated in 1800. Schelling posited that the artwork displays the
9
Vilhjálmur Árnason has recently claimed, for instance, that “philosophy must recover
the notion of nature as it enters into the history of human development” in order to pro-
vide “an adequate account of human morality” (“Morality and Humanity,” p. 3).
overture 9
synthesis of nature and freedom “as the most perfect unity,” treating the aesthetic
experience as a medium of reconciliation in a manner looking back to Kant and
forward to Hegel. The problem is that it is the aesthetic of beauty, not the sub-
lime, that offers itself as an embodiment of reconciliation. Schiller’s vision of the
artwork also involves a mediating synthesis, as we have seen, but the dynamic,
tension-laden elements that are undervalued in too much aesthetic theory, includ-
ing Kant’s Critique of Judgment, are fully recognized by Schiller. Unlike Kant,
Schiller did not embrace the somewhat abstract notion of art as a “disinterested
pleasure”; he persisted, despite all obstacles, in seeking an objective definition for
art that would underscore its ethical character. Furthermore, Schiller located a
conflict at the heart of the artwork, since in his view the synthesis of the rational
and sensuous is problematic and can never be fully achieved. In this respect, his
vision of the work of art belongs to what we may broadly describe as the aesthetic
of the sublime rather than the aesthetic of the beautiful. The sublime, in Schiller’s
formulation, fuses disparate elements, and its power is bound up with the irrec-
oncilability of reason and sensibility. The ultimate aim of art, in this sense, is in-
evitably left unfulfilled, but the task is all the more compelling for its apparent
impossibility.
The ascendancy of the aesthetic of beauty and the related decline of the aes-
thetic of the sublime in the nineteenth century arose from a different line of inter-
pretation. Kant saw in beauty a harmonious relationship between the imagination
and understanding; in his view, a beautiful object is brought into accordance with
unknown laws that govern a higher unity in nature. The sublime, however, entails
a relationship between the imagination and reason that resists the ideal of recon-
ciliation; for Kant, as for Schiller, the structure of the sublime is characterized by
an unresolvable conflict. Consequently, Kant could not clearly incorporate the
sublime into the comprehensive system of his philosophy. Beauty, being unbur-
dened by any such fundamental conflict, offered a more serene model for art
seemingly grounded in universal natural phenomena. Not surprisingly, systematic
thinkers such as Hegel neglected the sublime, and tended to domesticate art under
the category of beauty. The influence of German neo-Classicism, as mediated by
Johann Winckelmann, who discovered in the art of Greece a spirit of “noble sim-
plicity and quiet grandeur,” contributed to this trend, which was reflected for in-
stance in the reduction of Mozart to Schumann’s “floating Greek gracefulness” or
Wagner’s “genius of light and love.” Despite some countervailing tendencies, the
nervous, disturbing, conflict-ridden aspects of Mozart—not to mention his wit—
were often underestimated by an age predisposed to hear in his music a tranquil
beauty comparable to the works of painters such as Raphael or Watteau.
If the classicizing ideal of beauty proved too abstract to encompass the artistic
reality of Mozart, its application to Beethoven seemed questionable from the be-
ginning. For as E. T. A. Hoffmann stressed in his famous review of the Fifth Sym-
phony, Beethoven’s music is permeated by the sublime. An aesthetic of the beau-
tiful, whereby the artwork acts as a medium of reconciliation, is exemplified far
more in a composer like Johann Strauss. The Blue Danube, not the Ninth Sym-
phony, has settled deeply into the general social consciousness without forfeiting
10 beethoven
its integrity. Whereas the waltzes of Strauss invite easy assimilation, the meaning
of even the popular melodic emblem of Beethoven’s “Joy” theme is rendered con-
ditional by the internal context of the symphony, placing further demands on the
listener; only in relation to the earlier movements can the choral finale be fully
understood.
The challenges of a work like Beethoven’s Ninth conform to the aesthetic
analysis by Hans-Georg Gadamer, for whom “not only the cognition of meaning
is involved . . . something else is always awakened, whereby we recognize our-
selves.” Gadamer proposes that only when the listener “fills out” the work of
art, going beyond its immediate sensuous appearance in the direction of its im-
plied meanings, does the work really come into existence. “Only then does all
conflict disappear between intention and being, and every difference vanish be-
tween that which the artist wishes to say and what the interpreter makes of it.
They have become one. . . . This is the reason why works of art bring about a true
self-encounter in all those who come to grips with them.”10 Like Schiller, Gadamer
thus stresses both the moment of aesthetic identification and the ethical character
of this process, whereby the individual is freed from a purely sensuous relation-
ship with the work. Ultimately, of course, this process embraces much more than
just the sublime: humour, defined by Jean Paul Richter as “the sublime in reverse,”
or gaiety, pathos or tragedy all surface in Beethoven’s dramatic style, emerging out
of the configuration of relationships forming the unconsummated symbol.
Beethoven’s music often displays a provocatively open relationship with the
world that forces us to reconsider the nature of aesthetic experience itself. In its
original sense as episteme aisthetike, aesthetics refers not only to art or beauty but
to sensible awareness more generally; the opposing complement to this concept is
the anaesthetic, involving a loss or deadening of feeling.11 One reason for the
scope of Beethoven’s achievement may lie in his ability to navigate between these
two realms, ironically granting the anaesthetic its place beside the aesthetic. Bee-
thoven expands the boundaries of art through his absorption of trivial, common-
place material, as in the Diabelli Variations, or through symbolic intrusions into
a work from without, as in the “terror fanfare” in the finale of the Ninth Sym-
phony or the warlike episodes in the Missa solemnis. His use of severe contrasts
becomes a means of welding sections or movements into a larger narrative se-
quence with symbolic implications, as in the last piano sonatas, with their open
cadences pointing into the silence beyond. In the dualistic finale of the Sonata in
A major op. 110, the resolution at the end of the second fugal section is affirmed
yet endangered; it proves barely sufficient to outweigh the preceding Arioso do-
lente. Like the close of the Missa solemnis, this resolution is poised at the edge of
an abyss. Walter Riezler wrote accordingly about the presence of the “world
background” in Beethoven’s works, the sense that despite all their density of in-
ternal unifying relations these pieces are not self-contained but strive to confront
10
This and the preceding quotation come from “Ende der Kunst?,” pp. 31–32.
11
Cf. Welsch, Ästhetisches Denken, pp. 9–40.
overture 11
the outer world of common existence.12 It is precisely this quality that invites and
even demands of the listener the kind of self-encounter described by Gadamer.
This need for the listener to grasp the latent artistic content—in its uneasy
blending of object and subject, conscious and unconscious, nature and freedom—
harbors ethical and even political implications. The work of art, in the sense de-
scribed above, arises in a realm beyond the reach of political power and social
conformity, and its very existence potentially confirms the democratic ideal of per-
sonal freedom. For Schiller or Beethoven, the glorification of freedom through art
was coupled with discontent about actual political conditions. Schiller remained
justifiably skeptical about the attainment of “freedom and progress” in the politi-
cal sphere, maintaining that “art is the daughter of freedom” and that “in order to
solve the political problem, one must take the route of aesthetics, since it is through
beauty that the way is made to freedom.”13 Moreover, as Chytry has pointed out,
Schiller explicitly distinguishes his approach from the premises motivating “the
most perfect Platonic republic,” exposing the fallacy behind the standard argu-
ment of German Romantics advocating subordination of the individual to the
state based on the metaphor of the formal artwork.14
With historical hindsight we can acknowledge the continuing validity of
Schiller’s position: the work of art, if it is to represent the highest human poten-
tial, must embody the principle of self-determination while avoiding ideological
determination from without. In this sense Schiller’s revised Enlightenment per-
spective remains more viable than later idealistic, romantic, formalist, structural-
ist, or socialistic views of the relationship of art and society. The danger of political
romanticism, with its impending retrogression into nationalism or fascism, arises
from inadequate recognition of the individual human being as a potentially au-
tonomous and creative agent, the grounds of whose self-determination constitute
freedom. As soon as our concept of the human being is dominated or consumed
by his or her relationship with state, people, class, gender, background, formative
experiences, or any other contextual factors, this principle of freedom is violated
by ideology, that is, by premature and illegitimate generalization about human na-
ture. An assumption of potential autonomy on the part of other human beings,
then, is an indispensable means of curbing the intrusion of a limiting ideological
bias. The open universe of Beethoven’s Fidelio, Missa solemnis, and Ninth Sym-
phony, with its rejection of materialism, deemphasis on received doctrine, and
glorification of freedom, is not merely one ideological statement in preference to
others but rather an artistic embodiment of ideas intrinsically resistant to ideology.
Any such claim about specific works by Beethoven can of course be properly
supported only through detailed analysis. But these preliminary observations al-
ready begin to indicate how close Beethoven’s aesthetic attitudes come to the ideas
articulated by Schiller. The claims of “freedom and progress,” innovation and fan-
12 Beethoven, pp. 108–9, 198.

13 Aesthetic Letters, L. 2.
14
The Aesthetic State, p. 86.
12 beethoven
tasy, were ingrained so deeply into Beethoven’s creative method that he could say
about the last string quartets in 1826 that “You will find a new manner of voice
treatment, and thank God there is less lack of fantasy than ever before.”15 He
could have added that there is also less lack of integration and structural control
than ever before. Beethoven’s innovative quest is merged here with all those quali-
ties of sovereign concentration that E. T. A. Hoffmann described as self-possession
(Besonnenheit).
The astonishing understatement of this comment about “less lack of fantasy”
is characteristic of Beethoven, and carries the same implication as Schiller’s tenet
about the unfulfilled nature of the artwork. Already twenty-five years earlier Bee-
thoven had expressed dissatisfaction with his previous works, and according to
Carl Czerny, stated his intention to seek a “new way,” a claim borne out by the
series of pathbreaking compositions from around 1802, the threshold of his so-
called second period. Beethoven’s conviction that in art one “cannot stand still”
is best understood not merely as a personal idiosyncrasy, or as an expression of
the problematic romantic notion of originality, but rather in terms of a universal
experiential duality whose reconciliation is an ever-challenging task of art.
The possibility of an artistic resolution to the division in human nature be-
tween the sensuous and rational accords a special role to the productive imagina-
tion, and raises fundamental aesthetic questions. A work of musical art is not an
abstract entity, but needs to be realized in sound and time. The implications of
that fact were probed by Theodor W. Adorno, who, like Gadamer, viewed the
work itself as “a copy of a nonexistent original”—for, paradoxically, there is no
work as such—it must become.16 At the same time, in Adorno’s view, the true per-
formance or analysis does not possess the work ontologically—in its essential
being—though it must convey it. For, as with any creative act, the product cannot
be predicted or fully envisaged in advance but represents rather an imaginative
synthesis consisting of elements that are intimately known.
This concept of the musical work of art thus eschews relativism and structural-
ism by placing analytic criticism in the service of aesthetic categories in an imma-
nent relationship with the music, which remains ever unknown in its totality,
waiting for its true realization. Built into this concept is the necessary dynamic
relation: “What is only and surely right,” in Adorno’s formulation, “isn’t right.”
The underlying principle is thus analogous to the arguments stated above con-
cerning the possibility of human freedom: only through an acknowledgment of
limits to categorical understanding can we approach a truly integrated internal
sound image of the work and a balanced appreciation of its blend of the sensuous
and rational. The point needs stressing in view of the overemphasis on systematic
methodology characteristic of some musical analysis, as well as recent polemical
attacks on the notion of artistic unity by critics innocent of the underlying issues.
If a primary condition for the appearance of a true work is its unity, this is to be
understood not as an abstract, tautological concept, or even an organic whole, but
15
Thayer-Forbes, p. 982 (translation amended).
16 Ästhetische Theorie, vol. 7 of Gesammelte Schriften, p. 32.
overture 13
rather that totality of concrete elements and relationships that demand realization
in sound. What is meant is a unity that is synthetic in nature, and entirely com-
patible with tension, contrast, diversity, and the individuality of a work.
Ultimately, of course, an apprehension of unity or integration is wholly de-
pendent on our internal sound image, or Klangvorstellung, of the music. Without
this key ingredient, analysis is empty and criticism blind. It follows that analysis,
properly considered, must engage the immanent temporality of the work, not
merely the visual notation of the score, nor a structural matrix posited by a priori
theoretical constructs. Unlike most earlier music, which unfolds in a successive,
linear fashion, and much later music, which returns to the continuous pulse char-
acteristic of the Baroque, the Viennese Classical style cultivates structures whose
internal shapes and symmetries seem to hold back or modify the unidirectional
passage of time by joining the musical events together in complex ways. This pro-
cess corresponds to the annulment of time Schiller attributed to the “form drive.”
In recognition of this phenomenon, some scholars have distinguished between
“temps espace,” or measured, divisible, quantitative time, and “temps durée,” a
musical time concept contesting the transience of experience through anticipation
of the future and memory of the past.17 The configuration of such durational time
typically involves a forward-directed tension, a field of culmination, and a resolv-
ing, past-orientated phase—all three of which taken together comprise the sense
of the gesture.
Beethoven’s complex use of thematic foreshadowing and reminiscence con-
tributes a dimension to his music that transcends a linear temporal unfolding. And
his special interest in techniques of parenthetical enclosure, whereby contrasting
passages are heard as an interruption within the larger context, further enriches
the temporality of his musical forms, helping to open up narrative possibilities
rare in instrumental music. Beethoven tended increasingly to tighten the cyclic re-
lationship between movements of his larger works, deemphasizing their genre
character while enhancing the individuality of the whole. Examples of this prac-
tice stem from Haydn and Mozart, but the unification of the Classical sonata cycle
reached new phases of development in Beethoven, often absorbing a symbolic
component. In the Fifth Symphony, for instance, he thoroughly interweaves the
formal and motivic content, compromising the autonomy of the four movements.
Their individuality of character nevertheless remains more distinct than in com-
parable works by Berlioz, Schumann, or Bruckner, where shared thematic mate-
rial is also spread across successive movements. The later practice is often more
prose-like and analogous to literary practice,18 and more diffuse in its larger rhyth-
mic movement. These factors tend to undermine the narrative possibilities of the
intrinsic musical design, by softening the hard contrasts and concentrated move-
ment characteristic of Beethoven into a more static, less highly determined idiom.
17
These concepts, which are indebted to the philosophy of Henri Bergson, are convinc-
ingly applied to music in Uhde and Wieland, Denken und Spielen.
18
For a discussion of “musical prose” from Berlioz to Mahler and Schoenberg, see
Danuser, Musikalische Prosa.
14 beethoven
Of course, the programmatic designates favored in the nineteenth century
often condition a more explicit narrative design than is characteristic of Beetho-
ven (apart from aberrations such as Wellington’s Victory). In Beethoven, we typi-
cally encounter associations that “overflow the musical scenario, lending a sense
of extramusical narrativity to otherwise untranslatable events,” to quote Solomon’s
description of the Ninth Symphony.19 The narrative design involved is not exter-
nally imposed, and it eludes reductionistic interpretations in programmatic or
structuralist terms. Far from being exhausted through analysis, these pieces seem
more fully integrated than any single hearing, and better than any single perform-
ance, as Artur Schnabel liked to claim.
The discernment in Beethoven of narrative designs of symbolic import—as op-
posed to merely literal, programmatic narratives—requires extensive discussion
of the works in question. But we should note even at this early stage that the
recognition is not new but builds on older insights. In his letter of 19 July 1825
Beethoven responded enthusiastically to the critical writings about his music by
Adolf Bernhard Marx, expressing his “fervent hope that Marx would continue to
reveal the higher aspects of the true realm of art” as an antidote to “the mere
counting of syllables”—one example among others of an abstract mode of criticism
incapable of grasping the essential artistic content. Marx, by contrast, addressed
Beethoven’s works using the criteria of “organic wholeness and coherence” and per-
ceived in them a “dramatic narrative” containing “deep psychological truth.”20
Beethoven’s path toward progressive integration, narrative design, and a deep-
ened symbolic expression is perhaps encapsulated most succinctly in the follow-
ing lines of the Schiller poem glorified in the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony:
Freude, Tochter aus Elysium!

Deine Zauber binden wieder,
was die Mode streng geteilt.
Joy, daughter from Elysium!

join again with your magic
what custom strictly divided.
The term “Mode” invites a broader interpretation here than “custom” or “fash-
ion,” especially when we recall Schiller’s quest, begun well before the composition
of the Ode in 1785, for a “transformational force” (Mittelkraft) to merge the ra-
tional side of the human being with the sensuous. Only years later, after Schiller’s
move to Weimar in 1787 and his subsequent engagement with the thought of Wil-
helm von Humboldt and Kant, did this ambition receive its philosophical expres-
sion in the Aesthetic Letters, and its highest artistic expression in his final play,
Wilhelm Tell. Nevertheless, a gap remained in Schiller’s achievement between the
ideal and the historical, as has often been observed. In the recent formulation of
19
Beethoven Essays, p. 10.
20
Beethoven’s letter and Marx’s reviews are cited in Burnham, “Criticism, Faith, and the
Idee,” esp. pp. 183–84, 188, 191.
overture 15
Chytry, “Ultimately, Schiller’s praxis confirms the implicitly pessimistic conclu-

sion of the Aesthetic Letters: the theory of the aesthetic state, at least in Schiller’s
version, cannot transcend an esoteric circle of initiates.”21
In this sense Beethoven succeeded where Schiller did not. Already in 1793
Schiller’s friend at Bonn, Bartholomäus Ludwig Fischenich, had written to Char-
lotte Schiller that Beethoven would set the Ode to Joy “strophe by strophe.” In
the end, the project waited more than three decades for its fulfillment, by which
time historical events had cast new meaning on the poem. It is remarkable that the
Ode to Joy, almost repudiated by its author in 1802, became the poem through
which Schiller’s “effigy of [the] ideal” has had its most profound impact, delivered
through a sonorous medium more eminently suited to the blending of the sensu-
ous and rational than spoken drama.
21
The Aesthetic State, p. 101.
1
R The Bonn Years
R
In retrospect, there is something fitting and almost inevitable about Beethoven’s
passage from Bonn to Vienna in 1792. The elector, or Kurfürst, at Bonn from
1784 was Maximilian Franz, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresia of Aus-
tria, brother of Marie Antoinette in Paris and the Emperor Joseph II in Vienna.
Max Franz’s assumption of the post was the product of intrigues and negotia-
tions, part of an effort to extend the influence of the Habsburg monarchy into the
Rhineland while limiting Prussian influence. As a result of this circumstance, the
most intimate connections linked the small city on the Rhine with the distant cap-
ital on the Danube, ten times its size. For the arts and sciences the appointment
had a beneficent effect. Max Franz continued the reforms initiated by his prede-
cessor, the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, reforms that paralleled those of his
brother Joseph II in Vienna. The clerics and especially the Jesuits were curbed;
musical, literary, and theatrical institutions were reorganized and supported. In
1785 the Bonn Academy was elevated to the rank of a university. Johannes Neeb
was engaged to teach Kantian philosophy, and men like the later revolutionary
Eulogius Schneider and Schiller’s friend Fischenich lectured on Greek literature,
ethics, and law. By the 1780s Bonn was recognized as a center of the Enlighten-
ment, that fragile yet immensely productive movement whose liberal reforms were
imposed from above, not in response to revolutionary strivings of the suppressed
classes. Bonn might have become another Weimar except for the upheavals brought
about through the French occupation, which was to sweep away the government
of Max Franz in 1794, less than two years after Beethoven’s departure. But no one
could have anticipated these events a few years earlier.
Otto Jahn, in his biography of Mozart, speculated that with a slightly different
turn of events Mozart might have been offered employment at Bonn. Max Franz
had known Mozart for many years and evidently valued him more highly than did
his brother, Joseph II (“for him there is nobody but Salieri,” Mozart is supposed
to have exclaimed).1 Already in 1787 Beethoven made a brief, abortive journey to
Vienna to see Mozart. And in 1792, one year after the great composer’s death,
Max Franz’s friend Count Ferdinand Waldstein depicted Mozart as Beethoven’s
guardian spirit in his famous entry in the young composer’s album:
1
Cf. Thayer-Forbes, p. 77.
16
the bonn years 17
You are going to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-frustrated wishes. The Genius
of Mozart is mourning and weeping over the death of her pupil. She has found a
refuge but no occupation with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him she wishes
to form a union with another. With the help of assiduous labor you shall receive
Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands . . . 2
But if the association between Bonn and Vienna was natural and expected, the
presence of another key influence on the young Beethoven—his most important
teacher, the composer and court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe—was a for-
tunate stroke of luck. Neefe was a “foreigner”—from Chemnitz in Saxony—and
a Protestant as well (see Plate 3). For these reasons he was at first considered ex-
pendable when reorganization of the musical institutions at Bonn was begun under
the new elector. Beethoven’s first salary as organist, in fact, was taken out of Neefe’s
income. It was Neefe who grounded Beethoven in the musical forms of the Clas-
sical style, who presumably introduced him to the theoretical works of Marpurg
and C. P. E. Bach, and who arranged for Beethoven’s adolescent publications, the
Dressler Variations and three Kurfürsten Sonatas for piano. Yet entirely apart
from his competent professional guidance and early recognition of his pupil’s cre-
ative potential, Neefe made further contributions that exercised fruitful influence
on the young Beethoven.
One of these consisted in Neefe’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for the music
of J. S. Bach. Very little of the elder Bach’s music had appeared in print by the
1780s, and one would not have expected The Well-Tempered Clavier to serve as
the cornerstone of instruction, as it did in fact for Beethoven. Neefe, however, had
studied in Leipzig, where his musical mentor had been Johann Adam Hiller, the
director of the Gewandhaus Concerts and later Bach’s successor as Kantor of the
Thomaskirche. By the time he came to Bonn in 1779 to work for the Grossmann
theatrical company, Neefe was an avid Bach admirer eager to pass on the legacy.
He summed up the situation in his notice in Cramer’s Magazin der Musik dated 2
March 1783, the very first printed statement about Beethoven:
Louis van Betthoven, son of the tenor singer mentioned, a boy of eleven years and
of most promising talent. He plays the clavier very skillfully and with power, reads
at sight very well, and—to put it in a nutshell—he plays chiefly The Well-Tempered
Clavier of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe has put into his hands. Whoever
knows this collection of preludes and fugues in all the keys—which might almost
be called the non plus ultra of our art—will know what this means. So far as his
duties permitted, Herr Neefe has also given him instruction in thorough-bass. He
is now training him in composition and for his encouragement has had nine varia-
tions for the pianoforte, written by him on a march—by Ernst Christoph Dressler—
engraved at Mannheim. This youthful genius is deserving of help to enable him to
travel. He would surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were he to
continue as he has begun.3
2
Ibid., p. 115.
3Thayer-Forbes, p. 66. The spelling “Betthoven” appears in the original source; Beetho-
ven was actually twelve years old at the time in question.
18 beethoven
Like Haydn and Mozart before him, Beethoven was to be exposed during his
first Vienna years to works of Handel and J. S. Bach at the musical gatherings of
the venerable connoisseur Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who had developed his
taste for Bach in Berlin before moving to the Austrian capital. Unlike his prede-
cessors, however, Beethoven’s formative musical direction was already shaped by
the Leipzig master. From an early stage Bach’s music counterbalanced for Beetho-
ven the pervasive presence of the galant, the elegant but superficial manner that
had threatened to submerge Mozart’s individuality during the 1770s. So thorough
was Beethoven’s assimilation of Bach, in fact, that Erwin Ratz was able to base an
illuminating study of musical form precisely on the comparison of Bach’s inven-
tions and preludes and fugues with Beethoven’s sonatas and quartets.4
Neefe’s own published compositions included operettas as well as songs, key-
board sonatas, and even a Piano Concerto in G major published in 1782. He also
translated many opera librettos from French and Italian, including Mozart’s Don
Giovanni. Beethoven’s early acquaintance with the music of C. P. E. Bach, Haydn,
and especially Mozart owed much to Neefe. And although Neefe’s purely musical
achievement remained within the sphere of solid professional competence, his
works must have posed a stimulating challenge to his young assistant. Among
Neefe’s larger compositions from the 1770s, for instance, were twelve settings of
odes by Klopstock. In 1782, three years after his arrival at Bonn, Neefe set an-
other such ode, Dem Unendlichen, for four choral voices and orchestra; it was
performed at first privately and then, during Holy Week, in the Fräuleinstiftskirche.
This piece forms part of the context out of which was to emerge Beethoven’s most
weighty single composition from his years at Bonn: the Cantata on the Death of
Joseph II written eight years later, in 1790.
For Beethoven, Neefe presumably became an important role model, helping to
fill the void opened by Beethoven’s difficult relationship with his father, Johann.
Neefe was a crucial figure but by no means the only source of personal support
and cultural nourishment for the young musician; another musical influence was
the Kapellmeister and composer Andrea Luccchesi, and especially important was
Beethoven’s friendship with the von Breuning family, which apparently began by
1784, having been enabled through Beethoven’s friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler.
Beethoven became acquainted with German literature and poetry in the cultivated
domestic environment of the von Breunings, whom he served as piano instructor,
giving lessons to Eleonore (who was about his age) and her brother Lenz (who
was seven years younger). During the summers, he probably spent time at the von
Breuning estate at Kerpen, west of Cologne. After the death of his mother in 1787,
he was offered support first by the violinist Franz Ries and later by the widow Frau
Maria Helena von Breuning, who assumed a protective, motherly attitude toward
Beethoven. To a great extent, then, the roles of both his natural parents were
taken over by others by the time of Beethoven’s adolescence. Stefan von Breuning
remained one of Beethoven’s closest friends during later years in Vienna, although
their relationship was strained by occasional quarrels and misunderstandings.
4 Einführung in die musikalische Formenlehre (Vienna, 1968).

the bonn years 19
Before we consider Beethoven’s intimate family constellation, it is essential to

address one more aspect of Neefe’s contributions to Bonn cultural life: his role in
the Orden der Illuminaten, and later in the Lesegesellschaft (Literary Society), or-
ganizations closely tied to the Enlightenment and not without links to freema-
sonry. The Freemasons’ Lodge founded at Bonn in 1776 soon disappeared in re-
sponse to Maria Theresia’s suppression of the order, but its role was largely filled
during the 1780s by the two aforementioned societies. The Bonn chapter of the
Orden der Illuminaten, founded in 1781, included among its members many who
stood close to Beethoven, including the horn player (later a publisher) Nikolaus
Simrock, and Franz Ries, father of Beethoven’s student and friend Ferdinand Ries.
Neefe was one of the leaders of the group. In 1784–85 the Orden der Illuminaten
was suppressed at its headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria; the Bonn circle contin-
ued their activities in following years in the Lesegesellschaft. Although there is no
evidence that Beethoven belonged to the Lesegesellschaft, many of the key players
surrounding him during his last years in Bonn were members, including not only
Neefe and Ries but also Count Waldstein. One reflection of its importance for
Beethoven is the fact that it commissioned the Joseph Cantata.
If some of Beethoven’s loftiest ideals can be associated with the cultural milieu
in Bonn during his second decade, his relationship to his family reveals the other
side of the coin: it is troubled and difficult to assess. A probing evaluation of the
conditioning role of Beethoven’s early experiences on his personality was under-
taken by Maynard Solomon in his 1977 biography. Solomon builds on documented
facts of Beethoven’s life to construct a suggestive psychological model that attempts
to pinpoint some of the driving sources of his creativity. Unlike many earlier bio-
graphers, Solomon does not hesitate to confront the more disturbing aspects of
Beethoven’s character or actions, but neither does his work dwell on demytholo-
gizing critique. Deep psychological conflicts have, of course, been experienced by
many persons without a trace of the miraculous artistic aftereffects these experi-
ences helped produce in Beethoven, but this fact neither compromises Solomon’s
insights nor confines their relevance strictly to the biographical sphere. The link
between biography and the analysis of works of art is delicate, but it can some-
times prove tangible and illuminating.
Solomon identifies a complex of conflicts and delusions in Beethoven’s psycho-
logical makeup whose underlying sources relate to Beethoven’s relationship to his
parents, and especially to his father. Beethoven’s deceased elder brother Ludwig
Maria, who lived only six days, was not forgotten but lived a posthumous exis-
tence in Beethoven’s psyche. What Solomon describes as Beethoven’s “birth year
delusion”—his lifelong tendency to deny the plain evidence that he was born in
December 1770—involves much more than a simple misunderstanding based on
Johann’s falsification of his son’s age. Psychologically, this behavior may reflect
Beethoven’s response to the unhappy resignation of his beloved mother, while also
revealing an impulse to deny or disown his father. Within the family Beethoven’s
role was to parallel that of his admired grandfather and namesake, the elder Lud-
wig van Beethoven, successful Kapellmeister at the Bonn court from 1761 until
his death in 1773. The curse of the Beethoven family, on the other hand, was al-
20 beethoven
coholism: the Kapellmeister’s wife, Maria Josepha, was removed to a cloister on
account of severe drunkenness, and the steep decline of Beethoven’s father into
helplessness took the same form. (On hearing of Johann van Beethoven’s death,
the elector spoke coldly about the loss to the liquor excise.) Beethoven’s ambiva-
lence toward his father probably stemmed not only from Johann’s increasing ad-
diction to drink, however, but from the severe and arbitrary discipline he suffered
as a child. Surviving reports refer to Beethoven’s mother, Maria Magdalena, as a
clever and resourceful, usually quiet and somewhat resigned woman. Beethoven’s
first preserved letter, from 15 September 1787, written soon after her death to an
acquaintance in Augsburg, expresses deep affection: “She was such a good, kind
mother to me and indeed my best friend. Oh! Who was happier than I, when I
could still utter the sweet name of mother and it was heard and answered; and to
whom can I say it now? To the dumb likenesses of her which my imagination fash-
ions for me?”5
For the creative artist, nourished by dreams, fantasies, and aspirations toward
a higher, more beautiful or perfectible world, a relationship with an ordinary, banal,
depraved existence can become strained, even broken. Solomon argues convincingly
that, in Beethoven’s case, one response to this schism took the form of what Freud
and Otto Rank termed the “Family Romance”—the replacement of one or both
parents by suitably elevated personages. Beethoven’s nobility pretence may be un-
derstood at least partly in these terms (the “van” in his name did not designate
nobility). But Solomon also suggests the relevance of this constellation—involving
the search for an ideal, loving father figure—to passages in the finale of the Ninth
Symphony, and he identifies the mythic component of Beethoven’s musical works
as a possible link between the apparently discrete realms of the biographical and
artistic.6
In some respects, the challenge to analytic criticism is greatest when we con-
front the immature work of an artist, in which an authentic, original voice is not
yet heard, or not clearly heard. Many of the piano pieces, songs, and chamber
works that Beethoven composed at Bonn show relatively little of the skill and
power that distinguish his mature music. Nevertheless, this music is not without
interest. A piece showing insight into the abilities of the twelve-year-old Beetho-
ven is the aforementioned Dressler Variations from 1782, the work singled out by
Neefe in his announcement from the following year. In view of his subsequent
artistic development, it is remarkable that the young Beethoven wrote these vari-
ations on a funeral march in C minor—the key of the funereal fifth variation in
the op. 34 set and the funeral march in the Eroica Symphony. The figurative
elaboration in the Dressler set is mainly very straightforward, with the variations
remaining closely bound to Dressler’s march. Variation 1 replaces the chords in
dotted rhythm in the left hand of the theme by a flowing eighth-note figuration;
in Variation 2 this pattern in the bass is joined with an elaboration in sixteenth
notes in the treble. In Variation 3 further rhythmic division creates a texture of
5
Anderson, vol. 1, L. 1.
6
Cf. “The Ninth Symphony: A Search for Order,” in Beethoven Essays, pp. 309–26.
the bonn years 21
sixteenths in the left hand, which in Variation 4 migrates into the right hand,
while the left resumes the figuration from Variations 1 and 2. At two junctures,
however, the music departs from these predictable patterns. Variation 5, at the
center of the set, begins with close staccato imitation between the hands and sub-
sequently varies this texture, employing slurred two-note motives and rapid flur-
ries of thirty-second notes. More surprisingly, the final Allegro variation bursts
into running thirty-second notes in the major mode, leaving behind almost all
traces of the march, apart from allusion to its dotted rhythm at the close of each
half of the variation. Hence Beethoven’s later propensity to resolve his C minor
music into a lively concluding C major is also adumbrated in this piece by the bud-
ding twelve-year-old musician at Bonn.
Beethoven’s most important works of the following period are his three Quar-
tets for Piano and Strings, in E major, D major, and C major, WoO 36, from 1785.
A clear Mozartian influence is felt here, with Mozart’s Violin Sonatas in G major
K. 379, E major K. 380, and C major K. 296, respectively, serving as models.
Striking, however, is the expressive force of the Allegro con spirito in E minor of
WoO 36 no. 1, which opens with a rising triadic motive in the piano, reinforced
by a dotted rhythm in the melody and syncopations in the accompanying strings.
The crescendo on this gesture leads to an accented dissonance—a fortissimo
diminished-seventh chord—and a restatement of the main motive on this har-
mony carries the music in turn onto a dominant-seventh sonority, while the atmo-
sphere of stormy agitation is effectively maintained. Harmonically, this arresting
opening may owe something to the prelude in this key from the first book of
J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, yet the character of the music is completely
different and highly individual. The treatment of the string parts in these piano
quartets is rather undeveloped, but a much more engaging dialogue between in-
struments can be observed in Beethoven’s Trio in G major for Flute, Bassoon, and
Piano WoO 37, which he wrote a year later, in 1786, at the age of sixteen.
During his Vienna years, Beethoven sometimes returned to his portfolio of Bonn
compositions to absorb preexisting material into new works or publish older
pieces. Beethoven’s early acquaintance with J. S. Bach’s Musical Offering of 1747
seems to be reflected in his 2 Präludien durch die 12 Dur-Tonarten für Klavier
oder Orgel, pieces stemming from the 1780s and revised in 1789, although pub-
lished only in 1803 as op. 39. Beethoven’s cyclical plan of modulations rises
through the circle of fifths from C major to C major and then falls through the
flat keys, reaching D major before returning to C major. There were, to be sure,
various historical models for such modulating preludes “per tonus”; the best-
known was probably Bach’s perpetual canon, in the Musical Offering, on the
royal theme “Ascendente Modulatione ascendat Gloria Regis,” in which contin-
ual ascent of the canon symbolizes the endlessly rising glory of the king. The
modulations in Bach’s canon proceed not by fifths but by rising whole steps; after
six repetitions the original key is thus reattained an octave higher. The young Bee-
thoven was not unaffected by this esoteric side of Bach’s legacy, although its full
impact surfaces only much later, in works of his last decade.
Beethoven wrote a number of songs at Bonn, some of which were published
22 beethoven
only many years later. The two settings of texts by Gottfried August Bürger
(1748–1794), “Mollys Abschied” (Molly’s Departure”) and “Das Blümchen
Wunderhold” (“The Dearest Sweet Little Flower”), published as no. 5 and no. 8,
respectively, of the Eight Songs op. 52, in 1805, have long been thought to date
from the Bonn period. The recent discovery of an album page in Beethoven’s
hand from the later Bonn years supports this chronology. The newfound album
inscription includes a slightly adapted version of the fourteenth strophe of an-
other poem by Bürger, “Die beiden Liebenden” (“The Two Lovers”), followed
by a short dedication:
Ein volles Herz giebt wenig Klang;
Das leere klingt aus allen Tönen.
Man fühlet dennoch seinen Drang;
Und ach! Versteht sein stummes Sehnen.
Bürger.
Zu immer grösserer Freundschaft
emphielt sich
Ludwig van Beethowen
Hofmusikus in Bonn.7
[A full heart makes but little sound;

An empty one sounds through all tones.
Yet one then feels its urgent pulse;
And oh! Does grasp its silent yearning.
Bürger.
To ever greater friendship
with kind regards
Ludwig van Beethowen
Court musician in Bonn.]
That Bürger was one of the most inspirational poets for the young Beethoven is
confirmed as well by the composer’s setting as a double song of the poet’s “Seufzer
eines Ungeliebten” and “Gegenliebe” (“Sighs of the Unloved”) and (“Requited
Love”) WoO 118, in 1794 or 1795. Beethoven adapted the musical theme of
“Gegenliebe” in the same key of C major as the basis for the variations in his Choral
Fantasy op. 80 in 1808, a setting that in turn strongly anticipates the choral finale
of the Ninth Symphony.
For whom did Beethoven write this thoughtful inscription with the quotation
7
A facsimile, transcription, and description of this source appears in Grita Herre, “Ein
frühes Stammbuchblatt Beethovens,” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (2006), pp. 115–17. As
Herre observes, the source was acquired by the Preussischer Staatsbibliothek (now Staats-
bibliothek zu Berlin preussischer Kulturbesitz) by 1942; nevertheless, it long remained in
obscurity, and was not included, for instance, in the comprehensive Beethoven Briefe pub-
lished in 1996. The spelling “Beethowen” is characteristic of the composer’s signature in his
early years.
the bonn years 23
from Bürger? As Grita Herre observes, the recipients must have been Jeannette
d’Honrath and Carl Greth, as is implied from the long-term possession of the
album leaf by persons associated with the family Greth; in 1941–42 the manu-
script passed to the Preussischer Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, but presumably due to
wartime conditions it was not catalogued at that time and remained unknown
until recently.8 Of considerable interest in this regard is an entry by Beethoven in
a conversation book dating from February 1823, more than thirty years after the
album inscription: “Carl v. Greth Feldm.[arschall-Lieutenant] | u. divi-|sionär |
anjezo | ⫹ jeanette Hohen-|rath – Commandant | in Temes-|vár.”9 Carl Greth also
belonged to the close circle of friends of the von Breuning family during Beetho-
ven’s last years at Bonn; his poetic New Year’s greeting to Eleonore von Breuning
from 1790 is preserved in the Wegeler Collection at the Bonn Beethoven-Haus. In
1802, Beethoven’s friend Franz Wegeler married Eleonore von Breuning, the com-
poser’s former piano student and sister of Beethoven’s lifelong friend Stephan von
Breuning. Wegeler, who in 1838 published his reminiscences of Beethoven to-
gether with those of Ferdinand Ries, left a vivid account of Jeannette d’Honrath
that deserves to be recounted here:
His [Beethoven’s] and Stephan von Breuning’s first love was Miss Jeannette d’Hon-
rath from Cologne . . . who often spent a few weeks with the Breuning family in
Bonn. She was a beautiful, vivacious blonde, of good upbringing and friendly
character, who much enjoyed music and had a pleasant voice. Thus she often
teased our friend through her performance of a then-familiar song:
“Mich heute noch von dir zu trennen
Und dieses nicht verhindern können,
Ist zu empfindlich für mein Herz!”
“To leave you already today
And not be able to delay
Is stressful for my heart!”10
In 1788, Jeannette d’Honrath married Carl Greth, an Austrian captain and re-
cruiting officer in Cologne, and it is surely in this connection that Beethoven wrote
his inscription for her. She presumably sang some of Beethoven’s early songs, such
as the two aforementioned strophic settings in G major to texts by Bürger, “Mollys
Abschied” op. 52 no. 5, and “Das Blümchen Wunderhold” op. 52 no. 8. The sim-
plicity of the setting of “Das Blümchen Wunderhold,” which is reminiscent of a
folk song, is part of its charm. The unassuming style lends itself well to the poem,
since the “dearest sweet flower”—in the last line of the twelfth and final stanza—
is identified with the moral virtue of “Bescheidenheit” or modesty.
8
See Herre, “Ein frühes Stammbuchblatt Beethovens,” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5
(2006), pp. 116–17.
9
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 3, p. 56.
10 Franz Gerhard Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van
Beethoven (Coblenz: Bädeher, 1838 and 1845; reprinted, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2000),
pp. 42–43.
24 beethoven
Beethoven’s conversation-book entry from 1823 was likely triggered by reports
in the Vienna newspapers of Carl von Greth’s appointment as “Commandant” in
Temesvár (now Timisoara, Romania), then a city within the Austrian Empire.
Greth had held the title of Feldmarschall-Leutenant at least since the Battle of
Leipzig in 1813. When Beethoven wrote down this conversation-book entry,
memories from his youth must have flooded his consciousness. He probably did
not know that Jeannette was then dying, and was soon to be buried at Temesvár.11
This vivid new glimpse of the context of Beethoven’s “first love,” in Wegeler’s
words, assumes special interest here as the first instance of a recurring pattern in
the composer’s life, whereby he became emotionally attached to women who were
unavailable to him or who chose others as marriage partners. The artist’s distance
from the feminine muse is conveyed in a stylized depiction titled Beethoven and
Jeannette d’Honrath by Wilhelm von Lindenschmit, a picture stemming from the
nineteenth century that is obviously inspired by Wegeler’s account (Plate 3). Con-
tinuing his remarks about Beethoven’s youthful erotic inclinations, Wegeler com-
ments that “there was never a time when Beethoven was not in love” and he leaves
to the reader’s judgment “whether one could compose Adelaide and Fidelio and
other such works, without experiencing love in its innermost depths.”12
S S S
When did the young composer first assemble the elements out of which his crea-
tive enterprise was to be shaped? Until 1884, almost a century after he left Bonn
for Vienna, this question could not have been answered, since only then did the
score of the Joseph Cantata come to light. Even now, few recordings are available,
and the piece remains virtually unknown to the general public. It never reached
performance in 1790, possibly because its technical challenges overtaxed the per-
formers; according to Simrock, “all the figures were completely unusual, therein
lay the difficulty.” This was the score that Beethoven probably showed to his
future teacher Haydn at their first meeting, when the latter passed through
Bonn. Beethoven could have been justly proud of the piece, since it is the most
prophetic single composition of his entire Bonn period. After the cantata’s redis-
covery, Johannes Brahms wrote enthusiastically that “Even if there were no name
on the title page none other could be conjectured—it is Beethoven through and
through!”13
A glance at the score suffices to show why Beethoven never revised or pub-
lished the cantata, for two of the most memorable passages in his opera Fidelio
were adapted from its material! The passages in question represent more than the-
matic borrowings, and neatly illustrate sharply contrasting aspects of Beethoven’s
musical symbolism. They could be described as topoi, or basic rhetorical arche-
11
Information related to Jeannette von Greth is found in Internet sources related to
Timisoara, but inaccuracies abound, with a connection often drawn to Johann van Beetho-
ven instead of Ludwig van Beethoven.
12
Biographische Notizen, p. 43.
13
Thayer-Forbes, p. 120.
the bonn years 25
types, with their roots in the conventions of figurative musical expression of the
eighteenth century. Beethoven’s continuing development of these rhetorical mod-
els is by no means confined to Fidelio; it touches on a broader dimension of sym-
bolic expression in his music in general. For that reason we shall examine the
cantata in some detail. Our concern is not to offer exhaustive description, how-
ever, but to indicate the work’s broader importance for the evolution of Beetho-
ven’s musical language.
The first of the prophetic passages begins and closes the cantata: Beethoven
rounds off the design of the whole piece with a varied repetition of its opening
chorus. The registral and textural dissociation of sonorities in the solemn orches-
tral ritornello is especially striking (see Ex. 1). A low unison C in the strings in the
first bar is repeated more emphatically two bars later; pitted against these deep oc-
tave unisons are harmonized woodwind sonorities in a higher register. The first uni-
son is answered by a C minor triad, the second by a dissonant diminished-seventh
chord that is dynamically inflected, played mezzoforte instead of piano. The inten-
sification is not merely harmonic, since the melodic implications of these paired
sonorities allow us to hear the rising tenth C–E as growing into a tritone with oc-
tave displacement, C–F , when the gesture is restated. In bar 5 the diminished-
seventh chord is resolved to the C minor tonic triad that marks the beginning of
a two-bar harmonized segment for the winds, featuring a prominent flute. The
ritornello is completed by the return of the unharmonized strings, which assume a
lamenting, declamatory character. At the repetition of the striking opening chords,
the high woodwind sonorities are set to the words “Todt! Todt!” (“Dead! Dead!”)
in the chorus, now making explicit the music’s desolate expressive connotations.
The rhetorical devices employed here were not of course invented by Beetho-
ven, but he combined them so as to make a strongly original impression. The most
revealing factor, however, is neither the genuine pathos that the twenty-year-old
composer evoked here, nor the shortcomings in technique or sensibility that pre-
vented him from sustaining the opening tension effectively. The beginning of the
Joseph Cantata confronts us with a characteristic phenomenon in Beethoven’s crea-
tive process: the deepening of musical conceptions in a seemingly continuous pro-
cess which was to stretch over decades of his life. To evaluate the significance of
this piece in Beethoven’s artistic development we must glimpse ahead fifteen years,
to around 1805, when he completed his opera in its first version, then entitled
Leonore, soon after incorporating a startling late-minute revision into what was
then the largest of all his piano sonatas, the Waldstein op. 53.
Most obviously related to the cantata is the orchestral ritornello marked Grave
that opens the last act of the opera, set in Florestan’s prison cell (Ex. 2). The low
unison Fs in the strings are juxtaposed with penetrating woodwind chords in the
high register—the gesture taken as a whole represents a direct transposition of the
“death” topos from the cantata into the even more dismal, F minor gloom of
Pizarro’s dungeon. But most instructive are the changes Beethoven makes as re-
gards the musical continuation. He now exploits a variety of means—rhythmic,
harmonic, linear, and motivic—to give to this music a powerful dramatic coher-
ence that was beyond his ability in 1790.
26 beethoven
Ex. 1 Joseph Cantata WoO 87
the bonn years 27
Ex. 2 Fidelio, Act II, no. 11
In Leonore Beethoven discards the fermate that prolonged each sonority in the
opening of the cantata. He endows the music with a new rhythmic energy bound
up with his characteristic device of foreshortening: the metric emphasis on two-
bar units allows us to hear the three repeated chords in bar 5 as a diminution of
the rhythmic shape of the entire opening gesture, with its slow articulation of three
impulses spread over five bars. This process propels the music forward, generat-
28 beethoven
ing a gradual increase in tension. The larger harmonic progression, on the other
hand, is controlled by a descending bass, reaching the first significant phrase divi-
sion at bar 11 on the dominant of F minor. Here Beethoven injects declamatory
motifs in the strings into the texture, motifs strongly reminiscent of the unharmo-
nized string phrases in the Joseph Cantata. But unlike the cantata, this music seems
constantly to be listening to itself. The expressive gesture in bar 11 highlights the
semitone D –C, and Beethoven’s rhythmic and dynamic nuances underscore the
poignant tension of the dissonance. This motif, in turn, is joined to a higher, an-
swering inflection in the winds, with both elements combined into a sequential
progression building in intensity to the climactic dissonant sonority in bar 15. But
that is not all: the D –C semitone figure is not only an expressive figure but a
structural intensification—only in the merging of both functions does it take on
its full aesthetic force. For the voice-leading of the opening woodwind chords—
the gestures set ominously to “dead” in the cantata—had already exposed the in-
terval C–D in a conspicuous way. The string motif is racked with the painful dis-
sonance already heard at the very outset of the Grave.
Such aesthetic relationships need to be conveyed in any adequate performance
but are passed over by many. A merely literal rendering in sound of the appear-
ance of the score is inadequate here, since an essential part of the meaning of this
gesture in the strings is connected to its dramatic derivation from the opening
chords in the winds. The connection can be made palpable through the combina-
tion of clarity of execution and expressive nuance, a matter to which we shall re-
turn. This example scratches only the smallest surface of the requirements of a
successful performance, but it does point to the kinds of relationships that take us
beyond the mere surface of the sound into the true content of the work seen as an
unconsummated symbol.
Once Beethoven had seen past the merely figurative level of this topos, other
possibilities occurred to him that lend themselves eminently well to instrumental
music. Characteristic is his use of a variant of the same topos in the substitute slow
movement of the Waldstein Sonata op. 53, written a year earlier, in 1804. The
original slow movement was an expansive, luxurious Andante favori in rondo
form that Beethoven is supposed to have removed for reasons of overall length.
That there were other, more intrinsic reasons for the change speaks for itself. The
substitute movement is an extended introduction to the finale, to which it is di-
rectly linked; at the same time it makes a much stronger effect of contrast in rela-
tion to the outer movements than did the original slow movement. At stake in
Beethoven’s decision to substitute the Introduzione were issues of balance and in-
tegration in the sonata cycle as a whole.
This substitution marked a turning point in Beethoven’s practice. There are, to
be sure, other slow introductions leading into finales in his earlier works—“La
Malinconia” in the Quartet in B major op. 18 no. 6, for instance. But after the
Waldstein, the principle of a contrasting slow movement linked to the finale in a
three-movement design becomes a mainstay of his style for about six years, until
1810. Examples include the Appassionata and Lebewohl Sonatas, the Violin Con-
certo, and the last two piano concertos.
the bonn years 29
By juxtaposing the contrasting slow movement directly with the finale, Beetho-
ven brings their moods into a closer relationship, setting the moment of transition
to the finale into sharp relief. Many later masterpieces, from the Archduke Trio
to the C minor Quartet, follow this pattern. But most revealing in comparison
with the Joseph Cantata is the way Beethoven achieves that quality of gigantic
simplicity that marks the slow interlude of the Waldstein (Ex. 3). The topos from
the cantata—with a low tonic pedal in unharmonized octaves answered first by
tonic harmony and then by a dissonant harmony with ascending voice-leading—
is replicated in the sonata. The harmonic resolution of the dissonant sonority,
however, is not to the tonic, as in the cantata, but to an E major chord, which
lends a more directional impetus to the phrase, bridging the evocative silence at
the start of the second bar. Furthermore, the ascending seventh in the bass, from
F to E, is treated by Beethoven as the starting point for a long stepwise descend-
ing progression, even more relentless than the one in Fidelio.
The form of the Adagio molto is based on a twofold statement of this progres-
sion drawn from the topos from the cantata, blended with an expressive idiom
suggestive of recitative and thematic dualism. Following the opening nine-bar
phrase, Beethoven restates the initial motif in the right hand which unfolds in a
declamatory fashion, with rising echoes in a polyphonic texture. After only six
bars, however, the passage dissipates into a hushed, enigmatic return of the begin-
ning of the Introduzione. The recitative-like phrases posit an alternative to the
somber, static character of the opening music that recalls the cantata. This brighter,
more consoling voice cannot be sustained, however; the music settles even more
deeply into the pensive mood generated by the falling-bass progression and coun-
tervailing ascent in the right hand. Only after an arresting climax on a widely
spaced diminished-seventh sonority and the convergence onto the dominant sev-
enth of C do we reach a miraculous turning point: the descending bass movement
is reversed as G rises to G , clearing the way for a cadential progression in C major
that underscores the luminescent texture and vast spacing at the beginning of the
finale.
Perhaps most remarkable here is the severe economy of the thematic material
and tight coherence of its development. In the Waldstein, the structural model of
the solemn chord progression that opens this youthful work was sufficient to
ground the entire structure of the slow introduction. At the same time, the dark-
hued, mysterious character of this music creates an expressive polarity that places
the brilliant C major world of the outer movements of the sonata in a new light.
The aspiring, affirmative side of Beethoven’s symbolic art is foreshadowed just
as clearly in the Joseph Cantata. The emblematic theme heard in the aria with
chorus “Da stiegen die Menschen ans Licht” (“there the people ascended into the
light”) is taken into the opera without much change. Beethoven preserves in Fide-
lio the original F major tonality, the meter and basic tempo, and many features of
the orchestration, including the use of pizzicato strings. This melody is not only
quoted in Fidelio but became a prototype for other Beethovenian melodies carry-
ing analogous expressive connotations. The melodic shape in the cantata, featur-
ing two initial rising fourths and further upward extension in the following
30 beethoven
Ex. 3 Waldstein Sonata op. 53/II
phrases, reflects the venerable practice of word-painting motivated in the text by

the idea of the ascent of humanity toward illumination. In Fidelio, this Human-
itätsmelodie emerges at the moment in the second-act finale when Leonore re-
leases Florestan from his chains. Beethoven reuses the theme here to symbolize
what language cannot convey. For after it is first sounded in the oboe, Florestan
himself doubles the melody heard in the winds to the words “O unaussprechlich
süsses Glück!” (“Oh unspeakable sweet happiness!”). And when this hymn-like
theme is repeated in the chorus, it is linked to the Deity and to a higher moral au-
the bonn years 31
thority: “Gerecht, o Gott! gerecht ist dein Gericht. Du prüfest, du verlässt uns
nicht” (“Just, oh God, just is your judgment! You test us, you abandon us not”).
If the symbolism of this theme in the Joseph Cantata can be adequately grasped
in terms of traditional musical rhetoric, its role in Fidelio is far more complex. The
key of F major and soloistic role of the oboe in the setting of Florestan’s “unspeak-
able happiness,” for instance, recall his earlier aria in the dungeon, culminating in
his delirious vision of Leonore as an angel leading him into the “heavenly realm
of freedom.” Appeals to freedom, of course, infiltrate the dark landscape of Fide-
lio at every turn, from the symbolic trumpet calls of the Leonore overtures to the
prisoners’ chorus in Act I.
As a harbinger of Beethoven’s mature style, “Da stiegen die Menschen ans
Licht” is at least as portentous as its antipode, the grim C minor opening of the
cantata. Its hymn-like character with prominent rising perfect fourths prefigures
a whole category of Beethovenian themes, from the Adagio cantabile of the Sonate
Pathétique to the “Dona nobis pacem” of the Missa solemnis. Most revealing,
however, is how both these symbolic musical elements from Beethoven’s ambi-
tious early composition were eventually absorbed into the mainstream of his
creative enterprise. Beethoven’s symbolic homage to the enlightened emperor re-
minds us that his art was from the beginning no abstract occupation. At the same
time, his subsequent use of borrowings from the cantata underscores the fundamen-
tal compatibility between symbolic rhetoric and the rigorous musical processes so
indispensable to the expressive power of his art.
The Joseph Cantata is not the only weighty composition from Beethoven’s
Bonn years, nor the only prophetic one. The Twenty-Four Variations on “Venni
amore” by Righini for piano WoO 65 from 1791 is equally rich in ideas and de-
vices used in Beethoven’s later music. In their imaginative skill and formal inge-
nuity the Righini Variations are perhaps the finest of all Beethoven’s independent
variation sets up to 1802, when he wrote his important variations in F major and
E major opp. 34 and 35 respectively. Other works from the Bonn period were re-
vised at Vienna—salvaged, like the cantata, for material used in new pieces—or
simply forgotten. For in spite of exceptional cases like the Righini Variations,
the music Beethoven composed at Bonn is of interest less for artistic than for his-
torical and biographical reasons. His coming-of-age as an artist may be placed
around 1795, on the basis of his impressive piano sonatas from that year, and our
first detailed analyses of works will focus on these pieces. In reality, however, Bee-
thoven’s creative development was a continuous, ongoing process that resists easy
categorization but to which the works themselves bear witness in abundant mea-
sure. The formative influence of Bonn on Beethoven was profound, but its deep-
est artistic expression belonged to another time and place.
2
RThe Path to Mastery:

1792–1798
R
Beethoven could hardly have imagined when he left Bonn in late 1792 that he
would never again see his birthplace, or that the reign of the elector would be
swept away in the wake of the French occupation less than two years later. The
conditions of his entry into Vienna were auspicious; he immediately came under
the wing of music-loving aristocrats who supported him generously. Although
he never held an official court position at Vienna, his success was dependent on
the patronage of noble benefactors including Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, Baron
van Swieten, the Count and Countess von Browne, and in later years Prince
Lobkowitz and Prince Kinsky, among others. Soon after his arrival in Vienna, Bee-
thoven moved in for a time with Lichnowsky, who had patronized Mozart a few
years earlier and whose private string quartet, led by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, as-
sumed special importance for Beethoven. The patronage of the Count and Count-
ess Browne is reflected in Beethoven’s dedications of several important works, in-
cluding the String Trios op. 9 and Piano Sonatas op. 10. Beethoven received
valuable presents from his patrons, including a quartet of string instruments from
Lichnowsky and a horse from Count Browne in response to his dedication to the
Countess of the Twelve Variations for Piano on a Russian Dance WoO 71 in 1797.
One of Beethoven’s most lasting friendships dating from these years was with
the amateur cellist Nikolaus Zmeskall von Domanovecz, who attended the musi-
cal performances held on Friday mornings at Lichnowsky’s house. Zmeskall care-
fully preserved his correspondence with Beethoven from this period when the lat-
ter was not yet famous; the letters richly display Beethoven’s sense of humor and
his indulgence in extravagant plays on words. One note, addressed to “My dear-
est Baron Muckcart-driver” (or “dirt-driver”) contains an elaborate pun based on
the mixing up or transposition of the last three letters of “baron.” Beethoven de-
lights himself here by linking the noun Versatzamt (“pawn shop”) with the verb
versetzen (“to transpose”—in this case, words, letters, or notes), and he throws in
for good measure a reference to his Duet for Viola and Cello WoO 32, a piece he
dubbed a “duet with two eyeglasses obbligato” and apparently performed with
Zmeskall.1 Zmeskall worked at the Hungarian Court Chancellery, but his name
1
Cf. Thayer-Forbes, pp. 221–22.
32
the path to mastery: 1792–1798 33
is Czech (or Slovakian); “zmeškal” literally means “missed” in the sense of being
late due to wasted time; another Czech word that sounds similar, zmetek, means
“misfit.” Zmeskall presumably explained these meanings to the composer, who
fancifully blended the connotations in addressing his friend as “dearest dirt
hauler” or “garbage man.” Further examples of Beethoven’s puns from about this
time surface in his correspondence with the horn player and publisher Nikolaus
Simrock in Bonn in which Beethoven plays on the word stechen, meaning “to
sting or stab,” as well as “to engrave.”
Beethoven composed little music during his first year in Vienna. This situation
led to embarrassment when Haydn sent to the elector at Bonn a letter of recom-
mendation for an increase in Beethoven’s stipend, accompanied by copies of
pieces, most of which Beethoven had already written before his departure. The
sting of the elector’s reply—with its assertion that Beethoven had learnt little and
would bring back to Bonn nothing but debts—cannot have helped endear Haydn
to Beethoven. Their relationship was somewhat stiff and reserved, though it re-
mained cordial. There is little doubt that Beethoven owed less to formal instruc-
tion with Haydn than to the inspiring model of the older man’s compositions. The
creative achievements of Haydn and Mozart were fully recognized for the first
time during the 1790s, and no one was better situated to build on their legacy than
Beethoven.
During his first Vienna years Beethoven composed primarily for solo piano or
combinations of instruments including piano. He devoted attention as well to the
medium of the string trio, as represented by the divertimento-like Trio in E op. 3
and the accomplished set of three trios op. 9, and composed occasional songs, in-
cluding the famous Adelaide. Beethoven referred to Adelaide as a “cantata,” al-
luding thereby to his departure from a strophic setting in favor of an extended
two-part structure. The poem, by Friedrich von Matthisson, has four stanzas,
each of which ends with an exclamation of the name “Adelaide!” In his setting,
Beethoven accommodates the first three stanzas to a flowing Larghetto and shifts
to Allegro molto for the last stanza, which includes additional repetitions of
phrases of the text. In a comment accompanying the re-publication of his col-
lected poems, Matthisson wrote that “several composers have animated this little
lyrical fantasy through music; I am firmly convinced however that none of them
so threw the text into the shade with their melody as did the genius Ludwig van
Beethoven in Vienna.”2 The wistful melancholy of the protagonist’s unfulfilled
yearning for the idealized, unattainable woman is conveyed through Beethoven’s
sensitive melodic treatment; the opening words “Einsam wandelt dein Freund”
(“Alone wanders your friend”) are set to a rising triadic upbeat leading a long
note on the downbeat marking “wander,” whereas “friend” is expressed through
an upward shift of a semitone to E at the first change of harmony, from the tonic
triad B major to a dominant-seventh chord. Beethoven was attracted by the sonic
qualities of the text, with its references to “whispering” breezes and “whistling”
nightingales, and he expresses these poetic qualities with soft tonal nuances and
2
Kinsky-Halm, Das Werk Beethovens, p. 110.
34 beethoven
vivid imagery. Most striking of all is the musical intensification of the last stanza
in the Allegro molto. In the piano, he compresses the melodic outline from the be-
ginning of the song, with its upbeat from F leading to repeated Ds and then the
dominant seventh supporting E . In this final section, the protagonist imagines his
death, and the attainment of his love seems remote; yet the music expresses a pas-
sionate, climactic conviction, and the only hint of resignation comes at the very
end, in the pianissimo echo of the last “Adelaide!”
Although written in the mid-1790s and first published in 1797, Adelaide was
eventually reissued in 1804 with the deceptively high opus number 46. The proud
designation of op. 1, on the other hand, was granted to the three Trios for Piano,
Violin, and Cello in E major, G major, and C minor, which were performed at a
private concert at Prince Lichnowsky’s residence in late 1793 or early 1794 and
painstakingly revised before their eventual publication in 1795. Beethoven’s pupil
Ferdinand Ries reported that Haydn expressed reservations about the C minor
Trio—remarks not well received by Beethoven, who considered it the best of the
three. Haydn embarked around this time on his second triumphant journey to
London. Beethoven, meanwhile, supplemented his instruction with Haydn by dili-
gent study with others: the composer Johann Schenk and the systematic theorist
Johann Georg Albrechtsberger.
Beethoven’s independent artistic stance was thus fully compatible with his de-
termination to master the traditional methods of composition; the imaginative
flights of the virtuoso pianist gained thereby in solidity, depth, and constructive
power. By the time he had finished his First Symphony and the String Quartets op.
18 in 1800, Beethoven had written thirteen piano sonatas (up to and including op.
22 and the two Sonatas op. 49), the first two concertos, and more than a dozen
sets of independent piano variations. Other piano works of the 1790s include the
Rondo in C op. 51 no. 1, the four-hand Sonata in D op. 6, various bagatelles and
miscellaneous pieces, and the Rondo à Capriccio in G, published posthumously
as op. 129. Contemporary reports described his extraordinary abilities in improv-
isation. In view of his formidable mastery of the instrument, we need hardly mar-
vel that Beethoven’s piano music remained a vehicle for his most advanced ideas
throughout his career.
It would be a serious error to underestimate Beethoven’s sonatas from the
1790s. Whereas his first published examples of the concerto, quartet, and sym-
phony are generally inferior to Haydn’s and Mozart’s masterpieces in those gen-
res, the same cannot be said of his early sonatas, especially those for solo piano.
It was in the piano sonata that Beethoven first revealed the full expressive range
and power of invention that he was to demonstrate only years later in some other
musical forms. In their broad scale and structural grandeur, his early sonatas and
chamber music with piano show signs of a symphonic ambition. Characteristic,
for instance, is his use of the four-movement form then associated more with sym-
phonies or quartets than with these more intimate genres; each of the three Piano
Trios op. 1 and Piano Sonatas op. 2 adds a minuet or scherzo to the conventional
three-movement plan. In the case of the big Piano Sonata in E op. 7, Beethoven
Ex. 4 Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1/I
incorporated a dance-like Allegro with Minore as the penultimate movement, a

piece he had originally sketched as a “bagatelle” independent from the sonata.3
In the three Violin Sonatas op. 12 written in 1797–98, he retained the three-move-
ment framework, but he employed four movements in two later works in this
genre—the C minor Sonata op. 30 no. 2 of 1802 and the final Violin Sonata op.
96 of 1812.
Our examination of the music from Beethoven’s early Vienna years will focus
primarily on his piano sonatas, beginning with the three works in F minor, A
major, and C major published with a dedication to Haydn as op. 2 in 1796. The
first movement of the very first sonata serves as well as any to illustrate Beetho-
ven’s thorough and original mastery of the Viennese classical style. This Allegro is
dominated even more than usual by his favorite practice of increasing structural
compression—a device sometimes described as “fragmentation” and which Al-
fred Brendel has more suitably termed “foreshortening” and described as “the
driving force of his sonata forms and a basic principle of his musical thought.”4
In a foreshortening process phrases are divided into progressively smaller units:
the effect is to drive the music forward with a nervous intensity quite alien to the
relaxed rococo elegance of the ancien régime. The opening theme of op. 2 no. 1
(Ex. 4) juxtaposes two-bar phrases on tonic and dominant, using a version of the
“Mannheim rocket” figure with a rising staccato arpeggiation peaking first on A
and then B in the treble, while staccato chords on the weaker beats in the left
hand provide the accompaniment.
The vitality of this theme is sustained from within, through constant reexami-
nation of the ongoing musical discourse. Bar 5 is an intensification of bar 2, cut-
ting the initial phrase to half its length; bar 6 similarly curtails the second phrase
to a single bar. All the dynamic markings are structural: they emphasize the
melodic peaks of the opening phrases as well as the isolation of those pitches
3
Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, pp. 508–11.
4
“Form and Psychology in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas,” Musical Thoughts and After-
thoughts, p. 43; also see Brendel’s essay “The Process of Foreshortening in the First Move-
ment of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 2, No. 1” in the same volume, pp. 154–61.
36 beethoven
through sforzandi, while the crescendo to fortissimo at the broken chord in bar 7
reinforces both the upper linear motion to the fifth degree, C, and the growing in-
tensity of the process of rhythmic diminution. The last bars of the theme are also
controlled by consistent foreshortening in the harmonic structure: the tonic chord
in bar 7 is sustained for only a half bar, whereas the shift from tonic to dominant
in the last bar of the theme is compressed into successive beats. The very silence
at the fermata after the turn figure in this bar seems generated by the intensity of
the drive toward concision, resulting in virtual liquidation of the basic thematic
material. In this arresting theme the initial two-bar units are thus reduced to single
bars, half bars, and single beats before the music abruptly confronts that silence
out of which it came into being. One senses in the opening rhetorical accents of
Beethoven’s first sonata a more aggressive variant of Haydn’s exquisitely delicate
play with silence in some movements of his op. 33 quartets.
This type of open-ended thematic shaping—a “sentence” (Satz) as opposed
to a closed “period” structure—displays an urgent temporal drive. The process of
foreshortening shapes the musical events decisively, leading to the cessation of
sound in bar 8, before a new statement of the “Mannheim rocket” figure in the
bass ushers in the transition. We shall observe other examples of such musical
processes in Beethoven, whereby an intensification breaks the immediate sonorous
continuity, suggesting metaphorically a heightened awareness of thought or
action. In this sense, the opening movement of op. 2 no. 1 already anticipates
larger works to come, such as the climax of the first movement of the Eroica
Symphony.
Beethoven’s rough draft of this Allegro shows how concerned he was to tighten
its thematic and harmonic relations. Compare, for instance, his sketch for the be-
ginning of the second subject with the final version (Ex. 5a and b).5 In the finished
work Beethoven has changed his sketch into a free inversion of the shape of the
first subject, designating a crescendo and sforzando to make the correspondence
clear. But that is not all: he has also shifted the second subject into the minor
mode, so that the flat sixth degree of A minor—F —is emphasized in two regis-
ters, harmonically as part of a dissonant minor ninth chord on the dominant. This
stress on F in the second theme sounds much like an intensification of the empha-
sis on the minor third (A ), in the opening theme.
Beethoven’s procedure of foreshortening is a flexible means of intensification
that is especially appropriate to the development section of the sonata design. In
this movement the development starts with a varied restatement of the opening
theme beginning in A major but passing through the pivotal harmony of a Ger-
man augmented sixth to the second subject, now in B minor (Ex. 6). Beethoven
thereby telescopes the entire first half of his exposition, deleting a dozen of its bars
while dramatically juxtaposing the two subjects he had devised as inversions of
one another. The energy produced by this accelerated plunge into the second sub-
ject is sustained in turn through a new process of foreshortening. First, the eight-
5 Nottebohm transcribed the sketch in Zweite Beethoveniana, p. 565.


a. sketch b. final version
bar model of the second theme leads through a new augmented-sixth chord into
C minor. Then the basic phrase is shifted into the bass, and descending sequences
carry the music progressively lower in pitch as the thematic structure breaks up
into smaller units. The prominent accented dissonances thus fall from A to G
and F , before Beethoven takes the crucial step of stripping away the melodic ma-
terial while preserving the descending linear motion and syncopated rhythmic en-
ergy in the circle-of-fifths progression that follows. These deeper musical
processes are the very lifeblood of the music. The falling series of syncopated bass
notes reaches E , D , and C (pitches echoed a fourth higher in the treble), and the
energy of this impressive passage is finally released at a powerful half cadence on
the dominant of F minor (Ex. 7). The rhythmic articulation or structural down-
beat at this juncture is marked by the ensuing dominant pedal, presaging the re-
capitulation twenty-one bars later.
The following passage on the dominant pedal is no longer driven by the impe-
tus of rhythmic compression and modulation; it assumes a more static, retrospec-
tive character. This music echoes the climactic cadence that had preceded it, par-
ticularly the semitone fall F–E and the associated harmonic resolution of the
diminished-seventh chord, now heard over the pedal. There is a close kinship here
with the second subject, with its similar dominant pedal and harmonic support;
Ex. 6 Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1/I, bars 42–60

38 beethoven
the relationship is easily audible in the recapitulation, when the second subject ap-
pears at the same pitch level. The gradually subsiding effect of the end of the de-
velopment is conveyed by the decrescendo to pianissimo as the last cadential echo
dissipates, reducing the music to a substratum of softly pulsating Cs in the left
hand. This too is part of the process of foreshortening in its broadest sense: the
lively eight-bar unit of the second subject has undergone a dramatic development
so exhaustive that its material literally dissolves.
Beethoven now uses the turn figure drawn from the opening theme to signal
the imminent recapitulation, which is enhanced through more forceful placement
of the accompanying chords of the main theme. Even more striking is his treat-
ment of the closing theme of the exposition and his reinterpretation of this music
at the close of the Allegro. He marks these passages “con espressione”; they are
imbued with declamatory rhetoric recalling the opening theme (Ex. 8 shows the
passage from the end of the movement). The staccato chords resemble its chordal
accompaniment, while the basic motivic shape—except for the ascending leap to
the dominant, C—derives from rhythmic augmentation of the turn figure. What
sticks out curiously is the upward leap and accented stress on the dominant note,
an inflection that soon delivers an astounding punch. The gesture at first sounds
odd, but harmless; only on its third appearance does Beethoven make his point.
He repeats the motif an octave higher and drastically reinterprets the sensitive
dominant note fortissimo with full harmonic support, prolonging it fourfold,
through an entire bar. So emphasized, this pitch becomes the surprising penulti-
mate chord of the cadence that closes the exposition.
When Beethoven returns to this passage at the end of the movement, he retains
not the same formula but his instinct for surprise. This time the emphatic “clos-
ing” chord is reharmonized to pass deceptively to the subdominant, evading a
tonic cadence. A pause and descending sequence follow, carrying the progression
down a tone to the mediant. Then Beethoven resorts for the last time to rhythmic
diminution, as faster sequences of accented chords drive to the close in F minor.
The brief coda traces a linear descent from dominant to tonic—thereby echoing
gestures like the climax of the opening theme or the “con espressione” phrases—
while gathering rhythmic energy through foreshortening to lead into the terse, em-
phatic cadence.
This tight, concise movement shows that by 1795 Beethoven was capable of
achieving a thematic integration and formal coherence which, though comparable
to Haydn’s, are quite individual in quality. Particularly noteworthy is Beethoven’s
almost obsessive use of rhythmic foreshortening as a means of musical develop-
ment. Douglas Johnson’s comparison with Haydn, claiming that “the old man’s
models are lean and taut, while the young man’s copies are overweight and long-
winded”6 does not apply here, though it is true of certain other works from this
period. In op. 2 no. 1 that criticism could perhaps be leveled at the second move-
ment, a florid Adagio in F major, although its lyrical repose does bring welcome
contrast after the terse drama of the Allegro. Like the opening Allegro con brio of
op. 2 no. 3, this Adagio uses material from Beethoven’s earlier Piano Quartet
WoO 36 no. 3, a work he wrote in Bonn at the age of fourteen, which shows the
influence of Mozart’s Violin Sonata in C major, K. 296. We shall return to the issue
of Beethoven’s use of Haydnesque and Mozartian models. More important in
connection with op. 2 is actually to acknowledge how boldly independent Beetho-
ven had already become.
The opening Allegro vivace of op. 2 no. 2 offers further testimony to Beetho-
ven’s audacity in its extraordinary treatment of the second subject group. After a
brilliant play of scalar figures and falling leaps in the opening theme the music set-
tles mysteriously onto the dominant E minor, with slow tremolos in the left hand
and a legato, espressivo phrase in the treble (Ex. 9). The lyrical phrase outlines the
falling semitones E–D –D, while the bass rises step by step, facilitating a modula-
tion to G. Sequential intensification of these bars extends the rising bass move-
ment, bringing the music to the remote key of B . Beethoven now exploits his pro-
cedure of foreshortening to bring matters to the breaking point: instead of
employing a stable thematic configuration, he devises his second subject as a dra-
6 “1794–95: Decisive Years in Beethoven’s Early Development,” p. 26.

40 beethoven
matic series of modulations that are strictly controlled by the long ascent of the
bass through a full octave. Once this progression has reattained the original pitch
an octave higher, the impact of foreshortening has stripped away all but the semi-
tone E–D in the melody.
Now comes the real crux of the matter: after the virtual disappearance of the
second subject, the falling scalar figure of the opening theme returns fortissimo to
fill the void! Beethoven adds a touch of the grotesque by juxtaposing the soft,
enigmatic high semitone E–D with the insistent bass figure outlining a tritone. He
then dwells on the semitone in the high register, pausing on an ambiguous dimin-
ished-seventh chord. The silence that follows magnifies the complex quality of this
moment, preparing a triumphant reversal of the resolution of the semitone, as the
diminished seventh containing D is finally resolved into cascades of figuration
elaborating the long-awaited E major triad.
Dramatically, the entire passage is posited on the notion of a controlled post-
ponement of the dominant key, building suspense that makes the eventual discov-
ery of that goal all the more satisfying. The dynamic thrust so evident in the de-
velopment of the Allegro of op. 2 no. 1 is transplanted here into the exposition of
the sonata form. The idea is original and the execution flawless, demonstrating
that by 1795 Beethoven had already transcended an imitative style of composi-
tion, at least in this genre. But many other aspects of his art can be properly ap-
preciated only in the broader context of an entire piece or opus. To that end, we
turn for an example to the remarkable trilogy of Piano Sonatas in C minor, F
major, and D major that Beethoven published three years later, in 1798, as op. 10.
The sharply profiled individuality of the op. 10 Sonatas nevertheless admits
some common features among them, such as the presence of comic music abound-
ing in sudden contrasts and unexpected turns. A whimsical, unpredictable humor
surfaces in the finales of all three pieces, and most strikingly in the opening Alle-
gro of the second sonata, in F major. The sonatas are nonetheless admirably con-
trasted in character, particularly in their first movements: the terse, dramatic
idiom of the C minor Sonata sets into relief the relaxed, mischievous spirit of the
F major, whereas the dynamic brilliance of the third sonata, in D major, expands
the formal design from within. Like Beethoven’s four earlier sonatas, op. 10 no. 3
also has four movements, incorporating a minuet before the finale. The first two
sonatas of op. 10 employ the more usual Classical design of three movements,
with a slower movement sandwiched between an opening Allegro and a finale in
a still faster tempo.
Op. 10 no. 1 marks the first appearance in the piano sonatas of Beethoven’s
celebrated “C minor mood,” the tempestuous, strife-ridden character reflected in
pieces such as the string trio op. 9 no. 3, the Pathétique Sonata, the Fifth Sym-
phony, and the very last sonata, op. 111. This idiom was forged by Beethoven out
of an artistic context reaching back to Mozart, Haydn, and Bach. Mozart’s piano
works in this key, such as the Sonata K. 457 and the Concerto K. 491, particu-
larly impressed Beethoven: he reportedly commented to J. B. Cramer about the
concerto that “we shall never be able to do anything like that!”7 The rhetorical
contrasts of these works often juxtapose a forceful, dramatic expression invested
with rhythmic tension and dissonance on the one hand, with the emergence of a
plaintive or lyrical voice on the other. Mozart’s C minor pieces, such as K. 491,
frequently project a sense of fatalistic resignation that arises through the objec-
tive, even impersonal character of their pathetic chromaticism, implying a subor-
dination of subjectivity to objectivity; Beethoven, by contrast, tends to subsume
such contrasts into an all-encompassing subjective dynamic.
The first movement of op. 10 no. 1 distils these contrasts with utmost concen-
tration. The powerful opening C minor chord, with its jagged, rising rhythmic
inflections, yields to a quiet transformation of the same sound, while the ensuing
motivic fall from C to B in bar 4 sets up reiteration of the forceful opening ges-
ture, now intensified through use of the dissonant diminished-seventh chord (see
Ex. 10). The following phrases build the climax of the opening theme through a
threefold stress on the dominant, G, before the line descends stepwise through an
7
42 beethoven
octave and breaks off mysteriously into silence. Here, as elsewhere in Beethoven,
the pauses are no less important than the notes: the rapport of sound with silence
imparts tension to the end of the opening thematic period, before the head of the
theme is reasserted with even greater vehemence.
Most of what follows is related to this opening theme. Variants of the stepwise
descending motif lurk in the tranquil transition passage, whereas the more lyrical
second subject in E major utilizes the falling semitone figure of the opening theme
while also hinting at its rhythm. The new melody that emerges in the development
section brings together motifs from both principal themes, carrying the music
through minor keys. The approach to the recapitulation, on the other hand, re-
shapes the descending line from the opening theme, the passage that had been bro-
ken off initially into silence. Now the pause is filled in, supplanting the mysteri-
ous interruption by a sonorous connection to the reprise—the symmetrical
turning point in the movement as a whole.
Another climax occurs later in the recapitulation, where the brighter second
subject is drawn into the sphere of C minor, with an effect of pathos. Beethoven
does not merely transpose it according to convention but first elaborates it in a
major key, F, reentering the tonic minor only at the point where the second sub-
ject is decorated with rising staccato scales. Thereafter the tonic remains unchal-
lenged; the movement closes laconically, with stark cadential chords. The terse,
concentrated expression of this movement would be misconstrued if taken as the
effusion of a youthful, emotional Sturm und Drang. As the other movements
make still clearer, the Beethoven that emerges here is as much a clear-sighted ra-
tionalist as a romantic visionary.
As is usual in Beethoven’s C minor works, the slow movement, an Adagio
molto, is in the key of the flat sixth, A major. Its grand lyrical expression relies
much on decorative variation, especially in the quiet second subject, in which each
phrase is reshaped into rapid, delicate figuration. This movement is a sonata form
with a single, emphatic dominant-seventh chord standing in place of a develop-
ment, but there is an extended coda, in which the reflective main theme is given a
new continuation and a new outcome. Its characteristic falling melodic thirds are
extended here to reach the dominant, E , before being softly resolved to the tonic
in a gesture of thematic completion and liquidation.
Out of the stillness at the end of the Adagio emerges the lean, shadowy open-
ing of the prestissimo finale, in which motifs from the first movement—such as the
Ex. 11 Piano Sonata op. 10 no. 1/III
semitone C–B—reappear in a new context. Still more surprising is the way the
principal motif is absorbed, with comic effect, into the second subject group of
this compact sonata form. Riotous humor erupts in the cadential theme: as if the
drastic contrasts of dynamics and register and the hammering, “telegraphic”
rhythms were not enough, Beethoven wickedly inserts a “wrong” chord on C ,
fortissimo, just before the cadence!
Following the brief development and a recapitulation hardly less amusing than
the exposition, despite its turn to the minor, the coda gradually slows the tempo
to adagio. Beethoven lingers here over his second subject, transforming its jaunty
character into a more reflective expression, while bringing the music to rest on a
seventh chord of A at the first tenuto marking (Ex. 11). What is the meaning of
this striking gesture? The sound is familiar, being enharmonically equivalent to
the first vertical harmony in the shadowy main theme of the movement. The point
is that this sound contains the tonic sonority of the A major of the slow move-
ment and can thereby serve both as a harmonic threshold to the finale and, later,
as a subtle means of reference to the Adagio molto. Without making a direct the-
matic allusion, Beethoven thus evokes the aura of the slow movement, effectively
setting off his final plunge into the prestissimo, which quickly dissolves into a si-
lence of pregnant irony.
The second sonata, in F major, takes its point of departure from the comic
strain already present in the finale of op. 10 no. 1. Though a favorite of Beetho-
ven’s, the piece has been regarded disapprovingly by some commentators, who
have pointed accusingly to loose, meandering features in the opening Allegro
while remaining deaf to their aesthetic quality. Brendel has recently observed how
easily such comic music can be spoilt in performance, or misunderstood by listen-
ers “expecting the celebration of religious rites.”8 Beethoven felt no such con-
straints: like Laurence Sterne’s character Tristram Shandy, he could revel in the
unexpected, the incongruous, and the grotesque, and, as in this movement, exhibit
8
“Must Classical Music be Entirely Serious?,” Music Sounded Out, p. 35.
44 beethoven
a coyish, good-natured capacity for just getting lost. In comparison with op. 10
no. 1 the form is antiteleological; the music appears to progress in fits and starts,
sometimes driven by feverish outbursts of impatience. One cul-de-sac occurs in
the second subject group after the first cadence in the dominant, C major, in bar
41 (Ex. 12). The ensuing phrase loses its grip on the cadence, and the pianissimo
chord in bar 46 suggests raised eyebrows of puzzled confusion. Another such pas-
sage is the false recapitulation, which begins innocently enough in D major. Re-
markably, it is not the harmonized chords forming the head of the theme but
rather its little ornamental turn whose repetitions stabilize the true recapitulation
in F, conveying a sense of the tail wagging the dog.
The second movement is an Allegretto with trio in F minor, the focus of grav-
ity in this otherwise lighthearted work. Its seriousness of character stands as com-
plementary to the comic fugal burlesque that forms the presto finale. This rela-
tionship can be vividly projected in performance through rhythmic means, if the
steady motion in quarter notes in the Allegretto yields to a subdivision of these
beats into eighth notes in the shorter bars of the Presto, thereby giving the effect
of an acceleration to double-time in the finale. The beginning of the Presto also
reshapes the same registral ascent that had begun the meditative Allegretto, trans-
forming its structural aspects in an atmosphere of unbuttoned wit and musical
laughter that “inverts the sublime,” according to one of Jean Paul Richter’s in-
sightful definitions of humor.
The design of the D major Sonata op. 10 no. 3 is unusual in that Beethoven
maintains the tonic major or minor throughout all four movements. One reason
for this tonal plan is found in the expressive relationship between the inner move-
ments—an extended Largo e mesto of tragic character in D minor, whose solemn
darkness is broken by the beginning of the gentle Minuetto in the major, marked
dolce. This wonderfully sensitive and gradual effect of light dispelling darkness
depends crucially on the use of a common tonality. A different sort of complemen-
tation holds between the bold and energetic first movement, marked Presto, and
the grave slow movement in the minor.
The very opening of the sonata, in unharmonized octaves, presents material
that in itself is not particularly distinctive: its initial descending fourth, D–A, and
subsequent ascent through tonic triads of D major represent commonplace ele-
ments of Classical tonality (Ex. 13). The sparse, elemental nature of this opening
lends itself well to reinterpretation and reworking, however, as is soon evident in
the exposition, where extended passages are given over to developmental
processes. The sudden interruptions and contrasts characteristic of this movement
are carefully coordinated with a logical, progressive unfolding and development
of the basic thematic material. Only after a contrasting episode in B minor and a
brilliant transition passage does Beethoven present the main part of his second
subject group, in A major. He incorporates here a new version of the opening
motif in smaller note values, with the descending fourth D–A given three times in
the major and three times in the minor before the music dissolves into silence. The
motif is then absorbed into a contrapuntal phrase leading into an exciting devel-
opmental continuation of modulating sequences and persistent syncopations. The
cadential themes are just as clearly based on the initial phrase of the movement,
notably on the thematic motto of the descending fourth. The exposition of this
Presto, as well as the remainder of the movement, shows an intense internal dy-
namism that strains the formal framework of the Classical sonata and expands it
from within—a hallmark of Beethoven’s forceful early style.
In the following Largo e mesto in D minor Beethoven exploits the contrast be-
tween thick, dark chords (with frequent use of the diminished-seventh sonority)
and a more transparent, recitative-like voice in the upper register. This slow move-
ment is one of the great tragic utterances in early Beethoven, and it displays a
sense of abortive struggle and resignation in his treatment of the sonata form. The
mood of brightness and hope at the beginning of the F major development is soon
negated by the fortissimo diminished-seventh chords that lead back into the
minor, while their register and motifs recall the movement’s opening theme. Espe-
cially powerful is the coda, in which a statement of the principal theme in the low-
est register leads to a dramatic, chromatic ascent through an entire octave in the
bass. The movement ends with references to fragments from the opening theme

46 beethoven
Ex. 14 Piano Sonata op. 10 no. 3/IV
and allusions to the registral disparities between its low chords and the extracted
motif of a semitone in the highest register.
If the ensuing transparent Minuetto leaves behind the gloomy depths of the
slow movement, the concluding rondo is characterized by an unpredictable
humor. Here the dynamic stops and starts from the Presto become a game of hide-
and-seek for the theme itself (Ex. 14). Indeed, is the theme ever found? The rondo
seems to suggest a process of seeking, doubting, and evasion. Its prominent decep-
tive cadence on B minor (bar 7) is later developed in an entire central episode built
upon a more jarring deceptive cadence on B . This episode, in turn, leads to a false
recapitulation in that key, and to a transition based on the crucial interval of the
fourth—no less important in this movement than in the Presto. The final episode
is like a quest for a more substantial but unattainable goal, and its sequences rise
ecstatically into the highest register of the piano before falling back in a short ca-
denza. In a peculiar way we seem not to have left the original ground: the open-
ing motif returns yet again, now assuming the minor mode and reminding us of
the tragic slow movement. A series of chords based on the rhythm of the initial
motif follows, and the sonata ends quietly with repetitions of the motif in the bass,
heard beneath chromatic scales and arpeggios in the right hand. Like op. 10 no.
1, this D major Sonata has an open, dissolving conclusion, as befits its commit-
ment to emerging process and ongoing development, as well as the deft circum-
spection of its wit.
S S S
If Beethoven had already by the 1790s achieved a consummate mastery in the
piano sonata, his compositional struggles are more clearly reflected in other gen-
res, in works like the Piano Concerto in B , the surviving torso of the C major
Symphony he abandoned in 1796, and in some of the six string quartets of op.
18. Beethoven himself expressed dissatisfaction with the concerto in his letter to
Breitkopf & Härtel of 22 April 1801:
I wish to add that one of my first concertos and therefore not one of the best of my
compositions, is to be published by Hofmeister, and that Mollo is to publish a con-
certo which, indeed was written later, but which also does not rank among the best
of my works in this form.9
The earliest of these concertos was the work in B eventually published as op. 19;
the second concerto, in C major, received the lower opus number 15. The history
of the B Concerto mirrors Beethoven’s growing compositional powers, since it
was revised or overhauled repeatedly between 1790 and 1801. Its origins go back
to the Bonn years; at that stage it probably had an entirely different finale, the
movement now known as the Rondo for Piano and Orchestra WoO 6. The rondo
was modeled in turn on the finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E K. 271, a
work whose influence also left traces in Beethoven’s first movement. It was the D
minor and C minor concertos of Mozart, however, together with the opening Al-
legro maestoso of the C major K. 503, that most deeply impressed Beethoven.
Beethoven’s sketches for a Symphony in C major occupied him in Vienna in
1795 and again during his concert tour to Prague and Berlin the next year. Doug-
las Johnson has speculated that Beethoven may have expected a performance of
the piece at Berlin that did not materialize. Johnson convincingly places the piece
in the context of Beethoven’s frustrated ambition to match Haydn’s towering sym-
phonic achievements, and he points as well to parallels between Beethoven’s frag-
ment and Haydn’s Symphony no. 97 in the same key.10 Characteristically, some
thematic material from the abandoned work eventually came to light five years
later in the finale of Beethoven’s First Symphony in C major op. 21, a piece that
owes little to the fragment but still falls short of Haydn’s lofty standards. The full
power of Beethoven’s symphonic style first emerges in the Second Symphony op.
36, one of a series of pathbreaking works from the watershed year of 1802.
Beethoven’s pieces for winds and for winds and strings stem almost entirely
from his Bonn period and first Vienna years, and often show Mozart’s influence.
They include the Octet in E , which Beethoven reworked as the String Quintet op.
4, the Rondino WoO 25, the Sextet for two horns and strings, and the Trio for
two oboes and English horn. The Octet, Sextet, and Trio were all eventually pub-
lished with deceptively high opus numbers: 103, 81b, and 87, respectively. Bee-
thoven wrote the Serenade op. 25 and Sextet for Winds op. 71 during 1796; the
minuet of the sextet quotes the opening of Mozart’s String Quintet in E K. 614,
as Denis Matthews pointed out.11 The most famous of all Beethoven’s chamber
works featuring winds is the Septet in E op. 20, from 1800. This attractive six-
movement divertimento is scored for bassoon, clarinet, horn, string trio, and
double bass. Its extreme popularity irked Beethoven, who did not regard his
9
10 Johnson’s full discussion of the unfinished symphony is found in the part of his Ph.D.
dissertation entitled “The Unfinished Symphony of 1795–96,” pp. 785–1037; he summa-
rizes his findings in Beethoven’s Early Sketches, vol. 1, pp. 461–69.
11
Beethoven, p. 150.
48 beethoven
pieces for wind ensemble too seriously; he claimed to have written the wind sex-
tet “in a single night.” After 1800 the evolution of his resourceful writing for
winds can be followed in his greater symphonic works.
The early performance history of the Trio in B for clarinet, cello, and piano
op. 11 of 1798 is bound up with Beethoven’s colorful competitive encounter with
the flamboyant virtuoso pianist Daniel Steibelt in 1800. According to Ferdinand
Ries, Steibelt responded to a performance of Beethoven’s trio with polite conde-
scension, offering in turn a showy improvisation on a popular theme drawn from
Joseph Weigl’s opera L’Amor marinaro—the same tune chosen by Beethoven for
the variations forming the finale of his trio. Beethoven retaliated by seizing the
cello part of a quintet by Steibelt: after placing it upside down on the music stand,
he poked out a theme with one finger from its opening bars. Offended, Steibelt
walked out during Beethoven’s ensuing improvisation, and refused any further as-
sociation with him.12 The use of a fashionable operatic tune as the basis for the
variation finale of op. 11 is reminiscent of Beethoven’s practice in many independ-
ent piano variations of the 1790s, which employ themes by such composers as
Dittersdorf, Haibel, Paisiello, Grétry, Salieri, Süssmayr, and Winter, among others.
Years later, Beethoven is supposed to have talked about substituting another finale
for the variations on Weigl’s tune in op. 11, which would have distanced this
charming work from its original topical context. After the 1790s, he preferred to
use original themes as the basis for variations in his greater works, and in the rare
exception of the Diabelli Variations he transcended the preexisting theme in un-
precedented fashion.
A fascinating example of Beethoven’s response to Mozart in the sphere of
chamber music is his Quintet in E for Piano and Winds op. 16, from 1796, an
imposing yet underestimated work that invites comparison with Mozart’s great
work for the same combination of instruments K. 452. Beethoven surely was
aware of Mozart’s quintet when he wrote his op. 16, a work composed during his
concert tour to Prague and Berlin. Douglas Johnson has speculated that wood-
wind players at Prague might have given Beethoven the idea of composing such a
work, possibly after a performance of Mozart’s K. 452, and that Beethoven sub-
sequently completed the quintet while in Berlin.13
The evaluations of commentators have often been to Beethoven’s disadvan-
tage. Donald Francis Tovey wrote that “if you want to realize the difference be-
tween the highest art of classical composition and the easygoing, safety-first prod-
uct of a silver age, you cannot find a better illustration than these two works, and
here it is Mozart who is the classic and Beethoven who is something less.”14 Echo-
ing this view, John Warrack wrote that “In the direct line of descent from Mozart’s
12
13
“Music for Prague and Berlin: Beethoven’s Concert Tour of 1796,” in Beethoven, Per-
formers, and Critics: The International Beethoven Congress, Detroit, 1977, ed. Robert
Winter and Bruce Carr (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980), p. 35. Beethoven’s
sketches for op. 16 are found exclusively on paper that he obtained during his tour.
14 Beethoven (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), p. 88.
piano and wind quintet is Beethoven’s work for the same combination . . . an in-
ferior work to its begetter.”15 Lewis Lockwood dismisses Beethoven’s quintet as
“designed for popularity and little more,” and he implies that with op. 16, as with
the Clarinet Trio op. 11, “Beethoven did well to make his piece attractive to au-
diences and performers . . . but he was fully aware that instead of attempting a
really serious work that could stand up to Mozart’s he was trolling the surface for
easy dividends.”16
The similarities between the two works go beyond the choice of instruments.
Both quintets are in three movements, and employ E major as the tonic key, with
the subdominant B major serving as the tonic key of the slow movement. The
opening movements are in sonata form, the finales in a rondo design, and each
piece contains an extended slow introduction to the first movement. These paral-
lels could scarcely have been accidental, and indeed convey the impression of Bee-
thoven placing himself in rivalry with Mozart’s quintet.
The originality of Beethoven’s approach in op. 16 begins to emerge if we iden-
tify the specific motivic content he extracted from Mozart’s work. Eyewitness re-
ports of Beethoven’s improvisations stress his capacity for developing much from
little, seeing a world in a grain of sand by making a seemingly accidental scrap of
musical material into the springboard for an imaginative musical discourse. Simi-
larly, Beethoven would often seize upon a particular motive while composing that
could serve as the basis for his musical elaborations. In this instance, it is the de-
scending motive from Mozart’s slow introduction that drew Beethoven’s atten-
tion. Heard in the bassoon beginning in bar 10 of K. 452, the motive unfolds in
sixteenth notes, passing by step through the falling seventh from G to a sustained
A ; in the ensuing statement in the horn, the figure begins on A (Ex. 15). Mozart
arranges the ensuing chain of motives so these entries sustain an ascending linear
pattern passing through an octave.
In the main theme of the Allegro, ma non troppo section in the massive first
movement of his op. 16, Beethoven develops this motivic pattern drawn from
Mozart. Following the upbeat figure B to G, the high G is placed on a downbeat,
supported by tonic harmony, and the four-bar antecedent phrase that unfolds
from this gesture outlines the descending seventh, closing on dominant harmony
(Ex. 16). Although the consequent phrase in bars 5–8 reaches A and unfolds over
more than an octave, it comes to rest on B , so that the overall shape of the ges-
ture retains the contour of a descending seventh, A to B . Within the entire open-
ing theme of sixteen bars, bars 10–14 isolate and emphasize the motivic idea of a
falling step, while the descending scale in bars 15–16 is articulated as a series of
two-note figures.
In striking ways, Beethoven alters this recognizable motivic idea in the open-
ing theme of his Allegro, ma non troppo. Mozart’s figure appeared in steady six-
teenth notes in a lower register and was then repeated in a series of sequences. In
15The Beethoven Companion, ed. Thomas K. Scherman and Louis Biancolli (New York:
Doubleday, 1972), p. 156.
16 Beethoven: The Music and The Life (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 108.
50 beethoven
Ex. 15. Mozart, Quintet for Piano and Winds K. 452, slow introduction to first move-
ment, mm. 9–10
Beethoven’s work, the motive appears in 3/4 time rather than in duple meter, as in
K. 452, and it receives a much more distinctive melodic and rhythmic profile, in
a higher register. The highest pitch G, the E a major third lower, and the lowest
tone A are each emphasized through the use of notes of longer duration, orna-
ments, or note repetition. By setting off his four-bar phrases by silences in bars 4
and 8, Beethoven presents the motive as a characteristic entity, which assumes a
leading role in the musical discourse. This descending motivic contour can be
heard throughout Beethoven’s Allegro, ma non troppo, and not only when the
opening subject is present. The dolce phrases at the beginning of the second sub-
ject and at the outset of the closing theme also partake of this gestural shape. Par-
ticularly resourceful is Beethoven’s subsequent compression of the closing theme
into a two-bar unit in triplets, which is then reinterpreted in turn as falling stac-
cato figuration in the piano leading to the end of the exposition.
Comparison of the two quintets shows that the motivic figure based on a de-
scending scale, and specifically the falling seventh G to A , assumes more promi-
nence in Beethoven’s work than in Mozart’s.17 While this figure is conspicuous in
Mozart’s slow introduction, it remains a localized musical element in K. 452. If
the motive pervades the principal themes of Beethoven’s entire first movement, its
importance is not confined to the opening Allegro, ma non troppo of op. 16. The
second movement, marked Andante cantabile, is a kind of slow movement rondo
form with episodes, assuming the pattern A-B-A1-C-A2-coda. The main theme,
which is varied and decorated each time it recurs, again displays the descending
scalar contour familiar from the first movement. The opening phrases of this dolce
theme seem to reshape the dolce phrase at the head of the second subject of the
opening Allegro. Beethoven’s sensitive reinterpretation of these phrases in his vari-
17
In view of these motivic similarities, as well as the general parallels between Mozart’s
k. 452 and Beethoven’s op. 16 in their overall structure and key schemes, it is hard to main-
tain skepticism about Beethoven’s knowledge of Mozart’s work, such as is expressed by Barry
Cooper in his study Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 66–67.
Ex. 16. Beethoven, Quintet for Piano and Winds op. 16, main theme of first movement
ations and coda ensure that the stepwise descending melodic contour remains
prominent, and this is nowhere more so than in the coda, with its falling scale in
octaves played fortissimo in triplets in the piano, over a dominant pedal point (bar
103). In the last moments of this Andante cantabile, the descending scalar motion
is heard yet again in the piano, with falling thirds sinking with a decrescendo
through a three-octave descent into the bass, leading to the cadence of the move-
ment in pianissimo.
In Beethoven’s closing rondo, on the other hand, a melodic relation to Mozart’s
quintet is not in evidence. Instead, another of Mozart’s finale themes becomes
his model—the opening subject of the rondo finale of the Piano Concerto in E
Major, K. 482, from 1785. The main rondo theme of K. 482 is based on a swing-
ing, hunting-type theme in 6/8 meter. The two-bar phrases of this theme outline a
rising contour, so that the upward shift from B to E reaches in G in bar 2, while
a sequence of this phrase moving from B flat through F reaches A in bar 4 (Ex.
17). The overall melodic peak is reached in the third phrase, which passes from
B through G to the B an octave higher, before the final two-bar unit brings a bal-
ancing melodic descent to a tonic cadence.
Like Mozart in K. 482, Beethoven initially gives the rondo Allegro theme in the
52 beethoven
Ex. 17. Mozart, Piano Concerto in E-flat Major K. 482, main theme of finale
finale of op. 16 to the pianist, and the swinging, hunting quality in 6/8 meter is re-
tained from K. 482. Moreover, the opening pair of two-bar phrases of this theme
outlines the same basic ascending pattern from B through E to G, and then from
F to A . The third two-bar phrase departs from its model, as Beethoven intensifies
the ascent to reach C, a melodic peak underscored by a crescendo and a shift to sub-
dominant harmony (Ex. 18). Beethoven composed his main theme as a kind of vari-
ation on the rondo theme of Mozart’s K. 482, but the model is effectively trans-
formed, and the rest of the movement displays little contact with Mozart’s work.
Our comparison of Mozart’s K. 452 and Beethoven’s op. 16 has uncovered mo-
tivic and thematic affinities that both confirm and limit the kinship between these
compositions. Beethoven seizes upon specific structural features of Mozart’s
music, while developing these aspects in ways that extend far beyond his models.
At the same time, in the forms and proportions employed in his quintet, Beetho-
ven departs substantially from Mozart, and his thematic model for the rondo
theme in op. 16 is taken from a different Mozartian work, K. 482. In particular,
Beethoven’s extensive development of the descending motive first heard in the bas-
soon in bar 10 of Mozart’s K. 452 provokes reflection. Mozart’s motivic idea is
extensively developed in the different musical environment of Beethoven’s op. 16.
Was he merely “trolling the surface for easy dividends” here? This situation calls
for an interpretative approach that gives more recognition to the challenging and
original features of Beethoven’s energetic early style.
A review of op. 16 from 1803 described it as “a new quintet by Beethoven, bril-
liant, serious, full of deep expression and character, but sometimes too bold, with
occasional rips in the framework [Odensprünge], in accordance with the inclination
of this composer.”18 A key term used by the reviewer is “Odensprünge,” meaning
digressions or artistic leaps, flights of fancy related here to the theory of the literary
ode. Reinhold Brinkmann has linked this notion of “Odensprung” to the “rip of the
century” (“Riss des Jahrhunderts”), connecting it to Romantic currents and
specifically to the formal experiments that would characterize Beethoven’s Ra-
sumovsky Quartets and subsequent works. Brinkmann observes in this context that
the term “Odensprung” relates to “pathbreaking conceptions in chamber music
and piano music, changes in formal function in sections and movements, and par-
18 “Ein neues Quintett von Beethoven, genialisch, ernst, voll tiefen Sinnes und Charac-
ters, nur dann und wann zu grell, hier und da Odensprünge, nach der Manier dieses Com-
ponisten,” in Ludwig van Beethovens Leben von Alexander Wheelock Thayer, vol. 2, ed.
Hermann Deiters and Hugo Riemann (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1922), p. 380. Al-
though the work under discussion is not explicitly identified, it seems clearly to be op. 16,
which had been published in March 1801.
Ex. 18. Beethoven, Quintet for Piano and Winds op. 16, main theme of finale
ticularly to the discontinuities of later works, with their richly divergent semantic
and structural aspects poised between fugue, homophonic sonata design, and in-
strumental recitative, as well as to changes in tempo and texture, breaks in narra-
tive continuity, expressive contrasts, and to tensions between form and subjectivity,
aspects that Adorno sought to recognize as definitive for Beethoven’s late works.”19
This perspective thus differs greatly from the dismissal of Beethoven’s quintet
as not a “serious work that could stand up to Mozart’s.” A richer sense of con-
text can be gained from Beethoven’s musical manuscripts and what is known of
the origins of the quintet. Douglas Johnson has claimed on the basis of study of
the manuscripts that “the Grave introduction to the first movement was in fact a
late addition, or at least . . . did not reach mature form until after the remainder
of the quintet had been worked out at length.”20 This insight makes good sense in
light of the motivic affinities we have discussed. For unlike the main body of the
first movement, the Grave introduction does not show a relationship to Mozart’s
quintet, but it instead displays an obvious parallel to the main theme of the finale,
with its independent Mozartian source, K. 482. The first notes of the unison fan-
fare idea that opens the Grave—B , E (repeated), G, E —correspond to the be-
ginning of the hunting-style theme of the finale. Most probably, Beethoven shaped
the theme at the outset of the Grave introduction as a variant of the main subject
of the finale, thereby casting connecting threads across the work as a whole. The
evocation of a character suggestive of the hunt is especially appropriate here in
light of the presence of the woodwind instruments, and particularly the horn.
Each of the movements of op. 16 moves beyond Mozartian models, even when
these are evoked, as in the first movement and the rondo. Instead of the compact
development section of the first movement of Mozart’s K. 452, Beethoven writes
a spacious, wide-ranging development that modulates initially to C minor, a key
that was emphasized in the slow introduction. There follows a reprise of the open-
19 “Wirkungen Beethovens in der Kammermusik,” in Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammer-
musik: Symposion Bonn 1984, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg and Helmut Loos (Munich:
Henle, 1987), pp. 100–101.
20 “Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof Miscellany’: Berlin Autograph 28”
(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1978), 614. A few sketches for the first
movement and more extended sketches and drafts for the second and third movements are
transcribed in Ludwig van Beethoven: Autograph Miscellany from circa 1786 to 1799;
British Museum Additional Manuscript 29801, ff. 39–162 (The “Kafka Sketchbook”), ed.
Joseph Kerman (London: British Museum, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 39–42.
54 beethoven
ing theme in the subdominant, A major, a gesture which proves to function as a
false recapitulation. Beethoven balances the development with a long coda, in
which the winds stress the head motive of the original theme, with its stepwise fall
to the tonic E , heard under a high trill in the piano, before emphatic chords bring
the movement to a powerful close.
The increasingly elaborate variations of the main theme in the Andante cantabile
owe nothing to Mozart and foreshadow Beethoven’s practice in many of his later
slow movements, from the “Andante favori” WoO 57 to the slow movements of
the late sonatas and quartets. The transitions to each return of the main theme are
delicately handled, and the exquisite use of the winds echoing the piano in some
later passages foreshadows the antiphonal effects between strings and winds in
the Adagio molto e cantabile in the Ninth Symphony. This is a touching slow
movement, providing a fitting center of gravity to the work as a whole.
Nowhere in op. 16 does the notion of an “Odensprung,” or creative flight of
fancy overturning an preexisting framework, seem so appropriate as in the con-
cluding rondo, marked Allegro, ma non troppo. As we have seen, Beethoven draws
here on another Mozartian model—the rondo theme from K. 482—and transforms
it especially through his use of the accented subdominant chord to serve as the cli-
max of his main theme. Beethoven’s propensity to reinterpret his thematic material
is much in evidence in this movement and contributes to the comic character of the
music, which assumes a more robust character than Mozart’s lighthearted wit and
revelry. The central episode of Beethoven’s rondo is full of mock bluster: all the in-
struments first hammer out the head of the rondo theme in the minor, before this
motive is tossed about between the winds, while the piano embroiders the har-
monies with rapid virtuosic passagework. This whole episode in the minor culmi-
nates in a showdown between the pianist playing double octaves fortissimo, and
the ensemble of winds in harmony, yet an ensuing transitional decrescendo featur-
ing a long descending scale to a soft landing on the familiar rondo theme dissipates
the commotion, confirming Beethoven’s humorous intent.
This mischievous dimension also surfaces in a colorful report about Beetho-
ven’s own performance of the quintet. Ferdinand Ries related an occasion when
Beethoven performed the piece with Friedrich Ramm as oboe soloist:
In the last Allegro there are several holds [or pauses] before the theme is resumed. At
one of these Beethoven suddenly began to improvise, took the Rondo for a theme and
entertained himself and the others for a considerable time, but not the other players.
They were displeased and Ramm even very angry. It was really very comical to see
them, momentarily expecting the performance to be resumed, put their instruments
to their mouths, only to put them down again. At length Beethoven was satisfied and
dropped into the Rondo. The whole company was transported with delight.21
The “sore” note of the main theme—the high C first heard in the piano in bar 6—
creates a large-scale tension that is intensified as the rondo subject is repeated and
21
Thayer-Forbes, p. 350. Actually, there is only one fermata before a return of the main
theme, in bar 75, and this is likely the place where Beethoven chose to extend the rondo
through spontaneous improvisation.
varied throughout the movement. Beethoven’s strategy is to bring this tension to

a head in the final stages, while reserving an active role for the pianist as soloist
within the ensemble. Therefore the last full statement of the theme consists of an-
tiphonal statements between the winds and piano. The winds blast the opening
phrase fortissimo in bars 227–28, answered by the pianist in forte in bars 229–30.
Then the winds venture their statement of the crucial phrase, including the
crescendo to high C, in bars 230–32.
At this juncture, Beethoven has the listener where he wants him, in a state of
suspense and uncertainty, surely not unlike the situation that so irritated Friedrich
Ramm in 1804. For long moments, the pianist seeks alternatives to the familiar
course of the rondo theme. The repeated Cs are carried upward to D , and from D
back to C; another attempt tries the rising third from C to E , with the harmonic
ambiguity expressed through a diminished-seventh harmony in the winds and the
pianist’s left hand. All of this is heard as a decrescendo, apparently in full retreat
from reliable structures and formulaic patterns. Nevertheless, the goal of the mys-
terious decrescendo, reached in bar 240, is none other than a 6/4 chord of the E
major tonic, the structural springboard to a cadence. The next, and last, version of
the main motive in the piano is played softly on the dominant, B , leading into a
long trill, heard over still subdued gestures in the winds. Then, all at once, the ac-
cumulated tension is released in a delightfully surprising fortissimo close, with rapid
scales across the keyboard leading into an emphatic motivic assertion suggestive of
a hunting call, a gesture reminiscent of the beginning of the entire work.
In this rondo, and the quintet as a whole, the resemblances to Mozart have
been diminished in a thorough process of transformation. Mozart’s music was un-
doubtedly inspirational for Beethoven, but despite the parallels between these
compositions, the differences weigh more heavily than the similarities. Tovey
clearly overstated the imitative aspects of Beethoven’s work, and our analysis does
not support his view of Beethoven’s quintet as an “easygoing, safety-first prod-
uct.” More to the point is Charles Rosen’s insight about the elusive aspects of
artistic influence, as expressed in his claim that “the most important form of
influence is that which provokes the most original and most personal work.”22 In
this context, Beethoven’s quintet has been often underestimated, and Hermann
Abert’s more balanced assessment of Mozart’s k. 452 and Beethoven’s op. 16, that
“both works truly mirror the qualities of their creators and stand artistically on
the same level,”23 has much to recommend it.
S S S
Unlike his occasional works for wind ensemble, or his isolated foray into the in-
strumentation of piano with wind quintet, Beethoven’s contributions to the duo
sonata for piano with cello or violin became an important abiding part of his ca-
reer. While he was in Berlin in 1796 he composed two innovative Sonatas for
22
“Influence: Plagiarism and Inspiration,” p. 88.
23 Abert, W. A. Mozart, herausgegeben als fünfte, vollständig neu bearbeitete und erweit-
erte Ausgabe von Otto Jahns Mozart, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1921), p. 189.
56 beethoven
Cello and Piano op. 5, and probably also wrote his sets of variations for these in-
struments on Mozart’s Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen op. 66 and on a theme from
Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus WoO 45. In the two sonatas, in F major and G minor,
the pianist assumes an essential, virtuoso role for the first time in the history of
the genre. The older continuo practice in cello sonatas is thereby discarded; a dra-
matic interplay of the two instruments is made possible. Beethoven himself per-
formed the two sonatas at the Berlin court, presumably with the famous cellist
Jean Louis Duport; they are dedicated to King Friedrich Wilhelm II. Especially
prominent are their extended slow introductions. In the G minor Sonata the in-
troduction takes on almost the weight of a slow movement. The serious, even pa-
thetic character of this Adagio sostenuto ed espressivo is maintained in the follow-
ing Allegro, before a joyous mood emerges in the G major rondo finale.
The importance of the G minor Sonata to Beethoven’s artistic development has
been underestimated. In its somber rhetoric and dramatic dialogue the slow intro-
duction of op. 5 no. 2 is prophetic. It points toward the harrowing climax of the
development in the slow movement of the Piano Sonata in E op. 7 and to “La
Malinconia” in the last of the op. 18 quartets. Its most familiar successor, how-
ever, is another slow introduction, the Grave of the Sonate Pathétique in C minor
op. 13, largely composed in 1798 and published the following year. The Pathé-
tique is one of those celebrated works whose revolutionary aura so excited artists
like the young pianist Ignaz Moscheles, who secretly copied it as a student at
Prague in 1804, in defiance of his teacher. Moscheles related that
The novelty of its style was so attractive to me, and I became so enthusiastic in my
admiration of it, that I forgot myself so far as to mention my new acquisition to
my teacher, who reminded me of his injunction, and warned me not to play or
study any eccentric productions until I had based my style upon more solid models.
Without, however, minding his injunctions, I seized upon the pianoforte works of
Beethoven as they successively appeared, and in them found a solace and a delight
such as no other composer afforded me.24
The Sturm und Drang pathos of pieces like the Pathétique was often over-
estimated in the nineteenth century but has been dismissed too readily in the twen-
tieth as self-indulgent posturing. A more promising approach is offered by Schiller’s
1793 essay Über das Pathetische; its lucid discussion of tragic art contains a con-
ceptual framework that applies well to Beethoven. Schiller stresses that the depic-
tion of suffering as such is not the purpose of art; such depiction is properly re-
garded as but a means to an end. Pathos or tragedy arises when unblinkered
awareness of suffering is counterbalanced by the capacity of reason to resist these
feelings. In such resistance to the inevitability of pain or despair is lodged the prin-
ciple of freedom. Schiller thus regards tragic art as founded on the intersection of
suffering nature on the one hand, and moral resistance to this reality on the other.
Beethoven’s Schillerian tendencies ran so deep that tragic resignation appears
relatively rarely in his works, at least as a primary determinant of artistic charac-
24
ter. In his C minor pieces, unlike Mozart’s, resignation is typically supplanted by a

resistance tending to revolution; this subjective principle in Beethoven often in-
volves a quest for an alternative vision that banishes, or at least delimits, the sway
of strife. We shall return to this idea in connection with the narrative design of the
Fifth Symphony. More germane to the Sonate Pathétique is Schiller’s basic concept
of tragic pathos as a resistance to suffering. What is it about Beethoven’s treatment
of textural dialogue or contrast and the development of musical tension that seems
to convey an existential conflict encoded in the very structure of the sound?
In the introductory Grave of this sonata, like the Largo e mesto of op. 10 no.
3, Beethoven stresses the contrast between an aspiring, transparent lyricism and
darker, dissonant chords in the bass. But in the Pathétique these aspects are
merged at the outset; the sense of resistance implied in the upward melodic un-
folding is pitted against the leaden weight of the C minor tonality, with its empha-
sis on diminished-seventh chords. While penetrating the higher pitch registers, the
melodic ascent becomes both poignant and fragile, since it is dependent on the un-
yielding harmonic underpinning of the bass. The recitative-like phrases near the
end of the Grave are harmonically parenthetical, poised on a deceptive cadential
inflection that delays the imminent resolution to the tonic C minor until the be-
ginning of the ensuing Allegro di molto e con brio.
At this moment of transformation Beethoven freely reshapes the rising chordal
progression from the Grave above a rumbling bass pedal of tremolo octaves. The
bass shows a powerful inclination to ascend, eventually forcing the music out of
the tonic C minor to the dominant of E . Here, at the threshold of the second sub-
ject group, he resorts to a variant of his innovation from op. 2 no. 2: he avoids en-
tering the key of E and remains instead on its minor dominant, creating thereby
a large-scale tension underlying an immense passage forty bars long. The tension
is reflected motivically in a dramatic dialogue exploiting registral contrast, in a
manner reminiscent of the slow introduction, while also foreshadowing the first
movement of Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata op. 31 no. 2 of 1802.
Most striking is how the Grave returns to preface the development and the
coda. Beethoven thereby underscores the juxtaposition of tempos as the germinal
idea of the movement, and he gradually deepens this conception. In the develop-
ment he quotes phrases from the Grave in the ensuing Allegro, confirming their
relationship, whereas at the climax just before the recapitulation he heightens the
registral contrast first exposed in the slow introduction. It is in the coda, however,
that the dramatic core of the movement is encapsulated in a single gesture. The
opening Grave phrases resolve here, for the first time, to bare octaves on C. This
hint of resigned capitulation is abruptly negated by Beethoven’s intensified clos-
ing reinterpretation of the Allegro di molto e con brio. The leverage, as so often
in Beethoven, is rhythmic: foreshortening of the closing phrase of the recapitula-
tion propels the music into the final accented chords, ending the movement with
the precise sonority with which it had begun.
The basic expressive tension is not laid to rest here but only disclosed: the cycle
of suffering and resistance could continue indefinitely. This demands a response
from the following movements if they are to be linked psychologically with the
58 beethoven
first; and in fact the Sonate Pathétique displays the outlines of a narrative se-
quence on which Beethoven was to build in subsequent compositions. The ensuing
Adagio cantabile offers the fundamental contrast of hymnic serenity, set in Bee-
thoven’s characteristic key for lyricism within a C minor context—the flat sixth,
A major. Characteristic too is the registral correspondence between the end of the
first movement and the beginning of the Adagio: the same C is reharmonized as
the point of transition into a new region of consciousness and feeling. Accord-
ingly, any extended pause or break of concentration between the movements is de-
structive to the artistic effect. The form of the Adagio is that of a slow-movement
rondo, with two varied repetitions of the broad, lyrical subject separated by epi-
sodes touching on minor keys. The design is rounded off by a coda echoing the
cadential phrase of the theme. Beethoven avoids an unambiguous close by ending
in the middle of the bar; and he extends the final chord with a fermata, implying
an immediate continuation into the C minor finale.
The rondo finale is clearly linked to each of the preceding movements. The
head of its main theme, for instance, is derived from the beginning of the second
subject in the Allegro di molto e con brio. The relationship between the rondo and
the preceding Adagio is more involved. The role of the Adagio as lyrical comple-
ment to the turbulent outer movements is bound up with the tonal relationship of
A major to C minor, and the rondo draws heavily on this association. Thus the
sonority of the German augmented-sixth chord built on A appears conspicuously
in the accompaniment to the rondo theme, whereas the central episode of the for-
mal design is actually in the key of A major. In the coda, moreover, Beethoven re-
captures this tonal relationship with a concentrated sense of summation. The last
appearance of the head of the rondo theme (bar 203) appears in A major, in the
same register as the main theme of the Adagio cantabile; Beethoven even strips
away the flowing left-hand accompaniment to enhance the similarity.
Although this last-minute departure into a remote key might seem to disturb
seriously the formal equilibrium, in fact Beethoven uses the technique as a means
of formal integration and resolution of tensions. For in the final bars, the German
augmented-sixth chord on A serves as the pivot for the return to C minor, while
the final cadence, with its powerful descending scale in triplets from high F, as-
sumes a structural significance evidently overlooked in the analytical literature. A
cardinal principle of Classical sonata procedure entails the ultimate resolution to
the tonic of material originally heard in secondary keys. In this instance, the
downward-rushing triplets recall earlier musical gestures, for example, descents
from high F above the dominant-seventh chord of C minor (bars 58–60, 117–20),
or, in the coda, above the dominant seventh of A (bars 198–201). Only at the very
end of the finale is the sweeping downward run directed emphatically into the C
25For an example of this practice in Haydn, see the first movement of the String Quar-
tet in C op. 33 no. 3, in which a last-minute adjustment enables Haydn to close the move-
ment with its opening phrase.
minor triad. The trick of delaying resolution of such a gesture until the final bar
was a specialty of Haydn, but never before Beethoven had it assumed such dra-
matic force and significance.25
The rondo finale of the Pathétique does more than allude to the preceding
movements; it welds these allusions into the intrinsic musical design. Important in
this respect is the detached, serene character of the central episode; its contrapun-
tal subject is built on the interval of the fourth—the motivic hallmark of the
hymn-like main theme of the Adagio. This initially calm episode stands apart from
the rest of the movement in its texture, rhythm, key, and even its form—it unfolds
as a series of variations. Variation procedure is the most static and unified of mu-
sical forms, since it revolves around repetition of a basic thematic shape. And al-
though Beethoven is clearly indebted here to the venerable tradition of variation
writing, he achieves a qualitatively new realization of artistic possibilities by lead-
ing his chain of variations on an abstract contrapuntal formula into a resumption
of the strife-ridden music in C minor.
Ex. 19 Pathétique Sonata op. 13/III, bars 73–107

60 beethoven
Beethoven’s main resources here are rhythmic diminution and a rise in register.
The registral starting point of the theme is identical with the beginning of the Ada-
gio cantabile, whereas the first variation of the eight-bar theme ascends an octave
in pitch, while subdividing the basic rhythmic motion from half to quarter notes.
After a four-bar interlude Beethoven brings in the second variation up another oc-
tave and then fills out the tonal space through a further diminution in rhythm to
eighth notes (Ex. 19). The configuration of fourths still heard in the original form
in the right hand is “composed out” in inversion in the long falling scale into the
bass. The structure of falling fifths A –D –G–C–F–B is unraveled and fleshed out
in the scale, gaining sinuous strength reflected in the crescendo to forte when the
descending scale-pattern begins in the right hand. This process of elaboration gen-
erates energy for the ensuing transition in character, as Beethoven leaves A major
for the dominant of C minor, building toward a dramatic climax through further
rhythmic foreshortening.
This passage thus embodies on a larger scale the same relations as does the
coda: a calm, detached oasis of sound in A dissipates into C minor pathos. What
Beethoven does here is to incorporate a “foreshortening” or compressed formu-
lation of the progression between movements into the finale proper. The rondo re-
sponds to its context in the work as a whole, twice making itself transparent to
the Adagio cantabile. The resulting progression, as often in Beethoven, is from
contemplation to action, and harbors an unmistakable hint of narrative strategies
in works to come. This contrapuntal topos in A major is the departure point of
a creative journey leading ultimately to the fugue of op. 110; the short series of
variations on it is a much more distant prototype for the slow movement of the
Appassionata or even for the Arietta movement of the last sonata, op. 111. Seeds
for many of Beethoven’s greatest works were sown in the impressive piano sonatas
from his first decade in Vienna.
3
R Crisis and Creativity:

1799–1802
R
The years around the turn of the century saw an important transition in Beetho-
ven’s artistic development, accompanied by a biographical crisis of major propor-
tions. No one category of analysis can adequately describe these complex events.
The tension between consolidation and innovation, between retrospective and
progressive tendencies, is particularly conspicuous in the music up to 1801, when,
according to Czerny, Beethoven told his friend Wenzel Krumpholz that “I am only
a little satisfied with my previous works. From today on I will take a new path.”1
Beginning in 1802, we can indeed discern a “new path” in works like the Piano
Sonatas op. 31, the Piano Variations opp. 34 and 35, and the Second Symphony
op. 36. But close examination of the music reveals deep continuities with Beetho-
ven’s earlier and later works. The new path was not entirely new, and it was
long—the expression attributed to Hippocrates, “ars longa, vita brevis,” was a fa-
vorite dictum of Beethoven’s which he repeatedly set as a canon many years later.
The claim about the “new path” that Czerny attributed to Beethoven, and even
the similar documented comment from the composer himself in 1802 concern-
ing the variations opp. 34 and 35, need to be interpreted cautiously, with due at-
tention to other historical evidence. With the passage of time, a simplified retro-
spective order tends to be imposed on the rich disorder of complex events, which
are easily distorted thereby. In particular, we should avoid assuming, on the basis
of verbal reports alone, that Beethoven set out to be more original at any one par-
ticular moment in time. As Hans-Werner Küthen has observed, Beethoven’s claim
about the innovative quality of his opp. 34 and 35 variations was evidently con-
nected to his irritation with a recent publication of music by his old friend from
Bonn, the flautist and composer Anton Reicha, in which reference was made to a
“new method of writing fugues.”2 Beethoven’s letter to Gottfried Christoph Här-
1
On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, p. 13; translation
amended. This remark supposedly followed the completion of the Sonata in D, op. 28, the
autograph score of which is dated 1801. See Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions of Con-
temporaries, p. 31.
2 “Beethovens ‘wirklich ganz neue Manier’—Eine Persiflage”; also see Küthen’s essay
“Pragmatic instead of Enigmatic: ‘The Fifty-First Sonata’ of Beethoven,” The Beethoven

Newsletter 7 (1992), p. 73 note 14.
61
62 beethoven
tel in December 1802 refers to “all the commotion about a new method of v[aria-
tions], as would be made by our neighbours, the Gallo-Franks, as for instance
how a certain French composer offers fugues according to a new method [après
une nouvelle méthode], which consists in the fact that the fugue is no longer a
fugue, etc.”3 The term “French composer” was Beethoven’s replacement for the
name “Reicha,” but it also fits the context of his allusion here to the German idiom
“Da kommt einem ja die Galle hoch!” Beethoven found Reicha’s claim unjustified
and therefore “galling” and responded verbally with one of his characteristic puns.
His own similar allusion to a “new manner” in his variations of 1802 may repre-
sent his ironic response to, or “persiflage” of, Reicha’s statement, but in Beethoven’s
case the innovative presumption is actually confirmed by the musical content. Bee-
thoven’s claim cannot be discounted, but it needs to be understood in context.
There is a special biographical background to Beethoven’s creative develop-
ment during these years, but we shall attempt here to reevaluate the facts of his
life in the light of the music, thus inverting the traditional procedure of artistic
biography. His composing activities are documented in much more detail than his
biography, and their sources are less familiar. My strategy is therefore to examine
Beethoven’s personal crisis primarily in the light of his compositional preoccupa-
tions. His stylistic development, on the other hand, can be assessed only on the
basis of a substantial selection of works in different genres. Attention will be given
in this chapter not only to solo piano works but to three other genres: the quar-
tet, concerto, and symphony.
In 1799, despite his formidable accomplishments and increasing stature, Bee-
thoven still remained cautious and even somewhat insecure when tackling those
musical genres in which Haydn and Mozart reigned supreme. In opera and the
piano concerto, a comparison with Mozart’s great legacy was inevitable; for
the symphony and string quartet, Haydn’s model was perhaps even more intimi-
dating, and more recent. Beethoven showed a particular self-consciousness about
his early works in these genres, and he exerted a tireless will to match the accom-
plishments of his great predecessors on their own ground.
One of the first significant works in which the brilliant young pianist-composer
staked claim to the universal musical legacy of the Viennese Classical style was his
Symphony in C major op. 21, completed in 1800. Stylistically, the First Symphony
is firmly rooted in the eighteenth century, especially the graceful Andante cantabile
con moto in F major, with its rococo rhetoric, and the playfully humorous, Hayd-
nesque finale. Bolder and more progressive are the first movement, with its impres-
sive slow introduction and resourceful orchestration highlighting the woodwinds.
At the beginning of this movement, as in the Prometheus Overture, Beethoven
heightens the musical tension by avoiding an immediate statement of the tonic
triad. Especially innovative in op. 21 is the dance movement, in the penultimate
position. Beethoven entitled the movement Menuetto, but that designation is con-
tradicted by his indication “Allegro molto e vivace” and by the swift metronome
marking, not to mention the sharp rhythmic accents of the opening section. The
3
Anderson, ed., The Letters of Beethoven, vol. 1, L. 67; translation amended.
crisis and creativity: 1799–1802 63
dynamic tension is evident from the very first phrase, in which a rising scale pat-
tern in iambic rhythm drives with a crescendo to an emphatic cadence in the dom-
inant. The trio retains the tonic key of C major and develops the contrasts in tim-
bre from the first movement in a delightful dialogue of pulsing woodwind phrases
and swirling string figuration. More than other movements of the symphony, this
Allegro molto e vivace breaks free from the burden and the anxiety of influence;
it displays a striking stylistic originality, while foreshadowing the scherzos in some
of Beethoven’s later symphonies.
It is in the context of this ambitious struggle with the legacy of Haydn and
Mozart that we may view Beethoven’s biggest single compositional project of the
first decade at Vienna: the set of six Quartets op. 18, written during 1798–1800.
The very number of pieces in the opus recalls the practice of Beethoven’s predeces-
sors: Haydn’s Quartets opp. 20 and 33 and Mozart’s famous Haydn Quartets were
all published in groups of six. In certain of Beethoven’s op. 18 Quartets the influence
of these earlier pieces is direct and tangible. Op. 18 no. 2, in G major, is Haydnesque
in spirit, reminding us of the older master’s quartet in the same key from his op. 33,
as Joseph Kerman observed.4 And Beethoven’s A major Quartet op. 18 no. 5 shows
a still closer kinship with Mozart’s quartet in this key from his Haydn set, K. 464,
parts of which Beethoven even copied out in score. According to Czerny, Beethoven
once exclaimed about Mozart’s K. 464: “That’s what I call a work! In it, Mozart
was telling the world: ‘Look what I could do if you were ready for it!’”5
In view of the size of the project, and Beethoven’s inexperience in the medium,
it is not surprising that the op. 18 Quartets are more uneven in quality than some
of his earlier piano sonatas or the three String Trios op. 9 of 1798, which Beetho-
ven had described as “la meilleure de [mes] œuvres.” Like the First Symphony,
these quartets have shortcomings that Beethoven soon redressed in his later pieces
in these forms; for this reason, an awareness of the historical context becomes an
especially important part of the critical enterprise. Beethoven frankly acknowl-
edged his struggle with op. 18 no. 1, in F major. This quartet was actually the sec-
ond of the pieces composed; Beethoven presumably placed it at the head of the set
because it is the grandest and most immediately impressive. It exists in a version
that Beethoven presented to his friend Karl Friedrich Amenda in 1799—not just
a draft, but a set of parts then intended as the finished work. Two years later, how-
ever, after completing his magnum opus of the first Vienna decade, Beethoven cau-
tioned Amenda to keep the manuscript to himself, since “he had only now learned
how to write quartets properly.”
Many of Beethoven’s revisions involved refinements in scoring, but one far-
reaching change was the decrease in motivic saturation in the opening Allegro con
brio movement, reducing the number of occurrences of the opening turn figure
from 130 to 104.6 The number of accents was similarly curtailed, although one
4
The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 44–45.
5
On the Proper Performance, p. 8.
6
Cf. Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, p. 32, and the detailed comparison of the two
versions in Levy, Beethoven’s Compositional Choices.
64 beethoven
striking new rhetorical feature was added—the two unison fortissimo scale figures
that mark the beginning of the coda in this sonata-form movement. Even in the
movement’s published form Beethoven exploits the turn figure with concentrated
single-mindedness. The opening theme is permeated with it, and the transition be-
gins with sequences of it leading to accented diminished harmonies. In the ensuing
passage, and again near the end of the exposition, the cello takes it up as an osti-
nato figure, which generates a whole chain of turns in rapid figuration. In the
development section Beethoven is obsessed more than ever with the figure. He re-
sourcefully exploits its rhythm in the agitated retransition to the fortissimo recapit-
ulation: the characteristic threefold upbeat pulse is detached from the turn, rhyth-
mically augmented, and syncopated as well in this striking if somewhat blatant
passage.
The slow movement in D minor, marked Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato, is
somewhat reminiscent of the Largo e mesto in this key in Beethoven’s great Piano
Sonata in D op. 10 no. 3. A specific poetic association is known for this Adagio.
Amenda reported that Beethoven wrote it while thinking of the burial-vault scene
in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The connection is confirmed by one of Bee-
thoven’s sketchleaves, which contains the inscription “les derniers soupirs” over
a passage emphasizing the interval of the diminished seventh. Such dissonances,
together with an intense dramatic rhetoric, effective dynamic contrasts, and an
evocative use of silences, all support the expression of pathos in this Adagio, the
centre of gravity in the quartet as a whole. The following scherzo and finale are
less weighty in tone and substance, though they offer some captivating passages,
such as the humorous trio, with its striking rhythmic and textural contrasts.
The opening Allegro of the G major Quartet op. 18 no. 2 shows a thorough as-
similation of Haydn’s comedy of manners merged with an occasional dramatic
thrust that is unmistakably Beethovenian. The beginning of the recapitulation, for
instance, is rhythmically charged by accented octaves, casting the theme in a new
light. The following Adagio cantabile employs a curious formal design, with a
dance-like Allegro interpolated between the slow lyrical theme and its decorated
recapitulation. Beethoven succeeds here in a seemingly paradoxical endeavor: to
maximize differences between the two sections while retaining a tangible struc-
tural link, involving a similar motivic contour between the two themes.7 A point
of this music is to show how the imagination can negotiate between seemingly in-
compatible realms, linking strange worlds together in a tensional balance. The
somewhat static character of the Adagio cantabile, with its heavy cadences and
portentous pauses, invites juxtaposition with its antipode, the swift and nimble
interlude supplied by the Allegro. In this sense, each of the two sections of the
movement can be regarded as a complement or critique of the other. The quest for
a paradoxical unity of opposites seems all the more fitting here in view of the hu-
morous spirit of the quartet as a whole.
In the scherzo and the finale Beethoven employs a rhetoric bristling with Hayd-
7
This thematic parallel is discussed in detail in my article “Transformational Processes
in Beethoven’s Op. 18 Quartets,” pp. 22–23.
nesque devices. The false recapitulation in the closing Allegro molto quasi Presto
steals in quietly in A major, and then suspiciously repeats the rising scale pattern
from the theme, conveying a character of puzzlement. Haydn typically handles
such tricks with finesse; Beethoven makes his point more bluntly, by restating the
ascending motif in doubled note values in a broad spacing, and with a crescendo
as well. Not infrequently, a tension can be felt in these early quartets between a
refined, courtly rhetoric and a powerful directness of expression that is typical of
Beethoven.
Another striking parallel with Haydn is offered by the Andante and variations
in C major forming the middle movement of Beethoven’s G major Piano Sonata
op. 14 no. 2, a work completed shortly before the quartets, in 1799. The artless
simplicity of Beethoven’s Andante tune is underscored by repetitions of its open-
ing phrase; one eminent critic was even provoked into describing the movement
as “stupid.” Yet the expressive heart of the piece lies in the tension between the
apparent naïveté of the theme and its reinterpretation through the addition of syn-
copations and dissonances in Beethoven’s variations. This tension is sustained
until the very end of the coda, with Beethoven’s humorous intent confirmed once
and for all in the surprising fortissimo outburst of the final chord! In these varia-
tions, Beethoven enlarges on the famous musical joke contained in another An-
dante movement in C—the slow movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony (no.
94). Instead of placing the shocking chord in immediate juxtaposition to a soft
and harmless theme, as Haydn did, Beethoven reserves the disruptive gesture until
the close, challenging the sober listener to question the seriousness of the entire
musical discourse, while also forging a transition to the finale—a playfully humor-
ous rondo bearing the unusual designation “scherzo.”
The third quartet of op. 18, in D major, opens with an Allegro of rather re-
laxed, even somewhat bland character, but Beethoven resourcefully experiments
with the listener’s expectations. Once again the moment of recapitulation receives
special reinforcement. Whereas the movement begins quietly with unaccompa-
nied whole notes on the dominant-seventh chord in the first violin, Beethoven
later supports this sonority harmonically with a chromatic ascent reaching C at
the end of the exposition. This pitch in turn becomes the focus for a huge fortis-
simo climax concluding the development, with the C resolved into the delicate
continuation of the main theme. The following Andante con moto in B major is
characterized by warmly lyrical canonic textures and contains one of the early in-
stances in Beethoven of a coda in which the basic thematic material is gradually
stripped away and virtually dissolved into silence. Beethoven labeled the penulti-
mate dance movement neither “scherzo” nor “minuet” but merely “Allegro.” It
relies heavily on motivic development of the appoggiatura or turn figure from the
first phrase of the theme; the trio, or “minore,” is based on the descending linear
configuration from the beginning of the Allegro, now heard in longer note values.
The presto finale further develops the motivic turn D–C –D from the preceding
Allegro in an expansive sonata form spiked with canonic episodes. The piece ends
in a gesture of Haydnesque wit, as Beethoven reduces the music to the turn alone,
heard pianissimo in all four instruments.
66 beethoven
The Quartet in C minor op. 18 no. 4, and especially its opening Allegro ma non
tanto, is one of the most controversial of Beethoven’s compositions. Hugo Rie-
mann speculated that it was based on older material, perhaps even dating back to
the Bonn period; and Kerman has followed up this line of thought, concluding
that “the C-minor first movement is more crudely written than anything in the
other op. 18 Quartets.”8 Ferdinand Ries related a conversation in which he
pointed out to Beethoven a case of parallel fifths in this work, to which Beetho-
ven replied “Now, and who has forbidden them?” To Ries’s answer, that this
grammatical failing was forbidden by Marpurg, Kirnberger, Fuchs, and other the-
orists, Beethoven defiantly declared “And so I allow them!”9
More recently Richard Kramer has analyzed the parallel fifths which occur at
the transition to the development in this first movement, a passage in which strong
chords preface a new statement of the main theme in G minor (Ex. 20).10 The bald
unison progression from C through C to D overlaps here with the upper-voice
ascent from A (⫽ G ) to A. It is difficult to explain this particular irregularity in
voice-leading as being required by artistic necessity. Beethoven’s protest to the
contrary, a lapse in technique is indicated; nor is it an isolated failure. In fact, Bee-
thoven’s earlier String Trio in this key, op. 9 no. 3, is a considerably more polished
work than the C minor Quartet. Suspicions are rightly aroused about the piece
being of early origin, but studies of the manuscript sources have not lent much
support to such speculation.
Ultimately, the roughness of this movement seems to arise from an imbalance
between the passionate force of Beethoven’s “C minor mood” and his ability to
mediate or control this idiom in the artistic form as a whole. A comparison with
another C minor piece, the first movement of the Sonate Pathétique op. 13, is re-
vealing. The beginning of the Pathétique slow introduction is extremely close to
the opening of the quartet in its rhythm, register, and rhetoric, with a parallel
placement of expressive appoggiaturas in each work. The Pathétique relies on the
repeated juxtaposition of its Grave introduction with the Allegro con brio, how-
ever; it does not depend so heavily on the vehement but rather simplistic gestures
that sustain the quartet. Least convincing in the Allegro ma non tanto of the quar-
tet is perhaps the succession of fortissimo chords alternating between tonic and
dominant at the end of the main theme and at other junctures, including the pas-
sage with the parallel fifths. To be sure, Beethoven is exposing in these bars an
important rhythmic configuration, one that is implicit within the main theme it-
self. But that is not quite enough to justify these powerful outbursts, nor to resolve
suspicions about the somewhat overblown rhetoric of the movement.
The other movements as well may not always convince according to the lofty
8
Riemann’s analysis appears in his 1917 German edition of the first volume of Thayer’s
biography, pp. 188–90; the passage is translated and commented on by Kerman in The Bee-
thoven Quartets, pp. 65–71.
9 Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions of Contemporaries, pp. 49–50.
10 “Counterpoint and Syntax: On a Difficult Passage in the First Movement of Beetho-
ven’s String Quartet in C minor, Opus 18 No. 4,” p. 116.

Ex. 20 String Quartet op. 18 no. 4/I, bars 76–96
standards set by Beethoven’s greater works, but they do contain unusual and
striking ideas. For the finale, for example, Beethoven employed a kind of rustic
gypsy melody in the first violin which is accelerated to prestissimo in the coda. At
the close, Beethoven first separates the head of this theme from its continuation of
six repeated notes, and then allows the latter motif to soar quietly into the very
highest register, before ending the piece with arresting fortissimo strokes.
As we have seen, Mozart’s Quartet in A major K. 464 was an inspiring in-
fluence on Beethoven’s op. 18 no. 5, in the same key. The impact of Mozart is also
felt in several of Beethoven’s piano sonatas of these years, including the two little
Sonatas in G minor and G major that he wrote between 1795 and 1798 and even-
tually published as op. 49, the two Sonatas op. 14 from 1799, and the Sonata in
B major op. 22 from 1800. In the opening Allegro of the E major Sonata op. 14
no. 1 the Mozartian influence is reflected in the skilful arrangement of distinct yet
related musical figures. Beethoven’s familiar technique of using a single dominat-
ing rhythmic motif is not in evidence. Instead, he devises the three phrases of the
main theme as a network of thematic variations stressing the interval of a rising
fourth. There is a Mozartian flavor as well to the chromatic touches in the main
subsidiary theme, and perhaps also to the transparent contrapuntal textures so
evocative of chamber music. Op. 14 no. 1 is the only sonata Beethoven ever ar-
68 beethoven
ranged for string quartet, and his decision to undertake the transcription in 1802
was surely motivated by the special affinity of this sonata with the quartet medium.
In Beethoven’s A major Quartet, on the other hand, the Mozartian influence is
centered on the third movement—like Mozart’s a set of variations. At the same
time, Beethoven’s five variations on his Andante cantabile theme mark a signi-
ficant moment in his lifelong fascination with this form; there is a distant fore-
shadowing here of the slow movements of the Appassionata Sonata and Archduke
Trio, among other works. As in these pieces, the theme has a quality of elemental
simplicity, and it serves as an effective point of departure for a series of transfor-
mations based on progressively faster rhythmic figuration—a venerable device in
the history of variation writing. The opening phrases of the melody do little but
spell out the interval of the sixth A–F , both ascending and descending. This basic
structure is elaborated in increasingly intricate textures and figuration as far as
Variation 4, a still, mysterious, chromatic version of the theme. Then the rhyth-
mic development reaches its climax in the high spirits of the last variation, in
which a new version of the theme in the inner voices is glorified by trills in the first
violin and accented leaps in the cello. The movement ends with a soft, reflective
reminiscence of the theme in a form close to its original.
Of the other movements, the Allegro finale is nearest to Mozart. Near the end of
the development Beethoven even borrows thematic material from K. 464, and he
demonstrates mastery in handling the transparent counterpoint characteristic of the
older master. A problem here, however, as elsewhere in the A major Quartet, is that
the process of modeling has muted something of Beethoven’s own individual voice.
Kerman concluded that “it must be counted the least personal of the quartets.”11
The opening Allegro con brio of the final quartet of op. 18, in B major, shows
a humorous spirit and lightness of tone. The delicately ornamented Adagio ma
non troppo that follows shares with it a certain economy in form and expression.
The most innovative and challenging movements are the energetic, syncopated
scherzo and, above all, the finale, with its juxtaposition of radically contrasting
material. The finale is a highly original conception that does not suggest the in-
fluence of Haydn or Mozart. Beethoven labels its opening Adagio section “La Ma-
linconia,” and he recalls the Adagio in the midst of the following dance-like Alle-
gretto quasi Allegro. We are reminded here of his abiding preoccupation with
composite movements embracing strongly contrasting ideas. An earlier work in
this vein is the Sonate Pathétique, which twice recalls the slow introduction in the
context of the Allegro con brio. Later, more complex examples include the inter-
weaving of scherzo and Allegro in the Fifth Symphony, and of arioso and fugue in
the late Piano Sonata op. 110. Beethoven’s integration of powerful contrasts
within a larger continuity is also a conspicuous feature in some of his last quar-
tets, such as the first movements of op. 130 in B and op. 132 in A minor.
Extraordinary in “La Malinconia” are the mysterious chromatic progressions,
which for all their effect of harmonic disorientation are masterfully shaped into
an integrated dramatic progression. After this enigmatic harmonic labyrinth, the
11 The Beethoven Quartets, p. 64.

following dance in 3/8 time provides an effective contrast and resolution of ten-
sion; and it also reshapes the falling third and rising steps from “La Malinconia”
in a new context, suggesting a rejection of melancholy (Ex. 21). Typically for
Beethoven, however, this optimistic transformation is not permanent but condi-
tional. He later brings back ten bars of the Adagio juxtaposed with four of the
Allegretto, and then two further bars of the Adagio, before the dance finally re-
asserts itself, shaking off the memory of “La Malinconia.” The intimate facing of
these contrasting modalities represents perhaps the most single arresting idea in
all the op. 18 Quartets.
S S S
Up to now our narrative has traced Beethoven’s increasing but still imperfect mas-
tery of the legacy of Haydn and Mozart; the fulfillment of Waldstein’s prophecy was
actually a lifelong task for Beethoven, an occupation that ceased to be a problem by
1809 but which left traces even in the last quartets of 1824–26. The evocative jux-
taposition of gaiety and melancholy in the finale of op. 18 no. 6 may be seen to sig-
nal a more profound conflict, with multiple implications. For it is around this time
that Beethoven was forced to confront a demon from within: a progressive deterio-
ration in his hearing that could no longer be ignored. His increasing deafness
plunged him into despair at the very time when his outward success seemed assured.
A pair of letters to Franz Wegeler and Amenda from 29 June and 1 July 1801 re-
spectively document Beethoven’s response to his disability. To Wegeler he wrote:
For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I
find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf.
And to Amenda he confided:

You will realize what a sad life I must now lead, seeing that I am cut off from
everything that is dear and precious to me. . . . I must withdraw from everything;
and my best years will rapidly pass away without my being able to achieve all that
my talent and my strength have commanded me to do. Sad resignation, to which
I am forced to have recourse. Needless to say, I am resolved to overcome all this,
but how is it going to be done?12
As Beethoven makes clear, the onset of his deafness predates these letters by a
considerable period; what precipitated his anguish was a growing recognition of
both the incurable nature of his condition and the implications for his social and
artistic life. The most important written documentation of Beethoven’s personal
crisis is the Heiligenstadt Testament, dated 6 October 1802, well over a year after
his letters to Wegeler and Amenda (we shall return to it below in connection with
the Eroica Symphony). Its references to suicide, contemplated and then rejected
in favor of stoical acceptance of his condition, show a deepening of the attitudes
expressed in his letters of the preceding year. It appears from these documents that
Beethoven came to terms with his infirmity only very gradually. The crisis of his
deafness forced him to reconsider the most fundamental assumptions about his
12
Anderson, vol. 1, L. 51 (to Wegeler), L. 53 (to Amenda).
70 beethoven
Ex. 21 String Quartet op. 18 no. 6/IV
life and art. For, as Beethoven put it to Amenda, he was consumed by doubts not
only about his social life but about his “being able to achieve all that [his] talent
and strength commanded [him] to do.” One of his worst fears may have been that
his deafness would stifle realization of his artistic potential.
The relationship between Beethoven’s deafness and his artistic development is
fascinating. Despite his initial fears, and now discredited attempts to characterize
his late style as a degeneration resulting from a lack of hearing, his art actually be-
came richer as his hearing declined. Whereas the evolution of his so-called heroic
style closely paralleled the personal crisis articulated in his Heiligenstadt Testa-
ment, the emergence of his late style, or “third period,” was marked by the com-
plete erosion of his hearing many years later, around 1818. The parallel between
Beethoven’s stylistic development and his increasing deafness is more than coinci-
dental, and it has not escaped notice. For instance, Solomon assesses the period
around 1801–2 as follows: “one begins to suspect that Beethoven’s crisis and his
extraordinary creativity were somehow related, and even that the former may
have been the necessary precondition of the latter.”13
In the very same letters to Wegeler and Amenda lamenting his condition Bee-
thoven wrote: “I live entirely in my music, and hardly have I completed one com-
position when I have already begun another.” He even added: “Why, at the mo-
ment I feel equal to anything. Since your departure I have been composing all
types of music, except operas and sacred works.” Beethoven’s expressions of
confidence are fully justified by the works of this period, and not only by those for
piano but increasingly in “all types of music.” The consciously innovative thrust
to his music from this time can be confirmed by analysis, lending general support
to the notion of a “new path,” though not to the fixation of this pathbreaking
trend to any particular point in time.
The relationship between the biography of an artist and his works is a delicate
one. But however difficult it may be to establish the precise nature of the relation-
ship, the connection cannot be severed in principle. It is pointless and unnecessary
to isolate works of art from their biographical and historical context. At the same
time, the successful artwork, if regarded in the sense of Langer’s “unconsummated
symbol,” cannot be reduced to an expression of the artist’s personality or re-
garded merely as a historical artifact. These alternatives simplify or evade the
critical challenge posed by the phenomenon of creativity. As Solomon has written:
creativity is a threatening subject . . . the artist himself is a dangerous child. . . .
Little wonder that he arouses extremes of ambivalent feeling—hostility and ado-
ration, rage and awe, hate and love. Little wonder that those critics who speak for
their own timidities, as well as for fearful social orders, have undertaken to neu-
tralize him and his work by every conceivable strategy.14
We are now in a position to gain new perspective on Beethoven’s creative

achievement from sources that were not available, or not fully available, to ear-
13 Beethoven, p. 115.
14 Beethoven Essays, pp. 110–11.
72 beethoven
lier commentators. The most important of these is the rich legacy of manuscripts
that Beethoven left at his death in 1827, including a large number of autograph
scores and more than 8,000 pages of musical sketches. The Beethoven sketch-
books and loose sketchleaves represent the richest documentation of the creative
process available for any composer of the first rank. Yet because of the large-scale
dispersal of these sources during the decades following Beethoven’s death, and the
upheaval of the two world wars in our century, a proper overview of them became
available only in 1985, about a century after Gustav Nottebohm’s pioneering sur-
veys of the sketchbooks that were then accessible for study.15 A significant body
of analytical work has now been produced on the Beethoven sketches, and their
significance for our understanding of the music has become clearer, although
much still remains to be done.
When we contemplate this massive legacy of sketchbooks, a correspondence
soon emerges between Beethoven’s response to his deafness and his ever-deepening
commitment to his art. Although Beethoven had made sketches in earlier years,
his first use of a bound sketchbook was in mid-1798, in connection with the op.
18 Quartets. The process of rigorous self-criticism so richly documented in his
sketches mirrors something of the increasing complexity and density of his style.
The genesis of the Eroica, for instance, is documented in a long series of drafts,
famous since Nottebohm. Much less familiar are the copious sketches from Bee-
thoven’s last decade. For works like the Missa solemnis or the C minor Quartet
op. 131 Beethoven made hundreds of pages of sketches in multiple formats before
writing out the autograph scores, which themselves were often subject to far-
reaching revisions necessitating new bouts of sketching.
Thus, long before Beethoven would have been forced to abandon composition
at the piano because of his increasing deafness he had already adopted a method
of composition specially designed to support his ambition to follow a “new path.”
The sketches are fixed improvisations, preserving a partial record of those sounds
Beethoven heard while his works progressed toward their final shape. The avail-
ability of these sources not only provides a remarkably detailed record of the
chronology of his works, it also reveals important principles that guided his crea-
tive method. Many aspects of composition from melodic refinement to large-scale
formal continuity are clarified in them. It is doubtful whether these documents
have yet received the recognition they deserve. Their ontological status is nebu-
lous, poised as it is between the biographical and the aesthetic, and this tension
poses special challenges to interpretation.
A popular notion of Beethoven’s sketching and compositional process would
have it that he labored long and hard on unpromising motifs and themes that
some other composers, such as Mozart or Schubert, would not have penned at all.
The problem with this view is its tendency to identify the part of the creative pro-
cess that was captured on paper with Beethoven’s artistic intention, without giv-
ing sufficient heed to the full aesthetic context. In Beethoven’s sketches much and
sometimes most of this context is not yet written down. Beethoven’s “movement
15
The Beethoven Sketchbooks by Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter.
plans” for works in progress reflect his attempt to envisage the whole even before
the motifs, themes, and individual sections had been realized. Further evidence
comes from his reported comment to Neate, “I have always a picture in my mind,
when I am composing, and work up to it,” and by his comment to Treitschke,
“For my custom when I am composing even instrumental music is always to keep
the whole in view.”16 This characteristic but paradoxical procedure was recognized
by Ernest Newman (in his book The Unconscious Beethoven), who wrote of the
first movement of the Eroica:
From the Sketch Books, we get the impression that in some queer subconscious
way the movement possessed him as a whole before he began to think out the de-
tails; and the long and painful search for the themes was simply an effort, not to
find workable atoms out of which he could construct a musical edifice according
to the conventions of symphonic form, but to reduce an already existing nebula,
in which that edifice was implicit, to the atom, and then, by the orderly arrange-
ment of these atoms, to make the implicit explicit.17
We shall return to the subject of Beethoven’s compositional process in connec-

tion with individual works. Important here is the recognition that beginning in
1798 Beethoven expanded his practice of making preliminary musical sketches to
that of using bound books; in subsequent years the nature of his creative project
tended to demand more and more sketching. There can be no doubt that this prac-
tice somehow mirrored the complex ramifications of Beethoven’s aesthetic proj-
ect. Whereas Mozart had resorted to sketches especially to work out contrapuntal
passages, and Haydn made the greatest use of them in connection with the special
demands of “The Depiction of Chaos” in The Creation, for Beethoven they be-
came an absolute necessity. The attitude they reflect is instructive, for it turns the
conventional dichotomy of “inspiration” and “calculation” on its head. We often
find that Beethoven’s relentless self-criticism in his sketchbooks has cleared the
way for original and powerful ideas that emerge late in the compositional process.
With Beethoven, it was not generally a matter of spontaneous ideas that were sub-
sequently worked out with rational calculation, but, rather, a blend of the rational
and sensuous achieved in a prolonged process of critical reflection. Ultimately
Beethoven’s deafness may have aided this process, by insulating him from the out-
side world and by forcing him to abandon activities that competed with his com-
posing, such as his public performances as a keyboard virtuoso.
S S S
The Piano Concerto in C minor op. 37 is the first of Beethoven’s great works in a
genre closely associated with Mozart. Beethoven’s admiration for Mozart’s C
minor Concerto is reflected in some details of the first movement. Thus the motif
C–E –A at the outset of K. 491 appears as counterpoint in the bass in bar 9 of
16 Cited in Solomon, “Beethoven’s Creative Process: A Two-Part Invention,” Beethoven

Essays, pp. 127–28, which demonstrates that the famous account of Beethoven’s creative
process by Louis Schlösser is untrustworthy.
17
Pp. 115–16.
74 beethoven
Beethoven’s concerto. The continuing presence of the piano after the cadenza is
probably also inspired by Mozart’s concerto. The opening of Beethoven’s Allegro
con brio, on the other hand, contains a succession of unison string and harmo-
nized wind phrases followed by the orchestral tutti, a procedure reminiscent of the
beginning of Mozart’s C major Concerto K. 467.
The compositional origins of the C minor Concerto reach back to Beethoven’s
journey to Berlin in 1796, when he made the notation “To the Concerto in C
minor kettledrum at the cadenza.” As Küthen has observed, the timpani motif has
a military flavor that harks back to Mozart’s example;18 in Beethoven’s hands this
motif becomes an important compositional element throughout the opening Alle-
gro con brio. He may have originally intended to play this concerto at his benefit
concert on 2 April 1800, but the piece seems not to have been completed in time;
Beethoven probably performed a revised version of the older C major Concerto
op. 15. The C minor Concerto was apparently played for the first time on 5 April
1803, with Beethoven as soloist, but aspects of the basic conception considerably
predate the completion of the autograph score.
The date on the autograph manuscript of the concerto (Staatsbibliothek Preus-
sischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Beethoven ms. autogr. 14) has been disputed. Leon
Plantinga has read the last digit of the apparent entry “1800” as a “3” turned on
its side, and has argued consequently for a later chronology for the work.19 The
thoroughgoing compositional changes in the score, however, lend more support
to the older view that the concerto was revised after an interval. As with previous
works in this genre, Beethoven subjects his own style to incisive critique of a kind
that might imply a temporal gap, though no proof may be forthcoming on this
matter. The solo part was left in an unfinished state in the autograph. The earlier
layer of writing in the score, in brown ink, shows the rondo theme of the finale
with syncopated chords in the left hand in place of the melodic accents of the
finished work; the sixteenth-note figuration in the left hand was not originally
part of Beethoven’s conception at all. In other passages, such as the end of the de-
velopment in the first movement, shown in Plate 6, Beethoven’s revisions suppress
gestures of an excessively showy pianistic virtuosity in favor of a more organic
and logical development of the musical material. His revisions to the wind parts
in the upper systems were entered in the older, brown ink, whereas his reworking
of the solo piano part was made in darker ink. He originally notated a long rising
chromatic scale in the piano, beginning one bar before the excerpt shown in Plate
6 and extending to the measured trill on high G and F in the second bar.
Beethoven’s seminal notion of highlighting the kettledrum in the first move-
ment is noteworthy in view of his later practice, in several important orchestral
works, of exposing an important motif in the timpani. One thinks of the opening
drum taps in the Violin Concerto, or the transition to the finale in the Fifth Sym-
18
Ludwig van Beethoven: Klavierkonzert Nr. 3 in c, op. 37, preface, p. v.
19
Cf. Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches, pp. 389–93, and Plantinga, “When Did Bee-
thoven Compose His Third Piano Concerto?”, and Beethoven’s Concertos: History, Style,
Performance (New York: Norton, 1999), pp. 113–58.
phony, not to mention the prominent timpani in the finale of the Seventh Sym-
phony or in the scherzo of the Ninth. In the C minor Concerto the drum passage
takes on a mysterious intensity in association with the solo cadenza, which Bee-
thoven may have finalized as late as 1809. He strips away much of the thematic
material and the orchestral texture here to isolate the dotted rhythm on tonic and
dominant in the timpani, delaying the imminent cadence and redefining at one
stroke the customary relationship between solo and tutti at this point in the form.
The end of the cadenza had already taken an extraordinary turn. Some mo-
ments before, the precadential trill on the supertonic, D, was prolonged in the
right hand without being resolved (Ex. 22). Against this trill, a rising chromatic
scale in the left hand merges into a simultaneous trill on B, the leading note. Bee-
thoven extends the double trill for six bars, while the motif from the second bar
of the opening theme is played in imitation above and below the trill on the har-
mony of the dominant seventh. Then G joins the trill, and the entire dominant
Ex. 22 Piano Concerto no. 3 op. 37/I, bars 469–82

76 beethoven
triad is set ablaze through this unmeasured pulsation. The A –G semitone at the
top of this multiple trill is derived from the last two notes of the thematic frag-
ment heard one bar before. The triple trill was a specialty of Beethoven’s piano
playing: it also appears in the longest of the three cadenzas to the C major Con-
certo, near the conclusion of the virtuoso piano sonata in this key, op. 2 no. 3, and
in the cadenza preceding the recapitulatory variation in the last movement of
the final sonata, op. 111. Here, in op. 37, the “Beethoven” trill stabilizes into a
triple appoggiatura chord whose A harmony resolves onto the dominant triad; a
series of repetitions and sequences of this figure leads once again to the dominant-
seventh chord with a trill on the supertonic.
The entire passage has been poised at the threshold of the expected cadence
and represents an immense internal expansion within the structural framework of
the concerto cadenza. But now Beethoven again avoids resolution with an even
more impressive effect. For the trill on the supertonic does not resolve to C; in-
stead, it ascends chromatically, reaching not the tonic triad of C minor but an un-
stable seventh chord. This is the moment Beethoven may have imagined as early
as 1796, “the kettledrum at the cadenza.” The drum taps out the third to fourth
bars of the opening theme four times in all, accompanied softly by the strings and
answered by figuration in the piano outlining diminished harmonies. The passage
is pianissimo and still suspended tonally, since the tonic cadence has not yet been
affirmed.
Beethoven’s treatment of his opening theme in the cadenza as a whole displays
a vast architectural logic. After the opening “lead-in” and canonic imitations on
the head of the theme, he dwells at length on the rising third from its first bar, as
brilliant arpeggiations carry the music into distant tonal regions. Much later, near
the conclusion of the cadenza, Beethoven resumes this thread, developing the sec-
ond bar of the theme in the passage with the double trill, as we have seen. What
remains is the tail of the theme—the last two bars with their characteristic dotted
rhythm. This is what Beethoven gives to the timpani, while wrapping the motif in
an uncanny veil of harmonic ambiguity. A guiding idea of the cadenza is thus the
successive treatment of the three component parts of the main theme, culminat-
ing in the mysterious drum passage. Strictly considered, the cadenza embraces not
only the solo but also the timpani statements, and ends only with the long-delayed
C minor cadence in the last bar of the example, where a new dialogue between the
piano and strings leads to the terse close of the movement.
The climax of Beethoven’s cadenza at the triple trill with A as highest note
foreshadows a relationship of surpassing importance in the movements to come.
The slow movement is a reflective Largo, whose expressive contrast to the pathos
of the outer movements is heightened by Beethoven’s choice of E major as the
tonic key. Consequently, the first and third degrees of the new tonic, E and G , are
raised a semitone above the triadic degrees of C minor; this relationship con-
tributes, along with many details of texture and orchestration, to the magical shift
to a brighter tonal color that sets the Largo apart from the framing movements.
That very contrast, in turn, poses a challenge to the finale, whose task it becomes
to integrate the luminescent, lyrical E major sphere with the darker C minor
idiom.
Only in this light can we understand the E major chord with G as highest note
that is played in the full orchestra to close the Largo (Ex. 23). The dynamic em-
phasis on this fortissimo chord, in conjunction with its weak rhythmic position,
makes it into the most disruptive element in the movement—so disruptive, in
fact, that conductors need to take care not to overemphasize the sudden increase
in volume or the detached articulation of the sonority. The unstable, unfitting
chord sets up the ensuing rondo finale, the main theme of which provides a tonal
pivot from E major into the tonic of the work as a whole, C minor. The pivotal
sound is, of course, the reinterpretation of G as A , and the motif that accom-
plishes the transition is built into the rondo theme as its most conspicuous melodic
element: the emphasis on the semitone G–A at the beginning is reemphasized by
the rising scale in bars 4–5. This striking melodic feature of the rondo theme will
eventually be resolved in the coda. But long before that, Beethoven seizes the op-
portunity to recall the slow movement within the central episode of the rondo, a
procedure comparable to (though more complex than) that in the finale of the
Sonate Pathétique.
As in the Pathétique, Beethoven begins the middle episode with a more placid
section in A major employing variation; in the concerto the theme is marked
espressivo and dolce, and offers a medium for lyrical exchange between the clar-
inet and solo piano. What ensues is an orchestral fugato based on the main sub-
ject; this developmental section converges onto the dominant of C minor with
strong reinforcement from the trumpets and timpani. Beethoven now reduces the
content of the music to two bars of bare octave Gs followed by reiterated octaves
on A : the music now reexamines the figure that had launched the rondo finale
and was so conspicuous in its main theme—the semitone G–A , which is made
gigantic—and the dramatization of this motif in the tutti sets the stage for a fun-
damental reinterpretation by the piano soloist (Ex. 24).
For the soloist withdraws here into the tranquility of the slow movement. Its
first bars receive the A octaves from the orchestra with a decrescendo; the next
two have softened to pianissimo, and take on a liquidity of sound indicated by
Beethoven’s pedal marking, corresponding to the slow movement. Beethoven does
not indicate that the pedal be lifted two bars later, when the miracle occurs: the
hands of the pianist are now resting over the precise spacing of the beginning of
the Largo, and the most crucial aspect of interpretation here is to convey in sound
the enharmonic shift of A into G as the E octave emerges in the bass. Unfortu-
nately, even the best available editions suggest a change of pedal at this point; con-
vincing performances are rare because of lack of comprehension of the full import
of the passage. A “clear” performance of the change in harmony is not to the
point here, and only betrays a lack of poetic sensibility. Essential, on the other
hand, is the veiled effect of the softening A s, the sound of which is enveloped in
pedal and then gradually mixed with the E octave in the left hand. This quiet
sound represents the a priori condition of the slow movement, a tonal space not
78 beethoven
Ex. 23 Piano Concerto no. 3 op. 37/II–III
yet filled out. Moments later, a new transparent variant of the rondo theme is
heard in the piano, pianissimo in E major; it is accompanied delicately in the
strings but soon tails off into hushed legato phrases converging onto a quiet uni-
son E in the violins. This is a vision of the slow movement seen through the veil
of the rondo theme itself, and it shows how capable Beethoven is of such allusion
even in the absence of direct thematic recall. In turn, this ethereal episode ad-
Ex. 23 (continued)
mirably prepares the ensuing transition to C minor for the following statement of
the rondo theme in its original form, which takes on in this context the quality of
a return to reality after the dream-like aura of the E major episode.
One more phase remains: the final resolution of the crucial A as G , this time
not in E major but in the major mode of the tonic, C. Beethoven’s solo cadenza
before the coda meaningfully recaptures and reinterprets the rising figuration that
80 beethoven
Ex. 24 Piano Concerto no. 3 op. 37/III, bars 252–70
previously led to various statements of the rondo theme: the tempo gradually
slows to adagio, the dynamic level thins to pianissimo. The piano pauses on G in
the same register as the beginning of the rondo. The last transformation comes as
G is carried upward to A in the C major Presto, and the coda revels in the reso-
lution of A to the keynote C, both ascending and descending. The expressive at-
mosphere of the coda is unmistakably that of the opera buffa finale; comic wit and
jubilation crown the dénouement of this drama in tones.
S S S
The years spanning the intended performance and eventual completion of the C
minor Concerto, 1800 to 1803, were especially fruitful for Beethoven; in 1802 in
particular his productivity was awesome. As usual, a considerable number of his
pathbreaking works were for piano solo or were duo sonatas with piano. The
hastily written Sonata for Piano and Horn op. 17, from April 1800, is rather light-
weight, but Beethoven was quite proud of the big Piano Sonata in B major op.
22, from the end of that year, claiming that the sonata “hat sich gewaschen”—that
it had turned out splendidly. In 1801 he finished two impressive violin sonatas: a
terse, concentrated work in A minor, op. 23, and the lyrically expansive Spring
Sonata in F major op. 24. Beethoven conceived these sonatas as a contrasting pair
and originally planned to have them appear under the single opus number 23. Two
years earlier he had paired together the two charming Piano Sonatas in E major
and G major as op. 14, but the violin sonatas offer the first notable instance of
Beethoven’s juxtaposition of drastically opposing characteristics in a pair of works
in the same genre, one in the major and one in the minor. Later examples include
the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas, and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.
Another genre that occupied Beethoven at this time was the string quintet. Al-
ready in 1795–96 he had arranged and revised his then unpublished Octet for
Winds as the String Quintet op. 4, as we have seen. In 1801 he composed the at-
tractive C major String Quintet op. 29, a work whose unexpected and faulty pub-
lication by Artaria the following year led to bitter accusations of piracy from the
composer and to a confused and messy lawsuit. To the irascible composer, Artaria
& Co. were “rascals,” guilty of the “biggest swindle in the world”; yet Artaria
was exonerated by the court, which requested in vain a retraction of Beethoven’s
accusations against the firm. Beethoven’s only other original work for the string
quintet medium was to be the Fugue in D major from 1817, published posthu-
mously as op. 137, although he made sketches for another string quintet in C on
his deathbed.
A series of piano sonatas completed by Beethoven in 1801 and 1802 shows a
variety of innovative approaches to the genre and, specifically, to the problem of
welding successive movements into a unified continuity. The Sonata in A op. 26
begins with a variation movement (as had Mozart’s A major Sonata K. 331) and
dispenses entirely with movements in sonata form, whereas the two works of op.
27 are each specifically described by Beethoven as Sonata quasi una fantasia. The
popular C minor Sonata op. 27 no. 2 is one of Beethoven’s few works in which
the finale is of unremittingly tragic character; the title Moonlight, invented by the
poet and critic Ludwig Rellstab, is quite inappropriate. The sonata is dedicated to
Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, who was incorrectly regarded in the nineteenth
century as the likely recipient of Beethoven’s letter to the “Immortal Beloved.” In
light of this, the opening slow movement was sometimes misconstrued as a kind
of love song without words. No other sonata by Beethoven has been so abused as
82 beethoven
kitsch; sentimental images of lovers adrift on a moonlit lake have clung to the
opening Adagio sostenuto. Much more suggestive and true to the music is Franz
Liszt’s description of the middle movement as “a flower between two abysses.”
A central idea of this sonata concerns the transformation of the gently ascend-
ing arpeggios of the Adagio sostenuto in the Presto agitato finale, where surging
arpeggios lead to emphatic syncopated chords in the highest register, supported
by a descending bass progression similar to that at the beginning of the first move-
ment. The second subject of the finale also recalls the principal theme of the open-
ing movement in its use of dotted rhythms, while still other passages of the finale,
such as the end of the development and the elaborate cadenza in the coda, bear
marked thematic and textural similarities to the Adagio sostenuto. The middle
movement, a minuet and trio in D major, represents a kind of interlude that con-
nects the almost static opening movement with the rapid, agitated finale. Some
twenty-five years later, in his great String Quartet op. 131 in the same key, Bee-
thoven returned to this conception of a series of interconnected movements lead-
ing, in the finale, to a fully developed sonata form; and in op. 131, as in op. 27
no. 2, the clear return of thematic material from the opening movement helps to
confirm the role of the finale as a culmination to the entire work.
The next piano sonata, op. 28 in D major (Pastoral), and each of the three vi-
olin sonatas of op. 30 are highly individual and polished works. The title Pastoral
is not unfitting for op. 28: one can find pedal points in the first and last movements
and occasional bagpipe fifths, whereas the cadential theme in the first movement,
internal episode of the slow movement, and scherzo are all rustic in character. The
Andante in D minor has a processional, ballade-like atmosphere: the melodic
inflections of its main theme seem suggestive of speech. In the coda Beethoven jux-
taposes the first phrases of the main theme with a disturbing, dissonant transfor-
mation of the innocent contrasting subject—a glimpse of the abyss, followed by a
close in bleak resignation. In the other movements of op. 28, Beethoven often em-
ploys static textures with repetitive figures, yet the development of the opening
Allegro is dominated even more than usual by a process of foreshortening. Ap-
propriately, this developmental passage is set apart from its context: the music
comes firmly to rest on a protracted F major harmony before phrases drawn
from the cadential theme are played in B major and minor to preface the recapit-
ulation. Beethoven used an identical modulation through the submediant to intro-
duce the climactic ninth variation of the “Joy” theme in the choral finale of the
Ninth Symphony.
The C minor Violin Sonata op. 30 no. 2 is perhaps the most powerful of Bee-
thoven’s works in this key up to 1802; one of its many inspired ideas is the terse
rhythmic motif linked to a German augmented sixth harmony that begins the
finale. The G major Violin Sonata op. 30 no. 3, on the other hand, is one of his
wittiest contributions to the high comic style forged by Haydn, and its finale is a
worthy successor to the humorous rondo finales in the D major Violin Sonata op.
12 no. 1 (with its clownish main theme) and the G major Piano Sonata op. 14 no.
2 (marked “Scherzo”). This Allegro vivace is studded with appearances of the
flowing contrapuntal theme in contrasting keys: we hear a robust version in C
major, a gentle “false” return in B major, and yet another statement of the rondo
theme in E major preceding the coda. At the close Beethoven heightens the humor
by deriving a string of syncopated accents in the deepest bass register from the rus-
tic trills of the original subject.
Impressive as they are, these sonatas may be regarded as works of consolida-
tion. Beethoven’s innovative tendencies surface more clearly in the three Piano
Sonatas op. 31, also from 1802. These three sonatas, in G major, D minor, and E
major, are notable landmarks along Beethoven’s so-called new path, boldly ex-
ploring artistic territory that he soon consolidated in the Eroica Symphony.
An aggressively original thrust emerges at the beginning of the G major Sonata
op. 31 no. 1. The initial gestures are syncopated; the two hands seem unable to
play together. Swift falling passagework yields to repeated tonic chords that reach
the dominant at the end of the first phrase. Then, surprisingly, Beethoven shifts
the following phrase down a whole step into F major. Such treatment of the nearer
keys “as if they were mere local chords,” in Donald Francis Tovey’s words,20 ex-
pands the tonal and dramatic range of the music. Beethoven introduced similar
harmonic departures at the outset of his Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas.
Both of the other op. 31 Sonatas, in D minor and E major, also begin with strik-
ing harmonic ambiguities and tensions—a hallmark of his innovative approach.
Unlike these pieces, the G major Sonata proceeds with an air of paradox and
comedy, with a touch of the bizarre that is no longer Haydnesque but distinctively
Beethovenian. As Brendel writes, “the character that emerges is one of compul-
sive, but scatterbrained, determination.”21 Such a work cannot be taken at face
value, but solemn commentators who would deny humorous possibilities to
music have maligned op. 31 no. 1 as inferior and slipshod.22 A key to understand-
ing the opening Allegro vivace lies in Beethoven’s ironic attitude to the unbal-
anced, somewhat commonplace nature of his basic material: what unfolds in the
development with startling vehemence later dissolves into coyish, understated ac-
cents in the coda, where a new point emerges in the business at hand. In these last
moments of the Allegro vivace, Beethoven introduces a turn figure foreshadowing
the head motif of the rondo finale, while he correspondingly recalls the opening
movement in the last moments of the rondo, thereby casting unifying threads
across the piece as a whole.
The second movement, Adagio grazioso, displays an atmosphere of operatic ele-
gance slightly overdone. The trills and ornate decorations, the serenade-like flavor,
and the exaggerated rhetoric convey a hint of sophisticated mockery. In the fol-
lowing rondo finale, Beethoven’s ingenious demands on the musical tradition take
yet another form. He renders the expected repetitions of the main theme in the
rondo design unpredictable through variations in texture and rhythmic intensifi-
cation, but reserves the most extraordinary events for the coda. Here, once more,
he sees through, and beyond, the surface of his thematic material, exposing an
20 A Companion to Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, p. 115.

21 Music Sounded Out, p. 28.
22 See, for instance, Blom, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas Discussed, pp. 125–26.
84 beethoven
Ex. 25 Piano Sonata op. 31 no. 1/III, bars 219–48
underlying substratum of musical meaning. First, the head of the rondo theme is
broken off into silence; the ensuing phrase is then broadened into an Adagio. Bee-
thoven extends the series of interrupted phrases without allowing the music to
close in the tonic, building suspense (Ex. 25). He then plunges into an exciting
Presto coda, with the thematic turn emancipated from its earlier context. Beetho-
ven caps his sonata by allowing the rapid turn figure to migrate into the low bass
register, as sharp repeated rhythms recalled from the opening movement dissipate
into a paradoxical close of soft chords and pregnant silences.
The Sonata op. 31 no. 2, the so-called Tempest, is Beethoven’s only sonata in
the key of D minor. A chief innovation of this work is its use of an opening theme
that embraces two diametrically opposed tempos and characters: a hovering, am-
biguous unfolding of dominant arpeggios in first inversion, marked largo; and a
turbulent continuation stressing a rising bass and expressive two-note sigh figures
or appoggiaturas, marked allegro. The harmonically ambiguous opening allows
Beethoven to delay the first strong cadence in D minor until the beginning of the
apparent transition, where the initially suspended, arpeggiated motif is incarnated
in the driven, propulsive Allegro (Ex. 26). The long series of ascending sequences
in the bass is balanced against expressive gestures in the treble, creating a dra-

a. opening b. bars 21–22
c. recapitulation, bars 142–48
matic dialogue. From a variant of this passage Beethoven derives much of the de-
velopment section, leading toward the climax of the movement at the beginning
of the recapitulation. Here the mysterious arpeggios return, a kind of temporal
oasis removed from the strife of the Allegro, and their expressive implications are
now made explicit through passages of unaccompanied recitative.
This recitative was the passage that influenced Beethoven, consciously or un-
consciously, when he conceived the famous baritone recitative “O Freunde, nicht
diese Töne!” in the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony, also in D minor. The
thematic similarity amounts almost to quotation, and the analogous expressive
function of the two recitative passages invites close comparison.23 In a sense, Bee-
thoven seized on and exploited this moment of internalization and reflection as
embodied in the gesture of recitative in the sonata to provide a gateway to the
utopian plane of the Ode to Joy as the basis for the choral finale of the Ninth.
The ensuing Adagio in the Tempest Sonata transforms elements from the first
movement in a brighter, warmer context: the opening arpeggio now rests on the
stable tonic sonority of B major, and the following, double-dotted motifs in the
high register are reminiscent of the recitative. The broadly lyrical periods of this
Adagio are linked by mysterious drum rolls in the bass. The close of the move-
ment exposes this registral gap in the most striking way, as a final, cadential ver-
sion of the high motif is answered by a single B in the cavernous low register. In
the Allegretto finale, in D minor, Beethoven develops the arpeggiated chords
throughout, as an all-encompassing, perpetuum mobile rhythm sweeps away the
23 Certain aspects of this relationship are noted by Kolodin in The Interior Beethoven,
pp. 128–30.
86 beethoven
rhetoric of dialogue characteristic of the preceding movements. Intimate, speech-
like accents are left behind here. As Jürgen Uhde pointed out, the temporal drive
of this finale opens a new and strangely distanced dimension, suggestive not of
spontaneous human expression but of engagement with objective phenomena be-
yond our control.24
Even more than the D minor Sonata, the opening of op. 31 no. 3 in E major
sounds like a continuation of music that had already begun. Its initial “call”
figures have no stable harmonic support; Beethoven’s characteristic device of
rhythmic acceleration, together with asymmetrical phrasing and a fluctuation in
tempo, all lend tension to the gracious opening theme. The initial impression of
holding back, of hesitation, stands as complementary to the irrepressible rhythmic
energy characteristic of this sonata as a whole. When the opening theme of this
Allegro closes, it sets into operation a steady eighth-note motion; later, in the sec-
ond theme, the figuration is rendered in still faster sixteenth notes. The comic at-
mosphere of these passages is heightened in the development, when a prominent
motif derived from the main theme is reiterated with amusing insistence in the bass.
Particularly innovative is the following Allegretto vivace in A major, labeled
“Scherzo” by Beethoven. It is a typical scherzo neither in its meter (2/4) nor in its
form, a sonata design without a trio. The defining quality, of course, lies in its gen-
eral character of humorous wit and rhythmic verve. As in the first movement, a
meaningful hesitation is built into the opening. After the initial phrases, a hushed,
unharmonized staccato continuation reaches C and then D , before Beethoven
reinterprets this pitch as part of the dominant seventh of A major. Later, after
repetition of both the opening theme and the quiet deflection to C, Beethoven re-
places the move to D with jarring, almost explosive fortissimo chords, decisively
carrying the music away from the tonic. By contrast, the ensuing closing theme of
the exposition is delicately transparent, staccato, and pianissimo.
The development unfolds around appearances of the main theme in new
keys—F major and C major. Beethoven extends the C major statement melodi-
cally to lead to D , and in the following passage forges the climax of the whole
scherzo. D is stressed in all the pitch registers, and the supporting diminished-
seventh harmony is altered to a dominant seventh as Beethoven “composes out” an
enormous linear descent from the highest D to the lowest A marking the begin-
ning of the recapitulation (Ex. 27). But the D , we recall, is not new: Beethoven’s
curious dwelling on this pitch at the outset, and his brilliant stroke of placing the
fortissimo eruption in the recapitulation on D , can only be fully appreciated if
the climax of the development has made its mark. Here, as elsewhere, Beethoven’s
treatment of dissonant sonorities is discriminate but potent and far-reaching:
the tension of the climax on D overflows, as it were, into a network of related
passages.
The third movement, a minuet with trio, is the focus of lyricism in the sonata.
A darker, mysterious dimension surfaces through a persistent emphasis on C , the
lowered sixth degree in E major. In the second half of the minuet this sensitive
24 Beethovens Klaviermusik, iii, pp. 78–79.

Ex. 27 Piano Sonata op. 31 no. 3/II, bars 97–107
pitch occurs twice, but in the middle of the trio it appears no fewer than seven
times, as part of a diminished-ninth chord on the dominant. For a few moments
the music is frozen on this static dissonance, before the graceful melodic character
is reestablished. In the coda Beethoven recalls these darker inflections, casting
shadows over the pianissimo conclusion.
In the finale Beethoven recaptures with a vengeance the comic, grotesque, even
parodistic tone of the opening movements of this sonata and of the G major
Sonata. There is something almost mechanical about the opening figuration,
which sets in motion a tarantella rhythm that dominates the wide expanses of this
sonata form. Like the finale of the Tempest Sonata, this Presto con fuoco is prac-
tically a perpetuum mobile, but Beethoven takes special care to hold back the
momentum in the last few bars: twice the music halts on fortissimo arpeggiated
diminished-seventh chords, before he reinterprets the jocular opening motif as a
series of rising sequences leading to the powerful full close.
Immediately after completing the op. 31 Sonatas Beethoven wrote his first big
sets of piano variations on original themes: the Six Variations in F op. 34, and the
Fifteen Variations and Fugue in E op. 35. In his often-cited letter from October
1802, whose background we have considered above, Beethoven described them
as having been written in “quite a new style and each in an entirely different
way.”25 Both works introduce features that overcome the basically static and ad-
ditive nature of Classical variation technique. The tonal plan of op. 34, for ex-
ample, is unusual and wide-ranging. The successive variations do not remain in
the expected tonic but appear in keys forming a chain of descending thirds, lead-
ing from the tonic, F major, through D major, B major, G major, E major, and C
minor; a short extension to the fifth variation elaborates the dominant seventh on
C, preparing the F major cadence at the beginning of the final variation, which
closes the circle of falling thirds. This variation reminds us of the original theme
in more compelling terms than the intervening ones (highly individualized and
25 Anderson, vol. 1, L. 62.

88 beethoven
marked by strong contrasts, with frequent changes of meter); the set concludes
with an ornately decorated reprise of the theme, marked Adagio molto.
The op. 35 Variations represent a larger and even more original conception
than op. 34 and assume a special significance by serving as a model for the finale
of the Eroica Symphony, the seminal movement of that great work, as Lewis
Lockwood has shown.26 In op. 35, as in the Eroica finale, the bass of the theme is
presented first alone and then in a series of introductory variations, with two,
three, and four voices. The subsequent appearance of the actual theme, together
with its bass, thus represents in a sense the fourth variation, but Beethoven’s num-
bering begins only after this statement of the composite theme. (In its fully har-
monized form the theme was used earlier as the seventh of the Contredances for
Orchestra WoO 14 and in the Prometheus ballet op. 43.) Opening with the basso
del tema enables Beethoven to emphasize its comic aspects, particularly the three
fortissimo B octaves in its second half, which are surrounded by rests, creating a
humor of expressive silences. In the ninth and especially the thirteenth variations,
this stress on B is developed as a pedal throughout the first half, with amusing
effect. The Minore, the fourteenth variation, and Maggiore, the fifteenth—a ma-
jestic, decorated Largo—represent a new section in the overall formal progres-
sion, which culminates in the powerful fugal finale. In its structural grandeur and
comprehensive range of expression this set anticipates the greatest of Beethoven’s
works in this genre, the Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli op. 120.
In a relatively short period Beethoven had completed the six Sonatas of opp.
30 and 31 and the Variations of opp. 34 and 35, in addition to several other
pieces; an additional key work of 1802 was the Second Symphony in D major op.
36. In this symphony, especially in its outer movements, Beethoven brought the
full scope of his imagination to bear on the orchestral genre for the first time. A
link with the legacy of Haydn and Mozart is still tangible, to be sure: certain fea-
tures of the slow introduction to the first movement are reminiscent of Mozart’s
Prague Symphony in the same key K. 504, whereas the coda of the finale has
Haydnesque touches. Unlike the famous off-tonic opening of the First Symphony,
Beethoven begins here with a deep unison D sounded across all the pitch registers.
The unison figure is analogous to the opening of Mozart’s symphony, yet more
forceful, since Beethoven begins not on the downbeat but with a thirty-second-
note upbeat to the sustained unison, and marks the gesture fortissimo. Such up-
beats are characteristic of his dynamically propulsive style, of which this move-
ment is a particularly telling example.
The contrast between forceful unison octaves and more intimate, lyrical, har-
monized phrases is a topos to which Mozart gave unforgettable expression; the
beginning of the C minor Piano Sonata K. 457 must have particularly impressed
Beethoven in this respect. Beethoven’s own development of this topos in the first
movement of op. 36 is brilliant, because it discloses a remote and almost forbid-
ding character lurking behind the playful action and high spirits of the Allegro con
brio and thereby lends much dramatic weight to the whole. Haydn frequently
26 Cf. “The Compositional Genesis of the Eroica Finale,” esp. pp. 84–85.
deepens the character of his symphonic allegro movements through a slow intro-
duction, but nowhere in his symphonies do the expressive implications of an in-
troduction impress themselves so powerfully on the following Allegro as in Bee-
thoven’s D major Symphony.
Crucial to Beethoven’s conception is the association of the stark, unharmo-
nized unison gesture with the minor mode of D. The opening phrases of the Ada-
gio molto employ this gesture to preface a pair of lyrical antecedent and conse-
quent phrases in the wind and strings, respectively. Much else happens in the
introduction, whose elaborate orchestral textures again invite comparison with
Mozart’s Prague Symphony. But the climax and turning point of the entire intro-
duction comes as Beethoven reaffirms and develops the unison gesture, with its
double-dotted upbeat rhythm, as the music plunges into D minor. He enlarges the
seminal rhythmic motif to form a broad, imposing arpeggiation that comes to rest
on the dominant pedal, which is sustained in turn over the next ten bars, up to the
beginning of the Allegro con brio (Ex. 28).
This is one of the moments in Beethoven’s earlier music that reminds us force-
fully of the Ninth Symphony. The main theme of the later work’s first movement,
in all its stark grandeur, is implicit in the dark undercurrent in the first movement
of this early symphony in the major mode of D. For the fortissimo outburst in the
slow introduction is by no means an isolated gesture. The second subject group is
fashioned so as to absorb the conflict exposed in the slow introduction, and the
triumphant character of the movement as a whole, culminating in the chorale-like
climax of the coda, is balanced against this large-scale tension. The second sub-
ject is a march-like theme employing a rising arpeggio and double-dotted rhythm.
As in op. 2 no. 2, its development brings an increase in excitement, leading to a
crisis that disrupts the organic musical development and opens a void that is filled
by opposing forces. The fortissimo gesture from the slow introduction, now har-
monized, punctuates the passage that prepares an expected cadence in the domi-
nant at bar 100, but Beethoven breaks off the cadence deceptively, and silence
ensues (Ex. 29).
This rip in the form is filled by an interpolated passage. The turn figure from
the main theme is recalled pianissimo in a series of rising sequences, reaching the
cadence in the dominant in bar 112. Then comes one of those brilliant strokes that
so utterly demolish the conventional gentility of courtly manners, transforming the
very notion of sectional closure in this style. For as the music moves toward a fur-
ther, necessary cadential articulation, Beethoven restates, in slightly varied form,
the entire arpeggiated climax in D minor from the slow introduction, complete
with the ensuing dominant pedal on A in the horns. The gesture is repeated, and
the pedal derived from it resounds through the closing moments of the exposition.
The intense energy from this thematic and modal conflict infuses the following
cadential passages based on syncopated augmentation of the turn figure from the
main theme; it also generates the scintillating arpeggiation of A major in the wind
that is mirrored in rhythmic diminution in the strings across all the pitch registers.
The excitement of passages like these was new to music, and it points toward
some of the most intoxicated moments in the third Leonore Overture and the
90 beethoven
Ex. 28 Second Symphony op. 36/I, bars 23–47
Ex. 28 (continued)
92 beethoven
Ex. 29 Second Symphony op. 36/I, bars 96–105
finales of the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. Yet, in all these cases, the impression
of unbridled power is inextricably linked with conflict, or set into relief through
powerful contrasts. Genuine triumph cannot be easily won.
Some early critics had difficulty with the Second Symphony, preferring the
milder manners of the First. Exasperated denunciation of the music as bizarre,
confused, or incomprehensible was directed especially at the finale, an Allegro
molto in sonata form. The style is clearly Haydnesque, but it is even more auda-
ciously impertinent than Haydn would have allowed. Immediately provocative is
the opening theme, with its huge gap of one and a half octaves between the up-
beat semitone F –G and the following trill figure on C . Only in the massive coda,
however, are the full implications of this startling gesture realized. The semitone
figure rises chromatically to C, as a chain of turns and trills around this pitch re-
leases an almost frightening energy in fortissimo outbursts for the full orchestra.
Earlier, a surprising dramatic bluster had surfaced, only to be incorporated para-
doxically into the comic character of the movement as a whole. The Allegro molto
of Beethoven’s Second Symphony is a heightened comedy, capable of absorbing
disruptive elements and even an excessiveness bordering on the absurd. This is the
comedy of the sublime.
4
R
The Heroic Style I: 1803–1806
R
Eighteen hundred and three was the main year of composition of the Eroica Sym-
phony, the centerpiece of the great stylistic transition that emerged out of Beetho-
ven’s personal and artistic crisis of 1802, a crisis precipitated above all by his incur-
able loss of hearing. In the Third Symphony Beethoven’s “new path” ascended to a
lofty summit with a commanding position in the history of the symphonic genre.
The historical and biographical terrain surrounding the Eroica has not yet been ex-
haustively explored, despite the fame and irresistible fascination of Beethoven’s in-
tended dedication of the work to Napoleon Bonaparte and his angry destruction of
that dedication after Napoleon had himself crowned emperor. It is a commonplace
of criticism that the Eroica inaugurates or consolidates Beethoven’s “heroic” style.
In approaching the symphony, however, we should reconsider some of the familiar
but questionable assumptions that have linked the work with heroism of the
Napoleonic variety. Beethoven’s attitude toward Bonaparte was ambivalent, but he
contemplated a possible move to Paris around this time, and he might have had
some entirely pragmatic reasons for dedicating the symphony to the French
leader—reasons that vanished when he remained in Vienna. The deepest impor-
tance of the Eroica in Beethoven’s creative development may lie in its symbolic or
mythic qualities, which shape not only the individual movements but also their re-
lationship to one another. This work is neither simply a homage to Bonaparte nor
a “programmatic” symphony in the conventional manner, whereby the music fol-
lows a literal narrative sequence. The continuity between movements in the Eroica
is sufficiently compelling to force us to give it critical recognition. But what really
counts here is not the imposition of associations from outside the work, but rather
the recognition that the music itself embodies these associations in its structure,
rhythmic movement, orchestration, and character. For want of a better formulation,
we may refer to this phenomenon as an intrinsically musical narrative.
The explication of these relationships demands detailed musical analysis. But
the biographical context is intriguing as well. The Heiligenstadt Testament, in
particular, deserves renewed attention in relation to the symbolism of the Eroica.
Solomon has offered an insightful analysis of Beethoven’s testament, shrewdly ob-
serving that “this neatly written document is a carefully revised ‘fair copy’ which
has been scrubbed clean of much of its original emotion.” Solomon argues that
93
94 beethoven
one remains unpersuaded by the references to suicide: “I would have ended my
life—it was only my art that held me back”; “Thanks to [virtue] and to my art, I
did not end my life by suicide.” It is as though Beethoven were being deliberately
laconic in order to avoid reviving distressful feelings.1
This histrionic element, suggesting the symbolic enactment of the artist’s own
death in order that he might start anew—in short, the notion of a “rebirth”—is
also implied by Beethoven’s references from about this time to a “new path” or
“a completely new manner” in reference to his art. More evidence comes from
the oratorio Christus am Ölberge op. 85 that Beethoven wrote in late 1802 and
early 1803 and which served as the final work at his concert of 5 April 1803. As
Alan Tyson and Barry Cooper have pointed out, the libretto has much in common
with the Heiligenstadt Testament, concerning ideas of undeserved suffering, in-
tense struggle, terror, imminent death, love of mankind, and eventual triumph
over adversity.2
In a recent study, Katherine Syer has suggested that the early genesis of the
Eroica Symphony dates from about October 1802, the period of the Heiligenstadt
Testament, and that the Landsberg 6 Sketchbook, the main source documenting
the evolution of the symphony, was already in use by this time.3 Beethoven’s story
in the Heiligenstadt Testament about feeling despair over his loss of hearing when
he failed to hear the piping of a shepherd matches to a similar account by his stu-
dent and frequent companion at the time, Ferdinand Ries. In this context, his
comment that “it was only my art that held me back” may be taken as referring
especially to the challenge of the new symphony. Further indications of Beetho-
ven’s psychological realignment at around this time come from the immediate
background of the Eroica Symphony. Its genesis is bound up with the now ob-
scure ballet music to Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus)
op. 43, written by Beethoven in collaboration with the dance master Salvatore Vi-
ganò. The Prometheus music was Beethoven’s first major work for the stage and
one of his earliest public successes, with more than twenty performances given at
Vienna during 1801 and 1802. After the initial run, the choreography was lost.
There have been practically no attempts to revive the ballet; concert performances
of the music are rare. According to an anecdote preserved by Alois Fuchs, Haydn
is supposed to have told Beethoven in 1801 that “I heard your ballet yesterday
and it pleased me very much!,” whereupon Beethoven replied: “O, dear Papa, you
are very kind; but it is far from being a Creation!” Surprised and almost offended,
Haydn retorted: “That is true; it is not yet a Creation and I can scarcely believe
that it will ever become one.”4 This story seems entirely characteristic and credi-
1
Beethoven, pp. 118–19. Canisius argues that some passages of the Heiligenstadt Tes-
tament paraphrase Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (Beethoven, pp. 158–64).
2 Cf. Tyson, “Beethoven’s Heroic Phase,” p. 140; Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative
Process, p. 48.
3
“A Peculiar Hybrid: The Structure and Chronology of the ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook (Lands-
berg 6),” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (2006), pp. 159–81.
4
the heroic style i: 1803–1806 95
ble; it once again illustrates Beethoven’s strong attraction to puns, a matter to

which we shall return. Haydn’s great oratorio The Creation had just recently been
performed. The agreement of both composers that the ballet music was “far from
being a Creation” is significant. The Prometheus ballet is of course a creation
myth in its own way, but what Beethoven produced in his op. 43 is illustrative,
programmatic music that follows a scenario imposed from without. There is no
real attempt here to achieve an “unconsummated symbol” in Langer’s sense. It is
not the ballet music but the Eroica Symphony that embodies an achievement of
Promethean stature, a work eminently worthy of being regarded as a “creation.”
Nevertheless, the symphony owes more to the earlier work than has often been
recognized.
Because of the unfamiliarity of the ballet music, the extent of its relationship
to the Eroica Symphony has remained obscure, in spite of the obvious reuse of an
important theme from the ballet in the symphonic finale. Complicating matters
further is the fact that Beethoven first elaborated some ideas derived from the bal-
let in a work for piano: the Fifteen Variations and Fugue in E op. 35 from 1802.
Together with its companion work, the F major Variations op. 34, this innovative
variation set helped to launch Beethoven’s so-called new way. But behind both the
piano variations and the symphony lies an inspiring mythic source that until re-
cently had been largely forgotten. Only in the 1970s did Constantin Floros suc-
ceed in largely reconstructing the choreography and related symbolism of the bal-
let from Beethoven’s surviving musical sketches.5 Since Beethoven made notations
about the stage action in these sketches, the association of music and dance can
be largely reestablished.
Floros’s work has shown that the links between the ballet and the symphony
are more substantial than has usually been assumed. Floros traces various rhetori-
cal and formal parallels between the opening Allegro con brio of the symphony
and, in particular, the eighth piece of the Prometheus music, the “Danza eroica.”
Still more important is the affinity of the two following pieces of the ballet, the
“Tragica scena” (no. 9) and “Giuocosa scena” (no. 10, in which the dead Prome-
theus is restored to life), to the progression from the Marcia funebre to the scherzo
in the symphony. This part of the Eroica has often proven a stumbling block for
commentators: Paul Bekker even suggested that the work would be more effective
if the inner movements were interchanged, with the scherzo preceding the slow
movement.6 The symbolism of the “heroic-allegorical” ballet—as it was described
in the program at the première—can help here to supply a more convincing basis
for analysis of the symphony.
The version of the Prometheus myth that Beethoven and Viganò tackled rein-
terprets the ancient tale of the defiant champion of humanity in a manner com-
patible with the spirit of the Enlightenment. Prometheus ennobled humankind
through his gifts of knowledge and art fashioned from fire that he stole from the
gods. In all versions of the myth Prometheus is severely punished in reprisal for
5
Beethovens Eroica und Prometheus-Musik; see esp. chapters 4 and 6.
96 beethoven
his actions on behalf of humanity. In the original version, Prometheus is chained
to a rock, where an eagle descends to devour his liver. After long years of suffer-
ing he is eventually freed by Hercules, a descendant of Io, who had come to
Prometheus in the shape of a goat many years earlier. Variants of the legend exist
in the ancient Greek sources, but all agree that the titan refuses to yield or com-
promise. Though physically in chains, Prometheus is spiritually free. In the world
of myth, there is perhaps no more telling symbol of resistance to the arbitrary ex-
ercise of authority.
In the version that Beethoven set to music, Prometheus’s suffering on the rock
is deleted, but his punishment is rendered more decisive, since he is put to death.
Another important change consists in the role of the two “creatures,” the Urmen-
schen, or archetypal man and woman. In the Greek sources the struggle of Prome-
theus occurs even before the creation of woman, whereas in the ballet the story is
revised to embrace all humanity as potential beneficiaries of the Promethean
sacrifice. Prometheus’s long trials and agonies are replaced here by a progression
of death and rebirth, since Prometheus is subsequently restored to life. The ballet
concludes with the apotheosis of Prometheus as he is celebrated by his two crea-
tures, who at last begin to display a true understanding of the significance of his
heroic deed.
This version of the myth thus shifts the dramatic emphasis from the defiant
martyr to the reception by humankind of the Promethean gift of culture. In the
ballet the cultural gifts of the titan are not initially understood or appreciated by
his two “creatures”; consequently, Prometheus’s agony comes to parallel the
plight of the misunderstood artist. Ultimately, a reconciliation is achieved in that
final section of the ballet that has always been understood as a link to the Eroica
Symphony. The shared material is the lively tune that Beethoven employed as the
seventh of his twelve German contredances WoO 14. He recycled the contredance
three times: in the ballet, the E Piano Variations, and the Eroica finale. The origi-
nal audience for the symphony would surely have recognized this theme in the
finale, but that is not all they are likely to have recognized.
The dramatic and symbolic elements incorporated from the Prometheus myth
are by no means confined to the finale. The overall narrative progression of the
four movements of the symphony outlines a sequence—struggle, death, rebirth,
apotheosis. The parallel with Beethoven’s own despair, thoughts of suicide, and
discovery of his new artistic path is scarcely accidental. But the heroic symbolism
of the Eroica is too deeply embodied in the artwork to be adequately interpreted
in terms of Beethoven’s biography, or in relation to any other historical figure such
as Napoleon. What Beethoven explores in the Eroica are universal aspects of hero-
ism, centering on the idea of a confrontation with adversity leading ultimately to
a renewal of creative possibilities. Variants of this narrative sequence surface
again and again in Beethoven’s music up to his very last years.
The immense scope of Beethoven’s first movement is reflected in his open, con-
tinuously evolving treatment of the basic thematic material. Elements of dramatic
tension are exposed from the outset. After the powerful opening chords and the
Ex. 30 Eroica Symphony op. 55/I
following triadic turning figure, the melody descends to a mysterious, low C ,

with syncopations heard above this pitch in the violins (Ex. 30). The full implica-
tions of the mysterious C are explored only at the beginning of the recapitulation,
when Beethoven reinterprets this pitch as D , with a new downward resolution
leading to an extended solo for horn in F major. Beethoven’s most striking formal
innovation in the opening Allegro con brio is his expansion of the development
section and coda. With its 245 bars the development dwarfs the exposition,
whereas the coda approaches the length of the recapitulation. The climax of the
development is generated by an intense rhythmic process involving accented, syn-
copated dissonances; so unrelenting is this rhythmic fragmentation and compres-
sion that the thematic material is virtually dissolved into nothing at about that
point when the recapitulation would normally be expected. Here Beethoven in-
troduces an apparently new theme in the remote key of E minor, a theme that is
later resolved to the tonic key in the coda.
98 beethoven
The formal expansion created by this infusion of new material in the develop-
ment thus arises as a consequence of unprecedented dramatic tension, and particu-
larly from Beethoven’s techniques of rhythmic foreshortening. His use of such
fragmentation culminating in dramatic silence is characteristic; we have discussed
one such example in the exposition of the first movement of the Piano Sonata in
A major op. 2 no. 2. There the device has the effect of comic wit; in the Eroica,
by contrast, it yields one of the most shattering climaxes in all music. The sense
of scale is vastly expanded: a long series of registrally enhanced motivic syncopa-
tions leads into massive syncopated chords, with a dissonant collision of the A
minor and F major triads marking the peak of intensification. The strongest rhyth-
mic impulse or structural downbeat in the entire movement falls on the empty beat
in bar 280, four bars before the E minor theme (Ex. 31). In this first movement,
then, the pivotal crux of the entire dramatic structure is anchored in a temporal
moment that is, paradoxically, soundless. This enables Beethoven to discharge the
almost unbearable tension of the dissonant syncopations while preparing the new
formal episode that is to fill the remainder of the development.
That the so-called new theme beginning in bar 284 is not entirely new is not
surprising, in view of the far-reaching motivic connections characteristic of this
movement. The theme calls to mind the three-note dolce motive heard already be-
ginning in bar 45, a motive employing an identical dotted rhythm in a different
metrical position, emphasizing the upbeat. In a recent analysis, William Horne
has suggested that the onset of the second theme group is best identified already
at this early juncture. Consensus on this point is unlikely, since Beethoven under-
mines the prominence of the “first cadential pillar” in the new key while present-
ing a rich array of thematic ideas.7 Horne’s perspective is supported, however, by
the extensive development of the motive in the first half of the development, in-
cluding increasingly energetic, accented motivic variants that trigger the great syn-
copated passage leading to the soundless climax in bar 280. That accented silence,
in turn, marks the beginning of a four-bar grouping, and the ensuing four-bar
phrases of the “new theme” adjust their accents to emphasize the downbeats of
the triple meter, which helps explain the changed metric position of the seminal
motive.
Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries related an incident at a rehearsal of the sym-
phony in which he mistook the premature horn entry just before the recapitula-
tion as an error in performance. The unfortunate Ries said to Beethoven “Can’t
the damned horn player count?—it sounds infamously false!,” a remark that en-
raged the composer. The device is not well regarded as a “mischievous whim” or
a “primitive banana skin,” as described by Ries or Martin Cooper, respectively.8
Beethoven’s music is elsewhere rich in humor, but this passage can hardly be reck-
oned comic, though it severely dislocates the instrumental parts. The effect is of a
bold expansion and diffusion of the structural moment of recapitulation over a
7
See Horne, “The Hidden Trellis: Where Does the Second Group Begin in the First
Movement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony?” Beethoven Forum 13 (2006), p. 144, 146.
8 Thayer-Forbes, p. 350; Judgements of Value, p. 150.
Ex. 31 Eroica Symphony op. 55/I, bars 272–92

100 beethoven
broader temporal span. The second horn anticipates the reprise four bars before
it occurs in the full orchestra, and brings about a superimposition of tonic and
dominant harmonies. The resulting dissonance is acute, despite the soft dynamic
level, and this helps motivate the powerful fortissimo outburst that ushers in the
“true” recapitulation. Nevertheless, the reprise fails to follow a familiar path: the
mysterious C is now reinterpreted as D , and its resolution to C opens up the key
of F major for the solo of the first horn. The two horn passages are related; both
infuse excitement and unpredictability into the music at just that moment when
concerns of formal symmetry would seem to be paramount.
The coda is expanded to almost the length of the exposition and recapitulation.
Here, the “new” theme from the development is resolved to the tonic key of E
major. Thus the coda serves to recapitulate those musical passages that did not ap-
pear in the exposition or recapitulation. But it also presents the exciting last chap-
ter in the story of the triadic turning theme that opens the movement. This main
theme is joined with a contrasting rhythmic subject, recalling a thematic combi-
nation from the development section, and Beethoven gradually intensifies the pas-
sage by means of orchestration and dynamics. As the music reaches its climax he
reinterprets the theme to lead to a full authentic cadence in E major: the resolu-
tion of this primary theme is inseparably bound up with the tonal closure of the
movement as a whole. Another reminder of the vast scale of this Allegro con brio
comes in the emphatic closing chords, which correspond to the two great E chords
at the beginning of the work. As Beethoven’s sketches show, these initial chords
were an afterthought: they anticipate the majestic power of the movement to fol-
low, but their echo in Beethoven’s final cadence also serves to cast unifying threads
over this immense symphonic structure.
Beethoven was particularly drawn to the genre of the Marcia funebre during
the transitional period that gave rise to his “new path”; other examples besides
the slow movement of the Eroica include the C minor variation in op. 34 and
the funeral march “on the death of a hero” in the A Piano Sonata op. 26, from
1801. The sonata “with the funeral march” was one of the most popular of all
Beethoven’s works in the nineteenth century. Its Marcia funebre was performed
during Beethoven’s own funeral procession in Vienna in 1827; it is the only
movement in his sonatas that he arranged for orchestra. It thus takes on unusual
interest not just for its orchestral rhetoric but for the part it played in the evolu-
tion of Beethoven’s posthumous reputation as artistic hero, a mythic role still
very potent today.
In its epic grandeur and dramatic power, the Marcia funebre in C minor in the
Eroica goes far beyond the more conventional march in the piano sonata. The
transparent orchestration gives special prominence to the woodwinds, particularly
the oboe. Especially impressive is Beethoven’s reinterpretation and development
of the opening processional theme, as well as his incorporation of contrasting epi-
sodes. At the heart of this Adagio assai he introduces a subject of triumphant
character in C major, with very full orchestration, which leads into a dramatic fu-
gato based on the main theme in the minor. The melodic climax of the proces-
sional march had been on A , a pitch that assumes special importance through-
out. Now, immediately after the luminous C major climax with trumpets and
drums, the music falls onto a mysterious unharmonized A , and hence into the
darkness of the minor, with the sense of a gaze into the abyss. Later, following the
fugato, Beethoven restates the head of the processional theme softly in the domi-
nant before pausing on a high A in the violins, with the effect of a question posed
against an indifferent sky. The ensuing silence is broken by an emphatic answer-
ing A in the low register, and a powerful “composing out” of this harmony leads
to a varied reprise of the processional march. Equally striking is the fragmenta-
tion of the basic thematic material into hushed, broken inflections in the final pas-
sages of the coda. Beethoven had already effected such a disintegration of his main
theme at the close of the Largo e mesto of his Piano Sonata op. 10 no. 3, and he
was to use the device again in his Coriolan Overture.
The subtle opening of the scherzo—which begins pianissimo and staccato with
strings alone in the lower registers—is presumably connected with the symbolic
“rebirth” of Prometheus, as Floros has suggested.9 Beethoven enhances the sus-
pense by withholding the main tune of this Allegro vivace until the seventh bar,
and by placing the melody on the dominant. When at last the long-delayed theme
is played by the full orchestra in the tonic key, it arrives with full force, fortissimo.
An obvious heroic note is sounded in the trio, with its soloistic use of three
horns—a special feature in the orchestration of the symphony. The musical char-
acter here is animated, even joyous, making a convincing psychological transition
to the comedy and high spirits that emerge in the finale. But Beethoven also incor-
porates into the scherzo a specific thematic reference to the outset of the first
movement which clarifies the narrative sequence of the work as a whole. Just mo-
ments before the close, the rising motivic progression D –D –E is played twice in
the high register in the winds (Ex. 32). In a sketch, Beethoven labeled the rising
figure as “a strange [or unfamiliar] voice” (“eine fremde Stimme”).10 This is, of
course, an inversion, and resolution, of the mysterious downward shift E –D–D
(C ) that was heard in bars 6–7 of the Allegro con brio (cf. Ex. 30). That disso-
nant inflection in the first movement is the first hint in the work of strife and
dramatic tension; the syncopations in the first violins emerge in response to the
downward chromatic figure, already foreshadowing the unprecedented rhythmic
force of passages to come. At the end of the scherzo, by contrast, this breach in
the E major tonality is closed; the wound is healed. The struggle embodied in the
first movement has been transcended. Furthermore, Beethoven enriches the con-
text of this “strange voice” within the third movement. In the trio, a repeated ca-
dential phrase in the first horn outlines this cadential phrase in a diatonic form,
rising a fourth from B to E . The chromatic variant in the winds at the end of the
movement can thus be heard as echoing these earlier horn gestures, with their
heroic associations.
In the finale the association with Prometheus becomes explicit through the
9
Beethovens Eroica und Prometheus-Musik, p. 98.
10
Nottebohm transcribes this sketch in Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre
1803, p. 44.
102 beethoven
Ex. 32 Eroica Symphony op. 55/III, bars 419–31
reuse of the theme from the ballet. The movement opens with a short emphatic
fanfare for the full orchestra, which moves from G minor to the dominant of E
major. This curtain-raising gesture is followed by a subject that enters on tiptoes;
as in the op. 35 Variations, Beethoven presents just the bass of the theme, which
is heard initially in the strings pizzicato, in a texture somewhat reminiscent of the
beginning of the preceding scherzo. Unlike in the piano variations, he can re-
orchestrate the repetitions of each half of the theme, with the winds and brass at
first echoing the strings. At the beginning of the second half, the strings drop out,
whereupon the octaves on B ring forth fortissimo from the winds and brass. The
grotesque humor of expressive silences is conveyed all the more vividly in this or-
chestral version. A source of inspiration for this use of the basso del tema—with
its stiff abruptness of loud repeated octave B s—may lie in the myth, since Prome-
theus fashioned his human creatures out of clay, and their initial movements were
awkward and clumsy.
In the two ensuing variations, Beethoven develops just the bass of the theme in
an orchestration of strings alone. The woodwinds are reserved for the presenta-
tion of the main melody that follows, the tune associated with the apotheosis of
Prometheus. We thereby witness the gradual creation of a composite theme out of
its component elements, a notion that took deep hold on Beethoven and which
surfaces again in more radical form in the Scherzando movement of the F major
Quartet op. 59 no. 1, from 1806. In transplanting the contredance melody from
the finale of the ballet to the piano variations and then the symphony, Beethoven
changes its presentation considerably. The tempo changes from the original Alle-
gretto to Allegretto vivace in op. 35 and Allegro molto in the symphony, and the
instrumentation is more elaborate in the Eroica than in the ballet, with the first
statement of each variation half heard piano in a more transparent setting,
whereas the repetitions are assigned to the full orchestra forte, with robust and
humorous effect.
The trajectory of the Eroica finale is bound up with a process of creation itself,
and the fragmentary beginning with the basso del tema lends itself well to this
metaphorical idea. Once the composite theme is revealed, the movement unfolds
in an atmosphere of spontaneous, lively unpredictability, with some of the varia-
tions displaying a chameleon-like ability to change as they proceed. The continu-
ation from the theme quickly modulates to the dominant of C minor, preparing a
fugato. The fugato begins in the violins with the basso del tema, but short motivic
injections from other instruments draw upon the repeated-note figure of the
upper-line melody, and the continuation of the fugal theme also utilizes features
of the contredance theme. Beethoven blends both features in his fugato, while the
music continues to evolve: an increasing density of sound and a harmonic pivot
through an augmented-sixth chord leads suddenly to another jaunty statement of
the main melody in D major, in the flutes and violins. This new variation then un-
dergoes an astonishing transformation: the second half spawns a virtuosic flute
part and closes with loud blustering triplets. Its D major cadence serves in turn to
launch an Alla marcia variation in G minor for the full orchestra. This highly
characteristic Alla marcia variation is given literal repetitions of each variation
half, unlike the developmental variations that precede and follow it.
The march variation in G minor stands at the center of a formal design com-
bining variation and rondo. The next appearance of the contredance melody,
played dolce in the flutes and violins in C major, recalls the earlier D major vari-
ation, but soon passes into another fugal episode, in which the basso del tema and
upper-line melody are intermingled. A new dimension is opened in a pair of poco
andante variations in the tonic E major beginning with an oboe solo con espres-
sione. The expressive broadening of this section culminates in the richly scored,
majestic second variation of the pair, yet this variation also changes character in
its final section, while modulating away from the tonic key. After building to a for-
tissimo climax and full cadence in G minor, a mysterious transition leads to a recall
of the introductory flourishes of the movement in G minor, ushering in the presto
coda of this remarkable movement. The coda is rich in resonances. The promi-
nence of the horns reminds us of the key role of this instrument in the symphony
as a whole. The final barrage of fortissimo tonic chords recalls both the opening
salvos of the first movement and the antiphonal gestures between winds and
strings when the basso del tema was first announced at the beginning of the finale.
Even the rising scale figures at the conclusion recall similar scales in the Alla mar-
cia variation, resolving this striking motivic gesture to the tonic E major.
In shaping the form of the Eroica finale, Beethoven adapted the rondo proto-
type from the Prometheus ballet finale as well as the extended variation chain of
op. 35. The resulting formal synthesis is tight and concentrated, ingeniously en-
riched through contrapuntal episodes and a sense of continuous development that
104 beethoven
overcomes the sectionalism often associated with rondo and variation form. Para-
doxically, the craft of counterpoint and a richness of developmental processes are
embodied here in music that begins in provocative simplicity, with just the basso
del tema played in pizzicato strings. From the sketches for the Eroica, we know
that the bass of the theme also served as progenitor for the opening of the main
theme of the first movement. Whereas the basso del tema initially outlines a inter-
vallic boundary space reaching to the fifth above and fourth below the tonic note,
Beethoven shaped his primary theme for the opening Allegro con brio as a turn-
ing figure within this boundary space, which introduces the notes of the tonic
triad in order, while returning to E after sounding G and B .11
The Promethean connection has received too little attention in discussions of
the symphony, and the Eroica finale has remained relatively neglected by com-
mentators. In a valuable study exploring programmatic interpretations of the
Eroica Symphony, Scott Burnham observes that the “conjunction of Beethoven’s
music with the ethical and mythical implications of the hero and his journey holds
the entire reception history of the symphony in its sway,” yet he confines his own
attention to the first movement, as if the remaining movements held no meaning
for the “hero and his journey.”12 Burnham believes that narrative interpretation
linking all four movements is stymied by the “presence of two movements after
the hero’s funeral.”13 Yet the Promethean narrative we have traced—struggle–
death–rebirth–apotheosis—emerges only through the work as a whole, through
the contribution of each movement to the narrative design. For Beethoven, hero-
ism is bound up with a commitment to humanistic causes—freedom, enlighten-
ment, creativity—that are pursued at risk or cost of death. In the Prometheus
scenario, as we have seen, the death and reincarnation of the mythic hero are ex-
plicit, while the outcome of the narrative brings a dawning recognition of the
creative principle by humanity’s representatives. Extolling the imagination and
its transformative possibilities, the Eroica finale shows how even unpromising
scraps—the bare bones of a grotesque basso del tema—can be turned into artistic
coinage as an apotheosis of play. We should not forget the underdog status of Bee-
thoven’s symbolic heroes. Prometheus has his Zeus; Leonore and Florestan their
Pizarro; Egmont his Alba. Confronted by brute power, each is vulnerable; death
threatens or claims them all. Most important is the principle for which they stand
and undergo sacrifices. From this viewpoint, an individual who succumbs to the
lure of power and authority for its own sake is disqualified from heroism, as was
Napoleon after he had himself crowned emperor.14
11
Lewis Lockwood has illustrated this process in his essay “The Earliest Sketches for the
Eroica Symphony” in Lockwood, Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 142–43.
12
Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 27.
13 Beethoven Hero, p. 4.
14
In an often-cited letter to Zmeskall, Beethoven wrote gloatingly that “Power is the
moral principle of those who excel others, and it is also mine” (Beethoven Briefe, vol. 1, L.
35, p. 43). However, the entire letter is humorous and highly satirical, and the statement is
not to be taken at face value.
The title Beethoven eventually gave to the work in 1806 was “Sinfonia
Eroica . . . composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand Uomo.” As Carl
Dahlhaus has observed, this reference to “the memory of a great man” resonates
with Friedrich Hölderlin’s unfinished “Ode to Napoleon” of 1797: “Poets are sa-
cred vessels wherein the wine of life, the spirit of heroes, is preserved”; in this
sense, “what the ‘Eroica’ realizes aesthetically is not the image but the myth of
Napoleon, which was associated with the myth of Prometheus.”15 But if Napoleon
was never the exclusive or even the primary heroic model for Beethoven’s Eroica,
the composer’s canceled dedication of the work to Bonaparte has exerted an irre-
sistible fascination. Some nineteenth-century commentators, such as A. B. Marx
and Alexander Ulibischeff, offered programs depicting the opening of the sym-
phony as morning on the battlefield, with Napoleon leading the action on his
battle steed.16 Such military symbolism does not fit the symphony as a whole, nor
is the first movement well served by images more appropriate to a “battle” sym-
phony like Wellington’s Victory. The Eroica Symphony is more than a sound-
track to an imaginary film about Napoleon. What then can be said about the
metaphorical meaning of the evolutionary trajectory of the Eroica’s first move-
ment, with its syncopated climax and “new” theme in the development? For
Burnham, the movement reaches its “antipode” at the E minor theme, which is
indeed the point of furthest remove in the tonal plan.17 On the other hand, this
theme stands out on account of its unusually clear formal structure, unfolding as
a sixteen-measure statement made up of two-bar phrase members; its ensuing repe-
tition in F minor replicates this pattern. Actually, the theme is not unrelated to the
earlier music, and it shows a distinct motivic kinship to the dolce subject first
heard at bar 45, as we have seen.
It is tempting to regard the E minor theme not as an exact opposite—or
antipode—of the opening triadic turning theme, but rather as an indispensable
thematic complement that is achieved through fortitude and determination. Not
without reason have some writers described this subject as a long-delayed “sec-
ond theme” of the movement. An unstable oppositional character is conveyed
above all in the syncopated passages, and especially that passage in Ex. 31 lead-
ing to accented collisions of the F major and A minor triads on an “evil chord,”
in Marx’s words.18 Regarded in this way, the juxtaposition of the “new” theme
with the primary thematic complex becomes an outcome of the momentous de-
velopment, and the further integration of the “new” theme in the coda represents
the achieved consequence of an arduous and even harrowing process. Neverthe-
less, the relationship of the “new” theme to the opening subject resides in its con-
trasting qualities: the darkening modal shift to the minor, and the replacement of
15
Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music, p. 25.
16 Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1875, first pub-
lished 1859), vol. 1, pp. 245–61; Ulibischeff, Beethoven, ses critiques, ses glossateurs
(Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1857), pp. 173–80; cited in Burnham, Beethoven Hero, p. 5.
17
Beethoven Hero, p. 12.
18
Ludwig van Beethoven, p. 253.
106 beethoven
the triadic configuration by stepwise melodic motion passing from the tonic to
mediant, and then descending from the dominant. In these respects, as well as its
downbeat orientation, the shape of the “new” theme invites comparison to the be-
ginning of the opening subject of the Marcia funebre.
Despite its connection to the Prometheus scenario, the overall narrative design
of the Eroica grows out of Beethoven’s earlier experiments in forging expressive
and symbolic links between the movements of his instrumental works. Particu-
larly striking are the parallels to his weighty Piano Sonata in D major op. 10 no.
3, completed several years earlier, in 1798. Like the Eroica, op. 10 no. 3 opens
with a bold energetic movement which strains the conventions of sonata style, while
its second movement assumes a melancholy character. As the sketches confirm,
this Largo e mesto in D minor is a companion piece to the Adagio affettuoso ed
appassionato of the Quartet in F major op. 18 no. 1 in the same key; both move-
ments are associated in turn with the burial-vault scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet and thus linked to the idea of death.19 As we have seen, the type of dis-
solving close of the Marcia funebre in the symphony is foreshadowed at the end
of the sonata’s slow movement, while distinctive features of the symphony’s third
movement bear comparison to the delicate beginning and ebullient trio of the
Minuetto in op. 10 no. 3. Finally, a character of emerging process, unpredictable
humor, and deft wit inspires both finales. These affinities remind us both of the
deep continuities in Beethoven’s creative process, and of the presence in his instru-
mental music of levels of symbolic meaning.
In the finale the association with Prometheus becomes explicit through the reuse
of the theme from the ballet. As in the op. 35 Variations Beethoven first develops
just the bass of the theme—with its grotesque humor of expressive silences—
before joining it to the upper-line melody. We thereby witness the gradual creation
of a composite theme out of its component elements, a notion that took deep hold
on Beethoven and which surfaces again in more radical form in the Scherzando
movement of the F major Quartet op. 59 no. 1, from 1806. The variations that
follow in the Eroica finale are resourcefully blended with fugato passages, an alla
marcia section, and an extended andante featuring wind solos to create a unique
formal design. As Lewis Lockwood has observed, “The Eroica finale emerges as
the generating movement for the whole work and as the most fully original sym-
phonic finale that Beethoven or anyone else had written up to its time.”20
S S S
Beethoven’s other instrumental works from the period of the Eroica are few in
number but great in their dimensions and demands on performers and instru-
ments. One landmark is the Sonata for Violin and Piano op. 47, from 1803, dedi-
19 These parallels are explored in my essay “Transformational Processes in Beethoven’s
Op. 18 Quartets,” in The String Quartets of Beethoven, ed. William Kinderman (Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 25–26.
20
“The Compositional Genesis of the Eroica Finale,” p. 100; Beethoven: Studies in the
Creative Process, p. 166.
cated to the violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. This is the most celebrated of Beetho-
ven’s violin sonatas, and the very name “Kreutzer” gradually assumed mysterious
connotations which Tolstoy’s novel served to intensify. (In his book Tolstoy as-
cribed uncanny seductive power to the first movement of the sonata.) Beethoven
described the piece as “written in a very concertante style, like that of a concerto.”
The Kreutzer Sonata is a grand and ambitious duo sonata, a counterpart among
the violin sonatas to works such as the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas for
piano alone. The first movement begins with a weighty slow introduction, marked
Adagio sostenuto, protean in character and tonally unstable after its first four bars
for unaccompanied violin in A major. This modulatory introduction gradually
isolates the germinal motif of a rising second, which becomes a crucial element in
all the themes of the ensuing Presto, in A minor. The relentless rhythmic drive of
the Presto abates momentarily at the chorale-like second theme, marked dolce, a
passage linked thematically to the introduction. Beethoven briefly recalls the Ada-
gio, furthermore, in his coda. A central idea in this movement, as in the first move-
ment of the Tempest Sonata, is the relationship and contrast between the slow in-
troduction and the faster, intensely dramatic material in the minor that forms the
main body of the movement. The second movement, an Andante con variazioni
in F major, consists of four increasingly florid variations followed by an extended
coda. The finale is a rondo in tarantella rhythm, in A major, originally conceived
as the finale of op. 30 no. 1, composed in 1802. Beethoven regarded it as too “bril-
liant” for the earlier work, but it is perfectly in keeping with the other movements
of the Kreutzer, his most brilliant violin sonata.
A remarkably original yet somewhat neglected piece from this period is the
Piano Sonata in F major op. 54, of 1804, the first movement of which is above all
a study in contrasts. Richard Rosenberg dubbed it “La Belle et la Bête,” and Bren-
del has described how its two contrasting themes—a gracious, dignified “feminine”
theme resembling a minuet, and a stamping, assertive, “masculine” theme employ-
ing accented octave triplets—gradually influence one another in the course of the
movement, until they become thoroughly integrated and combined in the final
passages.21 Here the music resembles the conventional form of minuet and trio
only very superficially, and the point of the dissonant outburst immediately preced-
ing the final cadence is to remind us—through the diminished-seventh harmonies,
triplet rhythm, and the use of register—of the contrasting thematic complex that
has gradually become absorbed into the minuet while transforming it. In this
movement Beethoven thus explores a directional process and an ongoing synthe-
sis of experience—qualities he further developed in many later works.
The ensuing Allegretto in a perpetuum mobile rhythm is already the finale—
op. 54 is the first of Beethoven’s major sonatas for piano to compress the formal
plan into a pair of movements. This sonata form unfolds with an irresistible mo-
mentum in long ascending lines punctuated by syncopated pedal notes. The two-
voice texture is reminiscent of Bach, but the dramatic power is unmistakably
Beethovenian. In the development Beethoven inverts the ascending linear motion
21 Die Klaviersonaten, vol. 2, p. 282; Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, pp. 47–50.
108 beethoven
so that it sinks chromatically into the depths of the bass, preparing a modulation
into C minor. The coda then accelerates the perpetual motion in a furious più alle-
gro. We can discern in this rhythmic drive a key to the relationship between the two
strongly contrasting movements of op. 54. The initial minuet had proceeded in halt-
ing fashion, stopping every two or four bars in cadences set off by rests, but the
assertive contrasting theme of that movement infused the music with an energy
that in the finale becomes an all-encompassing force. The discovery, integration,
and celebration of this rhythmic energy is a guiding idea of the sonata as a whole.
In the wake of the Eroica Beethoven showed a strong inclination to reshape his
sonatas and quartets on a grand scale, introducing innovations in texture, sonor-
ity, register, and color. Also essential is a sense of deepened contrast or conflict—
a quality present in op. 54 but largely absent in the contemporaneous Triple Con-
certo in C major op. 56, with its superficially brilliant yet rather conventional
rhetoric. Wilhelm von Lenz once described the Waldstein Sonata in C major op.
53, of 1804, as “heroic pianistic deeds” (“Klavierheldenthaten”) with a “sym-
phonic essence” (“symphonistischen Wesen”).22 In its opening Allegro con brio
Beethoven goes beyond the harmonic experiments of earlier sonatas such as op.
31 no. 1 to create an enlarged sense of tonal space. The quietly pulsating tonic
chords with which the sonata begins lead up a third to the dominant; moments
later, a restatement of the opening phrase beginning a step lower carries the music
to the subdominant. Within this broadened tonal spectrum it is natural that Bee-
thoven should choose the remote key of E major for his second subject group,
which begins with a serene, chorale-like subject marked dolce e molto legato. He
develops this lyrical subject through variation, embroidering its sustained notes in
a rhythmic texture of triplets that gradually reasserts the brilliant pianistic tex-
tures so characteristic of this sonata.
The scale of conception of the Waldstein is impressive, yet Beethoven substan-
tially reduced the length of the piece when he resolved to cut the original slow
movement, a luxurious rondo in F major, and have it published separately, while
substituting a brief but profound Introduzione in this key. The original slow
movement, the Andante grazioso con moto WoO 57, was so wildly popular with
his audiences that Beethoven called it “Andante favori,” favorite Andante. Each
time the charming main theme of the rondo appears, it trails off in a mysterious
decrescendo, and yields to a falling horn motive in D major, a gesture identical to
the “Lebewohl” (“farewell”) motive from the outset of the later Sonata in E
major op. 81a. The episodes of the rondo involve elaborate figuration and pas-
sages with octaves; the second of these, in B major, is a deliciously mocking par-
ody of Italian operatic style. In its final stages, the rondo seems hesitant to end;
even after a decrescendo to triple pianissimo with the hands placed in the extreme
registers of the keyboard, we hear the main theme one last time, beginning on the
Neapolitan harmony, G major, while the very last pair of soft chords are a gen-
tle reminder of the disappearing residue of the now familiar opening of the rondo
22 Kritischer Katalog sämtlicher Werke Ludwig van Beethovens mit Analysen derselben,
vol. 2, p. 273.
theme. The “Andante favori” reminds us of Beethoven’s lyrical grace and subtle
stylistic mastery, qualities that coexist with the more tempestuous characteristics
of his art.
As we have seen, the pensive substitute slow movement of op. 53 is linked, in
its structure and character, to Beethoven’s setting of “Dead! Dead!” at the begin-
ning of his Joseph Cantata, as well as to the orchestral introduction to the dun-
geon scene in Fidelio, composed shortly thereafter. To be sure, the symbolic con-
notations of the contrast between movements in the Waldstein are latent rather
than explicit, and hardly comparable with, for instance, the drastic juxtaposition
of the third and fourth Gellert songs “Vom Tode” (“Of Death”) and “Die Ehre
Gottes aus der Natur” (“The Glory of God from Nature”) op. 48, from 1801–2,
where gloomy F minor music associated with death yields to a resounding C
major setting marked “majestic and sublime.” In the sonata, the new slow move-
ment is admirably calculated to set into relief the luminous C major world of the
longer outer movements. Its guiding structural idea—a descending bass progres-
sion with a countervailing ascent in the right hand—is so devised that resolution and
closure cannot be achieved within the Introduzione but only at the threshold of
the ensuing finale. Only after an arresting climax on a widely spaced diminished-
seventh sonority do we reach a miraculous turning point at the emergence into the
rondo, which is marked Allegretto moderato.
The high G that acts as pivot from the Introduzione into the finale serves also
as the crucial peak of the main theme of the rondo. Beethoven glorifies this pitch
through sustained trills as the theme migrates into the stratosphere with the left
hand encompassing the lower registers with rapid scales (Ex. 33). Pianistic tex-
tures like these were unprecedented in 1804; they foreshadow some of the most
visionary moments in Beethoven’s last sonatas. Impressive as well are the episodes
of the rondo (the first of which has a “Russian” flavor, in A minor) and the cen-
tral development section, an imaginative fantasy based on the rhythm of the head
of the main theme. The prestissimo coda doubles the tempo, turning the main
theme into an ethereal parody of itself. But that is not all: Beethoven recaptures
here the developmental fantasy, and connects that passage to a series of octave
glissandi in both hands culminating in the sustained trills. Now, however, the
main theme is written in longer note values; it reassumes its original shape before
the closing passages of this great sonata reassert first the urgency of the thematic
compression and then the magnificent breadth of Beethoven’s rhythmic conception.
The contrasting companion work to the Waldstein is the Appassionata Sonata
in F minor op. 57. This work is overcast with dark foreboding and represents an
antipode to the luminous C major Sonata. Tovey once observed that the F minor
Sonata is Beethoven’s only work to maintain a tragic solemnity throughout all its
movements.23 The title Appassionata, though not from Beethoven, is not inappro-
priate (though Czerny was surely correct in observing that the work is “much too
magnificent” for the title).24 In its poetic power and richness of allusion, and in
23
A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, p. 169.
24 On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, p. 12.
110 beethoven
Ex. 33 Waldstein Sonata op. 53/III, bars 49–64 (and 331–46)
the gigantic simplicity of its structural foundation, this sonata represents a pro-
found achievement, outstanding even for Beethoven.
The opening Allegro assai begins with a phrase of four bars, whose two halves
embody contrary tendencies. The first two, unharmonized, bars consist of a tri-
adic figure in gapped octaves, with the bass reaching the lowest F (Ex. 34). The
second half of the phrase, in contrast, presents an imploring, plaintive, harmo-
nized gesture around an expressive trill. The tension implicit in this motivic jux-
taposition is heightened in the following phrase, which is placed by Beethoven up
a semitone, so that it closes on the dominant harmony of the Neapolitan, D . Sub-
sequently, through his technique of foreshortening, Beethoven compresses the
four-bar phrases into shorter units, beginning with the plaintive gesture of the
trill, at which point we hear a four-note motif in the bass—D –D –D –C—a motto
that tersely encapsulates the harmonic tension.
A crucial dramatic event in the movement centers on the appearance in the de-
velopment of the lyrical second theme in D major. Already in the exposition this
theme had employed a bass-line rising stepwise through a fifth. Now, in the devel-
opment, the bass continues to rise, carrying the music through a series of modu-
lations. After the ascent has spanned two octaves the theme dissolves, and the
music becomes, in Tovey’s words, “inarticulate.”25 All that remains of the the-
matic material is a rhythmically charged texture of diminished-seventh arpeggios,
and the music descends, in a free fall of four octaves, until impact is made on the
low D . In a brilliant stroke Beethoven introduces at this point the four-note motto
from the outset of the movement, the motif that so resembles the so-called Fate
Ex. 34 Appassionata Sonata op. 57/I, bars 1–4
motif of the Fifth Symphony. The recapitulation follows, as the accumulated en-
ergy of the development is unleashed in an ostinato bass pedal.
Other passages, such as the end of the exposition and conclusion of the coda, trail
off into a mysterious pianissimo, while opening a vast gap in register between the
two hands. As Martha Frohlich has observed, Beethoven actually sketched a pow-
erful fortissimo conclusion, only to reject that idea in favor of a hushed, open-ended
cadence.26 The mysterious ending connects more effectively with the ensuing slow
movement, implying the unresolved character of the dramatic tensions exposed in
the Allegro assai—tensions that must carry over into the remaining movements.
In the overall design of the Appassionata Beethoven exploits a relationship be-
tween serene lyricism in D major and the tempestuous idiom in F minor such as
is exposed in the first movement. Important are the parallels in character between
the opening Allegro assai and the finale, Allegro ma non troppo, and especially
the contrasting role of the slow movement, a set of variations in D major on an
almost static, hymn-like andante theme. The course of these variations seems pre-
determined by the quietly reflective nature of the theme, which consists initially of
stationary pedal notes and which repeatedly closes harmonically on the tonic
triad. The variations embellish the theme through a series of progressive rhythmic
subdivisions, coordinated with a gradual ascent in register; yet the entire process
is contemplative and dream-like, to be abruptly shattered, as Tovey observed, by
the first hint of action. That confrontation occurs at the harmonic substitution of
an arpeggiated diminished seventh beneath the cadential D , in the treble which
might, under other circumstances, have closed the movement (Ex. 35). The arpeg-
giated chord returns an octave higher and then is reiterated thirteen times in the
original register at the outset of the Allegro ma non troppo, now intensified rhyth-
mically and dynamically. The rhythm of the Andante theme is extracted and ac-
celerated in these chords, which build the threshold into the finale. The “self-
sufficiency” of the variation movement is thus annihilated, as its tonic, D , now
becomes a crucial dissonance in the context of F minor, recalling a similar treat-
ment in the first movement. Indeed, from those thirteen repeated chords Beetho-
ven derives the main theme of the finale by “composing out” the diminished-
seventh chord as a sinuous figuration that carries over into the passagework of the
Allegro ma non troppo.
26
Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, pp. 97, 108–9.
112 beethoven
Ex. 35 Appassionata Sonata op. 57/II–III
According to Ries, Beethoven conceived this passage, and much that follows it,
during and immediately after a long walk in the countryside near Döbling, a small
town outside Vienna where he spent part of the summer of 1804. Ries wrote that
during the walk,
in which we went so far astray that we did not get back to Döbling, where Beetho-
ven lived, until nearly 8 o’clock, he had been all the time humming and sometimes
howling, always up and down, without singing any definite notes. In answer to my
question what it was he said: “A theme for the last movement of the sonata has
occurred to me” [in F minor op. 57]. When we entered the room he ran to the
pianoforte without taking off his hat. I took a seat in the corner and he soon for-
got all about me. Now he stormed for at least an hour with the beautiful finale of
the sonata. Finally he got up, was surprised still to see me and said: “I cannot give
you a lesson today, I must do some more work.”27
What preoccupied Beethoven on that summer day in 1804 was one of his most
unrelenting finales, a movement “whose tragic passion is rushing downwards,” in
Tovey’s words (if “rushing” is the right expression for a measured Allegro ma non
troppo). Beethoven gives unusual weight to the later portions of the finale by pre-
scribing a repetition of the development and recapitulation, a direction unfortu-
nately ignored by some pianists, at the recommendation of Hans von Bülow.28 No
one who has seen the inscription “la seconda parte due volta” written in large let-
ters in Beethoven’s autograph, however, would be likely to ignore it. After the rep-
etition we hear a Presto coda, beginning with an ecstatically stamping dance
which dissolves into a final, frenzied intensification of the turbulent rhetoric from
the Allegro ma non troppo. Uhde has rightly pointed to the dissociated, even
shocking effect of the coda’s beginning:29 it seems to represent a valiant yet futile
27 Thayer-Forbes, p. 356.
28 Notes in his edition of the sonatas (New York: Schirmer, 1894), p. 473.
29 Beethovens Klaviermusik, vol. 3, p. 214.
attempt to break out of the downward rush of music burdened with a sense of
tragic doom.
Maxim Gorky described Vladimir Lenin’s comments after having heard a per-
formance of a Beethoven sonata as follows:
“I know nothing which is greater than the Appassionata; I would like to listen to
it every day. It is marvelous superhuman music. I always think with pride—
perhaps it is naïve of me—what marvelous things human beings can do!”
Then screwing up his eyes and smiling, he added, rather sadly: “But I can’t listen
to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid, nice things,
and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile
hell. And now you mustn’t stroke any one’s head—you might get your hand bitten
off. You have to hit them on the head, without any mercy, although our ideal is not
to use force against any one. H’m, h’m, our duty is infernally hard!”30
It is revealing that Lenin, for all his admiration for the Appassionata as “super-
human music,” seems to have perceived an idealistic “beauty” in this dark
composition, an aspect that threatened to soften his ideological resolve. On the
contrary, another famous political figure, the German Chancellor Otto von Bis-
marck, reportedly said that if he “listened often to music” like the first movement
of the Appassionata, “he would always be very brave.”31 This comparison re-
minds us of the divergent responses that characterize reception history, a sphere
in which artworks are often viewed in contradictory ways.
S S S
The antipodal tonal worlds of the Waldstein and Appassionata mirror something
of the central schism in Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera and the greatest problem-
child of all his works. Beethoven’s labors over Fidelio, or Leonore, to use the title
he would have preferred, were protracted over a decade and involved two major
revisions of the entire opera and the composition of no fewer than four overtures.
The models for the libretto and indeed also for aspects of the music were French;
Beethoven was attracted at this time by the grand rhetorical manner of the operas
and overtures of Luigi Cherubini. Fidelio is the only example of the genre of French
Revolutionary “rescue” opera that has remained in the active repertory. Its text was
adapted from Jean François-Nicolas Bouilly’s Léonore ou L’amour conjugal of
1798, a libretto based in turn on an actual episode from the Reign of Terror. In Fi-
delio themes of unjust imprisonment at the hands of a tyrant and heroic valor in
the name of freedom are given expression in a manner not merely realistic but
deeply symbolic and archetypal in import. It is not far-fetched to see in the charac-
ter of Leonore an affinity with the feminine liberty symbol of the French Revolu-
30 Maxim Gorky, Days with Lenin (New York: International, 1932), p. 52. The pianist
who played the Beethoven sonata was Isaiah Dobrowein.

31 Cited in David B. Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996), p. 37. As Dennis notes, this report stems from the pianist
Robert von Keudell, who found in it a “comic twist,” since the chancellor “never required
musical inspiration to be brave” (p. 37).
114 beethoven
tion, and thus with the positive ethical potential of the Revolution that was be-
trayed during the upheavals of the 1790s. Unlike in many other revolutions, the
statues of the monarch overturned during the French Revolution were often re-
placed by a timeless, universal image—that classically robed, feminine embodiment
of “la liberté” that long graced French and American coins and which is also famil-
iar from the famous gift of the French to the Americans: the Statue of Liberty. Iron-
ically, in view of its cultural orientation, the premiere of Fidelio in November 1805
was spoiled by the military occupation of Vienna by the French. Many Viennese
aristocrats fled the city; some of those who did hear the sparsely attended perform-
ances were French officers. Beethoven soon undertook a revision of the opera, com-
pressing the original three acts to two. After only two performances of this version
in the spring of 1806 he withdrew the opera, disgruntled over the financial return.
Not until 1814 was Fidelio successfully revived in the form that is familiar today.
Fidelio can almost be regarded as two operas: a drama centered on noble, ele-
vated personages—the unjustly imprisoned Florestan and his loyal, courageous
wife Leonore, who works at the prison disguised as a man—inlaid into a more
humble, opéra-comique plot inhabited by the commonplace characters of Rocco
the jailor, his daughter Marzelline, and her jealous boyfriend Jaquino. As in
Mozart’s Zauberflöte, things are not as they seem at the beginning. Doubtless the
transformation of Bouilly’s libretto into the more exalted, ethically inspired drama
of Fidelio is no more perfect, even in its final version, than was the somewhat anal-
ogous reworking of the original fairy-tale plot of Die Zauberflöte into a richly
symbolic drama of a rather different kind. An awareness of the political context
and compositional evolution of Fidelio helps to illuminate its outstanding impor-
tance in Beethoven’s career. That the ethical dimension of Fidelio embodies a re-
sponse to Mozart’s operatic legacy seems unmistakable. Beethoven expressed se-
rious reservations about the subject matter of Mozart’s great Da Ponte operas:
Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and by implication, Così fan tutte. According
to Ignaz von Seyfried, he stated that “‘Don Juan’ still is fashioned altogether in
the Italian style and, besides, art, which is sacred, should never be degraded to
serve as a pretext for so scandalous a subject.”32 Another witness, Ludwig Rell-
stab, reported Beethoven as saying that “I could not compose operas like ‘Don
Giovanni’ and ‘Figaro.’ I hold them both in aversion. I could not have chosen such
subjects, they are too frivolous for me.”33
Although Così fan tutte is not explicitly named in these reports, there is reason
to suppose that it was especially this opera that preoccupied Beethoven when he
composed Fidelio. What was it about these Mozartian works that got under Bee-
thoven’s skin, and that he felt compelled to resist, despite his long-standing and
sincere admiration for Mozart’s music? His charge of “frivolousness” seems
aimed at the skepticism toward ideals and ironically tolerant view of fallible
human relationships that are embodied in Mozart’s operas. In Così, the “philoso-
pher” Don Alfonzo, aided by his paid assistant Despina, becomes the architect of
32 Beethoven: Impressions of Contemporaries, p. 44.

33 Ibid., p. 182.
a partner-swapping experiment designed to expose the transient nature of emo-

tional commitments and the fragility of vows of faithfulness when confronted
with the volatile passions of real individuals. This viewpoint of Don Alfonzo’s is
set forth as a general theory of human nature, according to which ideals are des-
tined to prove vulnerable when tested by human beings.
Così fan tutte thus radically destabilizes those bonds between the sexes that
Beethoven glorifies through the elevation of spousal virtue in Fidelio. In this con-
text, the subject of the opera Léonore ou L’amour conjugal, which reached the
stage at Paris in 1798, with a text by Bouilly (1763–1842) and music by Pierre
Gaveaux (1761–1825), was bound to have appealed to Beethoven. The historical
realism and political cast of the Leonore plot gripped Beethoven, motivating him
to pursue this project instead of the libretto of Vestas Feuer (Vesta’s Fire) that he
was offered by Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart’s Zauberflöte. In a
letter of 4 January 1804 to the writer and editor Johann Friedrich Rochlitz, Bee-
thoven explains that he lingered for half a year over Schikaneder’s libretto and
had composed several numbers, although the overall plan and sense of its heroic
Roman subject remained obscure to him, and the language and verses of its char-
acters sounded like “present-day Viennese apple-vendors.”34 Decrying the use of
magic as a theatrical effect, Beethoven explained to Rochlitz that “Schikaneder’s
realm has been totally eclipsed by the light of the clever and practical French op-
eras” and stated that “I now have had an old French libretto adapted, and am be-
ginning now to work on it.”
Bouilly’s “old French libretto” as set by Gaveaux is an opéra-comique with
spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. More precisely, it was entitled Fait
historique en deux actes et en prose, mêlé de chants, with the formulation “fait
historique” signaling its relation to an actual event (see Plate 8). The role of the
villain, Pizare, is spoken, and Roc, Marceline, and Jaquino speak in dialect. In his
autobiography Mes récapitulations, written some forty years after the fact,
Bouilly describes how his training as a lawyer and judge led in 1793 to his being
appointed accusateur public and then becoming a member of the commission mil-
itaire in his native Tours. As David Galliver has observed, “his apparent identi-
fication with the revolutionary administration [was] only a cloak under cover of
which his real activities were carried out. A convinced enemy of oppression and
champion of liberty, he had been ceaselessly engaged in assisting families who had
come under suspicion, and in saving his home town from the ravages of assas-
sins.”35 In a tantalizing, glancing reference, Bouilly describes his Léonore, ou
L’amour conjugal, as “[un] trait sublime d’héroisme et de dévouement d’une des
dame de la Touraine, dont j’avais eu le bonheur de seconder les généreux efforts”
(“a sublime act of heroism and devotion by one of the women of Touraine, whose
generous efforts I had had the pleasure of assisting”).36 However, the absence of
further details and the context of his activities imply that Bouilly’s story may have
34 Beethoven Briefe, vol. 1, L. 176.

35 “Fidelio—Fact or Fantasy?,” Studies in Music 15 (1981), pp. 83.
36
Mes récapitulations: Deuxième Époque, 1791–1812 (Paris: Louis Janet, 1837), p. 81.
116 beethoven
imaginatively combined several occurrences, and that the author may have known
more than one woman who served as a model for aspects of Leonore.
The wide appeal of Bouilly’s Léonore plot was reflected not only by the con-
siderable success of the Gaveaux opera at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris, but
through its adaptation in two other operas: Leonora, ossia L’amore conjugale by
Fernando Paer at Dresden (1804), and the “farsa sentimentale” L’amor conjugale
by Simone Mayr at Padua (1805). Since they are lighter comic works, the operas
by Paer and Mayr do not exploit the fascinating mixture of genres in Bouilly’s
original plot that is heightened in the German adaptation by Beethoven’s first li-
brettist, Joseph von Sonnleithner. Bouilly deserves more credit than he usually re-
ceives, and his reputation as librettist at the time was enhanced by his other op-
eras, particularly Les deux journées, composed by Cherubini and admired by
Beethoven, who while sketching Fidelio in 1804 copied out ensemble passages
from Cherubini’s opera as well as from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Die Zauber-
flöte. According to Seyfried, Beethoven regarded the latter as Mozart’s greatest
opera, and the composer stated that “among all living opera composers Cheru-
bini is for me the most deserving of respect.”37 While at work on his opera dur-
ing 1804, the composer enjoyed free lodging in the Theater an der Wien building
until the anticipated completion of the project. Seyfried, who was conductor at
the theater, related that Beethoven took advantage of this situation to frequently
attend performances in the house, and that “he was especially captivated by the
creations of Cherubini and Méhul, which at that time had begun to rouse the en-
thusiasm of all Vienna.”38 Beethoven was well aware of recent developments in
French opera, and it seems probable that he had access to the printed vocal score
of Gaveaux’s Léonore.39
A strength of Bouilly’s Léonore plot lies in its sturdy symmetry, which com-
bines aspects of two theatrical traditions, that of the tragédie bourgeoise (domes-
tic tragedy) and the comédie larmoyante (sentimental drama). This blending cre-
ates a dramatic form poised midway between classical tragedy and comedy. The
fact that the central protagonist, Leonore, is disguised allows her to function
simultaneously on two planes of action, thereby connecting these dramatic levels.
Disguised as Fidelio, she interacts with the jailor Rocco, his daughter Marzelline,
and Jaquino. Revealed as Leonore, she confronts the tyrant Pizarro, shields her
imprisoned spouse Florestan and is extolled for her heroism by Don Fernando in
the finale of the last act.
This symmetrical disposition of the seven main characters, which Sonnleithner
and Beethoven took over from the original French version, is shown in Figure 1.
At the same time, the architectural framework of Bouilly’s libretto was consider-
37
Beethoven: Impressions of Contemporaries, p. 44.
38 Ibid., p. 40.
39 Rainer Cadenbach has explored the striking affinities between Gaveaux’s work and
Beethoven’s opera in “Die ‘Leonore’ des Pierre Gaveaux: Ein Modell für Beethovens ‘Fide-
lio’?,” in Collegium Musicologicum: Festschrift Emil Platen (Bonn: Beethoven-Archiv,
1985), pp. 100–121.
Domestic
Tragedy Don Fernando
Pizarro Florestan
Leonore
Fidelio
Marzelline Rocco
Jaquino Sentimental
Drama
Figure 1. The disposition of characters in Fidelio
ably expanded. In its 1805 version, for instance, Beethoven’s opera begins with
Marzelline’s aria followed by a duet for Marzelline with Jaquino, just as in the
French original. However, the following terzett for Marzelline, Jaquino, and
Rocco, and the quartet for these characters with Fidelio were new musical num-
bers, creating an overall opening sequence gradually building from one voice to
four, and culminating in the remarkable canonic quartet, “Mir ist so wunderbar.”
In the 1814 version of Fidelio, this plan has been obscured through the reversal of
the opening two numbers, with the duet preceding Marzelline’s aria, while the
terzett is one of three numbers from 1805 that were dropped altogether. Removed
as well were a duet for Marzelline and Fidelio and a piece in which the villainous
Pizarro intimidates his chorus of prison guards.40
The tension between the two dramatic levels surely accounts in large measure
for Beethoven’s prolonged struggle together with his three librettists to find an op-
timal form for the opera. Beethoven was captivated by the great, overarching
themes of freedom and tyranny, life and death, and he wedded them to music of
surpassing power. In the tonal symbolism of the opera the antipodes are F minor,
the key of Florestan’s aria in the dungeon, and C major, that of the three Leonore
overtures and the finale of the last act, which culminates in the arrival of the min-
ister of state and the release of Florestan and the other political prisoners held by
the tyrant Pizarro. As in the Appassionata Sonata, the F minor music of the dun-
geon scene particularly emphasizes the dissonant semitone D to C. Noteworthy
in this connection is Beethoven’s use of D major as the first change of key, twenty-
one bars into the orchestral introduction. There are few direct thematic corre-
spondences between Fidelio and either of the great piano sonatas, apart from the
Introduzione of op. 53. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable and characteristic
kinship in their key symbolism. If Florestan’s “God!—what darkness here!” might
serve as commentary on the conclusion of the Appassionata, the choral text “Hail
to the day! Hail to the hour!” at the end of Fidelio might also be the motto for
the jubilant coda of the Waldstein finale. In comparison with Fidelio, of course, the
40
The removal of the duet helped conceal the artificiality of the chain of lovers: Jaquino
loves Marzelline, who loves Fidelio, who loves Florestan.
118 beethoven
Waldstein coda is more rarefied and ethereal: the sonata does not confront the
world in the same direct, encompassing way as does the opera.
The trouble with the great overtures of Fidelio—the second and third Leonore
overtures—is that they distil the overriding dramatic themes with such powerful
concentration as to overshadow, if not annihilate, the homely opening scenes of
the first act. Beethoven recognized this problem and finally in 1814 substituted the
shorter Fidelio overture, a piece that only hints at the deeper issues lying con-
cealed at the outset of the dramatic action. Significantly, he decided to change the
key of the overture to E major, the dominant of the opening duet between
Marzelline and Jaquino at the beginning of Act I. The very choice of C major as
tonic for the Leonore overtures had been connected with Beethoven’s intention to
anticipate the most weighty events to follow—these are foreshadowed not only in
a direct quotation from Florestan’s aria and in the trumpet calls, but, no less im-
portant, in the ecstatic climax in the coda of Leonore no. 3 on a dominant minor
ninth chord, where the musical intensity equals that of the most gripping of the
later staged dramatic events. No amount of revision, including even the compres-
sion of the original three acts to two, could resolve the fundamental conflict be-
tween the overture and the ensuing Act I. Beethoven had spectacularly over-
indulged his characteristic practice of musical foreshadowing. Paradoxically, the
greatest of all dramatic overtures, Leonore no. 3, had to be cut from the opera to
which it is inextricably bound. It is no wonder that Beethoven claimed in 1814 to
have earned a “martyr’s crown” for his labors on the revision of Fidelio!
In the Adagio introduction of Leonore no. 3, a descent into darkness is embod-
ied in the tonal shift from C major to B minor—from a stepwise falling scale
emerging out of the initial fortissimo unison G to the hushed F octaves reached
in bar 5. Then, following the quotation of Florestan’s “In des Lebens Frühling-
stage” (“In the springtime of life”) in A major, with its mood of hopeful reminis-
cence, Beethoven modulates through the major mode of B to release astonishing
energies in the A major tutti outburst of bar 27. On a metaphorical level, hope,
maintained under conditions of adversity, becomes a springboard to a realization
of joyful liberation. The dynamic and rhythmic power exposed here in the intro-
duction reaches its culmination only in the coda of the sonata form. Dizzying
chains of syncopations lead into a rising, chromatic linear ascent through a tenth
to high A, a note corresponding to the peak of the initial motif of the main Alle-
gro theme. In the ensuing climactic minor ninth chord, with its reversal of the lin-
ear motion through the downward shift to a dissonant A , Beethoven absorbs the
darker tensions once and for all into the triumphant accents of the conclusion.
Despite the problems of dramatic imbalance between the opera and its overtures
and the awkwardness of Marzelline’s infatuation with the disguised Leonore, Fide-
lio draws much power from a collision of perspectives in which the commonplace
characters such as Rocco play an essential role. It is appropriate that Beethoven,
after having removed Rocco’s “Gold” aria from the first revision, restored it in the
final version. We all know people like Rocco: his is a materialistic ideology that
rejects higher values and fills the void through the embrace of money. He is not
free, but is obliged to serve the tyrant Pizarro. Rocco’s integrity is severely com-
promised by his complicity in oppressive criminal activities, even if he refuses to

commit the murder himself. While not inherently evil, he is a collaborator, guilty
because he lacks the conviction or courage to stand by higher ethical principles.
As we have seen, the opening duet between Marzelline and Jaquino (“Jetzt,
Schätzchen, jetzt sind wir allein”) was originally no. 2, but was placed by Beetho-
ven at the outset of the opera in 1814. This duet brilliantly employs his new tech-
niques of heightened tonal contrast—as heard at the beginnings of the G major
Piano Sonata op. 31 no. 1, and the Waldstein—to depict psychological tension be-
tween characters. As Jaquino nervously but eagerly broaches the topic of mar-
riage, he is rebuffed by Marzelline. This disharmony between them is reflected by
Beethoven’s shifts from A major to B minor and back. Repeatedly, Marzelline
changes the key of Jaquino’s entreaties when she answers him. The rhythm of the
“knocking” distractions that annoy poor Jaquino returns with a vengeance in
Marzelline’s emphatic cries of “No” (“Nein”). Jaquino’s hope (“Hoffnung”) be-
comes bothersome to Marzelline, since “he hopes at the slightest appearance”
(“Er hofft bei dem mindesten Schein”).
The political dimension of Fidelio operates on a collective as well as an indi-
vidual level. The finale of Act I centers on the prisoners’ chorus. At Fidelio’s insis-
tence, the prisoners are allowed brief access to the warmth and light of the out-
side. Their appeal, “O freedom, will you come?,” is juxtaposed with whispered
warnings that the guards are listening; the atmosphere is that of a concentration
camp. It was especially this part of the opera that struck home in the staging by
Christine Mielitz at the Semper Opera in Dresden during October 1989, just as
political demonstrations were beginning to topple the East German regime. In its
first versions, this act had closed with a number for Pizarro and the chorus of
guards. In 1814, by contrast, the role of the prisoners’ chorus was enhanced
through the addition of a stirring setting of the text “Lebwohl, du warmes Son-
nenlicht” (“Farewell, you warm sunshine”), sung as the men return to their cells.
The same basic dramatic progression, with a sustaining vision of freedom
maintained against formidable physical odds, is repeated in more drastic form in
Florestan’s aria. It is revealing that the death-wish of the prisoner in Bouilly’s
French text was deleted in Fidelio. Close to death, Florestan is consoled by the
knowledge that his action in seeking to expose Pizarro’s wrongdoing was virtuous
and necessary: “I have done my duty!” The music of Florestan’s aria embodies a
complex psychological progression: the dismal, death-haunted atmosphere is
reflected in unusual aspects of harmony and orchestration, such as the drum-
strokes on pitches a tritone apart, while his reminiscence of past happiness is con-
veyed in a dolce theme for winds in A major—the subject foreshadowed at the
outset of the second and third Leonore overtures. Concluding the aria is Flo-
restan’s delirious vision of Leonore as an angel leading him to freedom, a passage
added to the work in 1814. In this F major section Beethoven uses an oboe melody
soaring into the high register to symbolize the angel Leonore (Ex. 36). The asso-
ciation is made explicit at Florestan’s words “ein Engel, Leonore” (“an angel,
Leonore”), which mimic the preceding oboe phrase.
Nowhere else in the opera are the boundaries between imagination and reality
120 beethoven
Ex. 36 Fidelio, Act II, no. 2, bars 82–98
so challenged as here. The “heavenly realm” of freedom—is it to be realized in

life, or only in death? The final section of this aria is one of Beethoven’s most
significant moments to the Romantic tenet that the current of subjectivity, of spiri-
tual activity, of the individual’s apprehension of value, is more than external real-
ity. Florestan’s aria is among those parts of the opera that most deeply impressed
Ex. 36 (continued)
Wagner, and traces of its influence are felt in Tristan’s “delirium” scene in the last
act of Tristan und Isolde.
The corresponding psychological moment for Leonore—exposing the under-
lying, nourishing source of her courageous determination—occurs in her aria
“Komm, Hoffnung” (“Come, Hope”) in Act I. The principle of hope had occu-
pied Beethoven in another context at about this time. In late 1804 and early 1805
he was infatuated with the Countess Josephine Brunsvik Deym; the first of his two
song settings of Tiedge’s An die Hoffnung op. 32 was written for her. His passion
went unrequited; he soon had to retreat into a more distant relationship with
Josephine, and by the time the song was published, in September 1805 her name
had been removed from the dedication. Some years later Beethoven produced a
more elaborate, through-composed setting of An die Hoffnung that was pub-
lished in 1816 as op. 94. Tiedge’s poem takes the form of an ode, like Schiller’s An
die Freude. As Hans Boettcher observed, such texts articulate an objective, con-
ceptual awareness of an entity beyond the self.41 Similarly, in “Come, Hope” in
Fidelio, Leonore’s vision of hope taps hidden archetypal energies that sustain her
struggle against adversity.
Beethoven’s sensitivity to psychological subtleties is illustrated by another pas-
sage that like Florestan’s vision must have been added to the work in 1814, even
if surviving sketches for it are lacking. This is the ensuing melodrama, when the
gravediggers stare at the unmoving prisoner. Rocco: “Maybe he is dead.” Leonore:
“Do you mean that?” Rocco: “No, no, he is sleeping.” At the Poco adagio pas-
sage heard as Florestan makes a movement, the arpeggiated oboe line in F major
is a near-quotation from the concluding section of Florestan’s aria, heard just be-
fore. In its register and character, the quotation closely resembles the oboe phrases
surrounding Florestan’s text “an angel, Leonore,” the passage in which the ex-
change of melodic phrases between oboe and voice makes the symbolic role of the
oboe explicit.
41
Beethoven als Liederkomponist, p. 46.
122 beethoven
What is the meaning of this correspondence? From the perspective of the
gravediggers as they move toward the motionless prisoner, it appears that he may
be dead. What has sustained Florestan’s vital forces against all odds in his predica-
ment is an idealized, spiritual experience—a sustaining vision of Leonore as angel
of freedom. In a profound sense, the aria of the prisoner, and especially its culmi-
nating F major section, is inward and psychological, and not an outward display
or physical performance. The oboe excerpt in the melodrama thus conveys how
Florestan’s life is sustained through his imagination and inner conviction; in so
doing, it precisely identifies this inward state with the symbolic climax of the pre-
ceding aria. If we wish, we may even take these two events to be simultaneous
rather than successive: the outward sign of life that Rocco acknowledges with the
words “No, no, he’s sleeping” coincides with that inner vision that soon becomes
more real than external conditions. For the real object of aspiration and agent for
change has just entered the forbidden chamber, and Florestan’s imminent death is
about to be circumvented.
That brings us to Leonore’s key role. Unlike Florestan, whose heroism is that
of endurance, Leonore is an active heroine involved in a race against time. Two
years have passed since the secret incarceration of Florestan, but the opera’s ac-
tion transpires in a single day. Through Pizarro’s sadistic reduction of Florestan’s
rations, the prisoner has been brought close to death; but the anonymous tip
about the minister’s surprise visit to investigate “victims of arbitrary power”
forces Pizarro’s hand, compelling him to plan the murder immediately. Like
Leonore’s disguise, Pizarro’s decision to post an officer and trumpeter on the look-
out tower to warn him of the minister’s arrival is double-edged: although osten-
sibly to aid the tyrant, the trumpet call functions symbolically to confirm the im-
minent arrival of justice, marking the end of Pizarro’s reign of terror. The minister
Don Fernando is no deus ex machina, because Leonore’s interventions have by
then already held Pizarro in check.
Leonore’s quest invites assessment in relation to traditional gender roles, a
topic that has attracted growing attention. Beethoven’s archetypal narrative of
overcoming—of confronting and surmounting existential challenges—has been
discussed by commentators including Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht,42 while the mas-
culine connotations of this “heroic narrative” have been explored recently by
Sanna Pederson and Scott Burnham.43 Pederson asks, “Why should a narrative of
overcoming necessarily mark the music as masculine? Shouldn’t the struggle to re-
alize one’s potential be a true universal of humanity?”44 In addressing these ques-
tions, Pederson refers not to Beethoven’s music, but to the German philosophical
tradition, which she regards as “particularly strong in denying women their own
Bildung.” Citing passages from Hegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Ludwig
42
Zur Geschichte der Beethoven-Rezeption (Laaber: Laaber, 1994).
43
Beethoven Hero, especially the chapter “Beethoven, the Goethezeit, and the Heroic
Conception of Self,” pp. 112–46.
44 “Beethoven and Masculinity,” in Beethoven and His World, ed. Scott Burnham and
Michael P. Steinberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 325.

Feuerbach, she finds support for the idea that the role of women was regarded as
passive rather than active. She concludes that “in sum, the German tradition that
valorizes Beethoven’s narrative of overcoming has a tradition of viewing woman
as an unchanging, eternal essence, as the polar opposite of the dynamically striv-
ing and achieving man.”45 According to this view, the universal dimension of Bee-
thoven’s heroic narrative of overcoming may be valid in theory, but it is under-
mined in practice. In the historical context, established role models and socially
constructed expectations enforced an inequality of roles.
If our only means of evaluating the meaning of Beethoven’s heroic narrative
were derived from writings by Hegel and Humboldt, this argument might be more
convincing, but what is missing is a consideration of Beethoven’s musical works.
Burnham’s own engagement with Beethoven’s heroic phase is limited to a small
handful of works, and his related discussion of the Eroica Symphony is confined
to the first movement, as we have seen. Burnham bypasses Fidelio, which engages
generously with heroic narrative and with gender roles. If we assume that the mas-
culine role is invested with activity and power while the feminine role is passive,
Beethoven’s opera can be seen to invert these relations, turning them on their
head. At the climax of the opera, the heroine Leonore reveals her sex as female
just as she asserts her moral and her physical or strategic superiority, burnishing
a pistol to hold Pizarro at bay. The power-hungry tyrant is as it were unmanned,
at that very moment when Leonore, who had until then been disguised as a man,
reveals her femininity.
An overlooked model for Beethoven’s interpretation of Leonore is the fifteenth-
century teenage heroine Joan of Arc, as mediated through Schiller’s play Die
Jungfrau von Orleans. According to Seyfried, “Beethoven never was seen in the
street without a little note-book in which he jotted down his ideas of the moment.
When by chance this was mentioned, he would parody the words of Joan of Arc:
‘I may not come unless I bear my banner!’”46 This allusion refers to the end of
Schiller’s play, when the mortally-wounded Johanna asserts her fidelity to the
larger cause that sustains her: “Nicht ohne meine Fahne darf ich kommen.” Bee-
thoven’s attachment to Schiller’s play is also reflected in a pair of canons he wrote
in 1813 and 1815 on “Kurz ist der Schmerz, ewig ist die Freude” (“The pain is
short, the joy is endless”).47 These are the words from the very last line of the play,
uttered by Johanna immediately before her death.
The parallels between Joan of Arc and Leonore extend to the gender ambigu-
ity of a heroine dressed in masculine garb and to Johanna’s reference to herself as
“Retterin” (“rescuer”), the same expression applied to Leonore in the finale of
Act II of Fidelio. Another specific affinity is lodged in the recitative preceding
Leonore’s aria in Act I, in which the heroine, responding to Pizarro’s fierce hate or
“Tigersinn” (“tigerish heart”), perceives a consoling rainbow before her, illumi-
45
Ibid., p. 326.
46
Beethoven: Impressions of Contemporaries, p. 42.
47 The first canon, WoO 163, was written for Johann Friedrich Naue in November 1813;
the second, WoO 166, was written for Louis Spohr in March 1815.
124 beethoven
nated above dark clouds: “so leuchtet mir ein Farbenbogen, der hell auf dunkeln
Wolken ruht.” The inspiration for this luminous image—which was added in
1814—surely derives from the end of Schiller’s play, when the dying Johanna asks
those around her, “Sehr ihr den Regenbogen in der Luft?” (“Do you see the rain-
bow in the air?”). The musical setting involves a shift to a sustained C major
chord in the woodwind instruments in Adagio tempo, opening an expressive
space of calm self-possession that stands in the strongest possible contrast to the
agitated turbulence of Pizarro’s destructive rage. Berthold Hoeckner has described
this gesture as a “C-major Lichtblick . . . [which] foretells, like a celestial appari-
tion, the opera’s concluding ‘ode of matrimony’ in the same key.”48
Leonore’s ensuing aria “Komm, Hoffnung” (“Come, Hope”), undoubtedly re-
sponds to Fiordiligi’s “Per pietà, ben mio perdona” (“Dearest love, I beg your par-
don”) in Act II of Così fan tutte. Both arias are set in E major, beginning Adagio,
and the prominent horn in Fiordiligi’s piece becomes three horns in Leonore’s
aria. Significantly, the collapse of Fiordiligi’s efforts to remain faithful is a reflec-
tion of her immersion in the present moment, which supplants her loyalty to the
past. In an analysis of Così, Edward W. Said observed that “one of the main
motifs in Così fan tutte is the elimination of memory so that only the present is
left standing.”49 In this respect, Fidelio offers the strongest possible contrast to
Mozart’s work, since the undimmed memory and spiritual conviction of Leonore
and Florestan are crucial enabling factors. In the face of uncertainty and seemingly
insuperable barriers, yet strengthened by the “duty of true conjugal love,” Leonore
appeals in her aria to the “last star” to “illuminate her goal, however distant, in
order that love reach it.” Fittingly, the registral ascent to her peak note of high B
first takes place at “erreichen” (“reach”). In another E major Adagio written soon
after the opera, the slow movement of the second Razumovsky Quartet from 1806,
Beethoven would again invoke a contemplative vision of the “starry heavens.”
A comparison to Mozart is suggested as well by Beethoven’s next number, the
prisoner’s chorus beginning the Act I finale. The men sing “O welche Lust!” as
they are allowed brief release from their cells into the open air. Yet their true
yearning desire, or “Lust,” is revealed only later, in the contrasting middle section
of the musical form, as the music shifts from the tonic B major to G major. Its
tenor solo, inspired by divine faith and the whisper of hope (“Hoffnung”), with a
chorale-like musical setting, boldly predicts liberation: “we will be free” (“wir
werden frei”). To this utterance, the full chorus responds emphatically with an ex-
clamation followed by a question: “O Himmel! Rettung! Welch ein Glück! O
Freiheit, kehrst du zurück?” (“Oh heaven! Rescue! What happiness! Oh freedom,
will you come?”). This invocation of freedom triggers an astonishing orchestral
and vocal intensification: a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo, involving the
addition of the woodwinds and then horns and trumpets. Harmonically, the cli-
48 Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneu-

tics of the Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 29.
49
On Late Style: Music and Literature against the Grain (New York: Pantheon, 2006),
p. 66.
max falls on a accented seventh chord on G , which Beethoven interprets as a Ger-

man augmented-sixth sonority, and the music lands on the dominant of B major
once the question is restated: “kehrst du zurück?”
An entirely different evocation of liberty occurs at a parallel juncture in
Mozart’s Don Giovanni: Giovanni’s “Viva la libertà!” in the Act I finale. In wel-
coming the masked avengers to his party, the Don adds these loaded words to his
greeting; the slogan is then taken up by Leporello and the masked visitors, as the
words are repeated over and over in a vocal quintet. For long moments, the music
dwells on “Viva la libertà!” which is given an emphatic treatment with trumpets
and drums in C major. The meaning of this gesture could hardly be more opposed
to Beethoven’s chorus of ragged prisoners. For Don Giovanni is advocating not
the genuine article, the political cause of liberty, but merely a self-serving freedom
of indulgence.
This raises in turn the matter of whether Pizarro’s captives should be under-
stood to be political prisoners. As Galliver has observed, Bouilly would have
found the material for his plot “amid the turmoil and violence of revolutionary
Touraine,” and “the setting of his play, une prison d’état, might have been any one
of the great châteaux—Loche, Amboise, or Chinon—which at that time were
crammed with prisoners, many of them innocent suspects.”50 In this regard,
Beethoven’s Fidelio holds clues that have been missed by some commentators.
Winton Dean finds that the prisoners “could be a set of thieves, murderers, and
delinquents,” and Joseph Kerman builds on this comment, referring to “all the
thieves, murderers, and laudanum pushers” among the prisoners.51 However, the
aforementioned message to Pizarro about “victims of arbitrary power” implies
that Florestan is not the only innocent victim held at the prison, and this impres-
sion receives confirmation from his cruel incarceration in response to an effort to
expose Pizarro’s abuses. Rocco too is aware of injustice at the prison, for when
asked by Leonore whether the unnamed prisoner in the dungeon is a “great crimi-
nal,” he responds that he may “have great enemies; that amounts to much the
same thing.” While trying to bring Pizarro to justice, Florestan has joined the list
of victims.
In Beethoven’s opera, the captives come to stand for all of suffering humanity.
Especially moving is the strange passage accompanying the bass solo heard after
“O Freiheit, kehrst du zurück?” which intensifies the long-held pianissimo string
sonorities from the mysterious introduction to the prisoners’ chorus. In context,
after sudden dispersal of the massed voices, the muffled chromatic shift leading to
a B major chord at “Sprecht leise” (“Speak softly”), and the diminished-seventh
chords at “wir sind belauscht” (“we’re spied upon”), vividly convey the op-
pressed and justifiably paranoid state of the prisoners. Their lack of freedom is de-
picted in the empty, withdrawn character of the music. The soft dynamic level is
50
“Fidelio—Fact or Fantasy?” p. 90.
51
Dean, “Beethoven and Opera,” and Kerman, “Augenblicke in Fidelio,” in Ludwig
van Beethoven: Fidelio, ed. Paul Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
pp. 45, 134, respectively.
126 beethoven
maintained throughout the remainder of this section, with reiterations of “leise”
connecting to the soft onset of the recapitulation of “O, welche Lust!”
Certain words appear with special frequency in Fidelio, helping to cross-refer-
ence the different responses of the characters. The word “Pflicht” (“duty”), with
its Kantian ethical associations, marks Rocco’s refusal to kill the prisoner (“that
is not my duty”), the fortifying presence of “the duty of true wifely love” in
Leonore, and Florestan’s consoling thought that his opposition to Pizarro was
rightful. An especially important word is “Augenblick,” referring to a decisive
moment of decision or recognition. In Act I, such concentrated expression is en-
countered in Pizarro’s aria with chorus “Ha! welch’ ein Augenblick! Die Rache
werd’ ich kühlen!” (“Ha! What a moment! I will taste revenge!”). Beethoven
builds here again on Mozart’s legacy, but in a more straightforward fashion. D
minor is the key associated with vengeance in several Mozartian operas; one
thinks not only of Don Giovanni, but of Elettra’s final aria in Idomeneo and the
last aria of the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte. In Beethoven’s Allegro ag-
itato for Pizarro, the first six measures of orchestral introduction are poised on a
dominant pedal point of D minor, with a twisting melodic line emphasizing the
half-step from A to an accented B . These two notes bear the words “Die Rache”
(“revenge”) in bars 8–9, but Pizarro’s obsessive hate is already projected earlier in
the rhythmic compression of this motive. After appearing once per measure in
bars 2–3 and twice in bar 4, the motive appears fourfold in running sixteenth
notes in the bar marking the vocal entrance before this driving momentum un-
leashes a falling scale in the following measure, leading to an emphatic D minor
cadence at “Ha! welch’ ein Augenblick!”
The collision of Pizarro’s thirst for revenge with Leonore’s protective response
in the dungeon in Act II forms the crux of the entire drama, as lodged in the quar-
tet “Er sterbe!” (“He dies!”). Beethoven assigns the major mode of D to this num-
ber, and allows Pizarro to dominate the first section, disclosing his identity to Flo-
restan as he prepares to kill the prisoner. At bars 49–50, the triumphant rhetoric
of the music, with majestic dotted rhythmic figures in the horns and trumpets,
supports Pizarro’s pretense to be an avenger, but Florestan deflates his claim: “A
murderer, a murderer stands before me.” Provoked, Pizarro closes in for the kill,
attempting to seize the moment: “nur noch ein Augenblick, und dieser Dolch”
(“only just a moment, and this dagger”). Musically, the opening unison motive,
with its accented long note and sweeping, descending continuation, is sequenced
upward from A to B, C , and D. At “Dolch” comes Leonore’s first intervention on
a high G supported by a C major chord: “Zurück!” (“Back!”). In what follows,
she assumes vocal leadership over the musical trajectory, carrying the ensuing pas-
sages through F minor and G minor. G then serves as a recitation tone for her
message “death shall answer your lust for murder!” preceding her revelation
“Tödt’ erst sein Weib!” (“kill first his wife!”), whose vocal setting springs up a
fifth from E to the peak note of high B . These vocal high points help establish
her musical dominance over her adversary, none more explicitly bound up with
her femininity than “Weib!” (“woman!”), set as it is to the B near the top of her
range, and heard unaccompanied, without the orchestra (Ex. 37).
Ex. 37 Fidelio, Act II, Quartet (“Er sterbe”), setting of “Tödt’ erst sein Weib!”
(“Kill first his wife!”)
The astonished response of the three men (“His/my wife?”) on a prolonged E

seventh chord yields to a persistent anapestic rhythmic ostinato, whose short-
short-long-long pattern scans “Leonore!” as is confirmed in Florestan’s vocal
recognition. Now, taking the offense, Leonore challenges Pizarro on his musical
home turf: the tonic key of D. Starting at the Più moto, Beethoven reaffirms D
128 beethoven
major in the faster tempo and recaptures the earlier pattern of rising tonal se-
quences, here ascending from D through E to F , reinforced by the anapestic
rhythmic motive heard in the winds and trumpets. The linear goal of the larger
trajectory is G, heard as part of a dominant seventh chord of D major, and it is
Leonore who controls this crucial pitch. Her last and most decisive intervention,
as she draws the pistol on Pizarro and silences him, outlines this sonority: “Noch
einen Laut, und du bist todt!” (“One more sound, and you’re dead!”). Her silenc-
ing of her opponent involves seizing from him the structural fundamentals of the
key of D, that tonality that was closely identified with Pizarro already in his aria
in Act I. At the very moment when Pizarro utters “den Tod mit ihm!” again threat-
ening Florestan with death, Leonore turns the tables, and her word “todt!” coin-
cides with the sudden shift to a B major chord, as the trumpet sounds from the
ramparts, announcing the approach of Don Fernando. The anapestic rhythm of
the trumpet fanfare links it motivically to “Leonore!” In this thrilling “Augen-
blick,” her triumph over Pizarro reaches beyond the dungeon, overthrowing his
tyrannical regime.
The revision process of the 1814 Fidelio removed the prolonged suspense from
the dramatic situation following this quartet. In its original version, the ensuing
lovers’ duet “O namenlose Freude!” was a kind of ecstatic Liebestod, sung with
the outcome still left in doubt and danger still hanging over their heads; offstage
choral shouts calling for vengeance seemed potentially threatening to the pair. In
accordance with the changed dramatic situation and the effective change of scene
introduced in 1814, with the finale of Act II taking place not in the dungeon but
in the light and fresh air of the outdoors, Beethoven drastically shortened “O na-
menlose Freude!” with this Allegro vivace in G major preparing the resolution to
C major at the beginning of the finale with chorus: “Heil sei dem Tag! Heil sei der
Stunde!” (“Hail to the day! Hail to the hour!”).
Beethoven has sensitively linked parts of his finale to various earlier numbers
of the opera, creating a network of tonal correspondences and resolutions. In this
sense, the “namenlose Freude” duet for wife and husband in G major passionately
realizes the latent potential of the beautifully suspended canonic quartet in this
key in Act I, an ensemble associated with the idea of marriage. The overall key of
C major of the Act II finale is foreshadowed already in the naive joy of
Marzelline’s opening aria, in Leonore’s mysterious Lichtblick in her Act I recita-
tive, and later in the trio “Euch werde Lohn” (“You’ll be rewarded”) in the dun-
geon, when Leonore offers bread to Florestan. The music of the A major Meno
allegro section of the finale, heard as Don Fernando recognizes the couple, refers
back through telling details of motive and rhythm to the grave-digging duet in A
minor, assuming a resolving function.
Most weighty of all these correspondences is the expansive musical “Augen-
blick” of the Sostenuto assai in F major. Don Fernando, in an afterthought, in-
vites Leonore to unlock her husband’s chains. This is the passage in which Bee-
thoven reused the hymn-like theme of his aria with chorus “Da stiegen die
Menschen ans Licht” (“There the people ascended into the light”) from the
Florestan Grave: Orchestral Introduction F minor

“Gott! Welch’ Dunkel hier!” F minor
“In des Lebens Frühlingstagen” A-flat major
Poco Allegro: Vision of Leonore F major
Leonore, Rocco Melodrama Modulatory

“Grave Digging” Duet A minor
Leonore, Rocco, Florestan Trio: “Euch werde Lohn” A major
Leonore, Rocco, Quartet: “Er sterbe! D major

Florestan, Pizarro
Leonore, Florestan Duet: “O namenlose Freude!” G major
Finale “Heil sei den Tag, Heil sei der Stunde!” C major
Meno allegro: Don Fernando: “Gefesselt” A major
Sostenuto assai: “O Gott! Welch, ein Augenblick!” F major
“Wer ein holdes Weib errungen” C major
Figure 2. Overview of the formal design of Fidelio, Act II
Joseph Cantata of 1790. Two rising fourths from C to F and then B are followed
and balanced here by an expressive stepwise descent through the same tonal
space, a melodic contour that unfolds and develops as the setting of Florestan’s
words “O unaussprechlich süsses Glück!” (“Oh inexpressible sweet bliss!”). The
use of the oboe in F major in this emblematic theme is surely connected to the
revised ending of Florestan’s aria from 1814. In that passage, Florestan, in his
clairvoyant state, conjures up a vision of his liberation by Leonore; in so doing,
his music anticipates the oboe in F major that will mark his actual unchaining.
In some uncanny way, as Beethoven’s purposeful musical design implies, it is
this sustained ethical vision that has kept Florestan alive until his rescue by the
heroic Leonore. Yet another example of dramatic foreshadowing related to the
important Sostenuto assai passage spans the work as a whole. For when Fidelio
is first seen on stage, he/she is carrying chains for the prisoners, ironically
prefiguring her unchaining of Florestan and liberation of other prisoners in the
finale of Act II.
The overall formal design of the second act is shown in Figure 2. The succes-
sive keys form an audible tonal path, bridging some intervening passages of spo-
ken dialogue. After the modal shift from A minor to A major for the trio “Euch
werde Lohn,” descent through the circle of perfect fifths carries the music through
D major and G major, reaching C major at the celebratory beginning of the finale.
A pivotal key in this large-scale design is D major, which is closely linked to D
minor, Pizarro’s key of wrathful vengeance. Awareness of this tonal design lends
perspective to Leonore’s dramatic interventions in the climactic quartet. Through
her seizure from Pizarro of D major, she helps guide the musical trajectory toward
its affirmative outcome.
Beethoven caps his choral finale with an Allegro ma non troppo, whose text
130 beethoven
begins with another allusion to Schiller, this time a direct use of two lines from An
die Freude that would also find their way into the Ninth Symphony, followed by
the last two lines of the text praising Leonore as “Retterin”:
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen
stimm’ in unsern Jubel ein.
Nie wird es zu hoch besungen,
Retterin des Gatten sein.
Whoever has won a noble woman
join in our jubilation.
Never will it be too highly praised
to be rescuer of your partner.
Plate 9 shows a sketch for this text setting, which was already part of the original
version of the opera from 1805. In view of his long-standing interest in the poem,
it is probable that Beethoven himself interpolated these lines from Schiller. They
fit well into the dramatic context, since the prisoners have now been joined by the
townspeople, and many couples have been reunited.
In its innovative development of Bouilly’s plot, combining a sense of historical
realism with an ethical idealism extolling feminine heroism, Fidelio is the most po-
litical of operas, carrying a message of burning conviction. Taken as a whole, the
drama involves a penetration into the depths followed by a reemergence into a
light that stands for Enlightenment, as fidelity and justice triumph over tyranny.
How does this scenario relate to the French Revolution? It is tempting but mis-
leading to identify the villainous Pizarro simply as a tyrant of the ancien régime,
who is overthrown amid rejoicing of the liberated prisoners and populace. Actu-
ally, the plot of Fidelio originally took shape as a story of rescue from the tyranny
of post-Revolutionary circumstances, and by implication, it applies to all those
oppressive events that continue to litter human history. The transposition of
events to Spain in the libretto in no way blunts its undiminished political rele-
vance. Fidelio honors the principles of the French Revolution but not its history,
and no opera so powerfully critiques every regime that denies human freedom. In
1945, Thomas Mann wrote about the opera in Germany during the Third Reich:
“How could it happen that Beethoven’s Fidelio . . . was not forbidden in the Ger-
many of the last twelve years? . . . For what utter stupidity was required to be able
to listen to Fidelio in Himmler’s Germany without covering one’s face and rush-
ing out of the hall.”52
The action has been shifted forward to the twentieth century in some recent
productions of the opera, such as the Metropolitan Opera’s Fidelio directed by
Jürgen Flimm and conducted by James Levine, with Karita Mattila as Leonore.
This production premiered in New York on 13 October 2000 and has since been
mounted at the Chicago Lyric Opera and London’s Royal Opera House. In an
essay accompanying the 2002 release of the production on DVD, Mike Ashman
52
Thomas Mann, Briefe, 1937–1947, vol. 2, ed. Erika Mann (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1961),
p. 444.
singles out the impressive characterization of Leonore, who “has to work hard to
appear to be a man—and to pull off the seemingly impossible task of springing
her man from a top-security prison. So, at last in a production of this opera, we
see a credible looking male with a short, sharp haircut, tight, flat military clothes
and gauche, young-man mannerisms.”53 (See Plate 11.) There is good reason to
believe that theatrically, Mattila’s Leonore would compare favorably to the most
celebrated nineteenth-century exponent of the role, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient,
while vocally, she would almost certainly prove superior to her famous predeces-
sor.54 Other effective touches in this production include giving the role of the first
prisoner to a cleric, while the second prisoner, with his warning message, is as-
signed to a black person, who as a member of a minority might remain more sus-
picious of predictions of liberation.
Fidelio and the Eroica Symphony are two major monuments of Beethoven’s
heroic style, and it is not surprising that they share certain distinctive features. The
three horns used in Leonore’s aria are reminiscent of those in the Eroica. In the
Allegro con brio of the aria, in particular, the rising triadic horn fanfare invites
comparison with the ascending horn gestures in the trio of the Eroica. But this is
not the only point of contact between these compositions. Both works reflect Bee-
thoven’s artistic response to serious issues of life and his determination to main-
tain an open, optimistic perspective despite setbacks and apparently insurmount-
able obstacles. The rescue of Florestan, or the rehabilitation of Prometheus, each
stands for a generative process with universal human relevance, aspects of which
are embedded in the “unconsummated symbol” of Beethoven’s music. As we have
seen, the symbolization involved here is no mere programmatic illustration; the
difference is well indicated by setting the Prometheus ballet music alongside the
far greater achievement of the Eroica Symphony. The enhancement of the narra-
tive and mythic dimension in some of Beethoven’s works after 1801 resulted from
a confluence of historical, artistic, and personal factors, but above all from his
deepening appreciation of the almost unlimited potential of musical expression.
The apparent failure of his opera after 1806 in no way dampened the energy he
brought to this task.
53
“Modern Times,” essay accompanying the DVD of Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio
(Deutsche Grammophon B0001417–09).
54
From the reports we have, Schröder-Devrient seemed to have been a brilliant actress
but less impressive vocally than some other singers. See, for instance, Paul Robinson, “An
Interpretative History,” in Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1996), pp. 148–50.
5
R
The Heroic Style II: 1806–1809
R
After he put Fidelio aside, Beethoven’s major artistic preoccupation became the
set of three Razumovsky String Quartets in F major, E minor, and C major of op.
59, composed mainly between April and November 1806. This trilogy stands at
the center of a splendid series of masterpieces from that year, including the Fourth
Piano Concerto op. 58, the Fourth Symphony op. 60, and the Violin Concerto op.
61. An orchestral ambition surfaces in the imaginative sonorities and enhanced
scale of some movements of the Razumovsky Quartets, from the broad opening
Allegro of the F major Quartet to the nervously emphatic finale of the C major.
At the request of the Russian ambassador, Count Razumovsky, who commis-
sioned the pieces, Beethoven incorporated Russian folk songs into the finale of op.
59 no. 1 and the third movement of op. 59 no. 2. The third quartet contains no
obvious quotations, but, as Riezler and Marion Scott have suggested, its melan-
choly slow movement may harbor a more elusive relationship with Russian style.1
The first two quartets were coolly received when first performed; only the C
major was warmly appreciated. Time has reversed that judgment, however: the F
major and E minor Quartets are now placed among Beethoven’s surpassing essays
in this genre, overshadowing op. 59 no. 3. Alan Tyson’s study of the genesis of these
works indicates that the C major Quartet was composed swiftly, perhaps even
hastily: the evidence comes from water stains on Beethoven’s manuscripts for the
quartets and his Appassionata Sonata (which was finished only in 1806, though
begun two years earlier).2 In late October 1806 Beethoven traveled from a country
retreat in Silesia to Vienna with his manuscripts packed in a trunk. On the way he
encountered a storm with pouring rain that penetrated the trunk, so that the man-
uscripts were wet when he reached Vienna. Thanks to this leaky trunk and the re-
sulting water stains on his manuscripts, we know that by this point he had finished
in score only the first two movements of the E minor Quartet and had sketched just
the first movement of the C major. This left little time for the completion of op. 59
1 Riezler, Beethoven, p. 172; Scott, Beethoven, pp. 256–57; Czerny, On the Proper Per-
formance, p. 13. Lini Hübsch, in her study Ludwig van Beethoven: Rasumowsky-Quar-
tette, pp. 90–93, identifies a Russian melody beginning at bar 23.
2 “The ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets: Some Aspects of the Sources”; the water staining can be
seen in the facsimile editions of the quartets edited by Tyson.
132
the heroic style ii: 1806–1809 133
no. 3. The smaller scale of this work, the apparent absence of a Russian theme, and
Beethoven’s use in the minuet of material sketched years earlier are all factors that
may connect with a certain haste in the process of composition.
The opening Allegro of the F major Quartet bears comparison with the corre-
sponding movement of the Eroica Symphony. Like the Eroica, it is on an immense
scale, with a development much longer than the exposition and studded in this
case by a big double fugue. The quartet movement relies, as does the symphony,
on far-reaching reinterpretation of the main theme at important junctures of the
sonata form. Beethoven places the main subject in the cello, under the pulsating
accompaniment; only after the second phrase does the theme pass to the violin
two octaves higher. The guiding motivic idea is a series of ascending steps in quar-
ter notes that becomes gigantic when this rising pattern is augmented to whole
notes at the cadence of the theme. Especially important in the opening melody is
the pitch G, which closes the second and third phrases in the cello and first violin.
When Beethoven restates this subject at the opening of the development, the G has
become G , forcing a new harmonic continuation. Even more conspicuous is the
shift at the recapitulation to a G that is sustained over ten bars to support a
powerful climax. As Kerman has observed, two further reinterpretations of the
opening theme occur in the coda.3 First, its harmonic ambiguity is purged when
Beethoven restates the melody fortissimo in the upper instruments, while the cello
(for once!) supplies the solid harmonic foundation that was previously withheld.
Later in the coda the first violin carries the rising steps from the theme into the
stratosphere, as the highest C is sounded against G and then F in the cello.
The scherzando movement that follows is an astonishingly original concep-
tion. Beethoven experiments here, as in the Eroica finale and its model, the op. 35
piano variations, with the notion that a piece may be conceived as a search for its
own thematic material. He begins with a mere abstract of a seminal rhythm,
tapped out softly in the cello on a single stationary pitch. Motivic fragments are
juxtaposed long before they are eventually assembled as the “completed” theme.
Only in bar 29 is the bare rhythm from the outset filled out harmonically and dy-
namically (Ex. 38), and only near the end of the first subject group is this harmo-
nized rhythm to be combined with an upper-line melody. The overall design is a
modified sonata form with a somber second subject in the minor that foreshadows
the character of the following slow movement. Beethoven dovetails the end of the
development with the passage from his exposition leading to the harmonized for-
tissimo statement of the seminal rhythm, and it is again with this gesture that the
scherzando movement ends. Immediately before the final cadence he mischie-
vously interpolates a striking dissonant G in the first violin, reminding us thereby
of disruptive earlier passages based around this sensitive note.
The Adagio molto e mesto is a lament of tragic character that directly connects,
through a florid violin cadenza, with the finale in sonata form. The main subject
is a Russian tune that Beethoven found in a contemporary anthology. Here, as in
the E minor Quartet, he showed little regard for the stately character and moder-
3 The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 95–97.

134 beethoven
Ex. 38 String Quartet op. 59 no. 1/II, bars 1–34
ate tempo of the preexisting theme, as Philip Radcliffe has pointed out.4 The
theme is effective in the brisk tempo chosen by Beethoven; it also lends itself well
to development. In its rising stepwise motion it has an obvious motivic parallel
with the main subject of the opening Allegro.
Whereas the F major Quartet is spacious and grand in its overall character, the
E minor Quartet is more concentrated, at least in its first movement. The intro-
ductory gesture of chords and silences is terse and arresting; the initial tonic sonor-
ity then unfolds as a broken chord, and, after another striking pause, Beethoven
restates the idea on the Neapolitan, a semitone higher. Most of the movement’s
thematic material is derived from these opening bars. According to Czerny, the
following Molto adagio in E major occurred to Beethoven while he was “contem-
plating the starry heavens and thinking of the music of the spheres.”5 This is in-
deed music of sublime contemplation, foreshadowing later works, such as the
Benedictus of the Missa solemnis and the celestial central variation in E major in
the slow movement of the first of the late quartets, op. 127. It is in the trio of the
third movement, marked Allegretto, that Beethoven cites the second of the Rus-
4
Beethoven’s String Quartets, p. 49.
5
sian folk songs used in op. 59, the same melody used by Mussorgsky in the Coro-
nation Scene in Boris Godunov. The theme is stripped of its solemn, ecclesiastical
associations and treated in a parodistic fugal medley that is repeated in full after the
return of the Allegretto. The presto finale employs a main theme that begins in the
“wrong” key of C major instead of the tonic E minor. In its rhythmic character this
movement strongly anticipates the finale of the later Quartet in C minor op. 131.
The characteristic tonal relationships of the second Razumovsky quartet may
be connected in part with its central position in op. 59. Its first and third move-
ments are closely related in their structure and expression, sharing an emphasis on
the Neapolitan degree of F in an E minor context; no less striking is the persistent
C major beginning of the rondo theme in the finale. Whereas the Neapolitan em-
phasis can be heard in relationship to the tonic key of the preceding quartet, the
main theme of the finale may be linked to the tonality of the following quartet.
The C major Quartet op. 59 no. 3 is an oddly unsettled piece. It opens with a
mysterious slow introduction, paralleling Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet K. 465 in
the same key. The following Allegro vivace, and the minuet as well, show a retro-
spective orientation; they breathe the air of the eighteenth century. Perhaps this
quality contributed to their contemporary popularity but now somewhat faded
appeal. In the moto perpetuo finale an enormously extended, rambling theme is
treated fugally; the triumphant fury of this conclusion is just a little hollow, quite
unlike the masterful C major finale of the Fifth Symphony of 1808. The most im-
pressive movement of op. 59 no. 3 is probably the second, in A minor, marked
Andante con moto quasi Allegretto (Ex. 39). There is nothing else like it in Bee-
thoven. The strangely static 6/8 rhythm, pedal points, haunting melodic inflec-
tions and harmonic dissonances, and use of pizzicato all lend an aura of remote,
almost mythical melancholy and bleakness. Is this unique movement Beethoven’s
attempt to capture a Russian character in music?
S S S
A spacious, lyrical serenity characterizes several of Beethoven’s works from this
period, including the Fourth Piano Concerto in G major op. 58. This reminds us
of the breadth of Beethoven’s style, and of the need to avoid one-sidedness in dis-
cussion of the “heroic phase” of his career. In view of the central importance of
the Eroica and Fidelio, and their lines of connection to a number of other compo-
sitions, it makes good sense to speak of Beethoven’s heroic style. However, these
very works embrace a wide stylistic and expressive range, not excluding humor,
and an impressive feature of Beethoven’s achievement is his artistic scope.
In the opening Allegro moderato of op. 58, the presence of an upbeat figure of
repeated notes similar to that in the Fifth Symphony reminds us of the fundamen-
tally different character of the concerto. Whereas the symphony’s first movement
displays a relentless rhythmic drive, the concerto shows an extreme refinement in
texture. Particularly arresting are those moments when the soloist seems to with-
draw into ethereal seclusion. One such passage appears early in the piano exposi-
tion, as the orchestra pauses on a mysterious pianissimo B major chord, and the
pianist penetrates the very highest register with an espressivo melody, with an ac-
136 beethoven
Ex. 39 String Quartet op. 59 no. 3/II
companiment of triplets in the left hand. Another instance of lyrical withdrawal

occurs at the end of the exposition, when the brilliant triplet trill of the soloist,
instead of resolving, melts into a whispered dolce e con espressione statement of
a motive that had just been affirmed loudly in the orchestra. At the threshold of
the development, on the other hand, the isolation by the soloist of the four-
repeated-note motive—with a sudden shift of mode and modulation—stops the
orchestra in its tracks. Beethoven was surely inspired here by the corresponding
passage in the first movement of Mozart’s Concerto in C major, K. 503, since the
same rhythmic motive appears there and even serves a similar transitional func-
tion at the change in key. Later, following the climax of the development on C
minor, Beethoven places the motive in the low strings pizzicato, while the soloist
is granted yet another mysterious utterance, marked pianissimo and dolce. In the
finale of the concerto, yet another solo passage of this kind is the exquisite dolce
second subject, with a melody perched in the heights and a counterpoint in con-
trary motion in the middle register in the left hand, all heard over a deep pedal
point in the first cello.
According to a tradition stemming from Liszt and others, the Andante con
moto is associated with Orpheus taming the Furies; more recently, this interpre-
tation has been extended by Owen Jander and refined by Joseph Kerman.6 In this
movement the classical topos juxtaposing stark, unharmonized unisons and pli-
ant, harmonized lyricism is imposed on the relationship between tutti and soloist,
investing the music with a mythic aura. Beethoven bases the movement’s general
progression on the principle of gradual transformation, so that the bare, harsh or-
chestral unison on E at the outset is eventually replaced by a soft, sustained, E
minor harmony at the conclusion. This, in turn, is superseded by the brighter, more
stable sonority of C major that opens the main theme of the ensuing rondo finale.
Consequently, the entire slow movement seems to be poised in a dependent rela-
tionship with the music to come. Beethoven achieves a similar effect at the end of
the B major Adagio of the “Emperor” Concerto, where a pivotal drop of the semi-
tone B–B in the orchestra restores the basic tonality of E major at the threshold
of the finale.
An important dimension of the dialogue between tutti and soloist consists in
Beethoven’s control of pitch registers. The orchestral passages take on a predomi-
nantly descending contour, with the first two phrases closing a fourth and fifth
below the initial pitch level of E. In contrast, the piano ascends, molto cantabile,
closing its phrases in a somewhat lower register in order to connect with the suc-
ceeding entries of the tutti. This tug of registers, with the piano gradually gaining
primacy, is most vividly illustrated after bar 26, where Beethoven employs his fa-
miliar technique of foreshortening to tighten the exchanges between the con-
tenders (Ex. 40). The first of these shortened orchestral phrases descends from E
to A, to be answered by an ascending solo phrase whose expressive appoggiatura
controls the pitch level of the following tutti phrase, beginning on F and falling to
B. The ensuing phrase in the piano now forces a further concession from the or-
chestra, which is obliged to ascend from B to C. The accelerating process of
diminution helps to underscore the growing primacy of the soloist; in bars 33–35
the exchanges occur in every bar, with the soloist gaining an increasing monopoly
over the texture while the orchestra completes its uncharacteristic ascent to the
tonic E. As the tutti is thereby compelled to abandon its uncompromising stance,
the solo unfolds for the first time in a more animated motion in continuous eighth
notes, in its characteristic legato articulation.
The following phrases are modeled on the sequences beginning in bar 26, but
they sound utterly different in expressive quality. The tutti, while still maintaining
its detached articulation, has lost its stolid fortitude; the dynamic level softens to
piano. Now the soloist can afford to mimic the falling contour of the orchestral
phrases, while penetrating still higher in register. Hence the very substance of the
tutti phrases is transformed here into the more integrated, harmonized texture of
the soloist. The music assumes a human face; the stern, forbidding posture of the
orchestral phrases is injected with inner life. As the foreshortening process runs its
course, the orchestral dynamic level softens to pianissimo, and the incorporation
6 Jander, “Beethoven’s Orpheus in Hades”; Kerman, “Representing a Relationship:
Notes on a Beethoven Concerto.”

138 beethoven
Ex. 40 Fourth Piano Concerto op. 58/II, bars 19–38
of C in place of C signals yet another concession in the lost struggle with the
soloist—even the hold of the tutti on the minor mode is momentarily put into
question.
From this point the dominance of the pianist is absolute, and a new stage in the
narrative design of the movement has been reached. Having subdued the antago-
nists, the soloist exploits them as audience for an unforgettable climactic message.
A contrapuntal transition accompanied by subservient pizzicato strokes in the
strings leads to a pause on the dominant-seventh chord of E minor (Ex. 41). A
chain of trills rises by thirds to reach C, a ninth above the root of the dominant
sonority. The C is made to ring through the long, stationary vibration of the trill,
played fortissimo. Beethoven “composes out” the diminished-seventh chord sup-
porting the C, with a rapid oscillation across the tritone A–D below the trill, and
an appoggiatura G –A sounded above it.
The searing intensity of this cadenza is the apex and turning point of the entire
concerto. As the music gradually fades from fortissimo to pianissimo, the trill un-
ravels into the contour of the figuration played moments before in the left hand,
and a relaxing process of rhythmic augmentation prepares the arpeggiated caden-
Ex. 41 Fourth Piano Concerto op. 58/II, bars 47–62
tial chords that follow. At the cadence in bar 64, the conversion of the orchestral
antagonists is confirmed through the sustained E octave, marked with a triple
pianissimo, a rare indication in Beethoven. Noteworthy too is the stress placed by
the orchestral phrases on C; three times C is sounded below the protracted E, be-
fore the music unfolds toward the final cadence. Now, most significantly, the tutti
adopts the harmonic texture and legato articulation from the solo piano. As the
140 beethoven
movement closes, a complete concordance is established; all traces of conflict have
been erased.
The Andante con moto of the G major Concerto thus provides a paradigm of
musical transformation, whereby the detached, objective idiom of the tutti is
gradually infused with human subjectivity, won over by the power of the artistic
imagination. It can do no harm to think of the Orpheus myth here, as long as we
do not limit the music to this association. For Beethoven’s Andante is far too sub-
tle to allow a smooth fit between the stages in Orpheus’s passage and the musical
process we have described. Comparison with the famous setting of Orpheus and
the Furies in Gluck’s Orfeo reminds us of the greater musical integrity of Beetho-
ven’s movement. The Andante con moto is an intrinsically musical narrative, which
urgently invites interpretation without allowing itself to be displaced thereby. The
imposition of a definitive verbal interpretation would disrupt the balance in
the music between the rational and the sensuous, ignoring the primacy of the
Klangvorstellung. It is more appropriate to reflect on the impact of Beethoven’s
climactic, despairing cadenza. Here the soloist’s earlier confident tone experiences
a crisis. Has his apparent rhetorical triumph masked a hidden weakness? Does the
cadenza harbor implications of a Pyrrhic victory? Such questions are raised but
not answered by the music. This much is certain: the powerful elaboration of the
dominant ninth as a trill on C is not truly resolved here. The sound of the C lingers
in the mind after the dissipation of its physical sound; the later emphasis of the
strings on the low C picks up traces of these dying resonances. The overall effect is
to destabilize the ensuing cadence in E minor, which opens into the C major of the
rondo finale. There is an anticipation within the Andante con moto of the music to
come, making clear that the entire movement is a stage within a larger process.
The first movement of this concerto had already given particular prominence to
the dialogue between solo and tutti by beginning with a short piano passage, marked
dolce. Such an opening was unusual, although Mozart’s Concerto in E major K.
271 provided a precedent. Beethoven sought out novel, experimental openings for
each of his later concertos. The Fifth Piano Concerto in E op. 73, for instance, be-
gins with a written-out cadenza for the soloist, and the unfinished D major Piano
Concerto of 1815 was also intended to open with a cadenza.7 At the outset of his
beautiful Violin Concerto in D major op. 61, composed for the virtuoso Franz
Clement during December 1806, Beethoven employed an even more striking idea.
The Violin Concerto begins with a bar of soft drum taps, a motif consisting of
five repeated notes (Ex. 42). Rhythmic motifs involving repeated notes often ap-
pear in Beethoven’s works of these years: the first movements of the Appassion-
ata Sonata, Fourth Piano Concerto, and Fifth Symphony each provide examples.
In these pieces the repeated notes act as an anacrusis, or upbeat, driving the music
forward. The Violin Concerto, by contrast, opens on a downbeat, anchoring the
motif and ensuring its stability. The initial isolation of this motif in the timpani is
especially fitting in the Violin Concerto; the device exposes in the most distinct
way the tonal substratum and underlying pulse of the musical structure. Its impor-
7 Cf. Lockwood, “Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Concerto of 1815.”

Ex. 42 Violin Concerto op. 61/I
tance is confirmed by the manner in which later themes defer to its rhythm, and
no less by Beethoven’s imaginative reinterpretation of this elemental gesture. Few
pieces by Beethoven achieve such grand effects with such economy of means.
Consider, for instance, Beethoven’s treatment of the moment of recapitulation.
In many earlier works, as we have seen, he enhances this symmetrical axis of the
sonata form by intensifying the dynamic level or by filling out the harmonic tex-
ture. The first movements of several of the op. 18 Quartets already display his ten-
dency to fortify the point of recapitulation, making clear that this structural point
is no mere repetition but a reinterpretation of the earlier music experienced in a
qualitatively new way. Other works, such as the Eroica, tend to diffuse or enlarge
the moment of recapitulation; Beethoven develops this procedure in a variety of
ways in later compositions. In the Violin Concerto the moment of recapitulation
is glorified through a rhythmic preparation of great breadth, leading to a trans-
formation of the quiet drum beats into deep, emphatic unison strokes in the full
orchestra. This is just one striking example of Beethoven’s resourceful manipula-
tion of the seminal rhythmic motif, which permeates much of the Allegro ma non
troppo. The luminous opening phrases in the winds already absorb this rhythm;
the entry of the violins on a mysterious, dissonant D employs it as well. An even
more conspicuous development of the idea occurs in the memorable lyrical theme
exchanged between the winds and strings, with a shift between major and minor
(Ex. 43). Here, the motif derived from the drum taps is played in the violins, dove-
tailed with related rhythmic phrases in the winds in a higher register. Beethoven’s
use of such a rhythmic motif with repeated notes to underpin a broad lyrical sub-
142 beethoven
Ex. 43 Violin Concerto op. 61/I, bars 47–58
ject may have influenced Schubert in the second theme of the finale of his Great
C major Symphony.
The entry of the solo violin exposes another essential dimension of Beethoven’s
use of the unaccompanied timpani at the outset. An improvisatory solo passage
ascends into the registral stratosphere to the highest D, four octaves above the re-
peated drumstrokes that announce the beginning of the second exposition. An-
other vast disjunction in register marks a related pivotal moment near the begin-
ning of the development: here the solo violin restates its introductory passage, in
C major, but Beethoven reinterprets the high ethereal pitch and its low counter-
point as a harmonically unstable augmented sixth, and the music passes mysteri-
ously into B minor. There is an affinity between this passage and the uncanny
pianissimo passage in C minor in the middle of the development of the G major
Piano Concerto.
One of Beethoven’s simplest yet most telling strokes in the Violin Concerto is
his derivation of the sustained dominant pedal that precedes the recapitulation
from the elemental drum motif. The hushed sound of timpani and trumpets
underlies and strongly foreshadows the recapitulation itself, where the drum
taps are made gigantic, sounded fortissimo in the full orchestra. This work re-
minds us of the extent to which Beethoven relies on the reinterpretation of ges-
tures over vast temporal spans, often reserving the most definitive presentation of
his themes or motifs to a late stage in the musical discourse. Another such ex-
ample is his decision to delay giving the violin solo the memorable lyrical theme
until after the cadenza. Here, at last, the figure of repeated notes disappears, as
the soloist guides the music to its radiant conclusion.
The first movement of the Fourth Symphony in B major op. 60, composed ear-
lier in 1806, offers another example of Beethoven’s extraordinary use of the tim-
pani, here in connection with an unorthodox approach to the recapitulation. The
general character of the Allegro vivace is energetic and even boisterous, but Bee-
thoven withdraws into a subdued pianissimo toward the end of the development.
Mysterious drum rolls are heard on B , and the music lingers for some moments
in the remote key of B major, as hushed, transparent descending scales unfold in
the strings, while the timpani are silent. Beethoven then returns to the harmony of
B major while maintaining the enigmatic pianissimo. The drum rolls recur, first
intermittently, then as a sustained tonic pedal held for twenty-three bars until the
beginning of the recapitulation. There is no cadence; the approach to the reprise
is a protracted crescendo, in which the motivic texture gradually penetrates and
then fills the tonal space above the rumbling drum until the recapitulation is
affirmed fortissimo by the full orchestra.
A fascinating aspect of this passage is that the drum sounds on B can be heard,
at least in retrospect, as a subtle foreshadowing of the actual recapitulation, which
is ushered in by the long timpani roll on the tonic. The modulation to B major, on
the other hand, introduces sufficient contrast to enable Beethoven to relinquish
any dominant preparation, or indeed any cadence whatever. This passage may
have helped inspire the remarkable approach to the recapitulation in the first
movement of Schubert’s last Piano Sonata, in B major, in which analogous “drum
rolls” in the form of low trills introduce a foreshadowing of the main theme on
(but not in) the tonic, moments before the actual recapitulation is reached.
S S S
144 beethoven
In March 1807 the first performances of the Fourth Symphony and Fourth Piano
Concerto were given at the Lobkowitz palace, together with another orchestral
work completed early that year: the Coriolan Overture op. 62. Along with the
Fifth Symphony, the Coriolan Overture is the most intensely dramatic and rhyth-
mically propulsive of the orchestral works in Beethoven’s “C minor mood.” Based
not on Shakespeare but on a tragedy by the Austrian dramatist Heinrich von
Collin, the story concerns a proud, defiant aristocrat caught in unresolvable inner
conflict; seeing no way out of his dilemma, he chooses death. In a perceptive ap-
preciation of the overture, Wagner described Coriolanus as “the man of untam-
able force, unsuited for a hypocrite’s humility.”8 A quality of defiant, passionate
energy permeates this music. Unlike the Fifth Symphony, the Coriolan Overture
has no positive resolution; the tragic end of the protagonist is implied in the frag-
mented, dissolving coda.
Beethoven begins the Coriolan Overture with yet another transformation of
the topos associated with death in the Joseph Cantata and in Fidelio. As in those
works, deep sustained unisons are juxtaposed with harmonized chords employing
winds in the upper register (Ex. 44). In the faster tempo of this Allegro con brio,
Beethoven prescribes tied whole notes for each of the unisons; the sharp, accented
chords that follow are hurled into the void. Sequences of this arresting gesture
ensue, with the rising upper voice supported by diminished-seventh chords, before
two further chords connect cadentially to the main theme in more rapid eighth-
note motion, beginning in bar 15. Michael Broyles suggests that this opening re-
sembles a typical slow introduction notated in the main tempo, but this is wide of
the mark.9 The prescribed metrical structure does apply to these fortissimo
chords, placed as they are in a context of extraordinary rhythmic tension. In order
to sustain the tension, and propel the music forward, Beethoven foreshortens the
metrical pattern just before the cadence, so that the music is pushed ahead of time
into the main theme. Characteristically, he compensates for this gain of energy by
otherwise relaxing the point of arrival; the new subject begins piano, in a rela-
tively simple texture that lends itself to later development. In later sections of the
overture he combines the sinuous figuration of the main subject with massive, em-
phatic sonorities such as were heard at the outset. Thus, like the first movement
of the Fifth Symphony, the Coriolan Overture shows an interplay between molecu-
lar motivic figures and larger harmonic structures.
An important but old-fashioned piano work in this key which reached publica-
tion in 1807 is the set of Thirty-Two Variations in C minor WoO 80. This piece was
seriously underestimated by Beethoven himself, who referred to it disparagingly
and failed to assign it an opus number. The C minor Variations are strongly remi-
niscent of a Baroque chaconne, employing a short, eight-bar theme with a chromat-
ically descending ground bass. Beethoven often effectively overcomes the terseness
8
“Ouvertüre zu Koriolan,” Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, vol. 5, p. 173.
9
The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s Heroic Style, pp. 148–51.
Ex. 44 Coriolan Overture op. 62
of the theme by grouping the variations together, as in nos. 1–3, 7–8, 10–11, 12–14,
15–16, 19–22, 26–27, and 31–32. These groupings by no means exhaust the many
relationships between individual variations, which are based on general rhythmic
and textural features and on modal contrast (the Maggiore section, Variations
12–16, for example, embraces two of these groupings, and provides large-scale
contrast after the agitated variation pair nos. 10–11). Variation 31 provides a
reprise of the original theme above an arpeggiated accompaniment, whereas in
Variation 32 a rhythmic elaboration of the theme leads upward in register to the
high C three octaves above middle C, marking the beginning of the coda. (This high
C occurs for the first time among the sonatas in op. 57, composed in 1804–6, and
reflects the upward expansion of register in the pianos available to Beethoven; in
works up to op. 31, of 1802, the range rarely exceeds high F, a fifth lower.)
With his first mass, the work in C major eventually published as op. 86, Bee-
thoven found himself in a particularly direct and taxing comparison with Haydn.
The commission came from Prince Nikolaus Esterházy the younger, who turned
to Beethoven on account of Haydn’s advanced age. For Esterházy, Haydn had
written all six of his late masses, four of which were published by Breitkopf &
146 beethoven
Härtel during 1802–4. Beethoven’s sketches for the C major Mass contain ex-
cerpts from Haydn’s Schöpfungsmesse (Hob. xxii: 13), and his treatment of the
form of the mass largely follows Haydn’s models. Nevertheless, Beethoven’s dy-
namic and richly contrasting musical characterization of the text departs from
Haydn’s more restrained, unified approach; this is presumably what displeased
the prince, as Jens Peter Larsen has observed.10 After the first performance on 13
September 1807 at Eisenstadt, Esterházy is supposed to have remarked skeptically
“But, dear Beethoven, what is this that you have done again?”; the composer left
in anger, and changed the dedication of the mass in favor of Prince Kinsky. No
more such commissions were forthcoming; twelve years were to pass before
Beethoven tackled his second and final mass, the Missa solemnis. On 8 June 1808,
in a letter offering the C major Mass to the reluctant publisher Breitkopf & Här-
tel, Beethoven proudly emphasized the very aspect of the piece that must have
troubled Esterházy: “About my mass . . . I believe that I have handled the text
as it has been yet seldom treated.” In its historical context, this work appears less
conservative than when viewed only in the company of Beethoven’s ambitious
symphonic compositions of these years.
The climax of this immensely productive period of Beethoven’s career is the
contrasted pair of symphonies that he completed in 1808 and which were first
performed at his musical Akademie in the Theater an der Wien on 22 December
of that year. The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies are not only sharply profiled indi-
viduals but are diametrically opposed to one another in conspicuous features of
their structure and expression. Nevertheless, certain kinships between them are
revealing: their points of similarity relate to aspects of the narrative design, as well
as to style and character. Like the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas, the Fifth
and Sixth Symphonies represent disparate musical worlds that ultimately comple-
ment one another. We need not choose between them, but can appreciate each
more fully in the light of the opposing perspective embodied in its companion.
Whereas the C minor Symphony is perhaps the most goal-directed or teleolog-
ical of all Beethoven’s works, the Pastoral Symphony in F major is remarkably
relaxed, even passive. In the first movement of the Pastoral, Beethoven not only
suppresses dissonance to a remarkable extent, but he nearly banishes the minor
triad. The arrival at the recapitulation is treated in a soft, understated manner,
through the subdominant. In the development, extended passages are given over to
repetitive figures on basic triadic harmonies; mere chords are thereby magnified into
tonal regions. If the syntactical discourse of the musical language is flattened, Bee-
thoven compensates the listener through his deliciously sensitive handling of orches-
tral sonority. The F major Symphony is a transparently sensuous score, in which
rhythmic drive is largely suspended, held in reserve for moments of special import.
In its style and expression, the opening Allegro con brio of the Fifth Symphony
is the opposite: propulsive rhythmic energy and relentless harmonic dissonance sus-
tain it. In place of the broad expansion of sound of the Pastoral there is a terse con-
centration, with strong emphasis on dissonant diminished-seventh chords. Here,
10 “Beethovens C-dur-Messe und die Spätmessen Joseph Haydns,” pp. 12–19.

more than in his earlier C minor works, Beethoven gives voice to the Schillerian no-
tion of resistance to suffering in a manner that only music can command. In the
Fifth Symphony he enlarges this message across all four movements, which are
welded into an even tighter and more cohesive narrative design than in the Eroica.
In comparing these two symphonies it is tempting to claim that in the Pastoral
Beethoven precisely inverted the technique of his Fifth Symphony. The idea of a
“Pastoral” Symphony was in no way unprecedented; Beethoven actually adapted
his movement titles from those in a symphony by the eighteenth-century com-
poser Justin Heinrich Knecht entitled Le Portrait musical de la nature. The reali-
zation of the Pastoral Symphony, however, is not conventional but unique; it
embodies an artistic approach in the mainstream of Beethoven’s creative develop-
ment. Here, as in the C minor Symphony, an overall design is imposed whereby
the later movements flow directly into one another. In the Fifth Symphony the
scherzo is linked through a transition to the finale and is later recalled before the
recapitulation of that movement. Of the five movements of the Pastoral, the last
three are directly connected: the “Merry gathering of villagers” is disrupted by the
“Thunderstorm” and resolves into the concluding “Shepherd’s song,” expressing
“happy, grateful thanks after the storm.”
In accordance with its less directional or deterministic aesthetic, the Pastoral
Symphony shows much affinity between the opening movement and the finale,
quite unlike the polar opposition embodied in the Fifth. Following the beautifully
placid Allegro, marked “Pleasant, cheerful feelings aroused on arriving in the
countryside,” and the following “Scene at the brook,” with birdcalls in the winds
interpolated before the conclusion, Beethoven introduces the symphony’s first
marked contrast in the central dance movement. The elements of humor and par-
ody that surface here are not unusual for him; F major, the key of this Allegro, is
the tonality of several of his most comic pieces, ranging from the Piano Sonatas
op. 10 no. 2 and op. 54 to the Eighth Symphony and the String Quartet op. 135.
One of Beethoven’s funniest ideas is his parody of a village bassoonist, in the
middle of the first section. The bassoon player is unable to play along with the
oboe and strings, since he or she can produce only two notes, which vividly con-
veys a homely touch of rustic surroundings! Just as humorous, though more
subtle, is the following sympathetic imitation by the violas and cellos of the falling
pitches produced by the worthy bassoonist.
Beethoven interrupts the merrymaking of the peasants with an abrupt decep-
tive cadence, as the natural elements force their attention on the countryfolk. The
effective realism of the “storm,” with its wind, rain, thunder, and lightning, is
used here to make a dramatic point that puts the rest of the work into a new per-
spective. Hector Berlioz saw this clearly when he wrote of the climax of this Alle-
gro that “It is no longer just a wind and rain storm: it is a frightful cataclysm, a
universal deluge, the end of the world.”11 In the peaceful, idyllic environment that
has prevailed up to this point, the first impact of the full orchestral forces on the
F minor triad early in the “storm” is already disturbing. The climax that im-
11
A travers chants, p. 45.
148 beethoven
pressed Berlioz, on a vast diminished-seventh sonority enhanced by passing notes
in the basses, is so potent in good performance as to endanger the very premise of
a “programmatic” symphony.
It is perhaps in part for this reason that Beethoven wrote that the work was
“more an expression of feeling than tone painting” (“mehr Ausdruck der Empfin-
dung als Malerei”). He does indulge in egregious tone painting in his “storm”—
his resourceful use of the piccolo to provide streaks of lightning is one example.
But unlike many programmatic works, the Pastoral Symphony is not at all
confined to realistic depiction. At the climax Beethoven gathers together his entire
arsenal of instruments, including the trombones, and breaks the syntax of the mu-
sical discourse by protracting the great syncopated chord over six bars (Ex. 45).
This is a window out of the work into the world, a psychic storm that encourages
every attentive listener to reevaluate his or her aesthetic response to the music.
In the Fifth Symphony this reflexive dimension is much more pronounced. In
no other work did Beethoven achieve such a concentrated synthesis of successive
movements. One aspect of this synthesis is the famous rhythmic motif of repeated
notes and a falling third heard at the outset of the whole symphony. In the open-
ing phrases Beethoven dramatizes the figure by pausing on the last notes of the
motif, which momentarily holds back the full flood of the musical unfolding. Vari-
ants of this so-called fate motif appear in later movements, most obviously in the
insistent horn motifs of the scherzo. The motivic integration of the symphony also
shapes many aspects of the thematic treatment, orchestration, and form. By com-
bining the scherzo and finale into a composite movement, Beethoven places an
elemental polarity at the core of his formal conception. Another complementary
relationship holds between the terse C minor idiom of the opening Allegro con
brio, with its overpowering force and pathos, and the tremendous final Allegro in
C major, whose presto coda accomplishes the seemingly impossible, firmly resolv-
ing the formidable tensions of the entire symphony into an elemental substratum
of sound and time.
In the narrative design of the symphony, the slow variation movement in A
major represents both a lyrical diversion after the C minor pathos of the opening
Allegro and a significant foreshadowing of the triumphant finale. The episodes of
this Andante con moto turn repeatedly to C major with horns and trumpets, only
then to withdraw mysteriously into a twilight of harmonic ambiguity. In his
sketches Beethoven tried out a more straightforward anticipation of the C major
finale, but settled on a solution that is more precariously balanced, suggesting the
distant premonition of a goal that cannot yet be attained. The final cadence of this
movement sounds unsettled; it stresses a short, ascending triadic fanfare drawn
from the main theme, a figure that also presages the finale. Still another, more ob-
vious link to the final movement is the trio of the scherzo, which employs thematic
material in C major with a prominently rising contour. The pervasive ascending
tendency of the music is reflected as well in the orchestration of the trio, which be-
gins in the double basses and ends in the flute. The trio is an advance parody of
the finale folded into the mocking, grotesque context of the C minor scherzo.
Beethoven originally intended to repeat the entire scherzo and trio, but the
Ex. 45 Pastoral Symphony op. 68/IV, bars 105–14

150 beethoven
published version, without the repetition, is most effective in the overall narrative
design. The scherzo thereby yields up some of its formal autonomy in the interest
of the unfolding progression between movements. At the reprise of the scherzo its
substance is transformed into shadowy accents, with hushed pizzicato strings and
mysterious muted sounds in the winds. Then its dark humor fades into deeper ob-
scurity as a cadence is reached in the low register in an extremely soft dynamic
range, with the strings marked triple pianissimo. At this juncture we have reached
a turning point at the threshold of audibility.
What follows is one of the most celebrated transitions in all music (Ex. 46).
The timpani are heard on low C, softly tapping the motivic rhythm, before this
figure is gradually transformed into a steady pulsation. This drum sound is en-
veloped by the strings; at the structural downbeat in bar 324 the cellos and basses
settle onto a long-held A , pushing the music into a mysterious deceptive cadence.
When the strings now try to pick up the thread of the scherzo, they are stopped
in their tracks after three bars and dwell as if hypnotized on the falling intervals
from the end of the fragment. Although the thematic fragment is drawn from the
scherzo, its earlier temporal and formal context is completely suspended; op-
posing forces have come into play. The motivic scrap from the scherzo is quietly
repeated over and over, and drifts higher and higher until it converges into the
dominant-seventh chord for full orchestra that resolves to the emphatic beginning
of the ensuing Allegro, marked by the first appearance of trombones in the sym-
phony. The impact of the dominant seventh is enhanced by the mysteriously
understated, yet logical and even inevitable quality of the transitional passage.
The finale of the Fifth Symphony emerges suddenly, like a mirage in the desert. As
it appears, however, the apparent mirage takes on the glaring force of reality, and
exposes the desert as the illusion.
The finale of the Fifth absorbs something of the character of an éclat triom-
phal, with ties to French revolutionary music,12 and this accounts in part for the
dismissive reaction of some of the older critics. Alexander Ulibischeff saw the
coda of the finale as “filled up with commonplaces of military music”;13 Hermann
Kretzschmar found the themes “simple to the point of triviality.”14 The first move-
ment already shows a striking parallel with Cherubini’s Hymne du Panthéon, as
Arnold Schmitz observed.15 The rich connotations of this music owe much less to
such conventions, however, than to the gigantic, overreaching polarity of minor
and major that embraces the whole symphony. Lawrence Kramer has rightly em-
phasized the relationship between the end of the first movement, with its vehe-
ment effect of minor conquering major, and the inverse process at the end of the
finale, the positing of C major in a form “that cannot be followed.”16 Beethoven
12
Cf. Gülke, Zur Neuausgabe der Sinfonie Nr. 5, esp. pp. 56–57.
13
Beethoven: Ses critiques et ses glossateurs, p. 205.
14
Führer durch den Konzertsaal, vol. 1, p. 97.
15
Das romantische Beethovenbild, p. 167; see also Rolland, Beethoven: Les grandes
époques créatrices, who draws attention to the influence of Gluck.
16 Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After, p. 235.
Ex. 46 Fifth Symphony op. 67/III, bars 316–end
continued
152 beethoven
Ex. 46 (continued)
reminds us of the conditional, and perhaps provisional, status of his triumphant

final movement by recalling the scherzo in C minor in place of the development.
The moment of recapitulation thus represents not merely a return of the exposi-
tion in the tonic key, but a reinterpretation of the entire intermovement transition.
As the scherzo is recalled, the presence of the oboe harks back to the short expres-
sive oboe cadenza at the recapitulation of the first movement, a moment of brief
respite in the furious temporal drive of the Allegro con brio.
The presto coda leaves all doubts about a further relapse into the minor far be-
hind by delivering the C major “that cannot be followed.” Here, as in certain pas-
sages of the first movement of the Eroica, the rhythmic tension becomes so great
as to flatten and almost obliterate the harmonic syntax; the movement ends with
no fewer than twenty-nine bars reiterating the tonic triad of C major, with no har-
monic change whatsoever. Earlier in the coda Beethoven introduces extravagant
touches in orchestration, including a high trill in the piccolo. Climax builds on cli-
max, as the rising triadic theme of the Allegro is compressed into at least double
time, generating an exciting linear ascent of an octave and a half from C to the
highest G. This is the peak; the final phrases strive to repeat the ascent, but succeed
only in reaching E, a third lower. The final chords are positioned with the mathe-
matical precision of a gothic cathedral (Ex. 47). There are three groups of three
contained in the last thirteen bars: the three chords of the example, separated by
rests and containing the descent of the tenth from E to C; the next three chords,
at the beginnings of bars 438–40; and the overlapping closing group of three
chords, each set two bars apart. But superimposed on these groupings is a bigger
pattern of rhythmic impulses four bars apart beginning in bar 432, so that the
closing beats of each of the basic configurations, in bars 436, 440, and 444, res-
onate as a larger embodiment of the same rhythm. This is the final, unsurpassable
transformation and glorification of the motif that began the entire symphony.
The Fifth Symphony, like the Andante of the Fourth Concerto, embodies a pro-
cess of symbolic transformation, which is projected with remarkable coherence over
the work as a whole. Unifying motifs are almost inevitable in any such intermove-
ment narrative design, but no less essential is the directional tension culminating
in the finale—a feature that resurfaces in later masterpieces such as the Ninth
Symphony and the C minor Quartet. A shifting of weight to the finale occurs in
certain eighteenth-century pieces—notably in Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony—but in
Beethoven this tendency assumes such prominence as to realign the aesthetic foun-
dations of music. In the Fifth Symphony Beethoven departs from the more static,
successive classical formal models by explicitly connecting the movements, under-
mining their individual autonomy. A mythic pattern seems to be imposed on the
overall artistic sequence, guiding the processive chain of interconnected musical
forms. In its embrace of the dichotomous and its evocation of the ineffable or even
the demonic, the Fifth Symphony opens the door to Romanticism, yet the pro-
found lucidity of its musical shape defies unequivocal programmatic interpretation.
In this respect, as in many others, Beethoven’s importance lies in his synthesis of
the old and new, of the universality of the classical harmonic framework with the
quest for particularity of expression characteristic of the nineteenth century.
S S S
When the two new symphonies were first performed, in the Theater an der Wien
on 22 December 1808, they were joined in the program by several other pieces,
including the aria “Ah perfido!” and the G major Concerto, with the composer at
154 beethoven
Ex. 47 Fifth Symphony op. 67/IV, bars 428–end
the piano. The concert had some severe shortcomings, due to lack of rehearsal and
the fact that the hall remained unheated in the cold weather. Johann Friedrich
Reichardt reported that “I accepted with hearty thanks the kind offer of Prince
Lobkowitz to let me sit in his box. There we continued, in the bitterest cold, too,
from 6:30 until 10:30, and experienced the truth that one can easily have too
much of a good thing.”17 Despite the large amount of music to be performed, Bee-
thoven directed his energies to completing yet another work to serve as the crown-
ing final piece of his Akademie: the Choral Fantasy in C major for piano, orches-
tra, and chorus op. 80. Its performance did not run smoothly: at one point in the
middle Beethoven was obliged to stop the orchestra and begin again.
The Choral Fantasy begins with an improvisatory piano introduction, leading
to a set of variations on the theme Beethoven had used in his song Gegenliebe
WoO 118 of 1794 or 1795. Czerny reported that the poet Kuffner was engaged
at the last minute to write new words for the Choral Fantasy, following hints
given by the composer.18 Beethoven probably conceived much of the music before
the text was completed, since the words are missing from his sketches. The text
took the form of an idealistic “Ode to Music,” reminding us of Beethoven’s fasci-
nation with other poems of this general type, such as Tiedge’s Ode to Hope and
Schiller’s Ode to Joy. In fact, many aspects of the Choral Fantasy anticipate Bee-
thoven’s later setting of Schiller’s text in the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony,
as the composer himself recognized. In a letter from March 1824 Beethoven
described the choral finale of the Ninth as “a setting of the words of Schiller’s im-
mortal ‘Lied an die Freude’ in the same way as my pianoforte fantasia with cho-
rus, but on a far grander scale.”19
Yet another work from this period captures Beethoven’s abilities in keyboard
improvisation: the Fantasy for piano solo op. 77. Although not finished until Oc-
tober 1809, this piece may represent a revised version of the improvised solo fan-
tasy Beethoven played at the Akademie. The op. 77 Fantasy also culminates in a
set of variations, in B major, following a strikingly free opening section abound-
ing in thematic contrasts and sudden modulations, in a style reminiscent of
C. P. E. Bach. The initial gesture of this work is a rapid descending scale, which
seems torn, as it were, from the celestial ether; rather than support its key, G
minor, Beethoven proceeds to the remote D major, the key of the contrasting lyri-
cal theme. The op. 77 Fantasy and op. 80 Choral Fantasy both offer insight into
Beethoven’s considerable powers of invention outside the formal demands of the
classical sonata style.
The year 1809 was one of upheaval in Vienna, bringing events that had much
impact on the composer. The high inflation and unstable economic conditions
wrought by the Napoleonic wars worried Beethoven, who considered leaving the
city. The circumstances are tangled and hard to evaluate; once again, Beethoven’s
ambivalent attitude toward Napoleon lies at the heart of the matter. Shortly be-
fore, Beethoven had received a tempting offer of employment at Cassel from
Napoleon’s brother Jerôme, who had been installed there as King of Westphalia
one year earlier. On 1 November 1808 Beethoven wrote to Count Oppersdorf
18
Thayer-Forbes, pp. 448, 451. Nottebohm questioned Czerny’s attribution of the text
to Kuffner and speculated that the author might have been Georg Friedrich Treitschke, who
revised the libretto of Fidelio in 1814.
19
156 beethoven
that “I have been asked to become Kapellmeister to the King of Westphalia,
and it could be that I will accept this offer.”20 In a letter dated 7 January 1809 to
Breitkopf & Härtel Beethoven indicated that he had decided to move, and Ries
asserted that around February the contract for the position at Cassel was ready
and “lacked only the signature.”21
In response to Beethoven’s imminent departure, a counteroffer and annuity
contract were drawn up by three of Beethoven’s loyal patrons, the Archduke
Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz, and Prince Ferdinand Kinsky. All three were younger
than Beethoven: the archduke only twenty-one, Lobkowitz thirty-five, and Kinsky
twenty-seven. The agreement, dated 1 March 1809, guaranteed Beethoven a sub-
stantial income for life in return for the continuation of his artistic contributions
in Vienna. The later history of the annuity payments was complicated not only by
steep inflation and currency reform but by the premature death in 1812 of Kinsky
and the virtual bankruptcy of Lobkowitz, whose excessive expenditures on art
had drained his resources. Beethoven struggled with considerable determination
and occasional legal interventions to assure the continuance of the stipend to the
end of his life.
Three of Beethoven’s major works of chamber music were dedicated to the per-
sons who helped negotiate the annuity agreement: the Cello Sonata in A major op.
69 was dedicated to Ignaz Gleichenstein, and the two Piano Trios op. 70 to
Countess Erdödy. In the op. 69 Sonata the cello begins unaccompanied, dolce and
legato, with motifs that permeate the entire first movement. After the main theme
has been heard in both instruments it is suddenly dramatically altered, and cast
into A minor. This contrast between the quiet atmosphere of the lyrical opening
and a turbulent, rhythmically charged continuation is characteristic of the Alle-
gro, ma non tanto. The second movement is a scherzo, whose main theme takes
on a strong rhythmic tension through syncopation. Like the Cello Sonatas op. 5,
this work has no independent slow movement, but the finale is introduced by an
expressive Adagio cantabile in E major, whose thematic material bears a subtle re-
lationship to the finale.
At the beginning of his D major Trio op. 70 no. 1 Beethoven reshapes the basic
thematic outline from his earlier piano sonata in this key, op. 10 no. 3, to endow
the music with an intense forward drive. Instead of an upbeat figure descending a
fourth followed by a sequential rise in pitch, as in the sonata, Beethoven com-
presses the initial four-note motif, starting on the downbeat, fortissimo. This fore-
shortening generates a kind of metrical dissonance within the triple meter that
infuses much energy into the succeeding motivic figures based on fourths. He
thereby reverses his normal procedure, whereby rhythmic diminution follows the
basic motivic presentation, and he heightens the outcome of this arresting unison
phrase through a shocking turn into the minor mode, as F is substituted for F in
bar 5. Beethoven packs an extraordinary density of ideas into the concentrated
unison opening of this work.

21
Thayer-Forbes, pp. 453–54, 458.
No less remarkable is the slow movement of op. 70 no. 1, on account of which

the work has become known as the Ghost Trio. Czerny wrote about this Largo
assai ed espressivo in D minor that it “resembles an appearance from the under-
world. One could think not inappropriately of the first appearance of the ghost in
Hamlet.”22 Beethoven’s sketches do imply a Shakespearean connection here,
though to a different play, Macbeth. During 1808 Heinrich von Collin offered
Beethoven part of an opera libretto based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth; the drama,
like Shakespeare’s, was to have begun with the witches’ scene. In leaves originally
belonging to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony Sketchbook, entries for the pro-
jected opera on Macbeth are juxtaposed with work on the slow movement of the
trio. An uncanny atmosphere invests Beethoven’s Largo, with its mysterious
tremolos, chromatic textures, and powerful dynamic contrasts. Lockwood has
shown how intensively Beethoven labored on the final cadence, painstakingly de-
vising a solution that does not resolve but sustains the tension until the beginning
of the ensuing presto finale.23
During 1808–9 Beethoven showed a marked tendency to compose works in E
major; the Trio op. 70 no. 2, Piano Concerto op. 73, String Quartet op. 74, and
Piano Sonata op. 81a are all in this key. The E Trio looks back to Mozart and es-
pecially Haydn, while at the same time anticipating Schubert in its gracious third
movement, marked Allegretto ma non troppo. In the first movement, the relation-
ship of the poco sostenuto slow introduction to the Allegro ma non troppo shows
parallels with Haydn’s Drumroll Symphony (no. 103) in the same key, as Anthony
Burton has observed; an affinity with Haydn’s work can also be felt in the slow
movement, a set of variations on two alternating themes.24 Tovey wrote of an “in-
tegration of Mozart’s and Haydn’s resources” in op. 70 no. 2;25 the subtle stylis-
tic play at work in this trio transcends the classicizing impulse in some of Beetho-
ven’s earlier compositions, such as the C major Mass of 1807, with its more
obvious debt to Haydn. The most stylistically progressive movement of the E
Trio is the gentle, scherzo-like third movement. Beethoven breaks with convention
by placing this Allegretto not in the tonic but in the subdominant key, A major,
and he introduces enharmonic shifts of Schubertian delicacy in the trio, with the
piano penetrating the highest register in a transparent, pianissimo texture.
The Fifth Piano Concerto, from the beginning of 1809, is cast in a more bril-
liant, heroic mould. Its outer movements assume a majestic character, with rhyth-
mic figures evocative of military style and a formal breadth reminiscent of the
Eroica Symphony. Yet the important dramatic events often depend on the with-
drawal of the music into a mysterious stillness. In the solo exposition of the open-
ing Allegro the pianist presents a transparent, pianissimo subject in B minor and
22
On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, p. [87] 97.
23
“Beethoven and the Problem of Closure,” in Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammermusik,
pp. 267–70; Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process, pp. 191–97.
24 Anthony Burton, notes to the recording by Wilhelm Kempff, Henryk Szering, and
Pierre Fournier (Deutsche Grammophon), p. 17.

158 beethoven
C major, thereby presaging the Adagio un poco mosso in B major, the enhar-
monic equivalent of C . The last section of the development almost recedes into
inaudibility, as the music is reduced to its seminal rhythmic motif before increas-
ingly intense repetitions of this figure open the door to the recapitulation. Beetho-
ven had employed such a quiet withdrawal preceding the recapitulation in the first
movement of his Fourth Symphony, as we have seen. By no means do Beethoven’s
development sections in his sonata designs always require a steady increase in ten-
sion leading up to the recapitulation. As early as 1800, in the first movement of
the Piano Sonata in B op. 22, Beethoven had experimented with a development
that unfolds into a vast decrescendo, to be followed by a fresh start at the begin-
ning of the ensuing reprise. Another example from the period in question is the
first movement development of the Quartet in E op. 74, which gradually fades
into pianissimo before the use of pizzicato brings an even softer dynamic level;
only in the last three bars does Beethoven prescribe a crescendo leading to the
reprise in forte.
In the overall design of the E major Concerto the serene slow movement in B
major acts as an immense parenthesis; its mood of dream-like reflection is dissi-
pated with wonderful sensitivity at the transition to the finale. The cadential figure
of the Adagio theme, with its repeated motif B–A –B, is reinterpreted in a long
diminuendo passage, beginning at the point where the leading note A falls to A
instead of rising to B. The cadence is thereby interrupted, and the piano descends
out of the high pitch registers to alight eventually on a soft B in the bass. The pivo-
tal moment is reached when this B octave is sustained through a bar in the bas-
soons. For the next downward shift of a semitone is not merely motivic but sig-
nals a structural modulation: A becomes B , the dominant of E major. When the
resolution to B is sounded and then prolonged in the horns, the slow movement
is finished, but Beethoven preserves its tempo and dynamic level in his ensuing an-
ticipation in the piano of the finale’s rondo theme. Schumann imitated this pas-
sage at the transition to the finale of his Piano Concerto in A minor op. 54.
By the spring of 1809 political events in Austria had reached a crisis. On 9
April Austria declared war on France; Tyson has noted that Beethoven’s sketches
for Collin’s Östreich über Alles and for a Jubelgesang may be connected with the
patriotic fervor engendered by these conditions.26 By the end of April the French
armies had invaded Austria. On the night of 11–12 May the French bombarded
Vienna; Beethoven took refuge in the cellar of his brother Carl’s house, and, ac-
cording to Ries, “covered his head with pillows so as not to hear the cannons.”27
Vienna capitulated the next day. During the ensuing occupation Beethoven is sup-
posed to have displayed contempt for the French military, but he did not avoid
friendly contact with individual Frenchmen. He repeatedly met the Baron de Tré-
mont, a French officer and music lover who vividly described Beethoven’s improv-
isations and commented on the composer’s fascination with Napoleon.
In the wake of the war with France and occupation of Vienna, many of Bee-
26
The Beethoven Sketchbooks, p. 188.
27
Wegeler-Ries, Biographische Notizen, p. 121.
thoven’s friends and patrons left the city, including the Archduke Rudolph, who
departed on 4 May 1809, not to return until 30 January 1810. Shortly thereafter,
on 4 February, Beethoven offered Breitkopf & Härtel three new piano sonatas for
publication: the two-movement Sonata in F dedicated to the Countess Therese
Brunswick and eventually issued as op. 78, the “Sonatina” in G op. 79, and the
Sonata in E major op. 81a. Notwithstanding its compact dimensions and motivic
similarities to Beethoven’s Ritterballett of 1791, op. 79 is a highly polished work.
The rhythmic élan of its outer movements is reflected in the unusual direction
“Presto alla tedesca” for the first movement: the relaxed pace more typical of a
German dance is supplanted here by vivacious energy. The second movement, in
G minor, marked Andante, displays metrical ambiguity and a remote, archaic
quality suggesting the influence of Eastern folklore; one is reminded at least dis-
tantly of the Allegretto of the C major Quartet op. 59 no. 3.
An unusual feature of the F major Sonata op. 78 is the introductory motto en-
capsulated in the four opening bars, marked Adagio cantabile. Euphonious
chords enhanced with expressive appoggiaturas rise above a deep pedal point
in the bass; the gesture is declamatory, yet tender and heartfelt. This quality of
Innigkeit is found often in Beethoven, yet nowhere more prominently than in
some of the solo piano sonatas, from the gracious finale of the E Sonata op. 7 to
the glowing lyricism of the opening Allegretto of op. 101. Several such works
were dedicated to Beethoven’s female piano pupils: Countess “Babette” Keglevics
(later Countess Odescalchi) received the dedications of op. 7 and other works, while
the distinguished pianist Baroness Ertmann, whom Beethoven once addressed as his
“dear, valued Dorothea-Cäcilia,” received the dedication of op. 101. Therese
Brunswick was presumably a less accomplished player than Keglevics or Ert-
mann, but Beethoven devoted long hours to teaching her and her sister Josephine
as early as 1799, when, as she later recalled, he “never tired” of “holding and
bending my fingers.” Uhde has suggested that the choice of key for the F major
Sonata may have had a pedagogical purpose, and that the intimately lyrical char-
acter of the music was influenced by Bach’s works in this key in The Well-
Tempered Clavier.28 A tight network of motivic relationships takes shape in op.
78 as the ascending contour and harmonic color of the fervent opening motto are
reinterpreted in ensuing passages of the Allegro, ma non troppo. In turn, the sec-
ond group of the exposition introduces a motif of three emphatic chords, the last
marked sforzando, which are juxtaposed with more gentle figures marked piano.
A variant of this motif is employed in the principal theme of the finale.
The most weighty of the three sonatas is the Lebewohl in E major op. 81a, a
piece which, like op. 78, uses a motto technique in its opening movement. In this
instance Beethoven entered the dates of the archduke’s departure and return into
the score and allowed the emotional progression of “farewell–absence–reunion”
to determine the basic character of the three movements. He was irritated by the
use, in the first edition, of French instead of German titles, probably not only be-
cause of the difference in meaning between “Les adieux” and “Das Lebewohl,”
28
Beethovens Klaviermusik, vol. 3, pp. 225–27.
160 beethoven
but also because of the relationship between the falling horn motif (G–F–E , with
E –B –G in the lower voice) at the outset of the slow introduction and the syllables
“Le-be-wohl,” which are written above these chords.
The initial harmonization of this “Lebewohl” motif in the slow introduction
of the first movement does not affirm the tonic, E major, but leads first decep-
tively to the submediant, C minor, and then, in the eighth bar, to a sustained har-
mony on the more remote flat sixth, C major. The first strong cadential arrival at
the tonic triad of E is thus delayed until five bars into the following Allegro. The
tonal ambiguity of the slow introduction contributes to its suspended, searching
character, qualities that reappear in the second movement, “Abwesenheit” (“Ab-
sence”). At the same time, the “Lebewohl” motto of a stepwise descending third
assumes much importance throughout the Allegro of the first movement, which
begins with an energetic reinterpretation of the progression G–F–E above a chro-
matically falling bass. In the development Beethoven further exploits the associa-
tion of this motto with ambiguous harmonies, leading the music into remote key
areas; but the harmonic boldness characteristic of this sonata is most of all evi-
dent in the coda, where the tonic and dominant are repeatedly sounded together
(Ex. 48). Here the imitations of the original motto seem to recede into the dis-
tance, implying that the departure has taken place. (In many passages of this Al-
legro, the “Lebewohl” motif is written in whole notes, so that its actual duration
in performance approximates its initial appearances in the Adagio, where it is no-
tated in quarter notes.)
The “Absence” has a slow processional character and (like the “Introduzione”
of the Waldstein Sonata) leads directly into the finale. Though the principal key is
C minor, the opening dwells not on the tonic triad but on a diminished-seventh
chord; indeed, in a later restatement of the initial motif at the same pitch level (bar
Ex. 48 Piano Sonata op. 81a/I, coda

11), the harmony is intensified through the use of a dissonant chord of the
eleventh. Immediately afterward the motif is foreshortened and stressed by ac-
cents above a descending bass; this poignant and expressive passage leads through
a brief transition to a consoling, cantabile subject in the dominant key. The entire
period embracing these two themes is then repeated, beginning in B minor; and
we are given the sense that this cyclic repetition of grief and consolation could
continue indefinitely.
After six bars of a third period, in which the music ascends to the dominant-
seventh chord of E , the long-awaited event occurs in the form of a decisive and
jubilant elaboration of this chord in a ten-bar transition to the finale. This is, of
course, the moment of reunion. A dancing Vivacissimamente in sonata form now
transforms the “Lebewohl” motif from the first movement into scintillating figu-
ration. Beethoven recalls the symbolic progression from the “Absence” to “Re-
union” by transforming hard, bleak, unharmonized octaves into delicate turns
with grace notes in the swinging 6/8 meter. This finale embodies not only an out-
come of the overall narrative progression of movements, as in the Pathétique
Sonata, but acts as dramatic culmination of the entire work. Beethoven appar-
ently delayed the completion of this exuberant finale until the actual return of the
archduke gave him cause for celebration and a reason to immortalize their friend-
ship through a work of art.
6
R
Consolidation: 1810–1812
R
According to Czerny, Beethoven once said that “Schiller’s poems are extremely
difficult for the musician. The composer must know how to lift himself far above
the poet; who can do that with a Schiller text? In that respect Goethe is much eas-
ier!”1 Schiller himself had grappled with this difference in his treatise Über naive
und sentimentale Dichtung (On Naive and Sentimental Poetry) of 1795–96,
where he postulated two basic mental attitudes, the “naive” and the “sentimen-
tal,” with the latter understood in the sense of “reflective.” Goethe, like Shake-
speare and the greatest Greek poets, was regarded as “naive” because his work
mirrors the external world directly and unreflectingly; Schiller saw his own poetry
and much literature of his time as “sentimental,” in that it reconstructs, reflects,
and modifies the world through an active intrusion of the imagination. Beetho-
ven’s art straddles both sides of the distinction; the “sentimental” aspect is per-
haps most succinctly captured by Nietzsche’s comment that Beethoven “writes
music about music.”2 The less idealistic, more realistic cast of Goethe’s poetry
made it more accessible to the musician, in Beethoven’s view. Nevertheless, Bee-
thoven experienced difficulty in setting Goethe’s poetry in earlier years. Of the eight
songs to texts by Goethe that Beethoven attempted between 1800 and 1804, six
remained incomplete. And in 1808, when Beethoven tackled “Nur wer die Sehn-
sucht kennt” from Wilhelm Meister, he produced no one definitive setting. On his
autograph score Beethoven wrote, perhaps ironically, that “I lacked time to pro-
duce a good setting, therefore several tries.” He left four settings of this text.3
The climax of Beethoven’s engagement with Goethe’s writings came in 1810.
His main project during the first half of the year was the incidental music to
Goethe’s tragedy Egmont op. 84, which was first performed on 15 or 18 June.
During the following months he also completed three songs to Goethe texts that
1
On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, p. 19; translation
amended.
2
“Der Wanderer und sein Schatten,” no. 152 in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I and
II, p. 616.
3
Cf. the facsimile edition with commentary by Helga Lühning, Nur wer die Sehnsucht
kennt (Bonn, 1986).
162
consolidation: 1810–1812 163
were published as op. 83 nos. 1–3: Wonne der Wehmut, Sehnsucht, and Mit einem
gemalten Band (see Plate 9). Wonne der Wehmut might be translated as “Bliss in
Sorrow”; we shall examine this song in detail in order to illustrate some charac-
teristic features of Beethoven’s text setting (Ex. 49). Beethoven’s best lieder have
not received the attention they deserve; the songs have always been overshadowed
by his much larger production of instrumental music.
The key of Wonne der Wehmut, E major, was associated by Beethoven with a
reflective, elevated, and often ethereal or religious character. Examples among the
songs include the first of the Gellert Lieder, Bitten (op. 48 no. 1), the Opferlied,
and the Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel of 1820. Similar qualities surface in
some of Beethoven’s instrumental works in this key. As we have seen, he is said to
have conceived the E major slow movement of the second Razumovsky quartet
while “contemplating the starry heavens and thinking of the music of the
spheres.” His piano music in this key and general character ranges from the main
theme of the Adagio of the Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 3 to the slow movement of the
Third Concerto and the variation finale of the Sonata op. 109.
A comparison of the song with Goethe’s original poem reveals how freely Bee-
thoven has altered the text by repeating and interpolating certain words. “Trock-
net nicht!” is inserted between the third and fourth lines of Goethe’s poem. Sub-
sequently, Beethoven reiterates the last two lines of the text, and he closes the song
by changing the order of words, with a last repetition of “unglücklicher Liebe!,”
followed by a final, resolving statement of “Trocknet nicht!” He has reshaped the
text in accordance with his musical interpretation.
Beethoven’s means are simple but telling; like Schubert’s six Heine settings of
1828, Wonne der Wehmut displays a miraculous artistic economy whereby the
most basic elements of harmony and melody are endowed with a pregnant signi-
ficance. The song begins without introduction. The twofold statement of “Trock-
net nicht!” is supported by a harmonic progression from the tonic triad in root
position through a dominant-seventh chord to another tonic in first inversion in
the middle of bar 2; the bass ascends by step, with the subdominant reached in
bar 3 and the tonic in second inversion in bar 4. The resolution to the dominant
in this bar marks the end of the first larger phrase.
Beethoven’s basic voice-leading in this opening passage involves an ascending
stepwise progression from the third degree, G , in the voice and right hand of the
piano, supported by a parallel ascent in the bass beginning a third lower on the
tonic note E and reaching B at the half cadence on the dominant. It is in relation
to this firm structure that Beethoven introduces telling expressive nuances. Espe-
cially striking are the vocal appoggiaturas on “nicht,” stressing the negative import
of “Dry not!” as a means of heightening the poignant, almost masochistic conflict
within the protagonist. These vocal appoggiaturas embellish and resolve to the
pitches A and B heard in the piano; their dissonance imparts forward impulse to
the music by twice emphasizing a weak beat, the second eighth of the duple meter.
In a stronger metrical position on the second quarter of each of these bars, the
pianist plays a falling scale with slightly detached articulation, beginning exactly
164 beethoven
Ex. 49 Wonne der Wehmut op. 83 no. 1
an octave above the voice, sounding the same note, A, in the higher register.
Rhythmically, moreover, the initial A in the piano corresponds to what has just
been sung a moment before; this A, too, serves as a vocal appoggiatura in its char-
acter and structure. The entire descending scale in the piano is thus set into
motion by the sigh figure derived from the vocal setting of “nicht.”4 The first ap-
pearance of the falling scale sounds parenthetical, as a linear unfolding of the
dominant-seventh chords heard immediately before and after. This important
motif is strictly derived from the voice part, and its presence greatly heightens the
impact of the vocal delivery of “Trocknet nicht!”
4
Cf. Boettcher, Beethoven als Liederkomponist, p. 115.
[Dry not, dry not, tears of eternal love! Ah, it is only to the half-dried eye that the
world seems bleak and dead!
Dry not, dry not, tears of unhappy love!]
Some commentators have described this descending scale figure in the piano as
a “veil of tears,” but it is more than a pictorial device. In fact, Beethoven uses the
evocative descending scale in a much more generalized relationship with the text;
the last two times the word “Thränen” (“tears”) is sung, the scale is not heard
in the immediate context. This is not to deny that the falling scale is associated
with tears: the link is indeed unmistakable near the beginning of the second larger
musical phrase, when the voice declaims “Trocknet nicht!” while the motif re-
appears in the piano. The point is that Beethoven’s sensitive development of the
vocal appoggiatura into the descending motif in the piano is part of a larger pro-
cess whereby the expressive affect derived from the poem is transformed into the
musical structure. He does not simply depict particular words by means of musi-
cal motifs; the words enter into a dialogue with the music, which is not subordi-
nated to the text but, on the contrary, creates a new formal context for it.
By imitating the initial vocal phrases in the piano in bars 5 and 6, and incor-
porating the words “Trocknet nicht!,” Beethoven introduces the subsequent lines
of the poem in a manner that parallels the beginning. This procedure departs from
the structure of Goethe’s poem; but it allows Beethoven to set up expectations of
a paired phrase beginning in bar 5, implying a pattern that would normally lead
to a cadence in the tonic key in bar 8. There is no such continuation, however,
since the words “Ah, it is only to the half-dried eye that the world seems bleak
and dead!” motivate a change in character. In place of the rising melodic motion
in E major from the opening Beethoven now employs a vocal descent laden with
166 beethoven
chromaticism. The word “öde” (“bleak”) is stressed by a dissonant appoggiatura
against a dynamically emphasized seventh chord in the piano. But most striking
is the treatment of the words “wie todt die Welt ihm erscheint!,” with its accented
chords and descent in octaves in the bass of the piano.
The voice reiterates a single pitch to these words: G , a dark point of sound a
semitone below the bright G of the opening. One reason for Beethoven’s stub-
born emphasis on this note is that he is to return to the G in later sections of the
song, recapturing the same bleak sound in relation to different words. The con-
tinuation in bar 11 provides yet another variant of the opening motif, with the ris-
ing figure in the piano twice juxtaposed with “Trocknet nicht” in the voice. What
is touching here is the very absence of the descending scale figure that was previ-
ously heard. The tears no longer flow; the cheeks dry. The current of sustaining
inner life threatens to expire.
The second interjection of “Trocknet nicht” (bar 12) leads directly into the fol-
lowing phrase, a double setting of “Thränen unglücklicher Liebe.” By repeating
these words Beethoven underscores their importance in the piece as a whole. The
inner drama of this paradoxical poem resides in the tension between “tears of
eternal love” and “tears of unhappy love”; at stake here is the human capacity to
experience happiness despite the pain of loss. In the language of the poem, Goethe
only juxtaposes these sentiments, although his striking title Wonne der Wehmut
does conjoin them. A remarkable feature of Beethoven’s setting of “Thränen
unglücklicher Liebe” is that he combines aspects of two earlier passages, “tears of
eternal love” and “how dead the world seems.” The rhythm and melodic ascent
to E remind us of the beginning of the song, but the dark telltale G at “Liebe”
harks back to the end of the preceding phrase, alluding to the loss of feeling sig-
naled by the drying of the tears.
In this context Beethoven cannot end his song where Goethe concluded his
text. The musical sentiment spills over, forcing extensive reuse of the preceding
words. Such a practice is by no means confined to Beethoven’s lieder but is char-
acteristic of his text setting in his most massive vocal works. The final sections of
the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony, for instance, are based entirely on the
repetition of earlier parts of the text, and the great fugue and coda of the Credo
in the Missa solemnis elaborates no more than the last five words, “Et vitam ven-
turi saeculi Amen.” Something of the same process is at work in miniature in this
astonishing song from 1810.
In the final eight bars Beethoven brings together the conflicting sentiments and
at last succeeds in truly integrating them, absorbing melancholy into bliss in the
unconsummated symbol of musical expression. “Trocknet nicht” is recalled as
a reprise of the beginning of the song, complete with the descending scale; but
Beethoven now carries the voice part into the upper register to find its peak at
“Thränen,” on high G . This pitch is held over the barline; the very full harmonic
support in the piano recalls the earlier setting of “wie todt die Welt ihm er-
scheint!” Here, finally, the music strives toward that cadence in E major that had
already been implied in the second of the paired phrases near the beginning. Bee-
thoven imposes a formal symmetry on the song as a whole by employing paired
phrases again at the conclusion. The first of these reaches a deceptive cadence in bar
19; the second supplies the authentic E major cadence two bars before the end.
But we have not yet touched the heart of Beethoven’s conception, that moment
when the emphasis on G and the descending motif converge in the vocal part.
This occurs fittingly at the word “Thränen” (“tears”); the rhythm of an eighth
and two sixteenths in bar 18 corresponds to the falling motif in the piano. The
consequent phrase recaptures the climactic sonority in the piano and retraces
the descending contour of the preceding bars. The overall drop in register spans
the interval of a tenth, from G to E.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Beethoven’s song is that this descent rep-
resents an elaboration, or “composing out,” of the descending scale motif. Even
between the two phrases there is a remarkable sense of organic growth. The sec-
ond phrase supplies the neighbor note A above the G in bar 20 and a stepwise
descent from C to B in bars 20–21. The original descending linear progression
from A through a seventh to B is thus embedded in the voice and piano part of
these bars. Conspicuous as well is the linear discontinuity after the dominant note
B is reached at “Liebe”; here both voice and piano drop by the interval of a sixth;
the last segment of the linear path is left open.
The compelling logic of this melodic gap is revealed in the last two bars. With
a last, framing assertion of “Trocknet nicht!” the voice appropriates the falling
motif, fills the linear gap, and carries the progression firmly into the E major ca-
dence. This gesture provides both a linear and rhythmic resolution of the motif.
But it remains for the piano to restate its version of the descent, which for the first
and only time is now extended to reach the same stable tonic resolution as was
affirmed in the voice. The consolation of “bliss in sorrow” is conveyed through
Beethoven’s ingenious techniques of musical transformation and resolution.
S S S
The small scale of Wonne der Wehmut allows for a more comprehensive analysis
in a short space, illustrating aspects of Beethoven’s musical language that surface
in many of his larger instrumental compositions. Among his lieder this setting par-
ticularly stands out; here Beethoven did “lift himself above the poet,” revealing
new perspectives on the poetry that Goethe probably did not fully understand. As
is well known, Goethe preferred settings of his poetry that kept the text in the
forefront to those in which the music assumes preeminence. But Wonne der
Wehmut also invites consideration in relation to the biographical context of this
period. The theme of the “distant beloved” surfaces repeatedly in Beethoven’s
songs from An den fernen Geliebten of 1809 to the cycle An die ferne Geliebte of
1816. One is also reminded in this connection of An die Geliebte, a copy of which
Beethoven gave to Antonie Brentano in March 1812, as Solomon has shown.5
Wonne der Wehmut, with its touching meditation on “tears of eternal love” and
“tears of unhappy love,” gives compelling artistic expression to issues that were
of surpassing personal importance to Beethoven during these years.
168 beethoven
Early in 1810 Beethoven proposed marriage to the young Therese Malfatti,
who rejected him. His famous piano piece Für Elise WoO 59 is connected to this
episode of his life. As Max Unger first pointed out, Ludwig Nohl’s reading of the
inscription as “For Elise” is probably an error, since the manuscript was found
among the possessions of Therese von Malfatti and was apparently entitled “For
Therese.”6 Still more significant than his relationship to Therese Malfatti was Bee-
thoven’s association with the Brentano family, and especially with Antonie
Brentano and her sister-in-law Bettina Brentano. Antonie (see Plate 10) was the
daughter of the distinguished diplomat, art collector, and scholar Johann Mel-
chior von Birkenstock; Beethoven was a welcome guest in the Birkenstock man-
sion. Bettina vividly described the house in a letter to her friend Goethe:
Here I live in the house of the deceased Birkenstock, surrounded by two thousand
copperplate engravings, as many marble vases, antique fragments of hands and
feet, paintings, Chinese garments, coins, geological collections, sea insects, tele-
scopes and countless maps, plans of ancient buried empires and cities, skillfully
carved walking sticks, precious documents, and finally, the sword of the Emperor
Carolus.7
After her father’s death in October 1809 Antonie returned to her home town
with her husband Franz Brentano; she was to stay until 1812, when the couple
permanently left Vienna to return to Frankfurt, where his business was located.
Thus it was that this cultured family came into close contact with Beethoven at
precisely that time when his interest in Goethe’s poetry and drama was most in-
tense. The Brentano family figured very significantly in the literature of German
Romanticism. Bettina’s brother Clemens was author of the important novel
Godwi, published in 1801; she married the distinguished scholar and writer Lud-
wig Achim von Arnim. She was closely acquainted with Goethe and took it upon
herself to encourage an exchange between Beethoven and the great poet at
Weimar. The accounts she left of her experiences with Beethoven are not free from
literary exaggeration and even occasional deception, but they assume special in-
terest because of their bearing on Beethoven’s aesthetic attitudes and ideas. Mean-
while, the heavily revised manuscript of Beethoven’s early version of Wonne der
Wehmut (Hess 142) came into Goethe’s hands, probably through Friedrich
Rochlitz. A decade later, in October 1821, Goethe placed this treasure before the
young Felix Mendelssohn, who delighted the ageing poet with his performance
and with his clean transcription of the song, which is housed, together with Bee-
thoven’s autograph, in Weimar.
When Beethoven first met Bettina in May 1810, he sang and played for her two
of his Goethe songs: Kennst du das Land? from Wilhelm Meister (op. 75 no. 1)
and Trocknet nicht, Thränen der ewigen Liebe. Immediately after this encounter
Bettina wrote enthusiastically to Goethe about Beethoven; in his reply Goethe
6
7 Cited in Solomon, Beethoven Essays, p. 166.
suggested that Beethoven meet him in the summer at Karlsbad. That the two great
artists actually did meet at the Bohemian spas two years later, in July 1812, surely
owed much to the initiative of Bettina Brentano.
In Bettina’s letters to Goethe about Beethoven she repeatedly emphasizes the
notion of a synthesis between rational and sensuous faculties—an idea that par-
ticularly captivated her and which she attributes to the composer. Thus she writes
on 28 May that “Beethoven feels himself to be the founder of a new sensuous
basis in the intellectual life.” Later in the same letter she describes Beethoven
as having said that “Music, verily, is the mediator between the life of the mind and
the senses.” The later elaborations in her letter about music as “the one incorpo-
real entrance into the higher world of knowledge” and of music as “the electrical
soil in which the mind thinks, lives, feels” similarly imply a bond between the
mind and sensibility that is potentially achieved through music. In yet another
passage Bettina attributes to Beethoven the statement that “Music gives to the
mind the relationship to harmony. An isolated thought still has the feeling of the
whole, of relatedness in the mind.”8
How can we best evaluate Bettina Brentano’s testimony?9 Many of these state-
ments are variations on a theme, and it is not necessary to have full confidence in
the details of Bettina Brentano’s report in order to evaluate the general import of
her testimony. At bottom, what we confront here is a sometimes fanciful embel-
lishment of Schiller’s basic conviction about the merging of the rational and sen-
suous in the work of art. By 1810 the time was ripe for such speculations, and an
urgent need was felt to augment the critical vocabulary in order to better describe
the artwork as a tensional synthesis of conflicting elements. A landmark in this de-
velopment appeared less than two months after Bettina’s letter to Goethe: E. T. A.
Hoffmann’s famous review of the Fifth Symphony, with its appropriation from
Jean Paul Richter of the idiosyncratic term Besonnenheit, or “self-possession,” to
describe Beethoven’s combination of structural control and expressive vehemence.
At the time Bettina Brentano met Beethoven he was hard at work on the inci-
dental music to Egmont op. 84. Like Fidelio, the Egmont drama is based on his-
torical events. In his play, Goethe explicitly envisioned a role for music. The histor-
ical Count Egmont in the sixteenth century was an opponent of the Inquisition
and became a victim of the infamous “Council of Blood” erected by the Duke of
Alba, a ruler nicknamed “the Iron Duke” by Protestants in the Low Countries be-
8
These letters are reproduced with commentary in Thayer-Forbes, pp. 494–98.
9
K. M. Knittel dismisses Brentano’s input, relegating it to a vaguely defined “Beethoven
myth”; in a more nuanced, generous assessment, C. Edward Walden argues for the authen-
ticity of the missing 1812 letter from Beethoven to her, with its famous account of an inci-
dent at Teplitz when Beethoven refused to show deference to members of the royal family,
while Goethe stood to the side bowing. Knittel, “The Construction of Beethoven,” The
Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), p. 119; Walden, “The Authenticity of the 1812 Beethoven Letter
to Bettina von Arnim,” Beethoven Journal 14 (1999), pp. 9–15.
170 beethoven
cause of his harsh rule and cruelty. The dialogue between Egmont and Alba in
Goethe’s play (Act IV, Scene 2, 85–86) touches on these themes:
egmont . Religion, it is said, is merely a splendid device, behind which every
dangerous design may be contrived with the greater ease; the prostrate crowds
adore the sacred symbols pictured there while behind lurks the fowler ready to
ensnare them.
alba . This must I hear from you?
egmont . I speak not my own sentiments! I but repeat what is loudly rumoured,
and uttered now here and now there by great and by humble, by wise men and
fools. The Netherlanders fear a double yoke, and who will be surety to them for
their liberty?10
When Egmont faces execution by the Spaniards, he accepts his fate proudly, pre-
dicting the liberation of his country. At the end of Goethe’s play, the imprisoned
Egmont describes his dream vision of his beloved Klärchen:
With blood-stained feet the vision approached, the waving folds of her robe also were
tinged with blood. It was my blood, and the blood of many brave hearts. No! It shall
not be shed in vain! Forward! Brave people! The goddess of liberty leads you on!
Egmont’s dream projection of his role as a martyr of Flemish freedom thus

foresees an uprising—the famous revolt of the Netherlands. In his treatment of
this theme, Goethe’s direction that the play culminate in a Siegessymphonie or
Victory Symphony glorifies Egmont’s role, and that inspired Beethoven in turn to
write the prescribed music. Regarded in context, the Victory Symphony is explic-
itly associated with resistance to arbitrary authority and tyrannical brutality.11
In the Egmont Overture, which culminates in the Siegessymphonie, Beethoven
seizes upon the conflict between the personal tragedy of Count Egmont and the
larger ideal of freedom for which Egmont sacrifices himself. The pause at the end
of the reprise of this stern, concentrated overture is of symbolic import—in his
sketches Beethoven wrote that “the death could be expressed through a rest.” Un-
like the Coriolan Overture, however, a tragic end is avoided here: the piece is
capped by the Victory Symphony in F major, with its gripping apotheosis of the
fallen hero and his just cause.
The Egmont Overture opens with a slow introduction that juxtaposes massive
orchestral unisons and low, accented motifs in the strings with plaintive, transpar-
10 Egmont by J. W. von Goethe, trans. Anna Swanwick (New York: P. F. Collier & Son,
1909–14); The Harvard Classics, vol. 19, part 3; quotations are verse 85 of Act IV, scene
II, and verse 59 of Act V, scene IV, respectively.
11
Matthew Head’s claims that Goethe “appears to critique the idealism of Egmont as
much as the tyranny of Alba,” and that Beethoven’s “Victory Symphony discloses that the
heroic is essentially nothing more or less than noise” lack foundation. “Beethoven Heroine:
A Female Allegory of Music and Authorship in Egmont.” 19th-Century Music 30 (2006),
pp. 112, 131.
ent phrases in the winds in the higher registers. These contrasting ideas reappear
in the ensuing Allegro, where they are paired together and developed extensively.
The expressive associations of these motifs—the relentless, fortissimo gestures on
the one hand, and a more yielding, lyrical expression on the other—are clarified
at the end of the F minor Allegro. First, the ominous knocking rhythms are given
to the horns and trumpets; then the dismal fanfare is heard fortissimo from most
of the orchestra. The following lyrical response of the strings is abruptly cut off,
and a short pause follows; this is the moment symbolizing Egmont’s death.
Significantly, the following quiet transition is accomplished in the woodwinds. In
the Egmont Overture the winds are used consistently to hint at an alternative to
the tragic outcome, which is now to be manifested in the F major Allegro con brio
of the Victory Symphony. The triumphant close of the overture thus extracts a
moral thread from the F minor pathos of the preceding Allegro, and asserts this
alternative strain with a grandeur and power that subvert the tragedy.
Beethoven’s other major work of 1810 is also in the key of F minor: the String
Quartet op. 95, which was dedicated to Zmeskall. This piece was withheld from
publication until 1816. Beethoven titled it Quartetto serioso, which befits its dark,
introspective, and vehement character. Its idiom is concise if not laconic, with
many of the conventional transitional and cadential passages of the Viennese
Classical style curtailed or eliminated altogether; also drastically compressed is
the recapitulation in the first movement. As in Beethoven’s last quartets, there is a
special emphasis here on counterpoint and fugue. The slow movement in D major,
marked Allegretto ma non troppo, contains extended fugal passages based on a
chromatic subject, whereas the following march-like Allegro assai vivace ma se-
rioso in F minor makes much use of contrapuntal imitation of its basic dotted-
rhythm motif.
As in the Appassionata Sonata in the same key, Beethoven makes the Neapoli-
tan scale degree of G —a semitone above the tonic—serve as a crux for powerful
dramatic tensions. Already near the beginning of the Allegro con brio the terse
opening motif is heard on G ; an analogous rising semitone relationship is embod-
ied in prominent and disruptive rising scales, while an emphatic D chord—the
analogous semitone above the dominant—opens the coda. The mysterious de-
scending cello scale beginning on D that opens the slow movement is related to
this harmonic complex in the opening Allegro con brio, and particularly to the
gesture of rising scales, which in the first movement have twice been heard on D.
At the end of the slow movement the crucial pitch D is harmonized with a soft
diminished-seventh chord, before a sudden, forceful reinterpretation of that
sonority launches the third movement, in F minor.
The finale, marked Allegretto agitato, stresses some of the same harmonic re-
lationships, particularly the dissonant semitone D –C of the first movement, but
its astonishing coda, in F major, leaves the brooding character of the work as a
whole far behind. There is a curious parallel here with the Egmont Overture: in
the coda of the quartet the dramatic tensions are not resolved but are forgotten
and seemingly transcended in a brilliant, exhilarating conclusion. Randall Thomp-
172 beethoven
son wrote of the passage, as cited by Daniel Gregory Mason, that “no bottle of
champagne was ever uncorked at a better time.”12
S S S
Between the summer of 1810 and the end of 1812 Beethoven concentrated on four
major compositions, the Archduke Trio in B major op. 97; the Seventh Symphony
in A major op. 92; the Eighth Symphony in F major op. 93; and the Violin Sonata
in G major op. 96. During 1811 he also wrote extensive music for stage works by
August von Kotzebue, Die Ruinen von Athen (The Ruins of Athens) op. 113 and
König Stephan (King Stephen) op. 117. Much of this stage music is hackwork far
beneath the level of his other compositions. In 1811 a trend emerges that was to as-
sume more importance in the immediately following years: around this time Bee-
thoven made a clear distinction between serious compositions and works written
for public or ceremonial use but not fashioned to the highest artistic standards. The
gap in quality widens between pieces that may have been written almost concur-
rently but with a fundamentally different aim. The fact that Beethoven titled a bold,
advanced work like the F minor Quartet Quartetto serioso is interesting in this re-
gard, since the title may be understood to allude not merely to the work’s dark emo-
tional tone but also to its challenging stylistic demands. Op. 95 is one of the pieces
of these years that is most prophetic of the style of Beethoven’s later music.
Whereas the quartet is terse and concentrated, the Archduke Trio is broad and
expansive, the largest and most outstanding of all Beethoven’s pieces in this genre.
This Piano Trio in B major stands dead center in Beethoven’s creative develop-
ment. In some ways it looks back to the spacious, lyrical style of the masterpieces
from around 1806, like the Fourth Piano Concerto. But it also prefigures impor-
tant features of Beethoven’s later works. As he was to do in the Hammerklavier
Sonata and the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven inverts the traditional order of the
middle movements, placing the scherzo before a meditative set of variations,
which itself foreshadows the final movements of two of the last piano sonatas, op.
109 and op. 111.
The beginning of the Allegro moderato is of the utmost breadth (Ex.50). The
effect derives in part from the poise and inner strength of the theme itself. Built
into the opening thematic statement is a subtle treatment of linear relationships
and rhythmic foreshortening. The rhythmic stress falls on the second bar of each
of the initial two-bar phrases, emphasizing the melodic progression from F in bar
2 to G in bar 4. The rising stepwise motion through the fourth F–B in the third
bar is elaborated on a much larger scale across the first eight bars. Beethoven’s
fifth bar compresses the content of the preceding two bars; a further sequence in
the next bar substitutes A for G, extending the linear ascent. At this point Beetho-
ven varies the ascending figure from bar 3, which carries the melody upward more
rapidly to a firm half cadence on the dominant in the eighth bar; at the same time,
the long tonic pedal in the bass is succeeded by a stepwise descent in the left hand.
The linear ascent of the theme thus extends through an entire octave, with a
12 Cited in Radcliffe, Beethoven’s String Quartets, p. 97.

Ex. 50 Archduke Trio op. 97/I
strong effect of intensification arising from a rich combination of structural fac-

tors. The crescendo and trills in the piano are generated by the inner growth of
the theme itself.
At this point of articulation Beethoven avoids an immediate restatement of the
opening phrases and, instead, expands the music from within. The cello and vio-
lin seem to meditate on possible continuations, before finally taking up the coun-
terstatement as the piano reenters with the pedal figuration, now in both hands.
As the music reaches the half cadence, however, it takes a new turn. In place of
the stable dominant of the earlier passage, Beethoven substitutes an ambiguous
diminished-seventh chord, and the music withdraws mysteriously into pianis-
simo. Only after a brief excursion through sequences stressing diminished and
minor harmonies does the continuation pass through the subdominant to the ca-
dential phrases of this immense theme. The opening subject of the Archduke Trio
is no less than thirty-three bars in length, one of the broadest in the entire Classi-
cal repertory.
The second half of the development again withdraws into pianissimo, employ-
ing pizzicato strings with soft, ethereal trills in the piano. The texture is veiled and
muted, yet dynamically shaped; a single pizzicato line in the cello gradually builds
into more rapid, contrapuntal voices. All of this serves to throw the recapitulation
into relief. Trills lead to an unfolding of the main theme, and Beethoven now deep-
ens its cantabile, dolce character by adding expressive appoggiaturas in the piano.
The scherzo is invested with jaunty humor and lively counterpoint rich in con-
trary motion. Emil Platen has compared its exhaustive permutations of a basic
motivic cell to those in Beethoven’s aforementioned letter from the 1790s ad-
dressed to Zmeskall as “Baron Dreckfahrer,” where he writes “Adieu Baron Ba
174 beethoven
ron ron/nor/orn/rno/onr,” mixing up the order of letters in all possible ways;
Platen is also reminded of the passage near the end of the Alla danza tedesca in
the op. 130 Quartet, with its juggling of the expected sequence of bars in the main
theme.13 The formal scale of the scherzo, like the other movements of op. 97, is
large, and Beethoven uses an abbreviated return of the trio to serve as a coda. This
is especially appropriate on account of the complementary relationship between
scherzo and trio. Riezler has compared the trio to “an abyss into whose gloomy
depths a ray from the triumphant sun suddenly strikes.”14 He refers here to the
contrast between the uncanny chromatic canon in B minor at the outset of the
trio and the radiant waltz which suddenly emerges in D major. This duality
within the trio is clarified in turn by a thematic relationship linking the scherzo
and trio. The scherzo begins with a rising scale through the octave in the cello
alone. The trio also opens with an ascent from B in the cello, but its theme does
not show the same carefree spirit (Ex. 51a and b). Instead, the music explores
those spaces between steps of the diatonic major scale that were passed over
lightly by the scherzo. The reflective chromaticism greatly slows the rising motion
and deepens it, revealing an unsuspected seriousness lurking behind the gaiety of
the scherzo subject. The canonic entries form part of Beethoven’s transformation
of the scherzo theme. Since each entry of the canon rises only a fourth, it requires
two such entries, in the cello and left hand of the piano, to retrace the same ascent
through the octave. In the coda, by contrast, Beethoven reduces the trio to its
basic semitonal shape, especially C –B , before resolving it into the gaiety of the
rising scale in the major.
The theme of the Andante cantabile ma pero con moto in D major is of hymn-
like serenity. Rhythmically it resembles a sarabande, with frequent stress on the
second beat of the triple meter. The stately, chorale-like character of the theme is
decorated through rhythmic subdivisions in each variation: the triplet eighth
notes of Variation 1 are succeeded by textures of sixteenths, triplet sixteenths, and
thirty-second notes with syncopations. A reprise of the original theme follows,
varied in many details of harmony and instrumentation. But the movement is far
from over: a surprising modulation to the bright key of E major ushers in a coda
that dwells on the falling melodic step and dotted rhythm from the cadential
phrases of the theme. At the ensuing transition this rhythm and motivic step are
inverted to launch the main theme of the rondo, which begins with yet another
transformation of the rising linear pattern familiar from the first two movements.
The humor and high spirits of this Allegro moderato carry everything before
them. The rondo finale is a fitting culmination to the work, and shows the same
bold spaciousness that characterized the earlier movements. At the beginning of
the presto coda, Beethoven even incorporates an unusual modulatory excursion
to the key of the leading note, A major, distantly foreshadowing his more radical
use of this tonal relationship in the finale of the Piano Sonata in A op. 110.
13“‘Voila Quelque Chose aus dem alten Versatzamt’: Zum Scherzo des Klaviertrios B-
Dur opus 97,” pp. 168–84.
Ex. 51 Archduke Trio op. 97/II

a. Scherzo
b. Trio
During the months after March 1811, when he finished the Archduke Trio,
Beethoven’s compositional output was modest. That summer he journeyed to the
Bohemian spas at Teplitz, where he met a group of writers and intellectuals in-
cluding Christoph August Tiedge, and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense and his
wife Rahel Levin. It was at about this time that Beethoven worked on the revision
of his oratorio Christus am Ölberge for publication, and that his Mass in C major
of 1807 was at last successfully performed, to be published the following year.
176 beethoven
Beethoven’s first sketches for the Seventh Symphony in the Petter Sketchbook ap-
pear to date from the time at Teplitz. This work and its companion, the Eighth
Symphony, were Beethoven’s main projects during the following year. When he re-
turned to Teplitz in the summer of 1812 he made sketches for the Eighth Sym-
phony in later parts of the same sketchbook.
In 1827 a reviewer of the Seventh Symphony and professed admirer of Beetho-
ven’s earlier works asked “what had become of the good man in his later period?
Did he not succumb to a kind of insanity?” The tone of the review echoes that of
other dismissive contemporary assessments of Beethoven; it is the length, strong
contrasts, and expressive vehemence of the music that provoked rejection: “the
whole thing lasts at least three-quarters of an hour, and is a true mixture of tragic,
comic, serious, and trivial ideas, which spring from one level to another without
any connection, repeat themselves to excess, and are almost wrecked by the im-
moderate noise of the timpani.”15 A similar judgment was attributed, probably
falsely, to Carl Maria von Weber by the untrustworthy Anton Schindler, Beetho-
ven’s self-appointed secretary and biographer: according to Schindler, Weber is
supposed to have declared that the Seventh Symphony showed Beethoven “ripe
for the madhouse.”16
Despite such reactions, the A major Symphony, and particularly its Allegretto,
rapidly became one of Beethoven’s most popular works. Perhaps no other work
by Beethoven is so intensely animated and driven by the power of rhythm. In re-
sponse to this quality Wagner dubbed the symphony “the apotheosis of the dance,”
and imaginative commentators have produced various programmatic interpreta-
tions. Solomon has sought a common denominator for these opinions in the
notion of a “festive Paradise, outside of time and history, untouched by mortal-
ity.”17 For the Seventh Symphony, unlike the Fifth, does not involve struggle
against adversity, even if a darker, contrasting range of character emerges in the A
minor Allegretto. It is an accident of history that the first performances of this ra-
diant symphony in 1813 and 1814 exactly coincided with the celebration of the
victory over Napoleon.
The slow introduction is the most weighty in all Beethoven’s symphonies, and
it generates out of the most fundamental relationships of sound and time a
propulsive rhythmic energy that is to infuse the entire work. Especially important
is the series of four short but emphatic chords with a descending bass heard at the
outset. These sonorities are placed two bars apart in the 4/4 meter; they outline the
harmonic progression I–V–I7–IV. Connecting these majestic chords are motifs of
legato half notes, heard first in the oboes and then in the other wind instruments.
Beethoven soon reinterprets this opening gesture in compelling fashion. Beginning
in bar 15, the harmonic progression over a descending bass is restated, but the
chords are sustained in the winds and trumpets and played fortissimo (Ex. 52).
15 Cited in Kunze, ed., Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit, pp. 288–89.
16 See the discussion of this famous attribution by Robin Wallace in Beethoven’s Critics,
pp. 102–3.
Ex. 52 Seventh Symphony op. 92/I, bars 10–19

178 beethoven
The oboe line in half notes is assigned to the violins. At this moment Beethoven
introduces a third rhythmic level—a texture of rising scales in detached sixteenth
notes that spans and connects the various pitch registers outlined by the chords.
The power of this music derives in part from its synthesis of three rhythmic lev-
els, which subdivide the basic slow pulse of the chords according to precise pro-
portions. Thus the larger, controlling impulses at the beginning of each two-bar
group are divided into four, in half notes, and these impulses in turn are divided
into eight, yielding thirty-two sixteenth notes in each two-bar unit (see Fig. 3).
The tension generated by these relationships depends on the fact that Beethoven’s
second rhythmic division doubles the proportions of the first. At the same time,
the rising scales “compose out” the sound of the chords through the tonal space.
They are derived from the chords, yet they introduce an energy that later serves
to prepare the rhythmic transition into the Vivace.
The fortissimo passage combining the three rhythmic levels changes the har-
monic progression from the outset of the movement. The descent of the bass is
now chromatic, tracing the pitches A–G –G –F –F–E, and Beethoven alters the
harmonies to effect a modulation to C major, the key of the ensuing dolce subject,
played first in the winds and then in the strings. This theme reappears later in the
slow introduction in F major, which, like C, is a significant key in the main body
of the movement. But Beethoven’s use of these mediant and submediant tonalities
in the introduction is not merely a foreshadowing of later events. Above all, it en-
ables him to set the gracious dolce melody into marked tonal contrast with the
rest of the introduction, before integrating both in the passage that leads into the
beginning of the Vivace.
The dolce passages are not just episodes in the introduction. They are more like
musical samples, excerpts of a pleasant, charming style that could not puzzle or
offend Beethoven’s listeners. His treatment of these passages in the slow introduc-
tion of the Seventh illustrates Nietzsche’s comment about Beethoven’s writing
“music about music.” For in the second episode a transformation takes place.
Beethoven repeats the rhythm of the tune in the strings, while a rhythmic and dy-
namic intensification leads to the structural downbeat on the dominant in bar 53
(Ex. 53). Twice the winds attempt to carry on a musical discourse whose har-
monic texture and dotted rhythm is unmistakably related to the earlier dolce epi-
sodes. But these interjections are not taken up; the stronger rhythmic impulses and
their reverberations are reasserted and then seemingly distilled to their essence.
Beethoven restructures his framework of rhythmic levels to absorb the dotted
rhythm drawn from the dolce theme. The crucial turning point at the end of the
introduction occurs as the dotted rhythm is infused with this intense energy, cre-
ating thereby the ostinato figure of a dotted rhythm in 6/8 meter that dominates
large sections of the first movement.
Other passages in Beethoven most comparable to this generative process in the
Seventh Symphony include not only the slow introductions in the Second and
Fourth Symphonies but also the slow introductions to some of his instrumental
finales. One is reminded, very distantly, of the Introduzione of the Waldstein
Sonata and, much more concretely, of the introduction to the finale of the Ham-
Figure 3. Rhythmic structure of the slow introduction to the first movement of the
Seventh Symphony, bars 15–22
merklavier Sonata. Quite unlike the symphony, however, these movements begin
in a quiet, almost motionless state of calm. The opening of the Seventh Symphony,
by contrast, harbors virtually inexhaustible reserves of rhythmic energy that spill
over into every one of the four movements.
The famous Allegretto in A minor also features a prominent rhythmic ostinato,
which endows this movement with a processional aura, imposing a strong unify-
ing character that is felt throughout the variations of the theme and even the
contrasting episodes in the major. Here is one of the sources of inspiration for
Schubert’s many processional pieces associated with the Romantic theme of
the wanderer. The following, propulsive scherzo in F major emphasizes iambic
rhythms, whereas the closing Allegro con brio displays a considerable diversity of
rhythmic figures and patterns. The trio of the scherzo, on the other hand, repre-
sents the still center of the symphony. Its majestic, yet almost static character is
conveyed in part by impressive pedal points on A that resound through extended
passages, played fortissimo in the trumpets and drum. Yet even here, a suggestion
of processional movement is retained; according to a report from Abbé Stadler,
the theme of the trio was drawn from an Austrian pilgrimage hymn.18
18
180 beethoven
Ex. 53 Seventh Symphony op. 92/I, bars 47–60
In the Allegro con brio finale Beethoven’s main theme itself becomes an osti-
nato, a kind of revolving cam whose driving momentum is reflected in insistent
syncopation in the winds and low strings. The primary motif is like a coiled
spring, whose tension permeates the broader thematic idea that circles in quarter
notes around C , the third degree of A major (Ex. 54). This is hardly the idea of
a madman. What is involved is a sudden fourfold rhythmic augmentation of the
basic motif, so that the rapid motivic contour that had occupied less than one bar
of music is suddenly enlarged over several bars, while the structural accent on
E is reflected in the prolonged notes of the winds and horns. Here, as elsewhere
in the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven does indeed “spring from one level to
another,” but the connections are real and tangible. The music is dependent on
these relationships and it only truly comes alive when they are felt and conveyed
in performance.
Ernest Newman once wrote that the Eighth Symphony “takes the overspill of
the mighty Seventh.”19 Despite the strong differences between these works, the ex-
traordinary rhythmic intensity of the preceding symphony reappears in certain
passages of the Eighth, particularly in the development of the first movement and
in the finale. In its character the Eighth Symphony is somewhat reminiscent of the
sublime comedy of the Second Symphony. Beethoven often associated the key of
F major with humor, and this work is no exception. One of the humorous anec-
dotes often related about the symphony must be disallowed, however. Schindler
wrote that the Allegretto scherzando of the Eighth was based on a canon that Bee-
thoven improvised in the spring of 1812 at a farewell dinner for Johann Nepo-
muk Mälzel. Mälzel was an inventor best known for his devices to measure mu-
sical tempo. His first such device was the “chronometer,” which he was anxious
to publicize at precisely this time (it was only several years later, in 1815, that he
invented the metronome), and Beethoven’s interest in him was connected in part
to Mälzel’s efforts to fashion ear trumpets for the deaf composer. According to
Schindler, Beethoven’s party canon on “ta ta ta”—representing the beat of the
chronometer—supplied the principal motif for the second movement of the sym-
phony. Research since the 1970s has indicated that the Mälzel canon is almost cer-
tainly a forgery.20 Schindler forged many entries in the conversation notebooks
that came into his possession. He had no scruples about fabricating history and
did not hesitate to falsify sources to support the account published in his Beetho-
ven biography. There is no manuscript for the alleged Mälzel canon, and the his-
torical facts and sketch sources contradict Schindler’s account of the genesis of the
Allegretto scherzando. Thus this colorful story must be laid to rest, despite its il-
lustrious career in Beethoven biography.
Another finding is Sieghard Brandenburg’s discovery from manuscript sources
that Beethoven sketched the opening Allegro of the Eighth Symphony as a piano
19Notes to the Klemperer recording, p. 21, cited in Solomon, Beethoven, p. 213.

20See especially the symposium of essays by Standley Howell, Kathryn John, and Harry
Goldschmidt in Zu Beethoven, ed. Goldschmidt, vol. 2, pp. 163–204.
182 beethoven
Ex. 54 Seventh Symphony op. 92/IV, bars 36–45
concerto.21 Much of the symphonic exposition, up to the passage in dotted rhythm,

was to have served as the introductory orchestral ritornello in the tonic key; at this
point the solo piano was to enter with a cadenza. The transformation of the nas-
cent concerto into a symphony required no changes in the basic progression of
themes. But something of the genesis of the work can be felt in the contrast be-
tween the lighter, more transparent textures of the exposition and the forceful mo-
tivic repetitions and sustained syncopations of the development, which would not
have found a home in a concerto. The recapitulation marks the climax of this pro-
gression, and Beethoven writes a triple fortissimo in all the parts, creating prob-
lems of balance between the thematic return in the low register and the rest of the
orchestra. In this instance Beethoven enlarges the process of thematic return, dif-
fusing the moment of recapitulation, which might also be placed at the more har-
monically stable, dolce return of the theme in the winds.
The concluding Allegro vivace of the Eighth Symphony has been regarded as a
sonata form with a coda almost as long as the rest of the movement, or, more con-
vincingly, as a combination of sonata form and rondo, with two developments and
two recapitulations. Haydn had often resourcefully merged rondo and sonata form
in the finales of his symphonies, but he had never attempted anything resembling
this finale. Beethoven’s sublime humor is reflected above all in his treatment of the
21 “Ein Skizzenbuch Beethovens aus dem Jahre 1812,” in Zu Beethoven, ed. Gold-
schmidt, vol. 1, pp. 135–39.

intrusive “false note,” the C that is played between the paired statements making
up the principal theme. In the main body of the movement this striking dissonance
is juxtaposed with the theme, but it exerts no further influence upon it. Near the
end of the movement, however, the C asserts itself, shifting the entire perspective
of the music. The theme is subverted, and even the tonal equilibrium is thrown into
question, as the music turns into F minor, with the effect of an overturning of re-
straints. Riezler described the passage as one of “those sudden and surprising con-
trasts, which seem to tear open a gaping chasm beneath the hearer’s feet, but which
illumine the whole movement—the whole symphony—and are prepared with the
greatest mastery and form part of the living organism.”22
S S S
During his stay in Bohemia in July 1812 Beethoven experienced the emotional cri-
sis that is documented in his famous letter to the “Immortal Beloved.” Maynard
Solomon has demonstrated that Antonie Brentano fulfils the external criteria to
qualify as Beethoven’s beloved. She was in sustained contact with Beethoven from
May 1810 and visited Prague and Karlsbad at times compatible with the infor-
mation in Beethoven’s letter. The skepticism that still exists about Solomon’s
identification is most often connected with doubts that Antonie Brentano fulfils
the internal criteria. That she was so long overlooked as a candidate was surely
due to her status as a married woman and mother; indeed, the last of her children
was born at Frankfurt in March 1813, approximately eight months after Beetho-
ven’s letter was written. Proof of the identity of the “Immortal Beloved” may never
be forthcoming, but the circumstantial evidence pointing to Antonie Brentano is
substantial, and she is the only known candidate who remains in serious con-
tention on the basis of documentary evidence from the period in question.23 An-
tonie’s marital status would have inhibited Beethoven from committing himself to
her, since that act would have involved a betrayal of his friend Franz Brentano.
Solomon offers plausible reasons for Antonie Brentano’s having been drawn to
Beethoven: she was probably not emotionally fulfilled in her marriage; she in-
tensely wished to remain in Vienna; and she idolized Beethoven.
Solomon interprets the letter as an expression of Beethoven’s inner conflict
between acceptance and renunciation, as his “gratitude toward and love for
23
Arguments continue to be advanced occasionally for Josephine Brunsvik Deym, to
whom Beethoven was strongly attracted during 1804–5, as we have seen. In his Um die Un-
sterbliche Geliebte: Eine Bestandsaufnahme of 1977, Harry Goldschmidt analyzed the can-
didacy of both Josephine Brunsvik Deym and Antonie Brentano, without resolving the issue
one way or the other. In identifying Josephine as the “Immortal Beloved” in her book Bee-
thoven und seine “Unsterbliche Geliebte” Josephine Brunswick of 1983, Marie-Elisabeth
Tellenbach rejects the case for Antonie Brentano hastily and seemingly on principle, while
compensating for the lack of supporting evidence for Josephine from the period around
1812 by a leap of faith, asserting that “Since the letter . . . can only have been written to
Josephine, she must have been in Bohemia in the summer of 1812” (p. 113).
184 beethoven
Antonie . . . struggled against the ingrained patterns and habits of a lifetime.”24 It
is ironic but fitting that one of the songs Beethoven sang and gave to Antonie was
Trocknet nicht (see Plate 12). For the very language of his love letter shows a sub-
limated, distancing tendency. The name “Immortal Beloved” itself serves to em-
phasize an exalted devotion but not a passionate realization. Beethoven writes in
the second postscript, “Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can
we achieve our purpose to live together—Be calm—.” The suffering of Beetho-
ven’s beloved may have arisen in part from a realization that his capacity to trans-
form “unhappy love” into “eternal love” was itself a barrier to commitment in a
relationship.
In the autumn of 1812 Franz and Antonie Brentano left Vienna for Frankfurt.
There is evidence that Beethoven was under emotional stress around this time; the
aftermath of the “Immortal Beloved” affair was one of the most troubled and
least creative episodes in his life, quite unlike the artistically productive period of
crisis in 1802. Before the end of the year, however, he did complete one more
major work: the Violin Sonata in G major op. 96, which was performed by Pierre
Rode and the Archduke Rudolph on 29 December. Like the Archduke Trio,
the final violin sonata stands in the mainstream of Beethoven’s compositional de-
velopment. These two pieces are the most advanced works that Beethoven had
produced in their respective genres. His efforts to surpass his previous achieve-
ments in various musical forms were to continue in later years in works like the
Hammerklavier Sonata, but this tendency is visible at least as early as the Arch-
duke Trio.
The op. 96 Violin Sonata is an intimate work, rich in lyricism and subtle in its
motivic relationships. The delicate opening for violin alone—a trill connected to
an expressive appoggiatura a third higher—bears a family resemblance to various
other motifs in the first movement using appoggiaturas or neighbor-note figures.
At the beginning of the coda Beethoven introduces a mysterious dialogue based
on the trill figure in the lower registers of both instruments. Beethoven’s manu-
script shows that this section was an afterthought; the change was evidently made
in 1815, when he prepared the sonata for publication.25 The incorporation of this
passage is linked to the final reinterpretation of the first theme of the movement
at the end of Beethoven’s coda, where the open continuation characteristic of ear-
lier appearances of the theme is replaced, for the first time, by a progression to an
emphatic tonic cadence. Beethoven’s revision thus expands the role of the coda in
probing and eventually resolving the opening theme, whose motivic potential had
been explored throughout.
The inner movements of the sonata—an Adagio in E major and scherzo in
G minor—form a striking contrast but are directly connected to one another. The
24 Beethoven, p. 184; Solomon devotes an entire chapter to the riddle of the “Immortal
Beloved,” pp. 158–89.
25 Cf. the facsimile edition with an introduction by Martin Staehelin (Munich, 1977),
and Brandenburg’s “Bemerkungen zu Beethovens Opus 96,” pp. 22–25.

Ex. 55 Violin Sonata op. 96/IV
melodic interval of a descending tone or semitone assumes importance in these

movements as well. In the Adagio the hymn-like principal theme in the piano is
followed by a melodic continuation in the violin stressing the falling tone B –A ,
which initiates a change in key to A major, the subdominant. A modulating, de-
velopmental passage then leads to the dominant of E and eventually to the re-
capitulation of the opening theme in the violin. At the attacca transition to the
ensuing scherzo, the pivotal falling tone—spelt enharmonically as E –C in the
violin—represents a variant, in rhythmic augmentation, of the B –A interval
stressed earlier in the movement. Now, surprisingly, the descending second leads
through an augmented-sixth chord into G minor, the key of the scherzo. Beetho-
ven reinterprets the dissonant augmented sixth as the first upbeat of the scherzo,
setting into motion the insistent syncopations so characteristic of that movement.
This passage illustrates Beethoven’s concern to establish subtle transitions in
sonority between successive movements, even when these involve a strong con-
trast in character. Another such example is found at the end of the coda of the
scherzo, where the turn to the major mode and broadening in register create a
sonorous transition to the finale.
The theme of the closing variation movement predates the rest of the work,
since it appears on a sketchleaf from 1807–8, among sketches for the Cello Sonata
in A op. 69, for which it may originally have been intended. The finale comprises
a set of six variations on this dance-like melody of seemingly naive character (Ex.
55), which reminded Nottebohm of a tune from J. A. Hiller’s operetta The Happy
Cobbler.26 The variations are anything but naive, however, and thoroughly trans-
form the surface of the theme while developing its motivic substance. In the first
few variations Beethoven follows the familiar practice of introducing a progres-
26 Beethoveniana, p. 30.
186 beethoven
Ex. 56 Violin Sonata op. 96/IV, Variation 5, bars 1–6
sive foreshortening of rhythm, with one strong beat per bar in Variation 1, fol-
lowed by two accented beats in Variation 2 and four in Variation 3, where the per-
sistent syncopations in the melody and faster motion in sixteenth notes in the ac-
companiment reflect the increasing rhythmic energy. Variation 4 shows an
intensification of the internal phrase structure of the theme, as emphatic ascend-
ing chords in the first two bars of each phrase are juxtaposed with the descending
linear motion of the remaining bars.
The movement’s center of gravity rests in the fifth variation, where the thematic
model is greatly expanded through a slowing in tempo to Adagio espressivo and
a change in meter to 6/8 (Ex. 56). This aria-like variation freely elaborates the
basic melodic structure of the theme in intricate chromatic diminutions. Twice the
figuration crystallizes into sustained trills in the piano followed by soft, cadenza-
like interpolations of falling chromatic scales that seem to suspend the forward
progress of the music (bar 4). The piano trill arises out of the appoggiatura B–A;
the threefold chromatic run from C to F and the following extension to F in the
lower octave serve to compose out the dominant seventh of G, leading in the next
bar to the arrival in the tonic of the melody in the violin. These gestures hold back
the unfolding of the theme, exploring its structure from within.
Such florid, decorative textures are normal in the penultimate slow variation in
a Classical variation set, but the depth of expression touched on here retains a lin-
gering influence over the rest of the movement. A tension arises between the con-
templative transformation of the theme in Variation 5 and the return of the naive
folk-like tune as the basis for the conclusion. One is reminded in this connection
of the Diabelli Variations op. 120, whose richly decorated slow variation in the
minor, Variation 31, seems to leave Diabelli’s commonplace waltz so far behind.
In the Diabelli set, of course, there is no closing da capo of the original theme; the
final variation and coda seem to transcend Diabelli’s waltz once and for all.
In the sonata Beethoven follows established precedent in placing an Allegro
variation and return to the original theme after the slow, decorated penultimate
variation. Remarkable, however, is the way in which he evokes a more serious,
contemplative atmosphere in his coda. After the abrupt return of the original
theme, initially in the “wrong” key, E major, and the boisterous final variation,
Ex. 57 Violin Sonata op. 96/IV, bars 259–end

188 beethoven
Beethoven introduces a dark-hued fugal passage in the minor, written in longer
note values. A return to the major mode and the original theme follows, in a some-
what faster tempo, leading to rushing scale passages played fortissimo in both
piano and violin. The final cadence is near. But Beethoven now again interrupts
the musical discourse with a reminiscence of the tempo and harmonic inflections
of the slow fifth variation (Ex. 57).
Although Beethoven does not literally quote the Adagio espressivo, a sensitive
performance can unmistakably recall its character. As in the E major transforma-
tion of the rondo theme in the finale of the Piano Concerto in C minor op. 37,
with its evocation of the Largo movement in that key, the slow variation is deli-
cately recaptured here, glimpsed through the veil of the original theme. Then, in
the last bars before the Presto, Beethoven dwells on the closing motifs of the
theme, before suddenly accelerating the tempo as the pattern of rising thirds and
fourths drives to the cadence, played fortissimo in the upper register. The brilliant
closing flourish seems to complete the earlier Allegro passage, whose cadences
had been first avoided in the higher register, five bars before the Poco Adagio, and
then interrupted deceptively at the Poco Adagio itself, with its withdrawal into
thoughtful reminiscence. Thus, at the end of the sonata, two levels of experience
are juxtaposed: the inward world of the slow variation and the outward world of
the dance. The ending of Beethoven’s last violin sonata deepens the registral con-
trast of the first-movement coda into a tensional play of tempos and character that
embraces both of Schiller’s poetic categories.
7
R
The Congress of Vienna Period:
1813–1815
R
The aftermath of the “Immortal Beloved” affair of 1812 opens the most contradic-
tory chapter in Beethoven’s life. At no other time did he enjoy so much public ven-
eration or receive such generous monetary rewards. Half of the public concerts held
for Beethoven’s benefit in his lifetime took place in the single year 1814. Never be-
fore nor since has a musician received such recognition from assembled monarchs
and heads of state. Beethoven basked in the limelight and exploited the opportunity
financially for all it was worth, although benefits also accrued to public causes. His
enhanced popularity helped bring about the revival of his opera Fidelio. In 1815
he was awarded the “freedom of the city” in recognition of his efforts to raise
money for charity through performances of his works in Vienna. As far as his
fame and public recognition were concerned, this was the climax, “the glorious
moment,” to cite the title of his ceremonial cantata for the Congress of Vienna.
What is remarkable is that this success rested on some of the weakest music
Beethoven ever wrote. The issues raised thereby are not only aesthetic but histori-
cal, sociological, and even psychological in nature. For despite the outward bril-
liance of his success, this was a time of deep inner conflict for Beethoven. In 1813
he experienced a creative impasse that was undoubtedly linked to his personal life.
He produced virtually nothing of artistic importance during that year. There is
evidence, moreover, that his life was in disarray during the aftermath of the “Im-
mortal Beloved” affair. At about this time he began a Tagebuch, or personal diary,
that he kept for six years, until 1818.1 An excerpt from the very first entry reads
as follows:
You may not be a human being, not for yourself, but only for others, for you there
is no more happiness except within yourself, in your art. O God! give me strength
to conquer myself, nothing at all must fetter me to life.—Thus everything con-
nected with A will go to destruction.
1
The following quotations are taken from Solomon’s edition of the Tagebuch, first pub-
lished in 1982 in Beethoven Studies, vol. 3, pp. 193–285, and subsequently in Beethoven
Essays and as Beethovens Tagebuch (Bonn, 1990).
189
190 beethoven
“A” may refer to Antonie Brentano, from whom Beethoven was presumably at-
tempting to disengage himself. Several other entries in his diary document Beetho-
ven’s intention to embrace art while rejecting “life,” reflecting a disposition akin
to Arthur Schopenhauer’s “negation of the will to life” in his book Die Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Idea), published a few years later,
in 1819. Beethoven writes in an 1814 entry in the Tagebuch that “Everything that
is called life should be sacrificed to the sublime and be a sanctuary of art.” An-
other, later, inscription reads, “Live only in your art, for you are so limited by your
senses. This is therefore the only existence for you.”
If Beethoven meant to compensate for shortcomings in his life through creative
activity, he failed, at least during 1813. His creativity may have been paralyzed by
depression. His resignation to the prospect of a permanent solitary existence was
accompanied by a marked withdrawal from society. Other factors also played a
role. Financial worries plagued him, since his annuity income had been reduced
at the very time that his ailing brother Caspar Carl required assistance. The illness
and near death of Caspar Carl from consumption in the first months of 1813 also
took its toll on the composer. Solomon has speculated that Beethoven attempted
suicide during the spring or summer of 1813; reports of a suicide attempt were
made by Schindler and Joseph August Röckel, although the date has always re-
mained uncertain.2 Descriptions of Beethoven’s social isolation stem from
Nanette and Andreas Streicher, who commented on his despondent state of mind
and on the “deplorable condition” of his clothes and personal and domestic af-
fairs. According to the painter Blasius Höfel, Beethoven neglected his appear-
ance and cleanliness to the extent that his dining table at a favorite inn, although
large, “was avoided by the other guests due to the very uninviting habits into
which he had fallen.”3 Solomon and others have suggested that Beethoven vis-
ited prostitutes around this time, in the company of his old friend Zmeskall. Bee-
thoven’s notes to Zmeskall contain puns using code names, whereby “fortresses”
stands for prostitutes and “assaults” for sexual acts.4 That Beethoven would
have felt guilt about such encounters may be surmised from entries in his Tage-
buch like the following (no. 122): “Sensual gratification without a spiritual
union is and remains bestial, afterwards one has no trace of noble feeling but
rather remorse.”
If Beethoven had strayed from higher ethical ideals in his personal life, a devi-
ating trend can also be discerned in his music. He was now exploring another
“new path,” a path leading to a steep decline in artistic quality. More than at any
other time in his career, economic and political factors exerted a dominating
influence. Little scholarly attention has been given to Beethoven’s patriotic com-
positions from 1813 and 1814, which have often been dismissed as uncharacter-
2
Beethoven, p. 220.
3
the congress of vienna period: 1813–1815 191
istic aberrations or altogether disregarded. The neglect is unjustified, however, since

fascinating aesthetic issues are raised by such pieces as Wellingtons Sieg, Germa-
nia, Ihr weisen Gründer, and Der glorreiche Augenblick.
In these works Beethoven appears as a pioneer of kitsch at the dawn of the age
of mass production and modern commercial propaganda. This is a surprising role,
perhaps, for a cultural hero of Beethoven’s stature, but one nonetheless supported
by the historical evidence. Beethoven’s patriotic potboilers offer the spectacle of a
great composer lowering his art to gain economic reward and court political
favor. This episode in his career raises fundamental aesthetic and ethical ques-
tions. In order to evaluate these matters, it is helpful to review some of the criti-
cal literature devoted to art and kitsch.
In two classic essays from 1933 and 1950 Hermann Broch defined kitsch as
“evil in the value system of art.”5 According to Broch, kitsch involves a false as-
sociation between fundamental principles. Whereas the true work of art shows
qualities of openness, originality, and irrationality, kitsch displays a closed
and rational system of imitation. Broch compares kitsch to an anti-Christ, who
looks like Christ, and “acts and speaks like Christ and is nevertheless Lucifer.”
He asks,
Wherein is the difference ultimately noticed? An open system . . . is an ethical one,
that is, it offers the individual a guiding framework, within which he or she can act.
A closed system, on the other hand, cannot go beyond fixed rules—even if these are
given an ethical coloring—and it thus transforms those parts of human life that it
touches into a game that is no longer ethical, but only aesthetic in nature.6
Broch admits, even for himself, “that one is not infrequently very well disposed
to kitsch,” but he insists at the same time that “the goddess of beauty in art” is
“the goddess of kitsch.”7 He argues, in other words, that beauty alone is an
insufficient basis for art. Rather, beauty needs to be integrated with other dimen-
sions of the work in order that it does not become an end in itself, or a simple play
of effects. For in that case we would be dealing not with art, but with kitsch.
Other leading thinkers on aesthetics have shared the opinion that art is con-
cerned with more than mere beauty. Consider, for instance, Susanne Langer’s con-
cept of a successful artwork as an “unconsummated symbol,” or even Adorno’s
paradoxical description of a true performance as “a copy of a nonexistent origi-
nal.” What is essential is that the symbolic artistic content be recognized without
it being diminished or reduced, as in some programmatic interpretations in which
the integrity of the work threatens to vanish behind an unequivocal verbal inter-
5
“Das Böse im Wertsystem der Kunst,” p. 123; “Einige Bemerkungen zum Problem des
Kitsches,” p. 170. For an abridged version of this work in English, see Broch, “Notes on
the Problem of Kitsch.”
6
“Einige Bemerkungen,” p. 169.
7
Ibid., pp. 171, 167.
192 beethoven
pretation. The danger that arises thereby is of art being degraded into kitsch—a
common enough tendency in the reception history of art.
Broch’s insights can be refined on the basis of recent studies by Wolfgang
Welsch, who employs the pair of concepts “aesthetic” and “anaesthetic.” Welsch
writes that
Whereas aesthetic experience increases our sensibility, the anaesthetic stands for a
loss of sensibility . . . the anaesthetic is the converse of the aesthetic . . . Through
anaesthesia we block out feeling—and the loss of a higher perceptive capacity is
the direct result. The anaesthetic realm thus deals with the most elementary level
of the aesthetic, and furnishes its condition and boundary.8
This pair of concepts applies to the phenomenon of kitsch, and offers us a

means of critically testing Broch’s thesis. We can discern two opposing processes
at work. In the Viennese Classical style, and in Beethoven’s music generally, we
observe tendencies to widen the boundaries of art. Thus material can be absorbed
from the commonplace, taken from the anaesthetic into the aesthetic realm. With
kitsch we evidently encounter the opposite—what is offered as art demands no
higher perceptive capacity and brings a regression; material from the aesthetic
sphere returns to the realm of the anaesthetic. It would be misleading, however, to
regard art only as the expansion and kitsch as the surrender of aesthetic substance.
For, according to Broch, kitsch tends to wallow in beauty—its shortcoming is not
aesthetic, but ethical. Thus the boundary between aesthetic and anaesthetic expe-
rience is not to be understood merely negatively. As Welsch remarks, “one anaes-
thetizes, in order to avoid aesthetic pain”; and not a few artists, stoics, or mystics,
for instance, “strive toward a transcendence of the senses in the attainment of
‘another condition’”—which can presumably be understood as a type of anaes-
thetic state.9 These possibilities are contained in Broch’s somewhat questionable
attack on beauty as the “goddess of kitsch.” Broch is undoubtedly right, however,
that kitsch, if regarded as a system of imitation, can imply an ethical failure, inas-
much as it embodies a false pretense.
Let us consider in this light Beethoven’s “Battle Symphony” Wellingtons Sieg
(Wellington’s Victory), which was composed in late 1813, well before the begin-
ning of the Congress of Vienna (see Plate 12). After Wellington’s military victory
in Spain on 21 June 1813, Johann Mälzel spotted an excellent business opportu-
nity in the form of a commemorative piece to be performed on his elaborate me-
chanical instrument, the Panharmonicon. Mälzel approached Beethoven, who
agreed to take up the task. From the beginning the work was tailored for popular
success, particularly in England. Moscheles maintained that the entire plan of
the work, with its flourishes, marches, use of the hymns Rule, Brittania and God
Save the King, and even the fugue based on the latter, came from Mälzel, but
8
Ästhetisches Denken, p. 10.
9
Ibid., p. 11.
Küthen has suggested on the basis of the manuscript sources that Mälzel’s input
was mainly confined to the battle signals and fanfares.10 In the end, the “Battle
Symphony” was first given not by Mälzel’s Panharmonicon but in a version for
augmented orchestra at two gala charity performances on 8 and 12 December
1813. Its enthusiastic reception led to further performances for Beethoven’s own
benefit. At the first of those, on 2 January 1814, Beethoven dropped all reference
to Mälzel from the program, substituting pieces from The Ruins of Athens music
for Mälzel’s Mechanical Trumpeter, which had been featured in the charity per-
formances. Beethoven’s action contributed to a serious break in his relationship
with Mälzel that was not repaired until 1817.
Thayer cites Tomaschek’s comments on Wellington’s Victory that he was
very painfully affected to see a Beethoven, whom Providence had probably as-
signed to the highest throne in the realm of music, among the rudest materialists.
I was told, it is true, that he himself had declared the work to be folly, and that he
liked it only because with it he had thoroughly thrashed the Viennese.
Thayer comments that

There is no doubt that this was so; nor that they, who engaged in its performance,
viewed it as a stupendous musical joke, and engaged in it con amore as in a gigan-
tic professional frolic.11
Among the musicians who took part were the famous double bass player Drag-
onetti, the cellist Bernhard Romberg, the composer and violinist Ludwig Spohr,
and the future master of French grand opera Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose timid
drum playing reportedly met with Beethoven’s scorn.
Some critics have viewed this “professional frolic” kindly; Ludwig Misch
deemed it a masterpiece of its own genre.12 Is Wellington’s Victory shielded from
critique if it is regarded as practical Gebrauchsmusik with no higher pretensions?
We should resist the temptation simply to collapse the work into its historical con-
text. In its style Wellington’s Victory departs radically from Beethoven’s aesthetic
norms, quite unlike other “characteristic” pieces such as the Pastoral Symphony
or the Lebewohl Sonata. The crude realism of Wellington’s Victory is well illus-
trated in its first main section, which is devoted to the battle. After the prelimi-
nary fanfares and national marches heard from the opposing ensembles represent-
ing the French and British forces, the engagement begins with an Allegro, sporting
syncopations and motivic figures of descending scales. Initially, Beethoven favors
these syncopated beats for his placement of the cannon shots, which are meticu-
lously specified in the score with dark circles for the British and open circles for
the French artillery. A well-known aspect of the historical battle was the British
10 “Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria,” pp. 262–63.

12
Beethoven Studies, pp. 153–62.
194 beethoven
Ex. 58 Wellington’s Victory op. 91, “Storm March”
capture of the French guns; this is clearly reflected in Beethoven’s distribution of

the 188 cannon shots. As the tide turns against the French, their cannons are
heard less and less frequently and are then silenced altogether.
Characteristic of Wellington’s Victory are insistent repetitions of a few basic
figures on a broad but flat musical canvas. As the British launch their assault
in the “Storm March,” the music consists largely of twenty-four almost undiffer-
entiated repetitions of the single note A , followed by sixteen strokes on A and six-
teen more on B , leading to still more repetitions on B (Ex. 58). Beethoven pushes
up the music notch by notch, a familiar device in popular music. This is sympto-
matic of the almost complete absence, in the “Battle Symphony,” of a unifying
tonal and formal perspective such as we normally find in Beethoven. Wellington’s
Ex. 58 (continued)
soldiers have no need of subtlety; they force their way heavily and brutally into
the French defenses.
There are nevertheless a few finer points to Beethoven’s musical depiction of
the collapse of the French resistance. He employs a motif with a triplet figure and
falling semitone to serve as a tag for the French forces—this turn of phrase is
clearly derived from the “Marlborough” French marching song heard at the out-
set. As the British gain the upper hand, the motif is deprived of its downbeat,
196 beethoven
Ex. 59 Wellington’s Victory op. 91, “Storm March,” bars 331–49
suggesting an effect of breathless panic.13 While the British cannons pound re-
lentlessly, Beethoven even dismembers what is left of the French motif. In the
bars following the “double hits” of the cannoneers—as designated by two dark
circles on successive beats—the “Marlborough” figure is reduced to a single note
(Ex. 59). The subsequent rout of the French army is conveyed not only by the
13 Cf. Küthen, “Wellingtons Sieg,” p. 267.

Ex. 59 (continued)
long descending lines and decrescendo but by a limping and forlorn F minor
version of the “Marlborough” tune. This dismal departure of the French army
makes room for the triumphant “Victory Symphony” that makes up the remain-
der of the work.
The occasional subtle touches do little to relieve the impression of pastiche and
bombast. Some of the same rhetorical figures appear here as in Beethoven’s im-
portant compositions, but an integrating aesthetic context is absent or undevel-
oped. The “Battle Symphony” is a fascinating historical artifact, but a dubious
work of art; it is a “consummated,” not an “unconsummated,” symbol. As Solo-
mon has claimed, elements of Beethoven’s heroic style are recalled here, but only
as parody or farce.14 In this instance, identifiable aspects of Beethoven’s aesthetic
198 beethoven
enterprise dissipate into the realm of the anaesthetic. The narrative design of the
music is mainly extrinsic rather than intrinsic.
It was in response to these aspects that Alfred Einstein once described Welling-
ton’s Victory as “the lowest point in Beethoven’s work.”15 But a better candidate
for that distinction might be Der glorreiche Augenblick (The Glorious Moment),
the cantata for chorus, orchestra, and soloists that Beethoven wrote during the au-
tumn of 1814 in fawning tribute to the assembled dignitaries at the Congress of
Vienna. The Glorious Moment was performed on 29 November and 2 December
1814 in a program containing Wellington’s Victory and (as the reviewer in the
Wiener Zeitung put it) “a symphony composed to accompany” these works—the
Seventh Symphony!
The text, written by the deaf surgeon Alois Weissenbach, is an exercise in
bathos. One recurrent motif is a hymn of praise to “the queen of cities,” Vienna,
or “Vindobona,” the archaic name for the town, used in the fugal setting of the
closing chorus. “I am Europe, give way, proud Rome,” is the message in the aria
in which the soprano becomes the voice of Vienna herself. The Glorious Moment
is mostly sweetness and light, with a correspondingly “triumphant” musical set-
ting. The moments of pathos are exaggerated. “Oh kneel down, people, and wor-
ship those who have rescued you!” are the words of the recitative praising the
“gleaming crowned heads” of Europe. To be thus “worshipped” are the same
monarchs who were already consolidating their restoration of political power.
Only a few years later Austria was to suffer the oppressive police state of Metter-
nich. In historical retrospect, at least, the ideological content of this work is bla-
tant and cynical.
Beethoven’s music closely follows the rhetorical overemphases of Weis-
senbach’s text. Thus, at the end of the recitative and quartet (no. 5), Beethoven
brings about a great climax at the mention of Emperor Franz (Ex. 60). The com-
motion in the orchestra matches the effect of overstated pathos in the poem, with
its dubious rhymed pairing of “Glanz” (“splendor”) and “Franz”: “And God has
drawn this splendor, this glorious arch, through the world, in our Franz.” The ma-
jestic rhythms and rising string arpeggios contribute to the stirring fortissimo cli-
max on a D major chord in the full orchestra. This is an example of the manner
in which words and music in this work have been subordinated to the political
adoration of authority.
More than the “Battle Symphony,” The Glorious Moment offers an example
of kitsch in Broch’s sense, whereby beauty and harmony reign supreme and un-
challenged. There is no trace of critique in the cantata, although Beethoven surely
could have chosen a somewhat more differentiated approach without interference
from the censors. His own attitude toward the piece was by no means dismissive.
He offered it for performance or publication to contacts in London and urged his
new publisher, Steiner, to issue it. Beethoven considered writing an overture to
15
“Beethoven’s Military Style,” p. 244.
Ex. 60 Der glorreiche Augenblick op. 136, quartet (no. 5), bars 172–90
continued
200 beethoven
Ex. 60 (continued)
preface the cantata, and even five months before his death the cantata is men-
tioned in one of his conversation notebooks. When it was eventually published in
1837, with a different text, it received the opus number 136, one higher than the
last of the great string quartets.
In its style The Glorious Moment is not without parallels in Beethoven’s
greater works. Certain passages in the aria with violin solo (no. 3) vaguely fore-
shadow aspects of the Benedictus of the Missa solemnis, and the choral fugue on
“Vindobona” faintly echoes, in its rhythm and texture, the Handelian flavor of
the fugue in the Gloria of Beethoven’s Mass in D. The Glorious Moment is more
smooth and refined than Wellington’s Victory, but it consistently lacks those quali-
ties of expressive tension and formal integrity that we normally expect from Bee-
thoven. Especially after his experience with Wellington’s Victory, Beethoven may
have felt it appropriate to dilute much of the strength of his musical style in order
to please and flatter his listeners without really demanding their attention.
It is hard to know just how seriously Beethoven took The Glorious Moment
and some of his other pieces for the Congress of Vienna, such as the choral-
orchestral works Germania WoO 94 and Ihr weisen Gründer glücklicher Staaten
(You Wise Founders of Happy Countries) WoO 95, whose title alone betrays the
same mindless obsequiousness as The Glorious Moment. His angrily dismissive
response to a negative critique of Wellington’s Victory, however, shows a streak
of defensiveness: he wrote “nichts als Gelegenheitsstück” (“nothing but an occa-
sional work”) and then added, “pitiful scoundrel, my shit is better than [anything]
you have ever thought” (see Plate 16). But intentionally or not, Beethoven held up
a very unflattering mirror to this grand party of the restoration. In giving his au-
dience what they wanted, his Congress of Vienna pieces exposed the superficial
veneer that concealed the far less glorious realities of post-Napoleonic politics.
Some recent scholars have been drawn to Beethoven’s Congress of Vienna
works precisely because of their noncanonic status. Springing to the defense of
these works as pieces “marginalized by the ‘Beethoven Hero’ paradigm,” Nicholas
Cook urges that Wellingtons Sieg be experienced through a collage-like aesthetic
of “hyper-representation” and Der glorreiche Augenblick in terms of an “enact-
ment of community.”16 Yet both pieces are well endowed with heroic accents and
ceremonial gestures of a rather conventional kind. Rather than assuming that the
works are victims of some ill-defined prejudice, it is more convincing to observe,
with Nicholas Mathew, that what is lacking is “an aesthetic tension that is consti-
tutive of the composer’s voice.”17 Such a lack also characterizes the martial music
for Pizarro and his chorus of guards that closed the second act of Fidelio in its orig-
inal three-act version, a number that was retained in 1806 but wisely removed in
1814. If in Beethoven’s Congress of Vienna works we witness his “metamorphosis
from a cosmopolitan composer writing heroic works with a distinctly French
flavor to a patriotic German writing propaganda pieces against Napoleon,” in
Stephen Rumph’s words, this “metamorphosis” remained but a temporary, passing
phase lying outside the mainstream of his creative development.18 A reminder of
that situation is the timing of Beethoven’s painstaking revision and successful re-
16
“The Other Beethoven: Heroism, the Canon, and the Works of 1813–14,” 19th-Cen-
tury Music 27 (2003), pp. 3–24, quotation from p. 24.
17
“Beethoven and His Others: Criticism, Difference, and the Composer’s Many
Voices,” Beethoven Forum 13 (2006), pp. 148–87, quotation from p. 182.
18
See Rumph’s Beethoven After Napoleon: Political Romanticism in the Late Works
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); quotation from p. 96.
202 beethoven
vival of Fidelio, an opportunity that arose, ironically, precisely from his heightened
popularity during the Congress of Vienna period. As we have seen, the opera is in-
extricably bound up with French models and Enlightenment ideals, and its exten-
sive final revision in 1814 took place several years after Rumph sees Beethoven as
having renounced these principles (for a more detailed discussion of Fidelio, see
chapter 4). In at least one key aspect of the 1814 revision, Beethoven enhances the
symbolic treatment of freedom, while building on another of his works evincing
Enlightenment principles, the music to Goethe’s Egmont that he wrote in 1810.
Egmont’s vision of Klärchen in the Egmont Music undoubtedly served as a model
for Florestan’s vision of Leonore as an angel of freedom. In both works, two arche-
types are combined into one: a “distant beloved” with an idealized feminine em-
bodiment of liberty. In Fidelio, the symbolic treatment of this theme is richly devel-
oped, supported by a far-reaching network of musical and dramatic connections.
By contrast, the hollow splendor of The Glorious Moment represents an
overextended pretence in artistic guise, and the glaring contrast with Beethoven’s
other music implies a conscious decision on his part to adjust priorities. To be
sure, his occasional patriotic works indulge far less in hedonism than in aggres-
sive nationalist sentiments. Even in The Glorious Moment, a seductive wallowing
in beauty remains a secondary rather than a primary characteristic. It is not
dreamy sentimentality but the underlying criterion of a false pretence that betrays
the affinity of Beethoven’s Congress of Vienna works with Broch’s categories.
S S S
During 1814 Beethoven returned to serious composition with two major projects,
the revision of Fidelio with the librettist Georg Friedrich Treitschke, and the Piano
Sonata in E minor op. 90. Important revisions were made throughout the opera
and in aspects of its staging. As we have seen, some crucial additions were made,
such as the setting of “Farewell, you warm sunshine” for the prisoners at the end
of Act I and the F major concluding section of Florestan’s aria, and Beethoven
finally resolved the problem of the overture by writing a new one in E major. One
aspect of his revision that has received little attention is his compression of numer-
ous passages in various numbers of the opera. A more concise, terse concentra-
tion is characteristic of his later style in general, and the revision of his opera
helped initiate this new approach. A work like the F minor Quartet op. 95, which
was revised for publication in 1815, already displays this heightened density, as
does the first movement of the op. 90 sonata. Beginning with the two Cello
Sonatas of op. 102, from 1815, such concentration becomes an abiding feature of
Beethoven’s music. After his patriotic potboilers of 1813–14, with their thin,
vapid character, Beethoven turned about-face in his important works, signifi-
cantly raising the specific gravity of their artistic content.
The first movement of the E minor Sonata op. 90 tends to elide the formal di-
visions between the exposition and development and between the development
and recapitulation. As in the next sonata, op. 101 (as well as in opp. 57 and 110),
the exposition is not repeated. The development begins quietly, in bar 82, on the
pitch B, drawn from the preceding dominant chords that close the exposition, and
Ex. 61 Piano Sonata op. 90/I, development, bars 109–23
it is based almost entirely on the first theme, though the accompaniment in re-
peated notes and chords is drawn from the second group. The entire second half
of the development (bars 113 ff.) employs a different accompanimental texture
outlining broken chords in the right hand, while a figure drawn from the opening
theme is intensified with sforzandi in the left hand (Ex. 61).
Especially fascinating is how the musical content of bar 130—where Beetho-
ven changes the key signature to one sharp, indicating E minor—is treated in the
ensuing canonic passage to allow the recapitulation to emerge. This bar already
contains the essence of the recapitulation in its second and third beats, in particu-
lar in the descent of the third G–E in the high register. After three repetitions (bar
131) this figure is isolated and stressed dynamically in the next bar, with an imi-
tation an octave lower. Then a series of canonic mutations elongates the figure in
three successive rhythmic augmentations, and its relationship with the principal
theme gradually becomes clear. The close stretto at the unison (bars 138–41)
stresses the pitch level of the imminent recapitulation; in performance, these bars
are difficult to bring out effectively, on account of their dense texture, as the motif
continues to turn onto itself. Finally, the stretto expands across other registers and
yields to the recapitulation (bar 144). As in the first movement of the Fourth Sym-
phony, there is no cadence; harmonically, this entire static passage has remained
on the tonic. The rapid sixteenth-note figuration of the development (beginning
in Ex. 61) has proven against all expectations to belong to the head of the princi-
pal theme. Instead of defining a single structural moment, the recapitulation rep-
resents a process that extends over the eighteen bars that precede the literal point
of recapitulation. As in the first movements of two of the last quartets, opp. 130
and 132, the tonal and thematic recapitulations do not coincide.
The second and final movement, in E major, is the most Schubertian movement
in Beethoven, a luxurious rondo dominated by many, almost unvaried, appear-
204 beethoven
ances of a spacious cantabile theme. This is the last big lyrical rondo finale in the
Beethoven sonatas, the successor to the closing movements in op. 2 no. 2, op. 7,
op. 22, op. 31 no. 1, and the Waldstein. In this rondo, and in the A major Sonata
op. 101, Beethoven comes closest to the emerging Romantic style, yet there are
elements here that point unmistakably toward the unique synthesis embodied in
many compositions of his last decade. The op. 90 Sonata is a reminder that even
during the Congress of Vienna period Beethoven’s basic compositional integrity
remained intact and continued to grow, work by work, as he forged the elements
of a new style. Continuity from the past is especially felt in some songs of these
years. Apart from his occasional folk-song settings, Beethoven returned, in his sec-
ond setting of An die Hoffnung and in his later song Sehnsucht (Yearning) WoO
146, based on the poem by Reissig, to abiding preoccupations—he had already
written five songs entitled Sehnsucht based on two poems by Goethe (the four set-
tings of WoO 134; op. 83 no. 2). Another significant piece from this time is his
sensitive setting of two Goethe poems for chorus and orchestra Meeresstille und
glückliche Fahrt (Calm Seas and Prosperous Voyage), which was composed in
1814–15 but published only in 1822, as op. 112, with a dedication to the poet.
The two Cello Sonatas in C major and D major of op. 102 are Beethoven’s only
other important works of 1815. Though shorter than his earlier cello sonatas,
they are more concentrated and richly polyphonic. The C major Sonata opens
with an unaccompanied dolce cantabile phrase in the cello, as did the op. 69
Sonata in A major. The effect there is broader, but his treatment of the opening
phrase in the C major Sonata goes perhaps still deeper, since the thematic mate-
rial is immediately worked out contrapuntally with the entry of the piano. Much
happens here in a small space. The form of the whole also takes on some unprece-
dented features: for this pregnant, lyrical opening of the first movement is re-
called, in slightly varied form, shortly before the beginning of the finale; its the-
matic substance seems to be plumbed, and the fourth G–C—the main motif and
point of departure of the finale—is discovered as an outcome of contemplative
reminiscence.
Beethoven’s last cello sonata, in D major, begins with a contrast-laden and yet
superbly coherent theme: the opening fanfares in the piano preface a reflective,
dolce phrase in the cello, before the robust character of the theme is restored (Ex.
62). This theme well illustrates the enhanced density of Beethoven’s evolving mu-
sical language and its implications for analysis and performance. The succinct
four-bar opening in the piano is a configuration of durational time, in which dis-
ruptive and unifying forces are held in balance. They syncopated upward leaps of
an octave to D and a tenth to G outline precisely the tonal space that is traversed
in continuous motion in the descending gesture of the third bar. The inversion of
the linear motion leads to the register of the beginning in bar 4, making clear that
the second half of the phrase closes the first half. This closure is not merely con-
ventional symmetry, however: the second half of the phrase seems to turn back,
or even reverse, the driving upward sallies of the first half, producing a kind of
contrapuntal mirroring effect.
Ex. 62 Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 2/I
After its initial rising arpeggios the cello reaches its dolce melody in bar 5,
stressing in two registers the dominant note, A—a pitch prepared in turn by the
contour of the ascending fourth D–G in the opening piano fanfares. The cello
melody then elaborates that intervallic relation as G–D in the descending contour
of bars 6–7. Beethoven absorbs here the rhythm in sixteenths from the piano fan-
fares into the cello line, while displacing the notes of the turn figure by one six-
teenth. The ensuing phrases also develop the fourth D–G. In bars 8–9 the cello
and piano both play a linear configuration outlining D–G–D, which is treated in
a descending sequence in the following bar. But even this motif has been foreshad-
owed in an inner voice of the piano at the beginning of the dolce theme. In both
cases the voices rise from D to D before continuing to ascend. That chromatic
inflection, in turn, is developed in the E of bar 10, and further in the G of bar
12, which opens up the energetic drive into the dominant. The ascending synco-
pated octaves in piano and cello in bars 13–14 transform the initial fanfares and
206 beethoven
at the same time balance the opening phrase of four tonic bars with a varied con-
cluding phrase over a dominant pedal.
The overall structure of this sixteen-bar theme is almost parenthetical: an
eight-bar dolce melody in the cello is nested into two four-bar units of more as-
sertive character, with the piano in the dominating role. Beethoven has cast many
connecting threads over these contrasting components and woven the sections
tightly together to form a complex composite theme. Essentially, he has experi-
mented here with a variant of the openings of his two earlier cello sonatas, opp.
69 and 102 no. 1, in which the cello begins with a lyrical dolce gesture. The cor-
responding gesture here in the D major Sonata is the dolce theme beginning in bar
5, which even shows a rhythmic resemblance to the beginning of op. 69. Most
extraordinary is the way Beethoven devises the continuation of this theme. The
music unfolds in dialogue with what had preceded and what is to follow, gradu-
ally building an organic transition from the reflective, dolce character into the
brilliant, extroverted passage leading to the cadence in the dominant. It is a tall
order to convey these qualities clearly in performance, a challenge rarely met.
The rich network of motivic and formal relationships carries implications for
the temporality of the music. A piece such as the Allegro con brio of op. 102 no.
2 seems to arise out of a sustained tension between an anticipation of the future
and memory of the past. Inasmuch as this is perceived and adequately conveyed
in performance, it is no longer appropriate to attend to the artistic content as if it
were simply a succession of events in measured, quantitative time. This phenome-
non is undoubtedly connected to the confusion or grief that Beethoven’s most ad-
vanced works have sometimes caused listeners. The very first reviewer of op. 102
in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1818 wrote:
These two sonatas certainly belong to the most strange and unusual . . . that have
ever been written for piano. Everything is different, completely different from
what could be expected, even from this composer. He should not take it badly if
we add that not a few things . . . are shaped in order that they should appear very
strange.19
Op. 102 no. 2 is the only one of Beethoven’s cello sonatas to incorporate a fully
independent slow movement. This is an Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto in
D minor, reminiscent in its mysterious character of the Largo of the Ghost Trio,
in the same key. Also analogous to the Ghost Trio is Beethoven’s combination of
a slow, almost static theme with more intricate textures employing dotted
rhythms. A more distant but equally fascinating kinship may be felt with one of
the last and greatest of all Beethoven’s slow movements: the “Heiliger Dankge-
sang” of the Quartet in A minor op. 132. For the Adagio of the cello sonata be-
gins with solemn strains of a chorale-like subject, which are subsequently blended
with more elaborate, expressive textures. The austerity of the chorale is deepened
by Beethoven’s use of the low register of the piano, by modal inflections, and by
19 Cited in Kunze, ed., Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit, pp. 341–42.
the ritual pauses after every second bar. The setting exudes a remote, archaic, and
even oppressive atmosphere, which is suddenly, even miraculously, relieved by the
shift into D major in the middle section of the movement, marked dolce. Beetho-
ven emphasizes the affective contrast of the middle section in several ways. The
dragging pace of the chorale is supplanted by gentle pulsation of the accompani-
mental figuration, the somber heaviness of texture by transparent, lyrical gestures
reaching into the upper registers.
In the “Heiliger Dankgesang” movement, by contrast, Beethoven chooses a Ly-
dian modality for his hymn, and he pits against this chorale a luxurious, dance-
like subject in the major, marked “feeling new strength.” The roots of this ex-
traordinary conception can be recognized in the impressive slow movement of
op. 102 no. 2. Quite unlike the quartet, however, is the conclusion of the Adagio
con molto sentimento d’affetto. At the threshold of the final cadence in D minor
he introduces a mysterious, deceptive shift to a sonority of C minor, leading into
the transition to the final movement, the Allegro fugato (Ex. 63). This transition
supplies a good example of Beethoven’s increasing propensity for isolating the
basic motivic material in advance. The cello and piano each play a rising scale,
which soon becomes the point of departure for the culmination of the sonata in
the fugal finale.
Ex. 63 Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 2/II, bars 79–85; III, bars 1–14
208 beethoven
This fugue has often proved a stumbling block for critics. One early review of
1824, probably by Adolf Bernhard Marx, includes the following comments:
The theme is too merry for such serious treatment, and it therefore makes too shrill
a contrast to the other movements. How much we would rather have heard an-
other movement—a Beethovenian finale!—in place of this fugue. It would be
therefore desirable that Beethoven not exploit fugue in such a willful manner, since
his great genius is naturally lifted above every form.20
The reviewer’s dismissal of the finale seems motivated by his conviction that the
very traditional form of the fugue has obstructed Beethoven’s artistic expression;
despite its originality and skill, this fugue is not beautiful and “will not please any-
one, neither the connoisseur nor—and even less—the amateur.”
This contention touches central aesthetic issues in Beethoven’s later music. For
the fugal finale of the D major Cello Sonata is not an isolated experiment. This is
the first of a series of important fugal finales which Beethoven was to set forth
in the piano sonatas opp. 106 and 110 and in the huge finale of the original ver-
sion of the Quartet in B major op. 130, the Grosse Fuge. In this respect, as in
many others, op. 102 no. 2 is a prophetic composition.
There are motivic parallels linking this fugue with the fugal finale of the Ham-
merklavier Sonata. The main subject of the Hammerklavier fugue also uses scalar
segments, which at first descend, instead of ascending, as they do in the cello
sonata. Both fugues make much use of inversion, as well as rhythmic augmenta-
tion. In a sense, the fugal subject of the Hammerklavier might be regarded as com-
bining motivic elements from the first movement of that work—the rising tenth
and chain of falling thirds—with the stepwise, scalar contour of op. 102 no. 2.
Other motivic parallels of this kind link the cello sonata fugue with the fugal de-
velopment in the middle of the finale of Beethoven’s next sonata, op. 101.
As in these works, there is a grainy, even harsh quality to some of the contra-
puntal developments in the D major Cello Sonata. Quite unlike the Hammer-
klavier is the humorous character of the original subject, the quality that irritated
Marx in 1824. Beethoven’s choice of character is undoubtedly linked to the slow
movement, with its despairing mood, which is resolved or superseded in the un-
hampered gaiety of the beginning of the fugue. The intensity of the contrapuntal
operations lends weight to the finale, thereby anchoring the sonata as a whole.
Beethoven’s fugal subject undergoes a kind of passage from innocence to experi-
ence, a progression guided by the cold logic of the contrapuntal combinations and
culminating in an almost violent chain of strettos—one of those passages that
must have most shocked the reviewer from the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
(Ex. 64).
Immediately following this fortissimo climax, the music pauses on F as it fades
into pianissimo. A new fugal subject enters in long notes and flat legato articula-
tion. Unlike the rest of the Allegro fugato, this subject has a feeling of motionless-
ness. It resists the swift, unfettered movement of the finale in favor of the static
20
Ibid., p. 344.
Ex. 64 Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 2/III, bars 129–49
world of the Adagio. Hence a pivotal moment in the narrative design of the fugue,
and of the entire sonata, comes as each of the three contrapuntal voices in turn
breaks out of this detached stillness to reemerge into the dynamic, propulsive ex-
perience of the movement proper. The process occurs first in the cello; but the
crescendo to fortissimo marks the precise passage in which this emancipation
takes place in the piano, clearing the way for the exuberant closing section, with
its textures of contrary motion and trills.
Beethoven’s resource of the fugal finale in his last cello sonata can be seen in
part as an outgrowth of his practice, begun in works like the fantasy sonatas op.
27, of reserving the fastest and most continuous rhythmic motion for the finale.
The lively, dance-like gait of the Allegro fugato is well calculated to supersede the
contrast-laden first movement and the somber, chorale-like Adagio con molto sen-
timento d’affetto. What the fugal texture adds is the necessary density to allow the
finale to stand up successfully against the other movements, and indeed to act as
culmination of the whole.
By 1815 Beethoven had accomplished a further deepening in his art, fulfilling
the intention expressed in the first Tagebuch entry three years earlier. His unpro-
ductive spell at the close of the “Immortal Beloved” affair had been left behind;
the extravagant artistic misadventures of the Congress period were a closed chap-
ter. His public popularity was now on the wane; the composer of the hour was
Rossini. As complete deafness closed in on Beethoven, he approached his greatest
artistic challenges. Slowly and deliberately he assembled the elements of an unprece-
dented stylistic synthesis, whereby nothing was lost and yet everything changed.
8
R
The Hammerklavier Sonata:
1816–1818
R
In the summer of 1816 Fanny Giannatasio recorded notes in her diary about Bee-
thoven’s visit to her family at Baden, outside Vienna, which included the following:
My father thought that B. could rescue himself from his unfortunate domestic
conditions only by marriage, did he know anybody, etc. Now our long foreboding
was confirmed: he was unhappy in love! Five years ago he had made the acquain-
tance of a person, a union with whom he would have considered the greatest hap-
piness of his life. It was not to be thought of, almost an impossibility, a chimera—
nevertheless it is now as on the first day.1
Shortly before, on 8 May, Beethoven had written to Ries:
Unfortunately I have no wife. I found only one, whom I shall no doubt never
possess.2
As Solomon has observed, the Tagebuch contains two entries from 1816 imply-
ing the possible identity of the woman as Antonie, or “Toni,” Brentano:
Regarding T. nothing is left but to trust in God; never to go where weakness might
lead to do wrong; to Him alone, the omniscient God, leave all this.
But toward T. [be] as good as possible; her devotion deserves never to be forgotten—
though, unfortunately, advantageous consequences for you could never result
therefrom.3
In the spring of 1816, after Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” had remained a
“distant beloved” for several years, he gave definitive artistic expression to this
abiding and universal human theme in the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte op.
98. Thayer wrote about these songs that “no one can hear them adequately sung
without feeling that there is something more in that music than the mere inspira-
tion of the poetry.”4 Yet, as Kerman has claimed, it seems likely that this music
1
2
Ibid., p. 639.
4
210
the HAMMERKLAVIER sonata: 1816–1818 211
helped Beethoven to bring his emotional conflicts to rest; “by bringing his feelings
into the open, Beethoven was renouncing or abandoning them.”5 An die ferne
Geliebte relates to the “Immortal Beloved” crisis in a manner analogous to the
role of the Eroica Symphony in the Heiligenstadt crisis more than a decade ear-
lier. But there was another factor that ameliorated Beethoven’s loneliness and iso-
lation at this time. He had formed a close attachment to his nephew Karl, son of
his brother Caspar Carl, who had died in 1815. Beethoven’s relationship to Karl
undoubtedly helped fill the emotional void in the bachelor existence to which he
was now permanently resigned. (We shall return later to the problems surround-
ing Beethoven’s guardianship of his nephew.)
The text of An die ferne Geliebte stems from the Moravian medical student
Alois Jeitteles, who presumably gave Beethoven the poems in manuscript—they
were never published separately from the music. Beethoven made musical
sketches for the cycle in the Scheide Sketchbook, immediately preceding work on
the A major Piano Sonata op. 101. As Christopher Reynolds has pointed out, Bee-
thoven sketched the first song of the cycle most intensively; the music of the fol-
lowing five songs often varies or transforms elements from the first.6 The songs
are directly interconnected by transitions in sonority; they outline a cyclical key
scheme passing from E major to G (no. 2), A (nos. 3 and 4), and C (no. 5), re-
turning to the tonic for the sixth song. But the primacy of the opening song “Auf
dem Hügel sitz’ ich spähend” is reflected most vividly by Beethoven’s decision to
link its text and music with the conclusion of the cycle.
Kerman has convincingly suggested that Beethoven added the last stanza to the
opening strophic song in order to promote this cyclic connection.7 The fifth stanza
of “Auf dem Hügel” contains a closing couplet identical to the end of the last
song, preceded by two lines that may stem from Beethoven himself:
Denn vor Liedesklang entweichet
jeder Raum und jede Zeit,
und ein liebend Herz erreichet,
was ein liebend Herz geweiht.
[For the sound of song transcends
all space and time,
that a loving heart receive
what a loving heart has consecrated.]
The import of these lines resists literal translation; what is involved is a commu-
nication from one soul to another, overcoming spatial and temporal constraints.
Much the same message is conveyed in the dedication Beethoven was to write over
the Kyrie of his Missa solemnis: “Von Herzen—Möge es wieder—zu Herzen gehn!”
(“From the heart, may it go again to the heart!”).
The beginning of the final song, “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder, die ich dir,
5 “An die ferne Geliebte,” p. 131.

6 “The Representational Impulse in Late Beethoven, I: An die ferne Geliebte.”
7
“An die ferne Geliebte,” pp. 126–7, 129.
212 beethoven
Geliebte, sang” (“Take to your heart these songs that I sang to you, beloved”) is
quoted with moving effect by Robert Schumann at the end of the first movement
of his C major Fantasy op. 17 (Ex. 65a and b).8 Schumann’s quotation is at once
a homage to Beethoven and an allusion to his own “distant beloved” at the time,
Clara Wieck. It is noteworthy that Schumann originally intended to repeat the
quotation at the end of the final movement of the fantasy, a gesture that would
have echoed Beethoven’s procedure in An die ferne Geliebte, where the last song
brings a return of the music and words of the first. This device is the most strik-
ing single idea in Beethoven’s song cycle, an inspiration with broader ties to his in-
strumental music from these years.
It is for the last stanza of this closing song that Beethoven recalls the music
from “Denn vor Liedesklang entweichet” in the first song:
Denn vor diesen Liedern weichet,
was geschieden uns so weit,
und ein liebend Herz erreichet
was ein liebend Herz geweiht!
[Then the distance that so divides us
dissolves through these songs,
that a loving heart receive
what a loving heart has consecrated!]
A short piano introduction and a longer postlude frame the stanza, setting the re-
call of the music from the fifth stanza of the opening song on a pedestal. As Ker-
man observes, this device also marks an important moment in the gradually in-
creasing prominence of the piano throughout the cycle.9 The beginning of the
cycle had not strayed far from the Volksweise ideal, in which the words and vocal
line remain dominant; only the end of the cycle could have elicited Goethe’s dis-
approval by giving the music sway over the text.
The two-bar piano introduction was probably an afterthought that Beethoven
inserted into the autograph score.10 As a result of this interpolation, the vocal line
takes its cue from the piano; and now Beethoven uses every rhetorical and formal
device at his disposal to highlight the message of the final stanza (Ex. 66). The
words are repeated over and over, as motivic elements from the postlude of the
first song, such as the decorated inflection on high B in the piano, are developed
in a new context. Beethoven reserves the peak of the vocal tessitura on high G for
the passionate closing repetitions of “was ein liebend, liebend Herz geweiht!” The
piano echoes the final inflection of the voice and brings the music to a close with
an emphatic reiteration of the phrase that had begun the cycle.
Beethoven’s cadence is left open, with the final accented E major chord placed
8
Cf. Rosen, The Classical Style, pp. 451–53. Recent research has failed to discover any
documented references to Schumann’s Beethoven allusion before the twentieth century, but
that does not invalidate the tangible artistic kinship between these works.
9 “An die ferne Geliebte,” pp. 154–55.
10
Ibid.
Ex. 65a. An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 no. 6
b. Schumann, Fantasy in C op. 17/I
on a weak beat of the triple meter. The cycle turns back on itself, forcing the lis-
tener to reflect on the meaning of the circular design of the whole, with its sym-
bolic embodiment of the perennial, unending theme of human communication
and separation. It is the possibility of a true intimacy that is at stake here: “From
the heart, may it go to the heart!,” as Beethoven wrote into his score of the Missa
solemnis. This is the first of a series of open-ended conclusions of works that Bee-
thoven was to compose in following years, including the last three piano sonatas
and the Diabelli Variations.
S S S
As Alfred Brendel has suggested, Beethoven’s late music involves a general expan-
sion and synthesis of the means of expression, whereby opposites are often juxta-
214 beethoven
Ex. 66 An die ferne Geliebte op. 98 no. 6, bars 38–end
Ex. 66 (continued)
216 beethoven
posed, with every new complexity of style seeming to parallel, as its antithesis, a
childlike simplicity. Normal modes of analysis are inadequate to grasp the tremen-
dous richness of this idiom, which “embraces equally the past, present, and fu-
ture, the sublime and the profane.”11 This expansion in expressive range is often
associated with new departures in large-scale formal organization, and especially
with a tendency to replace symmetrical forms with a central climax by a progres-
sion leading to a final, culminating experience. Not only does Beethoven avoid the
enclosure of literal recapitulation within movements; he also tends to arrange suc-
cessive movements into a directional sequence leading toward the finale, now usu-
ally the most weighty movement of the sonata cycle.
Beethoven now devises new, unique means of linking the movements of his
works. In the C major Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 1 and in An die ferne Geliebte, as
we have seen, his later recall of the opening lyrical music assumes unusual impor-
tance, going well beyond the most analogous earlier example—his reminiscence
of the slow movement in the finale of the first of the fantasy sonatas op. 27 no. 1,
of 1801. But Beethoven’s most subtle use of this device is found in his next com-
position, the Piano Sonata in A major op. 101, from 1816. The crux of this sonata
is contained not in the opening Allegretto, ma non troppo, despite its quiet, lyrical
beginning in medias res on the dominant. The suspended quality of the music is en-
hanced by Beethoven’s seamless lyricism, his placement of the exposition in the
dominant key, and by his avoidance throughout of strong tonic cadences. Follow-
ing this short movement of yearning character, and the brusque, angular, contra-
puntal march in F major forming the second movement, a more fundamental level
of feeling or state of being is uncovered in the slow introduction to the finale,
marked Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll. Here the music is drawn progressively lower
in pitch, falling through a series of diminished-seventh chords, before it drops still
further in register, collapsing onto a soft sustained chord that is to serve as a turn-
ing point and a new beginning (Ex. 67). This passage anticipates in striking fashion
the Praeludium to the Benedictus of the Missa solemnis, where a low chord reached
through a similar descending progression is transposed upward several octaves to the
solo violin and flutes, to symbolize, with astonishing effect, the divine presence.
In the case of the sonata, this soft chord, which represents the end of the
descending progression and the termination of the Adagio, also embodies the
a priori condition for the first movement, since it presents the exact sonority, in
the precise register, out of which the opening of that movement has sprung. In
view of this, the opening of the sonata in medias res assumes a new and deeper
significance. The importance of this original sound—an E major sonority marked
by a fermata—is confirmed by its transformation, after a short cadenza-like pas-
sage, into the actual beginning of the opening movement. This reminiscence lasts
a few bars before it dissolves into the emphatic beginning of the finale, marked by
the first strong tonic cadence (in A major) that has yet been heard in the sonata.
The finale is in sonata form, with its development assigned to a fugato. Contra-
puntal devices have already been prominent in the march, particularly in its trans-
11 Music Sounded Out, p. 63.

Ex. 67 Piano Sonata op. 101, slow introduction to finale
parent canonic trio; but the fugal textures in the finale unfold with an uncompro-
mising determination and virtuosity comparable only with the fugal finale of Bee-
thoven’s next sonata, the Hammerklavier. Op. 101 is among the most difficult of
the sonatas, and Beethoven himself once described it as “hard to play.” The charac-
teristically ironic context of this remark—which relates to a critique of performance
difficulties in the Seventh Symphony—in no way invalidates the comment.
218 beethoven
The challenge of this work lies not only in the complex polyphony of the march
and finale but in the delicate narrative sequence of the whole. Twice we pass from
spheres of dreamlike reflection into the vigorous musical landscapes of the march
and finale. A complex network of tonal and thematic relationships makes clear
that these are not merely ruptures in the musical form but moments of transfor-
mation. Especially characteristic is Beethoven’s abiding memory, at the end of
op. 101, of earlier stages in the artistic process. It is almost uncanny how this en-
hanced vision or enlarged perspective nourishes the humorous wit of the conclu-
sion. Thus, the dolce passage beginning the coda is subtly reminiscent of the slow
introduction to the finale; and the continuation not only alludes to the earlier
fugal development but recalls harmonic features of the first two movements. Near
the end, Beethoven brings back as a pedal point the low contra E previously used
in the climactic cadence to the recapitulation of the finale, and adds above it a
long, dissonant trill, both of which are emphatically resolved into the final triadic
fanfare—a fanfare that itself ultimately derives from the climactic cadence to the
recapitulation. The depth of synthesis and richness of allusion in passages such as
this make special demands on listener and interpreter alike.
Few of Beethoven’s pieces exerted such a strong spell on the Romantic com-
posers as this A major Sonata. Mendelssohn imitated it in his op. 6 Sonata; Wag-
ner found in its opening movement the ideal of his “infinite melody”; Schumann
was captivated by its march-like second movement. Along with the cello sonatas
op. 102 and the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, the A major Sonata marks a
major transition in Beethoven’s style, pointing unmistakably to the unique synthe-
sis achieved in works of his last decade.
S S S
Let us pause at this point to reconsider the traditional periodization of Beetho-
ven’s career. The conception of three main periods—a classicizing or “imitative”
style in the 1790s, followed by a more expansive, “heroic” idiom forged in the
Eroica Symphony, and finally a concentrated “late” style inaugurated in pieces
like op. 101 and op. 102—has a venerable history reaching back at least to Wil-
helm von Lenz in the nineteenth century. The tripartite division is not unjustified,
and its transitional points correspond roughly to events in Beethoven’s life: his cri-
sis over his incurable loss of hearing, and the onset of nearly total deafness more
than a decade later. Nevertheless, such a periodization easily risks obscuring the
strong lines of continuity in Beethoven’s artistic development, as well as other
significant demarcations in his career. As we have seen, certain early works, no-
tably the Joseph Cantata, foreshadow aspects of his later music, without yet
demonstrating the structural mastery and sustained intensity of his mature style.
Beethoven’s achievement in the various musical genres did not proceed at an even
pace; his piano sonatas of the 1790s, for instance, can hardly be regarded as prod-
ucts of an “imitative” style. On the other hand, after 1809 we can discern a
change in his approach to composition that may be related in part to his income
from the princes Kinsky and Lobkowitz and the Archduke Rudolph. Beginning
around 1810, Beethoven concentrated on a smaller number of pieces, some of
which display an enhanced scope in their respective genres: the Archduke Trio,
Seventh Symphony, and Violin Sonata in G major. By 1815, major works like the
Cello Sonatas op. 102 show even more conspicuous experimental features. For
the composer of the Eroica, such an innovative tendency was in no way new; it is
the striking consistency of this progressive trend from work to work that eventu-
ally signals another important stylistic shift. An die ferne Geliebte is one product
of this impulse toward a richer artistic integration, with a group of individual
songs merged into a larger unity. Diametrically opposed to this integrating ten-
dency are the patriotic potboilers such as Wellington’s Victory and The Glorious
Moment, pieces that fall out of the main line of Beethoven’s artistic development
and demand therefore a different critical approach.
The three “periods” are a convenient simplification, which reflects some of
Beethoven’s abiding stylistic changes but fails to apply to a number of his works.
Ultimately, a convincing periodization needs to take biographical and historical
factors into account while nevertheless giving priority to the musical works. To
that end, we may discern four main periods, which are reflected in the chapter or-
ganization of this book. The first and most heterogeneous period embraces Bee-
thoven’s apprenticeship, as well as his path to mastery, and extends from the Bonn
years up to 1802. The second or “heroic” period begins in 1803 with the compo-
sition of the Eroica Symphony and extends to the end of 1812. Characteristic of
the music of this highly productive decade is a heightened symbolic or mythic di-
mension that is embodied in an intrinsically musical narrative; examples include
the Appassionata Sonata, the Andante con moto of the Fourth Concerto, the Fifth
Symphony, and the Egmont Overture, among many others. The onset of a third
period can be placed for biographical and historical reasons in 1813, although the
emergence of Beethoven’s “late” style was a gradual process in which the pivotal
work, the Hammerklavier Sonata—a primary focus of the present chapter—was
completed only in 1818. The culmination of the third period comes in May 1824,
with the performance of the pair of choral-orchestral masterpieces, the Missa
solemnis and the Ninth Symphony.
The fourth period is fragmentary, extending from 1824 to Beethoven’s death in
March 1827. During these years Beethoven’s creative energies were devoted al-
most entirely to his last five string quartets. The late quartets are deeply grounded
in his earlier music, but they open up new artistic territory in ways comparable
with the Eroica or the Hammerklavier; for this reason it is possible to regard these
works—or at least opp. 132, 130 with the Grosse Fuge as finale, and 131—as
marking the onset of a new period rather than serving as a subset of the third pe-
riod. Were it not for the collapse of Beethoven’s health in December 1826, he
might have continued these explorations in some of the pieces that he talked
about or had just begun to sketch: a String Quintet, a Tenth Symphony, an Over-
ture on B–A–C–H, a Requiem Mass. As it was, the task of building on the legacy
of the last quartets was left to the future: to Schoenberg, Bartók, and others.
S S S
Beethoven composed little music in 1817. His preoccupation with the education
and well-being of his nephew Karl and health problems both conspired to hinder
the completion of new compositions. This decline in productivity had begun ear-
220 beethoven
lier and is reflected in the surviving music manuscripts from the period. However,
a balanced assessment of Beethoven’s productivity at this time should take into ac-
count projects that remained incomplete as well as projects that evolved over
many years. During 1816, for instance, Beethoven worked on a Piano Trio in F
minor, which he offered to British publisher Robert Birchall on 1 October of that
year. The Scheide Sketchbook contains twenty-two pages devoted to the piece,
and a fragmentary draft in full score in Berlin preserves Beethoven’s ideas for the
opening section of the first movement of the trio. When these sources are studied
in conjunction with one another, they cast much light on his plans for this fasci-
nating project, which would have become one of his major chamber works had it
been completed.12
The innovative character of this fragmentary trio is signaled by its extensive
slow introduction, more than fifty bars long. The transformational character of
this introductory Andante con moto merits attention. Beginning with a complete
absence of tension, as a mysterious rumbling accompanimental figure in triplets is
played softly in the piano, Beethoven gradually introduces consequential musical
elements that foreshadow the main theme of the ensuing Allegro molto, in sonata
form. The short notes that conclude the opening phrases of the Andante con moto
already anticipate the rhythmic structure of this main subject of the Allegro
molto. Its characteristic dotted rhythmic motive, moreover, is soon foreshadowed
in the introduction, pianissimo; by stages this motive is then developed through
imitation and, finally, is emphasized first as an ostinato pedal point and then as
part of a thematic unit of breadth and verve. In its evolving rhythmic intensifi-
cation and motivic concentration, the passage invites comparison with some fea-
tures of the introduction to the first movement of the Seventh Symphony. Taken
as a whole, this weighty introduction in the trio offers a gradually unfolding in-
tensification or crescendo that leads with a sense of inevitability to the emergence
of the main theme.
Another work that begins with a pianissimo accompaniment involving triplets
is the Ninth Symphony, a piece whose compositional genesis reaches back to the
period of Beethoven’s involvement with the unfinished trio. Carl Friedrich Hirsch,
a grandson of Johann Albrechtsberger and Beethoven’s composition student dur-
ing late 1816 and early 1817, reported that the composer was then already at
work on his Ninth Symphony.13 The sketches support this chronology, since
the earliest sketch used in the Ninth Symphony is the notation for the second
movement, marked “fuge,” found at the top of page 51 of the Scheide Sketch-
book, an entry that probably dates from December 1815 or January 1816. A re-
lated sketchleaf is held at Weimar, containing sketches for the first and second
12 A detailed commentary with transcriptions of Beethoven’s sketches and draft is of-
fered in my study “Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Trio in F Minor from 1816: A Study of Its
Genesis and Significance,” Journal of Musicological Research 25 (2006), pp. 1–42.
13 Hirsch’s reminiscences are recounted in Theodor von Frimmel, “Carl Friedrich
Hirsch,” Beethoven-Studien, vol. 2 (Munich and Leipzig: Georg Müller, 1906), pp. 55–69;
the Ninth Symphony is mentioned on p. 60.
movements of the Ninth Symphony together with entries for the canon “Das
Schwiegen.”14 Beethoven wrote the two canons, “Das Schweigen” and “Das
Reden” (“Silence” and “Talking”) WoO 168, into the album of the English pi-
anist Charles Neate on 24 January 1816, preceding Neate’s departure for En-
gland. In 1815, Neate had traveled to Vienna to spend eight months there, moti-
vated by his admiration for Beethoven. He was one of the original members of the
London Philharmonic Society, and his connection to Beethoven formed part of the
context for the invitation from the Philharmonic Society the following year, on 9
June 1817, according to which Beethoven was to compose two symphonies. The
composer accepted the terms in a letter of 9 July 1817, declaring his intention to
compose the symphonies and travel to London by January 1818. Even though
Beethoven’s relationship with the Philharmonic Society was not always smooth,
the symphonic plans for London nevertheless exerted an impact on his creative
activities during the period in question.
Beethoven’s thoughts of leaving Vienna with a new symphony, while still hop-
ing to collect the annuity conditional on his Austrian residence, were vividly ex-
pressed in his diary in early 1817: “There is no other way to save yourself except
to leave here, only through this can you again lift yourself to the heights of your
art, whereas here you are submerged in vulgarity. Only a symphony—and then
away, away, away. Meanwhile collect the salary, which can still be done for
years.”15 In the end, however, the planned journey to England never took place,
and the completion of the Ninth Symphony required another seven years, until
1824. Among Beethoven’s few works from 1817 is the melancholy song Resigna-
tion WoO 149, which he completed only in a solo version but sketched as well for
vocal quartet, a setting reminiscent of his mournful Elegischer Gesang op. 118 for
four voices and string quartet of 1814. One of Beethoven’s main projects of 1817
was actually his arrangement of the C minor Piano Trio op. 1 no. 3 as the String
Quintet op. 104. This transcription was motivated by an unsatisfactory attempt
by a certain Herr Kaufmann, in response to which Beethoven undertook the task
himself. With characteristic humor, Beethoven described the finished arrangement
in an inscription as having been “raised from the most abject misery to some de-
gree of respectability”; the original quintet arrangement was “ceremonially
sacrificed as a burnt offering to the gods of the underworld.” As Tyson has shown,
however, Beethoven’s completion of the arrangement was actually somewhat un-
critical and careless; in this case, he evidently lacked the patience to redeem the
arrangement in all respects from the faulty standard of “Mr. Goodwill,” as Bee-
thoven dubbed Kaufmann.16
If Beethoven undertook few such transcriptions, he did make numerous ar-
rangements of Scottish, Irish, English, Welsh, and Continental songs that were
commissioned by the Edinburgh publisher George Thomson between 1809 and
14
For further details, see my study of “Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Trio,” p. 40.
15
“Beethoven’s Tagebuch,” ed. Maynard Solomon, p. 119 (entry no. 119).
16 See “The Authors of the Op. 104 String Quintet,” pp. 158–73; the quotations are
from 159–61, 173.

222 beethoven
1820. In his study of these arrangements, Barry Cooper tabulates 179 settings and
observes that Beethoven’s occupation with these folk songs fills some otherwise
inexplicable gaps in the record of his compositional activity. One such gap falls in
early 1817, when Beethoven produced a dozen settings for Thomson. In one of
these, the Scottish song Sweet Were the Hours op. 108 no. 3, to a text by William
Smyth, Cooper finds an experimental aspect not unlike the scherzo of the Ninth
Symphony: “an alteration of lyrical and dynamic sections, and the final soft, lyri-
cal one suddenly gives way to a loud, dynamic interruption that brings the music
to an abrupt close.”17 A duality of tempi between an Andante con moto e sem-
plice and an Allegro ben marcato characterizes this setting, and the abrupt con-
clusion recalls the spirited setting of the words “Wine! Wine! Wine! Come bring
me wine to cheer me.”
In 1816, another British publisher, Birchall, to whom Beethoven offered his
unfinished Piano Trio in F minor, requested variations on folk songs, and Thom-
son subsequently commissioned variations on sixteen melodies, pieces Beethoven
completed by early 1819. Thomson published only nine of these sets; the varia-
tions on all sixteen folk songs first appeared as opp. 105 and 107 in the editions
of Artaria and Simrock. In addition to eleven Scottish, Welsh, and Irish songs,
these collections include variations on two Russian and three Tyrolean tunes.
As the publisher specified, the folk-song variations are of modest difficulty and
provide an optional flute or violin part in the manner of the old-fashioned accom-
panied keyboard sonata. In essence, however, they are piano music of consider-
able subtlety that easily dispenses with the accompaniment. They deserve to be
better known, and represent a not insignificant stage in Beethoven’s evolving
treatment of variation technique, which assumes surpassing importance in his
later works. In his fine study of these variations, Uhde points out an impressive
richness of detail, as well as cyclic connections between the pieces, and concludes
that “they demonstrate convincingly . . . that nothing is too slight to serve as the
point of departure for great music. . . . The most humble things can be illuminated
to reveal a deeper meaning.”18
Beethoven’s blending of the exalted and the commonplace also surfaces in one
of his numerous letters from 1818 to Nanette Streicher, who showed an almost
maternal concern at this time for the well-being of the deaf master. As we have
seen, Beethoven’s attraction to puns was an abiding character trait; Czerny re-
ported that “he always knew how to devise a pun. While listening to an overture
by Weber [‘weaver’] he said: ‘Hm! It’s woven!’ [gewebt].”19 As Küthen has ob-
served,20 a subtle allusion to the Catholic Mass is incorporated into the following
note to Nanette Streicher:
17
Beethoven’s Folksong Settings: Chronology, Sources, Style, p. 208.
18
Beethovens Klaviermusik, vol. 1, p. 456. For a detailed study of the folk-song settings,
see Barry Cooper, Beethoven’s Folksong Settings: Chronology, Sources, Style.
19
Über den richtigen Vortrag, p. 13. On the Proper Performance, p. 7; translation
amended.
20 Personal communication.
Ich bitte in Eile mit Eile und durch Eile, dass Sie Streicher bitten, dass wir heute
gegen 12 Uhr allein sind.
In eiligster Eile ihr Freund Beethoven
[I ask in haste with haste and through haste, that you ask of Streicher, that we are
alone around 12 o’clock today.
In the most hasty haste your friend Beethoven21]
There is a double parody at work here. Beethoven’s other communications to
Nanette Streicher often contain the close “In Eil” (“in haste”). This time he comi-
cally amplifies that formulation as “eiligster Eile” (“the most hasty haste”). But
that is not all. The words “in Eile mit Eile und durch Eile” are a parody of the
Ordo Missae, part of the divine service preceding the consecration: “Durch Ihn
und mit Ihm und in Ihm wird Dir, Gott allmächtiger Vater, in der Einheit des Heili-
gen Geistes, alle Ehre und Verherrlichung” (in Latin, “Per ipsum et cum ipso, et
in ipso, est tibi Deo patri omnipotenti”). Beethoven unexpectedly twists this
solemn exhortation to dramatize the urgency of his wish for a noonday meeting
with Frau Streicher. He delivers his message from the high altar, so to speak.
S S S
As we have seen, the almost feverish pace of Beethoven’s earlier productivity had
by now slowed considerably. To a substantial extent this more deliberate ap-
proach was motivated by the changing nature of his artistic enterprise. He lav-
ished more and more attention on each of his major new compositions, which
were usually sketched at great length. As he began work on the largest of his piano
sonatas, the mammoth work in B , op. 106, Beethoven was virtually stone deaf;
the first of his conversation notebooks, in which visitors and friends wrote down
their comments to him, date from this period. Yet Beethoven’s inward powers of
imagination now gained new strength, as the great sonata abundantly reveals. The
name “Hammerklavier” reflects Beethoven’s concern at this time to use German
terms in music in place of Italian ones; the word was originally also associated
with op. 101 but came to be linked specifically with op. 106. The Hammerklavier
Sonata is but the first of a series of works that includes Beethoven’s most monu-
mental achievements in several other important musical genres: the Diabelli Vari-
ations, the Missa solemnis, and the Ninth Symphony. The sonata became his
major compositional preoccupation in late 1817 and throughout 1818. Beetho-
ven himself claimed that op. 106 was “a sonata that will give pianists something
to do” and that it would “be played fifty years hence”—a fairly accurate predic-
tion since, apart from Liszt, Clara Schumann, and von Bülow, few pianists tack-
led the immense challenges of this great sonata before the last decades of the nine-
teenth century.
The op. 106 Sonata offers unusual challenges not only to pianists but to all lis-
teners. It was this work in particular that provoked a crisis in the reception of his
music. The notion of Beethoven’s later music as inaccessible, too difficult, or even
21 Kastner and Kapp, eds., Ludwig van Beethovens sämtliche Briefe, L. 859; my trans-
lation.
224 beethoven
incomprehensible arose particularly in reaction to pieces like the fugal finales of
op. 106 and of the Quartet op. 130 in its original version—the Grosse Fuge. Bee-
thoven was fully aware that he had broken new ground with the Hammerklavier
and succeeding works, and he expressed resentment about what he saw as unde-
served enthusiasm for certain of his earlier pieces, such as the popular Septet op.
20. The significance of the Hammerklavier was not lost on some of Beethoven’s
friends; a conversation book entry from late 1819 records that Zmeskall “listens
to no music apart from op. 106.”22 Not surprisingly, other listeners took a con-
trary view. One reviewer wrote about the septet in 1826, for instance, that “It is
strange, that Beethoven declared precisely this work to be one of his least success-
ful. For even if the dimensions are somewhat broad, it is infinitely richer in true
beauty than many of his later works, for instance the big sonata, op. 106.”23
The Hammerklavier Sonata is concerned with much more than mere beauty; it
is profoundly shaped by forces of conflict and tension, and in the opening Allegro
it displays a remarkable forward drive and motivic richness. The sonata begins
with an imposing twofold fanfare, which unfolds from a low bass note held in
pedal; the ensuing fortissimo chords fill out the higher pitch registers, reaching
more than four octaves above the bass. The rhythm of each chordal fanfare sug-
gests “Vivat vivat Rudolphus,” an homage to the Archduke Rudolph to whom the
piece is dedicated. Following these impressive opening gestures, Beethoven intro-
duces a contrast, with sensitive polyphonic phrases played piano. Each of these
units—the fanfares and answering polyphonic phrases—is four measures long.
Beginning at the upbeat to bar 9, Beethoven restates the soft polyphonic phrases
an octave higher, and the lowest voice begins an enormous descent, as a long
crescendo leads to a powerful tonic cadence in bar 17. He now brilliantly com-
bines features of the two initial contrasting ideas, alternating forte and piano mea-
sures, while a series of rising phrases accompanied by chords reminiscent of
the opening fanfares carries the music through a huge arc. The passage eventually
settles with a diminuendo on widely-spaced Fs, a dominant pedal-point that acts
as a platform for a varied restatement of the opening fanfare motto, marking the
threshold to the second subject group.
An extraordinary role is assumed in each movement by B minor—a tonality
Beethoven once described as a “black key.” B minor functions in the Ham-
merklavier like a focus of negative energy pitted against the B major tonic, creat-
ing a dramatic opposition with far-reaching consequences. In the first movement
this generates an important climax after the beginning of the recapitulation, an
event deeply anchored in the musical structure. The melodic detail and the har-
monic and tonal progressions of op. 106 mirror one another with uncanny preci-
sion, often elaborating chains of falling thirds, as Charles Rosen has pointed
out.24 The opening chordal fanfares triumphantly spell out the descending thirds
D–B and F–D; the G major theme beginning the second subject group brings
22
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, p. 92.
23 Cited in Kunze, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit, p. 21.
24 The Classical Style, pp. 404–34; also Ratz, Einführung, pp. 201–41.
graceful falling thirds in a smooth legato figuration; and the powerful fugal devel-
opment elaborates the descending thirds relentlessly, periodically substituting ris-
ing sixths (their inversion) in order to maintain a stability of register within the
extended chains of thirds.
On the larger, architectural level of the tonal structure, Beethoven develops the
same relationships based on descending thirds. Beginning at the abbreviated re-
statement of the opening fanfare, he modulates from B major to G major,
whereas the fugal development begins with another conspicuous tonal drop of a
third, to E . Then, instead of preparing the recapitulation with the usual dominant
key, F major, he continues the series of descending thirds by modulating to B
major (enharmonically equivalent to C major) for the last section of the develop-
ment. The shift to B major at the recapitulation is abrupt, undermining the re-
assertion of the tonic, and he soon makes yet another change of key down a third,
to G . He now seizes upon the enharmonic equivalence of G to F to expose the
opening fanfare of the movement in the remote, yet rigorously prepared key of B
minor, climactically destabilizing the B major tonic while opening a rift into the
“black key” (Ex. 68).
Never before had Beethoven achieved such close coordination between motivic
and harmonic detail, tonal structure, and formal shape. We have noted various
passages in earlier works in which he turns a melodic inflection into a pivotal
structural gesture; the shift from B to B at the end of the slow movement of the
Emperor Concerto is one such example. In the Hammerklavier Sonata this prac-
tice is taken to a new stage. The difference is perhaps best illustrated through a
comparison with Beethoven’s previous compositions that exploit the same mo-
tivic relationships that are so prominent in the Hammerklavier: the semitone from
the Neapolitan B to the tonic B and the related semitone above the dominant,
G –F, in the key of B major.
As we have seen, it is especially characteristic for Beethoven to emphasize dra-
matically the semitones above the tonic and dominant in his F minor works: the
Quartet op. 95 and the Appassionata Sonata spring to mind. The Appassionata
Ex. 68 Hammerklavier Sonata op. 106/I, bars 262–73

226 beethoven
goes furthest toward “composing out” this relationship on the various possible
levels of structure: Beethoven distils the D –C tension as a motto within the main
theme, places the lyrical second theme in the key of D major in the development,
and has the entire slow movement in this key as well. These interlocking levels of
structure contribute to the quality of gigantic simplicity in the Appassionata, as
well as to its expressive force.
In the Hammerklavier Sonata the semitone tension is more deeply and perva-
sively lodged in the musical substance. Beethoven does not employ a motivic tag
or motto here, as he does in the Appassionata Sonata. Instead, as Rosen observes,
he allows the same relationships that are highlighted in the large-scale tonal struc-
ture to invest the harmonic texture of individual themes. The G –F semitone is
prominent in the bass line of the polyphonic continuation to the opening theme,
after the majestic opening fanfares. A striking phrase in the second subject group
in G stresses the corresponding relationship E –D and each time supplies the al-
ternative, E –D, in a higher register (Ex. 69). In the next few bars Beethoven trans-
fers this tension between E and E into the bass progression B–E–C –D–E and
develops it in turn in a series of sequences. The theme that follows, marked
cantabile dolce ed espressivo, is similarly poised between the major and minor.
Beethoven repeatedly supplies both the minor (B ) and major (B ) thirds in its
melodic structure, and, although the major tonic triad retains primacy, the balanc-
ing presence of the minor is reflected in his very consistent use of the lowered sixth
degree, E instead of E .
In this context Beethoven’s stroke of substituting B for B in the first-time bar
leading back from the end of the exposition to its repetition carries special con-
viction. When the exposition is repeated, in the second-time bar, the B is super-
seded by B , which carries the music into the development. Elements of the minor
are structurally assimilated into the basic tonality of the Hammerklavier Sonata,
as part of the pervasive emphasis on third relationships. Nowhere in the opening
Allegro is this modal tension involving a rising semitone more conspicuous than
in the final section of the development leading to the recapitulation. The long
fugal passage in E shows a gradual broadening in harmonic rhythm, until the

music dwells on repeated Ds in both hands. Here, the energy of the descending
third chain shifts from a harmonic to a tonal level, as Beethoven recalls the
cantabile theme in B, a key enharmonically a third below E and Neapolitan to B ,
the tonic (Ex. 70).
At this transitional moment the melodic semitone tension is between D and D ,
the minor and major third degrees of B; in the fifth bar of the cantabile, marked
espressivo, and again two bars later, Beethoven restates this semitone, whereas the
following decorated variant in eighth notes expresses the tension as D against
C . The rising linear motion is developed by Beethoven in the passage leading to
the recapitulation. The bars immediately before the reprise are a foreshortening
of the preceding music and incorporate the chromatic ascending motion derived
from the cantabile theme. This relationship supports a reading of A instead of A
at the famous disputed passage beginning at the upbeat, two bars before the reca-
pitulation. The first edition (Plates 14 and 15) contained no natural signs here to
cancel the A , but that was presumably an error (there are numerous other mis-
takes and omissions on the same page). The autograph score is not extant, but a
sketch implies the accuracy of A , as Nottebohm pointed out.25 If the passage is
played as originally printed, the shift from G to A as the lowest notes in these
sequences causes the music to avoid the dominant triad altogether, not only weak-
ening the harmonic preparation for the reprise but breaking the ascent by semi-
tone to the tonic note B , a progression implied by the intrinsic logic of the musi-
cal structure.
Beethoven underscores the importance of the cantabile theme by recalling it
once more at the beginning of his coda. Here, a slow trill on the semitone C –B ,
enharmonically equivalent to B–B , is at first combined with the theme; moments
later, this new reflection of the work’s central harmonic tension is resolved by a
double trill in the inner voices on C –B . Still, the corresponding semitone tension
on the dominant, G –F, darkens most of the remainder of the coda. These tensions
prove too powerful to be resolved in the first movement; they spill over into every
movement of this enormous work.
The following scherzo is a humorous yet dark parody of the opening Allegro,
transforming the motivic material based on thirds. A sardonic dimension surfaces
25
A thorough discussion of this sketch and other issues bearing on the disputed passage
is in Badura-Skoda, “Noch einmal zur Frage Ais oder A in der Hammerklaviersonate Opus
106 von Beethoven,” pp. 53–81.
228 beethoven
Ex. 71 Hammerklavier Sonata op. 106/II, bars 153–end
here in the presto passage connecting the B minor trio to the repetition of the
scherzo, and again, more tellingly, in the closing moments of this Assai vivace.
Characteristic of the scherzo is a tendency for its phrases to close softly on the tell-
tale B . The drift toward B undercuts the tonic B octaves that closed the first
scherzo section and might otherwise have closed the entire movement. What fol-
lows is an eerie disruption of the tonal equilibrium, as the music lingers in the
“wrong” tonality of B minor, even venturing a “distorted” version of the opening
motif in that key (Ex. 71). Only through a tremendous exercise of will does Bee-
thoven bring these subversive forces under control, as eighteen repeated double
octaves build in a furious crescendo to a brief closing restoration of the tonic B
major.
The two mysterious octaves on A and C that open the following slow move-
ment were an afterthought by Beethoven, added just before the sonata was
printed. The added bar acts like a pedestal, setting the ensuing music into relief.
But the A also captures the descending linear energy from the end of the scherzo,
carrying the B–B progression one step further, to A, before a change of key casts
this pitch into a new perspective.
The great Adagio sostenuto that follows is the longest slow movement in Bee-
thoven, an immense sonata form, described by von Lenz as “a mausoleum of col-

lective suffering of the world,”26 although the indication appassionato et con
molto sentimento points toward a suffering that is painfully alive. The key, F
minor, is enharmonically a third below B , poised between the overall tonic of the
work and the focus of contrary forces in B minor. The opening section in F minor
contains two themes, the first of which is played with the left pedal (una corda)
throughout, its sombre restraint brightened intermittently by fleeting lyrical
glimpses of the Neapolitan G major in the higher pitch registers. In the second
theme the left pedal is lifted, yielding a more direct sound quality, as a passion-
ately inward expression is rendered in intricate melodic decoration of the melody.
Only now, after forty bars, does the music change key to D major (a third lower),
opening up new, more hopeful regions of feeling in a theme whose phrases are first
sounded in the cavernous bass register before being echoed four octaves higher in
the treble. A return to muffled una corda inflections eventually leads to the ca-
dence of the exposition in a passage of vast contemplative stillness.
In the development Beethoven dwells on the opening theme and the juxtaposi-
tion of una corda and tutte le corde, while a long series of harmonic sequences
based on descending thirds eventually converges onto the recapitulation. The
music seems at once suspended and in flux. The recapitulation is no mere symmet-
rical return, but a profound reinterpretation of the opening theme, which is “com-
posed out” into moving thirty-second-note figuration in the right hand, balanced
against deep chordal pedal points in the bass. But if the recapitulation brings the
inner climax of the Adagio sostenuto, the outward, dramatic climax is reserved
for the coda. Here the theme characterized by vast registral echoes returns in G
major, and Beethoven incorporates a rising bass progression bringing the music
for once a third higher, to B minor. A series of high, climactic repeated F s follows;
after this dramatic outbreak, the return of a curtailed form of the opening una
corda theme has the effect of deep resignation. Yet here, for the first time, the
theme is conclusively resolved into F major, with the major third, A (enharmoni-
cally equivalent to B ), prominently doubled in the inner voices in the final bars.
The sketchleaf shown in Plates 19–20 is a new and revealing source for this
Adagio sostenuto. The leaf was misidentified by earlier scholars, such as Georg
Kinsky, who believed that its musical contents related to a violin sonata, and who
commented on the melodic and metrical similarity of this music to the violin part
in the Benedictus of the Missa solemnis.27 Like the Benedictus, the extended draft
that occupies most of this leaf is in 12/8 meter, not the 6/8 meter familiar from the
final version of the movement. This sketchleaf was not listed in standard cata-
logues of Beethoven’s sketches, but was discussed in a study by Nicholas Marston,
26
Kritischer Katalog sämtlicher Werke Ludwig van Beethovens mit Analysen derselben,
iv, p. 41.
27
Georg Kinsky, Manuskripte, Briefe, Dokumente von Scarlatti bis Stravinsky: Katalog
der Musikautographen-Sammlung Louis Koch (Stuttgart, 1953), p. 69. The manuscript
contains a notation not in Beethoven’s hand at the bottom of the recto side attributing the
draft to a “Violinsonate.”
230 beethoven
who supplies a transcription based on photographs on deposit at the National-
bibliothek in Vienna.28 The recto side of the manuscript contains nine measures
distributed across three systems devoted to the opening theme; the verso side has
about a dozen measures devoted to the next main theme and to the elaborate figu-
ration characteristic of this remarkable slow movement. Taking into account the
12/8 meter of this draft, the music in question corresponds to a section of more
than forty measures of the finished work. Another fascinating dimension of this
source is the short sketch in 6/8 meter at the top of the recto side, accompanied
by the inscription “auch in 3/4tel [Takt] mit 16tel besser” (“also in 3/4 meter with
sixteenth [notes] [is] better”). It is possible that this sketch might have been con-
nected to the introduction to the fugal finale, which is marked Largo in the finished
work, and which begins with a gesture of rising octave Fs not unlike those at the
beginning of the sketch.
The ensuing slow introduction to the finale indeed begins with this drop of a
semitone, as F is sounded across all the pitch registers. Beethoven now distills the
intervallic basis of the whole sonata, reducing the music to a fundamental, under-
lying level of content consisting solely of the chain of falling thirds in the bass, ac-
companied by soft, hesitant chords in the treble. This chain of thirds is interrupted
three times by brief glimpses of other music, and the last of these evocations is ob-
viously Bachian in character. As in the transition to the choral finale in the Ninth
Symphony there is thus a search toward new compositional possibilities, with
the clear implication here that Baroque counterpoint is transcended by the cre-
ation of a new contrapuntal idiom embodied in the revolutionary fugal finale of
the sonata.
No less fascinating is the manner in which Beethoven seems to derive elements
of the fugal finale from this Largo introduction. Following the Bachian “quota-
tion,” he repeats the searching unison octaves across all the pitch registers, now
on A instead of F; the head of the fugue subject employs precisely these pitches, F
and A, to span a rising tenth—an interval reminiscent at the same time of the ini-
tial upbeat in the first movement. Another, more obvious foreshadowing of the
finale is rhythmic in nature. After the strangely still and expressively blank chain
of falling thirds, Beethoven introduces an astonishing rhythmic intensification and
acceleration to fortissimo and prestissimo in the final moments of the introduc-
tion, before a ritardando and harmonic pivot from A to F lead into the Allegro
risoluto.
Beethoven described the fugue as “con alcune licenze,” but it is exhaustive in
its contrapuntal resources. Most of the seven main sections of the finale unfold
like fugal variations on the main subject, which is worked out in rhythmic aug-
mentation (section 2), retrograde motion (section 3), and inversion (section 4).
The subject bears an audible resemblance to the beginning of the first movement.
28
“Approaching the Sketches for Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata,” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 44 (1991), pp. 406–9, 416–18. The source in the Vienna
Nationalbibliothek is catalogued as Photogramm-Archiv 157.
Ex. 72 Hammerklavier Sonata op. 106/IV

a. fugue, bars 1–7
b. fugue, bars 141–49; the retrograde version of the theme is in the left hand in bars
144–49
Its striking opening leap of a tenth to a sustained trill and its sharp profile of
sequences outlining falling thirds lend themselves particularly well to contrapun-
tal processes. Even the most abstract thematic transformation—the retrograde
version, played in reverse, or Krebsgang—can be readily recognized through the
rhythm and placement of repeated notes (Ex. 72a and b).
This section in retrograde with its implied negation of the theme, as well as the
sublime interlude heard later in D major, raise fundamental aesthetic issues. The
smooth, somewhat faceless cantabile of the retrograde section and its tonality (B
minor!) set it apart from the remainder of the movement. By reversing the pattern
of thematic unfolding Beethoven seems almost to annul time, opening a dimen-
sion apart from the main action. The role of B minor as a focus of negative energy
receives its ultimate embodiment in this passage, though one, to be sure, that de-
pends vitally on an understanding of the structural operations in the music and
not merely on a response to the outward expressive effect.
By contrast, the D major episode, played una corda, is wholly positive in char-
232 beethoven
acter and akin to Beethoven’s setting of “in nomine Domini” in the Benedictus of
the Missa solemnis, as Uhde observed.29 As a still oasis amid the harsh brilliance
and rhythmic fury that generally characterize the finale, the D major interlude cre-
ates an even greater contrast than the B minor episode in retrograde. Yet both con-
trasting modalities are but stages within a larger process, and exert little lasting
influence on the final sections of the movement.
The fugue of the Hammerklavier seems not to affirm a higher, more perfect or
serene world of eternal harmonies, as in Bach’s works, but to confront an open uni-

verse. Beethoven utilizes an initially abstract, retrograde rhythm to
generate a vigorous, propulsive forward momentum in the transition to the fourth
section, when this figure is juxtaposed with the original subject in inversion. And
the wonderful transition from the sublime D major interlude to the penultimate
section is like an awakening from a dream. As Uhde pointed out, there is no deus
ex machina in the Hammerklavier finale. “‘Man thinks,’ but whether ‘God guides’
is left open, not denied, but also not affirmed here.”30
A relevant mythic analogy to the Hammerklavier Sonata may be Prometheus,
the legend that gripped Beethoven more than any other and became an inspiring
force for the Eroica Symphony, as we have seen. Of possible significance are cer-
tain motivic parallels between op. 106 and the Eroica—the trio of the scherzo in
the sonata sounds much like a minor-mode variant of the opening of the sym-
phony. Prometheus was, of course, condemned to suffering in reprisal for his gift
to humankind of knowledge and art. Like the Eroica, yet even more profoundly,
the Hammerklavier Sonata implies an analogous narrative progression of heroic
struggle and suffering, leading to a rebirth of creative possibilities. After the pur-
gatorial Adagio sostenuto, the return of vital forces in the slow introduction to the
finale, and the fiery defiance of expression in the fugue itself, embody one of Bee-
thoven’s most radical artistic statements, a piece of “new music” among the most
uncompromising ever written.
29 Beethovens Klaviermusik, vol. 3, p. 457.

30 Ibid., p. 464.
9
R Struggle: 1819–1822
R
Until relatively recently, 1819 seemed to have been one of Beethoven’s least pro-
ductive periods, with only a few canons and the Eleven Dances for Seven Instru-
ments WoO 17 attributed to that year. This impression has been substantially
revised through the scrutiny of manuscripts unknown to earlier scholars, particu-
larly the Wittgenstein Sketchbook in the Bodmer Collection held at the Beetho-
ven-Archiv in Bonn and related documents in other collections. The chief discov-
ery is that by the summer of 1819 Beethoven had already conceived much of his
next gigantic undertaking after the Hammerklavier Sonata: the Thirty-Three Vari-
ations on a Waltz by Diabelli op. 120, a work that was finished and published
only four years later, in 1823.
The Diabelli Variations is the most paradoxical work that Beethoven ever wrote,
an enormous musical edifice built on a trivial waltz that he originally dismissed as
a “cobbler’s patch” on account of its mechanical sequences. The publisher Anton
Diabelli circulated this waltz of his own invention to fifty composers, each of
whom was requested to contribute a variation to the collective endeavor; the proj-
ect was tailored to generate publicity for Diabelli’s firm. It is astonishing and yet
characteristic of Beethoven in his last decade that such a commonplace stimulus
could trigger a major creative brainstorm. Instead of the requested single varia-
tion, Beethoven conceived a microcosm of his art embodied in a vast collection of
transformations, or “Veränderungen.” In the end, the Variations became one of
his longest and most intellectually demanding pieces; Brendel has described it as
“the greatest of all piano works.”1 The unique formal design and psychological
complexity of this composition have inspired literary responses from writers such
as Michel Butor and Irene Dische, whose novel Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz imi-
tates the form of a “theme” and thirty-three changes or transformations in a
“German”—in this case, variations not on a waltz (“Deutscher”) but on her main
character, Benedikt August Anton Cecil August, Count Waller von Wallerstein. A
probing exploration of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations on the stage has been un-
dertaken in Moisés Kaufman’s play 33 Variations, which opened in 2007.
The revelation of the genesis of the Diabelli Variations sheds new light on this
monumental work. Like many of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, the Wittgenstein
1
Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, p. 14.
233
234 beethoven
Sketchbook has not survived intact, as Beethoven originally used it. Among the pa-
pers he used in the Wittgenstein Sketchbook are four pages of sketches for the Dia-
belli Variations now held in Paris; these two bifolia belong with the fourteen pages
of sketches for the Variations found near the beginning of the book. Even more im-
portant is a draft on loose papers that can be conceptually reconstructed from
sources now dispersed in various locations (see Plate 16; Beethoven originally kept
this page together with other manuscripts, which are now in collections in Berlin
and in Montauban, France, as well as in Paris). The content of the draft corresponds
intimately to the entries in the Wittgenstein Sketchbook, preserving a remarkably
coherent record of the genesis of the Variations in their early draft version.2
This source reconstruction shows that in 1819 Beethoven composed no fewer
than twenty-three variations, ten fewer than the final number. Then, by the summer
of that year, he set the work aside to attend to the Missa solemnis op. 123. When
he returned to the Variations several years later, in late 1822 and early 1823, he ex-
panded his draft from within, retaining the preestablished order while inserting new
variations at strategic points and greatly elaborating the conclusion. The added
variations from 1823 include nos. 1–2, 15, 23–26, 28–29, and 31, as well as the
present form of the final Minuet variation and coda. We shall assess the special role
of these variations and the unique formal design of the work in the following chap-
ter, which considers the period when the Diabelli Variations was completed.
The impetus behind the Diabelli Variations is basically comic in nature, touch-
ing issues that are by no means confined to Beethoven’s art but which surface in
his biography as well. No other work by him is so rich in allusion, humor, and
parody. We might almost regard the Variations as an enormously extended chain
of puns; in each transformation, motivic aspects of the waltz are developed with
far more determination than is evident in Diabelli’s ditty. Beethoven treats the
waltz as a reservoir of unrealized possibilities, out of which the variations gener-
ate an almost encyclopedic range of contexts. The psychological complexity of the
Diabelli Variations arises above all from this tension between the commonplace
theme as point of departure and the almost unlimited horizon of the variations.
Beethoven’s most striking joke is his reference, in the unison octaves of Varia-
tion 22 (no. 19 in the draft), to “Notte e giorno faticar” from the beginning of
Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Ex. 73). In devising this variation Beethoven is reputed
to have been grumbling at all his hard work in composing the Variations, but,
even if true, this story touches only one dimension of the parody.3 The allusion is
brilliant, not only through the musical affinity of the themes—which share, for ex-
ample, the descending fourth and fifth—but through the reference to Mozart’s
Leporello. For Leporello shares a psychological trait usually developed to a con-
siderable degree by great artists—a capacity for ironic detachment. A quotation
from Leporello fits the work, whereas a quotation from Don Giovanni or from
virtually any other character in the opera would not: Beethoven’s relationship to
2 A discussion and full transcription of the 1819 draft is offered in my book Beethoven’s
Diabelli Variations.
3
This story appears, for example, in Martin Cooper, Beethoven: The Last Decade, p. 208.
struggle: 1819–1822 235
Ex. 73 Diabelli Variations op. 120, Variation 22
his theme, like Leporello’s to his master, is critical but faithful, inasmuch as he
thoroughly exploits its motivic components. Moreover, like Leporello, the varia-
tions after this point gain the capacity for disguise, as if they were not what they
seem to be. With uncanny wit, this variation expands the scope of the set beyond
the formalistic limits of art.
It is relevant here to recall Beethoven’s passion for verbal puns, which is espe-
cially well documented in the letters and sketchbooks of his later years. He found
it absolutely irresistible to pun on words such as gelehrt (“learned”) and geleert
(“emptied”), or Verleger (“publisher”) and verlegen (“embarrassed”), and on names
like “Steiner,” “Gebauer,” “Hoffmann,” and others in which double or multiple
meanings occurred to him. In the case of the choir director and concert organizer
Franz Xaver Gebauer, Beethoven reinterpreted the name as “Geh! Bauer” (“Go!
peasant”), and in one note he requested “toilet tickets” (Abtrittskarten instead of
Eintrittskarten) to attend Gebauer’s “music in the corner” (Winkelmusik).4 This,
of course, exemplifies Beethoven’s use not of a high, but of a low comic style.
Beethoven’s verbal wit rarely approaches the level of the best of his comic
music. As early as 1795, in the scherzo of the C major Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 3,
for example, he produced a resourceful play of paradox comparable to the most
brilliant literary devices in Laurence Sterne’s comic masterpiece Tristram Shandy.
In this scherzo a motivic turn figure serves as the pivot between two drastically
opposing moods: light, humorous music in the major pitted against mock bluster
in the minor in the developmental middle section. Subsequently, in the coda, the
two hands of the pianist even agree to disagree about the mode of the piece, with
droll minor accents in low ostinato figures sounded against major harmonies in
the upper registers.5 This delightfully humorous yet highly rational strain of Bee-
4 Thayer-Forbes, p. 771, where “Winkelmusik” is mistranslated as “musical obscurity.”
In this context, “Winkelmusik” must refer to “music in the corner,” or “music in the out-
house,” i.e., sounds emanating from the place where the “Abtrittskarten” were to be used.
5 For a more detailed discussion, see my essay “‘Beethoven’s High Comic Style in Piano
Sonatas of the 1790s’ or ‘Beethoven, Uncle Toby, and the Muck-Cart Driver.’”
236 beethoven
thoven’s art resurfaces time and again in different ways, in pieces like the sonatas
of opp. 10 and 31, the bagatelles op. 33, and the scherzando of the first Razu-
movsky quartet.
In Beethoven’s verbal puns and accompanying music, on the other hand, the
comedy can fall short. Martin Cooper has described Beethoven’s verbal humor as
“the kind that friends tolerate, and even come to enjoy, not because it is in fact
amusing but because they associate it with the good humor and the happy moods
of a man they love and admire.”6 The blunt or even crude side of Beethoven’s
sense of humor is illustrated in his vocal piece Lob auf den Dicken (“Praise to the
fat one”), written at the expense of the stout violinist Schuppanzigh; more amus-
ing is his canon Bester Herr Graf, Sie sind ein Schaf (“Dear Mr. Count, you are a
sheep,” i.e. a gullible fool) directed at Count Moritz Lichnowsky. These pieces are
not works of art but spontaneous effusions of mood within a social context. By
contrast, Beethoven’s important works of comic music contain a deeper symbolic
dimension; Cooper cites in this connection Goethe’s shrewd comment about the
poet Lichtenberg: “Whenever [he] makes a joke you will find some problem hid-
den.”7 Even in a masterpiece like the Diabelli Variations, however, with its multi-
tude of hidden “problems,” Beethoven makes room for a direct and even provoca-
tively aggressive vein of humor.
This sharp edge of his wit is felt above all in his reinterpretation of trivial or
repetitious features of the waltz. The C major chords repeated tenfold in the right
hand in its opening bars, for instance, are mercilessly exaggerated in Variation 21
(Ex. 74a and b). The first four bars of the variation form a grotesque exaggera-
tion of the primitive chord repetitions in the waltz and of its conventional turn at
the head of the melody: the chords repeat each harmony sixteen times, the turns
multiply themselves down three octaves. The juxtaposition of this passage with
the following Meno allegro in 3/4 is one of those instances in Beethoven’s late
music in which the notes speak with rhetorical significance. It is as if he meant to
say, after the Schreckensfanfare of the first four bars, “nicht diese Töne.”
In another parody variation, no. 13, the harmonically static bars of Diabelli’s
theme are suppressed altogether, obliterated into the silence behind rhythmically
charged chords (Ex. 75). Here the sheer strength of Beethoven’s rhythmic concep-
tion makes a mockery of Diabelli’s theme and the inconsequential complacency of
its opening bars. The humor of the variation consists in its expressive use of si-
lence: our expectations are alternately strained by the forceful gesture of the
chords and then dissipated into nothing. At the same time Beethoven resourcefully
exploits contrasts in register and dynamics. In this variation the humor of expres-
sive silences that characterizes the bass theme of the Eroica Variations op. 35 (see
chapter 3) is carried to a higher level, while absorbing Beethoven’s implied cri-
tique of the waltz.
Beethoven also assimilates into this comic masterpiece variations embodying
6 Beethoven: The Last Decade, p. 103.

7
Ibid., p. 210, note.
struggle: 1819–1822 237
Ex. 74 Diabelli Variations op. 120

a. Theme
b. Variation 21
his most serious, exalted, or transcendental styles. Some of these pieces seem to
allude to Handel and, especially, to Johann Sebastian Bach, the great artistic pred-
ecessors noted by Beethoven in his aforementioned letter to the Archduke Rudolph
of 29 July 1819—the letter containing his evocative expression Kunstvereinigung.
In the same document Beethoven mentions his researches in the archduke’s music
library, work presumably connected with his labors on the Missa solemnis.
The Mass is the great watershed composition of Beethoven’s later years, the
piece that consumed him more than any other. Early in June 1819 he wrote to the
archduke that “The day on which a High Mass composed by me will be per-
formed during the ceremonies solemnized for Your Imperial Highness will be the
most glorious day of my life,” and by August he wrote to him again: “But I hope

238 beethoven
to complete the Mass and in good time too, so that, if the arrangement still stands,
it can be performed on the 19th.”8 The elevation of the archduke to archbishop
of Olmütz in March 1820 provided the occasion for Beethoven’s composition of
the Missa solemnis, but, like the Diabelli Variations, this project assumed un-
precedented dimensions and its completion took years longer than expected. Only
in 1822 was the Mass finished in its basic substance, while Beethoven continued
to make revisions in the autograph long after that date.
Beethoven’s struggle with the Missa solemnis involved the achievement of a
balance between tradition and innovation in this most conservative of musical
genres. The work shows the evidence of his studies of much sacred composition
from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and his assimilation of the tradi-
tional rhetoric of Mass composition.9 The greatest historical strokes in the Mass,
however, rely not on assimilation of tradition but on the bold juxtaposition of
different idioms. For his setting of the “Incarnatus est” Beethoven revived the Do-
rian mode, yet moments later, at the words “et homo factus est,” the music shifts
into D major and the warmth of tonality. This passage derives power not only
from the remote ethos of the distant past but from our sense that the later idiom
is actually an advance, that the birth of tonality is itself capable of dramatizing the
birth (or rebirth) of humankind. In other archaizing passages in the Mass, and in
the G major section of the Ninth Symphony finale, there is often no sense that
these historical references are superseded, as in the Credo of the Mass. But it is
significant that the conclusions of both works stress an immediacy of experience
that leaves all such references behind. The end of the Mass, in particular, in its
“depiction of inner and outer peace,”10 is highly subjective, though without a
trace of sentimentality.
Because of the close affinity between the musical symbolism of the Missa
solemnis and the choral finale of the Ninth, we shall reserve detailed discussion of
the Mass until the next chapter. The Diabelli Variations, Missa solemnis, and Ninth
Symphony offer ever more striking instances of a trend reaching back to the Ham-
merklavier Sonata, or even to the Archduke Trio or the Eroica—Beethoven’s ten-
dency to produce pieces of special ambition and enhanced scope that surpass his
previous achievements in particular genres. This process is reflected in his sketch-
ing procedure. For the Missa solemnis he made more than 600 pages of sketches,
filling generous portions of four large-format sketchbooks as well as numerous
pocket sketchbooks and loose gatherings of sketchleaves. A comparable amount
of preliminary labor was invested in other late works, with the number of sketches
for the C minor Quartet op. 131 exceeding even that for the Mass.
In view of this pattern one must question the claim advanced recently by Julia
Moore that financial considerations motivated Beethoven to undertake more am-
bitious artistic plans. Moore writes that “He set very high prices for his works at
8
9 Cf. Kirkendale, “New Roads to Old Ideas in Beethoven’s Missa solemnis.”
10
Beethoven’s original inscription in the autograph score used the word “Darstellung”
(“depiction”); he subsequently changed it to “prayer for inner and outer peace.”
struggle: 1819–1822 239
an early stage of composition and then had to justify these fees by producing
works large in scope and original in style.”11 If financial concerns were as domi-
nant as Moore maintains, Beethoven would hardly have delayed the completion
of projects like the Variations and the Mass for such a long time. On the contrary,
it was the unique artistic demands of these projects that apparently compelled him
to prolong the process of composition. Moore argues that Beethoven aimed at de-
liberate inaccessibility in his later music, since “his public no longer much cared
whether they understood his works . . . and they were moved to inordinate admi-
ration of works by the great Beethoven, works they could not understand.”12 This
statement is hard to reconcile with either the artistic or historical evidence.
Notwithstanding his financial anxieties and his sharp business practice in con-
nection with the Missa solemnis, Beethoven’s greater musical masterpieces can
scarcely be regarded as works written “for money”; such a view loses sight of the
priority of his artistic enterprise, which is more evident during these years than
ever before. We do not need to seek special economic motives for his Missa solem-
nis, or for his later sonatas and quartets: he quite justifiably demanded higher fees
in view of the enhanced scale and content of such works. The relatively small
number of pieces completed lent urgency to his concern to be fairly compensated.
Beethoven’s creative struggle from 1819 to 1822 resulted not from any loss of
inspiration but from the formidable compositional challenges he set himself, in
conjunction with the distractions of custody battles over his nephew Karl and
bouts of ill health. The climax of the custody hearings came in 1820. In February
Beethoven prepared a massive document presenting his side of the case, brimming
with accusations against Karl’s mother, his sister-in-law Johanna, whom elsewhere
he dubbed “the Queen of the Night.” In July the case was finally decided in Bee-
thoven’s favor, and Karl remained in his guardianship. Meanwhile, the Berlin pub-
lisher Adolf Schlesinger had approached Beethoven about piano sonatas, an im-
pulse that led to the final sonata trilogy, opp. 109–11, works that we shall examine
in some detail. These three sonatas represented interruptions in Beethoven’s pro-
tracted ongoing labors on the Missa solemnis, but their completion was in turn held
up by severe illness during the first half of 1821, which brought Beethoven’s com-
positional activity to a virtual standstill for several months. Only in 1822 and 1823
was he able to finish a number of major projects that had occupied him for years.
S S S
The compositional origins of the Sonata in E major op. 109 can be traced to the first
months of 1820 and actually preceded Beethoven’s negotiations with Schlesinger.
Recent research suggests that it was another request, from the musician and editor
Friedrich Starke, that motivated Beethoven by April of that year to break off work
on the Missa solemnis to write what soon became the first movement of op. 109.
Starke asked Beethoven for a contribution to his piano anthology, the Wiener
Pianoforteschule, in response to which the composer eventually offered the
11
“Beethoven and Inflation,” p. 217.
12 Ibid.
240 beethoven
Bagatelles op. 119 nos. 7 to 11 inclusive. But it appears that “the new little piece”—
as described in Beethoven’s conversation book in late April—was originally identi-
cal with what became the opening Vivace, ma non troppo of the sonata.13 Its un-
usual design suggests a bagatelle interrupted by two fantasy-like episodes, and in his
draft in the Grasnick 20b manuscript Beethoven even labeled the slow continuation
in triple meter, marked Adagio espressivo in the completed work, as a “Fantasie.”14
Brandenburg has proposed on the basis of sketches (Grasnick 20b, fol. 1v) that
Beethoven may have at first contemplated a new two-movement E minor Sonata,
without the independently conceived first movement.15 Some of the prominent
motivic links connecting the Vivace with the following Prestissimo movement and
the closing set of variations were evidently created or developed only after Bee-
thoven’s decision to weld the three movements together as one work.
The first movement of op. 109 reflects Beethoven’s intense interest at this time
with parenthetical structures that enclose musical passages within contrasting sec-
tions. His use of such procedures assumes more and more importance in the last
sonatas and seems to have increased as a result of his labors on the Credo of the
Missa solemnis during the first half of 1820, when he devised an immense paren-
thetical structure separating the musical setting of the events on earth (from the
“et incarnatus est” to the “Resurrexit”) from the remainder of the movement;
here, an abrupt interruption of the cadence at “descendit de coelis” prepares a
later resumption of the music at “ascendit in coelum.”16 The opening movement
of the sonata was composed at about the same time, and its unique formal design
is evidently the product of similar techniques of parenthetical enclosure. The open-
ing Vivace material is interrupted after only eight bars, as it reaches the threshold
of a cadence in the dominant of E major (Ex. 76). The cadence is not granted but
evaded in the ensuing fantasy-like Adagio passage, whose elaborate arpeggiations
make a striking contrast with the initial Vivace material, with its uniformity of
rhythm and texture. Yet, when the music finally arrives firmly on a dominant ca-
dence (bar 15), this is timed to coincide with the resumption of the Vivace music
in the very same register as before. The entire Adagio section is thus positioned at
the moment of the interrupted cadence, and the resulting parenthetical structure
gives the effect of a suspension of time in the contrasting section, or the enclosure
of one time within another.
Awareness of this parenthetical structure is essential to a proper understanding
of the formal design of the movement, which has resisted the schematic catego-
rization so often advanced by analysts. Charles Rosen and others have suggested
that the “second subject” is found already in bar 9, at the beginning of the Adagio,
but that explanation is partial and not entirely satisfactory.17 In fact, the firm arrival
13
Cf. Meredith, “The Origins of Beethoven’s op. 109.”
14
A facsimile and transcription of this draft is contained in my article “Thematic Con-
trast and Parenthetical Enclosure in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, Opp. 109 and 111.”
15
“Die Skizzen zur Neunten Symphonie,” p. 105, note 35.
16
See chapter 10, pp. 270–73.
17 Sonata Forms, pp. 283–84.
struggle: 1819–1822 241
Ex. 76 Piano Sonata op. 109/I
of a cadence in the dominant, which typically marks the beginning of a second sub-
ject group, is delayed here until the beginning of the development section based on
the Vivace material. The central idea of the exposition consists precisely in the in-
terdependence of the two contrasting thematic complexes, in which the parentheti-
cal structure plays an essential role. The bold and unpredictable quality of this de-
sign is sustained by Beethoven’s avoidance of literal recapitulation in later stages of
the movement, such as at the point of recapitulation (bar 48), where the music pen-
etrates the highest register, or the return of the Adagio (bars 58 ff.), which is no mere
transposition of the exposition but a reinterpretation of it, carrying the music em-
phatically and climactically into the remote key of C major. It remains for the coda
to synthesize the contrasting themes and bring them into a new and closer relation-
ship. These elements of continuing development and reinterpretation represent a
paradoxical assertion of Beethoven’s fidelity to Classical principles: since the initial
material had involved an astonishing and abrupt contrast, a predictability of design
involving literal transpositions in the recapitulation would be out of keeping with
the unpredictable, exploratory character established at the outset.
Beethoven’s coda actually does more than synthesize aspects of the two con-
trasting themes, since it simultaneously prepares the movements to come (Ex. 77).
Its melodic crux lies in the falling tone C –B, which occurs twice in the chordal
legato passage and then repeatedly in both the minor (with C ) and major in the
following bars, where the original texture of the Vivace is restored. This melodic
emphasis on the descent from C provides a direct link to the second half of the
theme of the finale. Later, in the penultimate bar of the coda, a sudden dislocation
in register and rhythm emphasizes the closing E major chord and sets up the sur-
prising plunge into the ensuing Prestissimo in E minor. As in opp. 110 and 111
Beethoven builds a bridge to the following music into the conclusion of the open-
242 beethoven
Ex. 77 Piano Sonata op. 109/I, bars 73–88
ing movement, which seems in its yearning incompleteness to hint at more than it
can encompass. A similar narrative thread, whereby the coda of a first movement
acts simultaneously as a reminiscence and a foreshadowing, can be observed in
both the following sonatas.
The Prestissimo is in 6/8 meter and takes on much of the character of a scherzo,
though it is in sonata form and lacks a trio. Like the first movement it employs a
stepwise falling bass, and the motivic relationship C–B, or C –B, from the end of
the Vivace again assumes considerable importance. The second subject begins on
the supertonic, F , by replacing the motivic step C–B by C –B, whereas in the de-
velopment a prominent bass pedal rises from B to C. The driven, agitated charac-
ter of the music relents at the end of the brief contrapuntal development, leading
to an una corda passage so devised as to slow and then virtually suspend all sense
of forward motion after the fermata nine bars before the recapitulation (Ex. 78).
Beethoven accomplishes this effect by introducing a melodic and rhythmic retro-
grade of the basic thematic cell, whose treble line E–F –G–E–F and rhythmic
pattern long–long–short–short–long is turned back on itself in the following bars,
with their melodic pattern E–G–F and rhythmic pattern short–short–long. At the
center of this mirroring retrograde effect is a renewed stress on the supertonic F ;
thus it is the dominant not of the tonic E minor but of the dominant B minor—
the “wrong” key—that leads into the reprise. The remote quality of this retrograde
gesture arises not only through tonal means but also through the spareness of tex-
ture and the extremely soft dynamic level, pianissimo and una corda, in contrast
with fortissimo and tutte le corde at the recapitulation. Consequently, the music is
wrenched violently into the recapitulation, overthrowing harmonic conventions.
Yet the stroke seems fully convincing in context, after the still moment of introspec-
tion that ends the development. Here again, as in the coda of the first movement,
the music transcends itself and seems to look beyond its immediate context as in an
act of clairvoyance, distantly foreshadowing the serene inwardness of the finale be-
fore the reassertion of the agitated character of the movement as a whole.
Some parallels with these special procedures are found in the faster movements
of both opp. 110 and 111. In the scherzo-like Allegro molto of op. 110 the music
struggle: 1819–1822 243
Ex. 78 Piano Sonata op. 109/II, bars 81–111
slows in tempo just before a brusque reassertion of the basic character leads to the
cadence of the main section in F minor. The thematic contour of this prominent
repeated gesture is later developed in the “coda” of the movement, which acts as
a bridge to the weighty finale. In op. 111, on the other hand, the contrasting lyri-
cal theme in A major in the exposition of the turbulent Allegro con brio ed ap-
passionato is presented parenthetically, slowing the tempo and transforming the
prevailing character. And although this theme is cut off abruptly in the exposition
by a resumption of the tempestuous music of the Allegro, its return in the recapitu-
lation is developed at greater length in C major, preparing the remarkable tran-
sition in the coda to the ensuing Arietta movement. In each of the last three
sonatas, thematic contrast in the faster movements thus serves the larger function
of foreshadowing the spiritualized final movements; the narrative significance of
this procedure is subtle but unmistakable.
Like the slow variation theme of the Archduke Trio op. 97, the theme of the
variations that close op. 109 resembles a sarabande, a dignified Baroque dance
type whose rhythm stresses the second beat of each bar of triple meter. Its reflec-
tive character results in part from a meditative dwelling on the tonic note E, which
is approached at first from the third above and then from more expressive, distant
intervals above and below. The pervasive descending bass motion familiar from
the earlier movements is reversed here: the bass ascends one and a half octaves in
the first two bars, forming an effective counterpoint to the melody in the treble,
whose falling thirds similarly invert the texture of rising thirds from the beginning
of the sonata. Beethoven’s indication Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung under-
scores the sublime lyricism that characterizes the whole, culminating in the extra-
ordinary sixth variation and the following, closing da capo of the original theme.
As with the op. 111 Arietta movement, Beethoven’s manuscripts for these
244 beethoven
variations reveal a rigorous process of selection, with many sketched variations
left unused and a number of early ideas combined in some of the finished varia-
tions. In the completed work the first variation maintains the tempo of the theme,
while expanding its register in an unfolding of passionate melody of an almost op-
eratic character (see Plates 22 and 23). The more flowing second variation has a
tripartite structure in each half with varied structural repetitions: while the first
and last sections somewhat resemble the texture of the Vivace in the first move-
ment, the beginning of the second section elaborates the lower pitch of each
falling third in expressive trills. The other variations bring metrical changes and
an increased density of counterpoint: Variation 3 suggests a two-voice Bachian in-
vention in invertible counterpoint; Variation 4 introduces four imitative voices;
and Variation 5 develops a complex fugal web infused with intense rhythmic en-
ergy. The climactic quality of this fifth variation even motivated Beethoven to
include an extra, more subdued repetition of the second half of the thematic struc-
ture; this passage acts as a transition to the final variation, with its initial restora-
tion of the tempo and basic character of the original theme.
Several of the variations are directly connected by subtle transitions in sonor-
ity, thus enhancing the unity of the whole. The strong contrast between the swift
Allegro vivace in 2/4 time and the more gentle, contrapuntal fourth variation,
with its spacious bars of 9/8 meter in a tempo slower than the theme, is bridged
through a common tied note, for instance. A direct harmonic transition links the
fugal Allegro, ma non troppo of Variation 5 with the last variation, since the last
chord of the former is left on the dominant and resolves to the tonic only at the
outset of the ensuing reprise of the head of the original theme. An even more
telling cadential overlap later connects the end of the ethereal sixth variation with
the closing da capo of the entire theme.
After the striking contrasts of the preceding variations, the sixth at first seems
to bring us full circle, with a return of the sarabande in its original register; but
Beethoven now explores the theme by developing the dominant pedal from the
beginning of each half. This pedal is prolonged and soon elaborated as a slow trill;
after a total of five progressive rhythmic diminutions, it grows into an unmea-
sured pulsation of fast trills sounded in both hands. At this point Beethoven con-
tinues the process of rhythmic intensification by increasing the motion of the
melodic voices first to triplet eighths and then to thirty-second notes, as the trill
on the dominant drops into the lowest register. Yet another stage of transforma-
tion is reached at the repetition of the second half of the thematic structure, where
the original contour of the theme appears in syncopation in the highest register,
above the trill in the middle register and rapid thirty-second-note figuration in the
left hand (Ex. 79). Thus, through a rigorous process of rhythmic acceleration and
registral expansion, the slow cantabile theme virtually explodes from within,
yielding, through a kind of radioactive break-up, a fantastically elaborate texture
of shimmering, vibrating sounds.
This ecstatic moment in the final variation reaffirms in the celestial upper reg-
ister the progression leading to the melodic peak on C that derives from the
theme itself, three bars from the conclusion of the sarabande. It is this gesture that
struggle: 1819–1822 245
Ex. 79 Piano Sonata op. 109/III, bars 177–80
was foreshadowed in the coda of the first movement and stressed at the fortissimo
climax of the fourth variation, among other passages; but perhaps nowhere else
is the expressive impact of the dissonant major ninth chord supporting C so strik-
ing as here. After this climax a gradual diminuendo on the protracted dominant
eventually resolves to the slightly varied da capo of the theme, which now seems
transfigured by the experience we have undergone in reapproaching it.
In a sense, then, the variations concluding op. 109 embody two cycles of trans-
formation: the first five variations recast the theme and develop its structure and
character in a variety of expressive contexts, while the sixth initiates a new series
of changes compressed into a single continuous process that is guided by the logi-
cal unfolding of rhythmic development. In the final variation an urgent will to
overcome the inevitable passing of time and sound seems to fill up the spaces of
the slow theme with a virtually unprecedented density of material, challenging the
physical limits of execution and hearing. This idea, in turn, was to be greatly ex-
panded by Beethoven into the controlling framework of the variations on the Ari-
etta that conclude op. 111, the last movement of his last sonata.
S S S
On 6 December 1821 Beethoven wrote a moving dedication of the E major Sonata
to Maximiliane Brentano, daughter of Antonie Brentano, who was to receive the
dedication of the Diabelli Variations. In the dedication Beethoven describes his
spiritual bond to the Brentano family as something that “can never be destroyed
by time,” and he recaptures his own fond memories of the experiences of a decade
earlier. He was now living in the Landstrasse, in the vicinity of the former Birken-
stock mansion, a circumstance that must have helped draw his thoughts to the
past, although his financial indebtedness to Franz Brentano may also have played
a role in these dedications.
The first half of 1821 had been a dismal time for Beethoven. The scant docu-
mentation of his activities, his letters attesting sickness, and the sketch sources all
point to a significant drop in productivity. He must have been too sick to compose
at all during some of this period. After a rheumatic attack in the winter, he suf-
246 beethoven
fered in the spring from an outbreak of jaundice, an ominous symptom of the liver
disease that eventually claimed his life. After this onset of long-term hepatitis, Bee-
thoven’s basic physical condition was especially vulnerable, and even his moder-
ate intake of wine would have had a damaging impact. In a recent study, Horst
Scherf divides the composer’s life into two clinical phases separated by the appear-
ance of incurable illness in 1821.18 Still, five extremely productive years remained
to Beethoven before the ultimate breakdown of his health in December 1826.
These years may be regarded as his last “creative period” if the emphasis is placed
on biographical criteria. The works of 1821–24, however, show deep affinities
with his earlier music and were begun in part well before 1821, even if some of
their conspicuous symbolic features were devised only later in the compositional
process, after his convalescence in September 1821. Beethoven’s recovery sparked
his sense of humor and his creative forces, resulting in the genesis of the Piano
Sonata in A major op. 110, the composition of which overlapped somewhat with
that of the final Sonata in C minor op. 111, from 1822.
Humor is abundantly evident in Beethoven’s canon O Tobias Dominus Haslinger
O! O! from September 1821, one of his numerous joking communications to
Haslinger, a partner in Steiner’s publishing firm. Beethoven explained the origin
of the canon as entwined with a twofold journey: a trip by carriage from Baden
to Vienna, during which he fell asleep; and an ensuing dream journey to Syria,
India, Arabia, and finally Jerusalem. “The Holy City made my thoughts turn to
the sacred books. So it is no wonder that I then began to think of that fellow To-
bias,” Beethoven wrote in the letter accompanying the canon he sent to Haslinger.
According to Beethoven, he forgot the canon upon awakening. Another journey
in the same vehicle the next day allowed him “in accordance with the law of the
association of ideas” to recall the piece and commit it to paper.19 This story well
illustrates Beethoven’s delight in the paradoxical joining of the exalted and the
commonplace, the sacred and the profane.
A somewhat analogous contrast is embedded in the A major Sonata op. 110.
Its second movement serves as a scherzo in form and character, although it bears
only the tempo designation Allegro molto, in 2/4 meter. This movement shows the
humorous temper characteristic of Beethoven’s scherzos, even though the tonic is
minor. As others have observed, Beethoven alludes to two popular songs, Unsa
Kätz häd Katzln ghabt (“Our cat has had kittens”) and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist
lüderlich (“I am dissolute, you are dissolute”), in the main section of this move-
ment.20 The opening phrase, with its use of Unsa Kätz häd Katzla ghabt, is stated
piano before being answered, in Martin Cooper’s words, by a “C major shout,”
and the sforzandi at cadences contradict the rounded phrase endings normal in
Beethoven, and sound comic and parodistic.
One key to the expressive associations of the Allegro molto rests in the text “I
18 “Die Legende vom Trinker Beethoven,” esp. pp. 242–46.

19 The letter and canon appear in Anderson, vol. 2, L. 1056.
20 Cooper, Beethoven: The Last Decade, pp. 190–91; A. B. Marx, Ludwig van Beetho-
ven: Leben und Schaffen, ii, p. 416.

struggle: 1819–1822 247
Ex. 80a. Piano Sonata op. 110/II, bars 17–21
b. Song, Ich bin lüderlich
am dissolute, you are dissolute” (the source of Beethoven’s quotation and the pas-
sage in the Allegro molto are compared in Ex. 80a and b). The word “lüderlich”
refers to a bedraggled or slovenly individual not fit for polite society. Beethoven
himself was once taken for such around this time when, miserably clothed and
having lost his way in Wiener Neustadt, he was seen peering in at the windows of
the houses, whereupon the police were summoned. When arrested, he protested,
“I am Beethoven,” to which the policeman replied, “Well, why not? You’re a
bum: Beethoven doesn’t look like that” (“Warum nit gar? A Lump sind Sie; so
sieht der Beethoven nit aus”).21 But even if there is an autobiographical resonance
in this passage, its main artistic significance lies in Beethoven’s assimilation of the
lowly, droll, and commonplace into the work, where such material proves com-
plementary to the most elevated of sentiments. Some musicians, such as von
Bülow and Martin Cooper, have looked askance at the unsophisticated humor of
Ich bin lüderlich; Cooper comments on “that Dutch vein of humour which re-
minds us that the composer’s forebears may well have been among the peasants
whose gross amusements we know from the pictures of the Breughels.”22 Yet here,
once more, “a problem may lie hidden,” in Goethe’s sense. Important in this con-
nection is Beethoven’s apparent allusion to Ich bin lüderlich in a passage much
later in the sonata, to be discussed below.
Transcendental and even religious characteristics surface in the unique finale of
op. 110, with its pairing of Arioso dolente and fugue. As in the Hammerklavier
Sonata and in the Ninth Symphony Beethoven incorporates a transition before
reaching the finale proper; the music is notated partly without bar lines and with
a profusion of tempo and expressive directions. An explicit recitative emerges in
the fourth bar and carries us to A minor, tonic minor of the sonata as a whole.
For some moments the music dwells contemplatively on a high A ; the recitative
then falls in pitch, briefly affirming E major before returning to A minor in the
bars immediately preceding the beginning of the great lament. In a sense, the en-
suing Arioso dolente is operatic in character, with a broadly extended but asym-
21 Thayer-Forbes, p. 778, polishes the language of the Austrian policeman; the colloqui-
alisms are retained in Frimmel, “Beethovens Spaziergang nach Wiener Neustadt,” Beethoven-
Forschung: Lose Blätter 9 (1923), p. 7.
22
Beethoven: The Last Decade, p. 191.
248 beethoven
metrical melody supported by poignant harmonies in the repeated chords of the
left hand. The recitative already foreshadows the tragic passion of the lament and
prefigures some of its motivic relationships. There is even a framing cadential ges-
ture at the conclusion of the Arioso dolente that harks back to the end of the pas-
sage in recitative (cf. bars 6–7 and 25–26).
The pairing of the Arioso dolente with the fugue in A major has no precedent
in Beethoven’s earlier instrumental music; its closest affinity is with the Agnus Dei
and “Dona nobis pacem” of the Missa solemnis, the movements of the Mass that
occupied him contemporaneously with the sonata. The Agnus Dei, in B minor, is
burdened by an overwhelming awareness of the sins of humanity and the fallen
state of earthly existence; by contrast, the “Dona nobis pacem” represents the
promise of liberation from this endless cycle of suffering and injustice, symbolized
by the recurring and ominous approach of bellicose music. Significantly, Beetho-
ven’s setting of the “Dona nobis pacem,” in D major, employs a prominent motif
outlining ascending perfect fourths, which are filled in by conjunct motion. The
fugue subject of op. 110 consists similarly of three ascending perfect fourths, the
last of them filled in by stepwise descending motion, while smooth conjunct mo-
tion also characterizes the countersubjects (Ex. 81a and b). The closest stylistic
parallels to this exalted fugal idiom in Beethoven’s piano music are the D major
cantabile fugal episode in the finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata and the superb
Fughetta from the Diabelli Variations, written soon thereafter, in early 1823. Each
of these recalls the polyphony of J. S. Bach, assimilating that idiom into the rich
context of Beethoven’s Kunstvereinigung.
The importance of the fugue subject in op. 110 is underscored by Beethoven’s
foreshadowing of this theme in the first movement. Its intervallic structure, with
three successive rising fourths (A –D , B –E , C–F) is already latent in the open-
ing four bars. This initial phrase is set apart from the continuation through its
polyphonic texture, fermata, and trill, and functions almost like a motto for the
entire sonata. The later fugal subject represents a kind of intervallic crystallization
or even purification of the motto. The vocal character and harmonic consonance
of the fugal subject in op. 110 bear comparison with the “Dona nobis pacem” of
the Missa solemnis, and, in its function within the whole sonata, the fugal subject
acts like a symbolic counterpart to the “Joy” theme of the Ninth Symphony.
Ex. 81a. Missa solemnis op. 123, Agnus Dei, bars 107–10
b. Piano Sonata op. 110/III, bars 27–35

struggle: 1819–1822 249
Beethoven’s later fugues make extensive, sometimes exhaustive use of the de-
vices of inversion, stretto, diminution, and augmentation. These devices tend to be
used not for their own sake but as a means of expressive intensification, especially
in the later stages of a work; in op. 110 they are concentrated in the second part of
the fugue, beginning in the remote key of G major. The central idea of this finale
consists in the relationship between the earthly pain of the lament and the conso-
lation and inward strength of the fugue. Initially, however, the fugue cannot be sus-
tained; it is suddenly broken off on a dominant-seventh chord of A major, which
is interpreted as a German augmented-sixth chord, resolving to a triad of G minor,
and this dark sonority is treated as tonic for the return of the Arioso dolente. The
tonal relationship involved is bold and virtually unprecedented in Beethoven: the
entire lament is restated, in intensified and varied form, in G minor; and the fram-
ing cadential gesture brings a shift to the major, which assumes the character of a
miraculous discovery. Nine increasingly intense repetitions of this G major sonor-
ity follow, and a gradual arpeggiation of that sound leads upward to the inversion
of the fugue subject, which now enters, quietly and una corda, in G major.
The concluding fugue thus begins in the key of the leading note, to reemerge
only later into the tonic, A major, in the triumphant final passages. This unusual
tonal relationship enhances the power of the conclusion; equally striking is
Beethoven’s treatment of contrapuntal permutations in the transition from G
major to A major. Not only does the subject appear against itself in diminution
and augmentation, but it appears in double diminution at the Meno allegro, com-
prising a decorating motivic cell that soon surrounds the sustained notes of the in-
verted subject (Ex. 82b).
Tovey claimed that in this closing fugue Beethoven eschewed an “organ-like
climax” with its ascetic connotations as a “negation of the world”: “Like all Bee-
thoven’s visions this fugue absorbs and transcends the world.”23 It is significant in
this regard that the transitional double-diminution passage seems to recall the ear-
lier comic allusion in the Allegro molto. The rhythmic and registral correspon-
dence renders the beginning of the Meno allegro transparent to Ich bin lüderlich,
reinforcing Tovey’s sense of an absorption of the “world”; a similarity is clearly
audible, in part because Beethoven compresses the fugal subject in diminution,
deleting the second of its three rising fourths (Ex. 82a and b). Both motifs stress
the fourths spanning A –E and C–G, which are inverted in the fugue, and there
is a parallel placement of faster note values.
The import of Beethoven’s inscription for the entire transitional passage, “nach
u. nach sich neu belebend” (“gradually coming anew to life”), is embodied in this
musical progression. The abstract contrapuntal matrix beginning with the in-
verted subject is gradually infused with a new energy, which arises not naturally
through traditional fugal procedures but only through an exertion of will that
strains those processes to their limits.
The rhythmic developments that point the way out of Beethoven’s fugal labyrinth
23 A Companion to Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, pp. 270, 285–86; see also Mellers, Bee-
thoven and the Voice of God, pp. 238–39.

250 beethoven
Ex. 82a. Piano Sonata op. 110/II, bars 17–21
b. Piano Sonata op. 110/III, bars 165–75
thus distort the subject, compressing it almost beyond recognition, while simulta-
neously opening a means of connection with the earlier movements through what
Carl Dahlhaus calls “subthematic figuration.”24 The entry of the original subject
in bar 174 is accompanied by sixteenth-note figuration continuing the texture of
double diminution, giving the effect of the theme being glorified by its own sub-
stance; at the same time this rapid figuration recalls the ethereal passagework
from the first movement of the sonata. The transition from the darkness and pes-
simism of the Arioso dolente to the light and ecstasy of the fugue is now fully ac-
complished; and in the final moments Beethoven extends the fugal subject melod-
ically into the high register before it is emphatically resolved, once and for all, into
A major sonority five bars before the end. This structural downbeat represents a
goal toward which the whole work seems to have aspired. Yet the true conclusion
lies beyond this chord in a rapport with silence, as (in Brendel’s words) the work
throws off even “the chains of music itself.”25
24
Ludwig van Beethoven, pp. 261–62.
struggle: 1819–1822 251
Like op. 110 the design of Beethoven’s final sonata op. 111 shows a powerful
directional progression toward its finale, consisting, as in op. 109, of a weighty
series of variations on a contemplative, hymn-like theme. The variations on the
Arietta in C major that form the second movement of op. 111 are more tightly in-
tegrated than those that close op. 109 and unfold according to the venerable de-
vice whereby each transformation of the theme brings increasing subdivisions in
rhythm. Beethoven carries this process so far in op. 111 that the series of rhyth-
mic diminutions first transforms the original character without altering the basic
tempo, and then reapproaches the sublime quality of the chorale-like theme, as
the most rapid rhythmic textures, culminating in sustained trills, are reached
in the closing stages. Something of the same plan underlies the final variation in
the finale of op. 109, but in his final sonata Beethoven developed this procedure
to serve as the structural basis for the entire closing movement. The variations
on the Arietta became a suitable culmination and resolution for the work, which
dispenses with any further movements and leaves the tempestuous C minor idiom
of the opening Allegro far behind. Moritz Schlesinger’s naive query whether a
concluding third movement had been omitted from the manuscript was received
disdainfully by Beethoven, who is supposed to have responded to a similar ques-
tion from Schindler with the ironic, and perhaps even contemptuous remark that
he had “no time to write a finale, and so had therefore somewhat extended the
second movement.”26 Thomas Mann (in consultation with Theodor W. Adorno)
devoted a chapter of his famous novel Doktor Faustus to the piece, and had the
fictional character Wendell Kretzschmar describe the climactic and yet open qual-
ity of the end of the Arietta movement as an “end without any return,” compris-
ing a farewell to the art form of the sonata in general.
The first movement of op. 111 represents the last example of Beethoven’s cele-
brated “C minor mood,” evidenced in a long line of works from the String Trio
op. 9 no. 3 and Pathétique Sonata to the Coriolan Overture and Fifth Symphony.
As in these works great stress is placed on diminished-seventh chords in a turbu-
lent, dissonant idiom. As in the Pathétique there is a slow introduction, but the
greater musical tension of the later sonata is evident at once in the tonal ambigu-
ity of the octaves outlining the diminished-seventh interval E –F , and in the use
of the three possible diminished-seventh chords in the opening sequences, empha-
sized by majestic double-dotted rhythms and trills. The closest relative to this pas-
sage is Beethoven’s setting of the Crucifixus in the Missa solemnis, as Mellers has
pointed out.27 The tension of the slow introduction is sustained in the pianissimo
continuation, leading first to a convergence onto a dominant pedal expressed as a
bass trill, and then to a transition to the new tempo, Allegro con brio ed appas-
sionato, and the long-delayed resolution of the trill to C minor that marks the be-
25
“Beethoven’s New Style,” in Music Sounded Out, p. 70.
26
27 Beethoven and the Voice of God, p. 325.
252 beethoven
ginning of the sonata exposition. The interval of the diminished seventh is incor-
porated prominently into the principal subject, which is first presented in unison
octaves and is developed only gradually, after several hesitating closes on the
tonic. A major portion of the sonata exposition (bars 35–50) consists of a fugal
exposition on a variant of this subject, combined with a countersubject in octaves.
This material is coordinated to create a large-scale ascending progression, begin-
ning on C and rising through an octave, before the bass brings the music climac-
tically to D , D , and finally E (bars 48–50; Ex. 83). This extraordinary climax is
underscored by the registral disparities of the sustained pitches played in the right
hand, F–D –D –C , which represent a variant, in rhythmic augmentation, of the
principal fugal motif. The shift from this low D to the high C traverses an ascent
of almost five octaves, so that the motif appears enlarged, or gapped, over an im-
mense tonal space. Then, suddenly, with the arrival of the bass at E in bar 50, a
lyrical voice is heard in the contrasting key of A major. A three-bar phrase with
expressive appoggiaturas fills bars 50–52, a fleeting lyrical moment that is ex-
tended by a decorated restatement in the following bars and by a gradual slowing
in tempo to Adagio.
The formal isolation of this lyrical second subject is an example of Beethoven’s
important technique of parenthetical enclosure, a device that also surfaces promi-
nently in two of his immediately preceding works—the first movement of op. 109
(as we have seen) and the Credo of the Missa solemnis. In op. 111 this technique
assumes special significance as a means of linking the two movements, which are
so antithetical in character. An effect of parenthetical enclosure is created not only
through the sudden thematic and tonal contrast and slowing in tempo but also
Ex. 83 Piano Sonata op. 111/I, bars 48–58

struggle: 1819–1822 253
through the sudden return of the original tempo and agitated musical character
at the upbeat to bar 56, where Beethoven brings back the same diminished-seventh
sonority heard earlier, when the climactic progression had been broken off (also
shown in Ex. 83). Here the high C is stressed as the clear link back to the earlier
passage, and the diminished seventh is elaborated by descending sequences through
those pitch registers that had been spanned in the earlier gesture. Consequently,
the intervening lyrical utterance in A major is isolated, like “a soft glimpse of sun-
light illuminating the dark, stormy heavens,” in the imagery of Mann’s character
Kretzschmar in Doktor Faustus.
In the recapitulation this lyrical material is not so easily swept aside; rather,
Beethoven extends the passage and, beginning in bar 128, reshapes it to lead us
back into the tempest. The lyrical passage has now reached C major, the key of
the second movement; when it slows to adagio in bars 120–21, it seems to fore-
shadow the sublime atmosphere of the Arietta finale. A direct transition to the en-
suing Arietta is built into the coda, when threefold phrases resolving plagally to
the tonic major seem to resolve the tension and strife of those threefold phrases
that had opened the slow introduction. The rhythm and register of the last bars
of the coda allude unmistakably to the forceful diminished-seventh chords that in-
terrupted the lyrical episode in the exposition (bars 55–56). Here, however, the di-
minished seventh is resolved, once and for all, into the C major triad, whose high
register and wide spacing foreshadow aspects of the Arietta and variations,
marked Adagio molto semplice e cantabile.
The Arietta movement is perhaps the most extraordinary example of a new
type of variation set characteristic of Beethoven’s later years. Formerly, variations
were most often used in inner movements of the sonata cycle; but here, and in op.
109, they assume such weight and finality as to render any further movements
superfluous. As we have said, the op. 111 variations are based structurally on the
model provided by the final variation of op. 109: there, a reprise of the slow rhyth-
mic values of the original theme is followed by a series of rhythmic diminutions
culminating in sustained trills. Now, in the op. 111 Arietta movement, each vari-
ation brings diminutions in the rhythmic texture without affecting the slow basic
tempo: consequently, the theme seems to evolve from within through a rigorously
controlled process. By the third variation, there is a resulting transformation in
character, due to the agitation and complexity of the rhythm, which Beethoven
notates in the meter 12/32. Thereafter, in the fourth variation, the tremolos and
arabesques of thirty-second-note triplets, together with the syncopated chords in
the right hand and the striking registral contrasts, create an ethereal atmosphere,
as if the music has entered a transfigured realm.
Martin Cooper once wrote of Beethoven’s late music as reflecting “a search for
unity in diversity and multum in parvo” representing the composer’s “growing
awareness of a unity lying behind the diversity of the phenomena of human exis-
tence.”28 If we acknowledge the presence in this music of heightened contrasts and
28 Beethoven: The Last Decade, 1817–1827 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970),
p. 420.
254 beethoven
discontinuities, on the one hand, and powerful resources for integration, on the
other, how are we to understand its process of unfolding in concrete terms as a
“search for unity in diversity”? In this regard, “transformation” and “transfigu-
ration” need to be treated as specific concepts, not vague laudatory terms. The no-
tion of Verwandlung, understood as transformation or metamorphosis, is appli-
cable here, since the changes involved in this process go beyond a structural or
decorative treatment to surpass or even transfigure the original music. The guid-
ing idea involves a transformative process capable of shifting levels, projecting a
change of kind rather than degree, and fundamentally altering thereby the basic
qualities of a phenomenon. The techniques employed are but no means in-
scrutable or opaque, and Beethoven’s compositional strategies can be illuminated
by means of comparison, since analogous devices are employed in different
works. The notion of “transfiguring” textures (“verklärende” figuration) has
been raised by Stefan Kunze, who observes that Beethoven’s use of small rhyth-
mic subdivisions can be embodied in stationary or circling figures, promoting a
quality of stasis or timelessness. For Kunze, the thrust of Beethoven’s variations
on the Arietta in op. 111 is ultimately to “set free” the theme; what is “tran-
scended” in the final stages of the movement includes a sense of formal closure.29
Robert Hatten has discussed related aspects of Beethoven’s style under the cate-
gory of “plentitude,” singling out as an example the exquisite Andante con moto
ma non troppo from the String Quartet in B op. 130.30 For Hatten, “plentitude
implies saturation or repleteness, and as such, the prototypical state of plentitude
would be one of suffused, contented fulfillment.”31 He describes plentitude as “a
typical strategy in Beethoven’s later variation movements, in which progressive
rhythmic diminution often leads to a state of transcendent bliss.”32 To be sure, we
can distinguish distinct types of textural saturation in this music, some of which
are associated with intense energy or agitation rather than “contented fulfill-
ment”; a character of plentitude conveying “transcendent bliss” or transfigura-
tion is often bound up with other qualities as well, such as lyric euphoria and a
climactic treatment of register.
In a recent discussion of the Arietta movement, Berthold Hoeckner juxtaposes
two influential discussions of the work: Schenker’s analysis in his Erläuterungs-
ausgabe of this sonata first published in 1916,33 and the aforementioned episode
29
“Figuration in Beethovens Spätwerk: Zur Krise der instrumentalen Spielformel in der
Musik um 1800,” in Festschrift Arno Forchert zum 60. Geburtstag am 29. Dezember 1985
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1985), p. 167.
30 Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 43–52. An expanded
version of this study appeared as “Plentitude as Fulfillment: The Third Movement of Bee-
thoven’s String Quartet in B , Op. 130,” in The String Quartets of Beethoven, ed. William
Kinderman (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 214–33.
31 Interpreting Musical Gestures, p. 43.
32 Interpreting Musical Gestures, p. 249.
33 Die letzten fünf Sonaten von Beethoven: Kritische Ausgabe mit Einführung und Er-
läuterung [Sonate C moll Op. 111] (Vienna: Universal, 1916). The reprint of this publica-
struggle: 1819–1822 255
in Thomas Mann’s novel Doktor Faustus of 1947, in which the character Wen-
dell Kretzschmar delivers remarks on the sonata that draw especially on Adorno’s
thought. Hoeckner notes that Schenker repudiated hermeneutics, lashing out
against the arbitrary detachment of detail on the part of commentators who
would fear “that they could be deprived through analyses from the understand-
ing of the whole and thus from the enjoyment of the artwork.”34 Thomas Mann’s
use of the name “Kretzschmar” is itself significant as an allusion to Hermann
Kretzschmar, a commentator associated with the hermeneutic orientation that
Schenker sometimes scorned. Nevertheless, Paul Bekker once wryly observed that
it was “instructive, and not without an involuntary comic side effect, to observe
how all those who repudiate hermeneutics—Schenker, Halm, Pfitzner, on down to
the most recent generation with writerly ambitions—themselves become herme-
neuts as soon as they start to speak seriously about music.”35
As Hoeckner observes, Schenker and Adorno both emphasize a particular focal
pitch in their analyses. For Schenker this focal pitch is the F3 that is emphasized
near the end of Variation 4 in the Arietta movement and that recurs prominently
in the last measures of the piece. Schenker draws attention to this high F in part
because he hears it as connected to the ensuing statement in the bass of the head
motive of the Arietta theme beginning on F; this takes place in the mysterious
modulating passage to E major, a passage whose long-sustained trill on D turns
into a triple trill (Ex. 84). Schenker indeed does not avoid metaphorical descrip-
tion of this cadenza-like passage, beginning at the marking espressivo, five mea-
sures after the change of signature to three flats. He writes of the ensuing section
following the trills as follows: “Yet what a wonderland awaits us here! As in a
dream, segments of the Arietta appear suspended, at first spread out by them-
selves, later more integrated; in between—as in a dream—the structure of the key
dissolves, yet despite the shifted foundation and temporal distance, one senses the
connection of these measures and precisely that coherence that ties them so tightly
to the reality of the Arietta and the variations.”36
Elaborating on Schenker’s point, one could observe that Beethoven’s earlier
tion edited by Oswald Jonas (Vienna: Universal, 1971) omits Schenker’s introductory re-
marks, including his dismissal of hermeneutics.
34 Hoeckner, Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the
Hermeneutics of the Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 229.

35 Paul Bekker-Hofheim, “Was ist Phänomenologie der Musik?” Die Musik 17, no. 4
(1925), p. 246; quoted in Robert Snarrenberg, Schenker’s Interpretive Practice (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 1; cited here in an amended translation by Hoeckner
in Programming the Absolute, pp. 229–30.
36 “Aber welch Wunderland harrt unser nun hier! Wie durch einen Traum geistern Takte
der Arietta, zuerst einzeln und in Abständen, zuletzt auch geschlossener; zwischendurch
reisst—wie eben im Traum—sogar die Brücke der Tonart, und dennoch, trotz verschobenem
Boden, trotz Abständen, ahnt man einen Zusammenhang der Takte, eben jenen Zusammen-
hang, der sie einst in der Wirklichkeit der Arietta und der Variationen so eng aneinander-
band.” Sonate C moll Op. 111 (Vienna: Universal, 1971), p. 91. My translation. Schenker’s
language is sufficiently metaphorical as to necessitate considerable freedom in translation.
256 beethoven
emphasis on F3 and F2 in the second half of Variation 4 marks precisely that point
where the variation structure is extended beyond the eight-bar framework that
governs each half of the binary theme. Seen in this context, Beethoven’s accented
dominant-seventh chord in Ex. 84 stands out for its simultaneous emphasis of
both F2 and F3 in the octave F in the right hand, and this voicing of the dominant-
seventh chord is reaffirmed in the last measure before the onset of the long-
sustained trill on D. At this juncture, Beethoven has already fully prepared the ca-
dence in C major that will be granted only twenty-five bars later, at the beginning
of the recapitulatory Variation 5. The extraordinary passage with the trills and the
dreamlike continuation noted by Schenker illustrates Beethoven’s interest in par-
enthetical enclosure, the interpolation of weighty passages at the threshold to an
struggle: 1819–1822 257
important cadence which is thereby interrupted and held in abeyance.37 With little
modification, the recapitulatory variation in the tonic C major could have directly
followed the emphatic dominant-seventh sonorities emphasizing F. Instead, Bee-
thoven positions the inner climax of the entire movement at this moment, intro-
ducing multiple trills, vast gaps in register, and wide-ranging modulations.
The role of F in this mysterious, cadenza-like developmental passage has much
to do with the articulation of the new key of E major through the use of the head-
motive of the Arietta theme. Hence the three-note motive, with its characteristic
long-short-long rhythm, heard initially as F–B –B in octaves in the bass, is echoed
in the middle register to initiate the triple trill, and it reappears in the treble nine
bars later, at the outset of the modulating espressivo passage. It is understandable
that Beethoven would employ his headmotive in this context, just as the music
penetrates new expressive regions. What is easily overlooked, however, is how his
modification of the headmotive in multiple voices seems to create the suspended
texture involving multiple trills. After the beginning of the long trill on D, the ad-
ditional voices set ablaze through trills are derived motivically through the head-
motive of the Arietta theme. In the uppermost voice, this occurs through the re-
versal of the A -to-G motive as G to A , as A joins the trill already resonating on
D.38 Simultaneously, the F in the middle register that initiates the headmotive is
also followed by a glorification of this same pitch as a trill. There is a sense here
of intense introspection brought to sound, as the components of the dominant-
seventh chord of the new key of E major vibrate together, having been assembled
in this configuration through an enlargement—a still, suspended, yet intensely
meditative vision—of the motives of the Arietta.
In this sense, we can indeed regard Beethoven’s handling of this climactic pas-
sage as a transfiguration of the Arietta, whereby astonishing ramifications display
unsuspected potential in the original theme. Characteristically, several compo-
nents of the music contribute to the overall effect: the surprising avoidance of the
expected cadence in favor of an inward, interpolated passage; the ensuing modu-
lation toward E major; the unfolding of simultaneous voices building up the har-
mony; the textural intensification involving higher pitch registers; and finally, the
saturation of texture produced by the multiple trills, which themselves represent
in this context an outcome of a pervasive development scheme based on rhythmic
diminution reaching back to the beginning of the movement.
Hence we can see that the phenomenon of transfiguration is not captured by
the emphasis on a single focal pitch, such as Schenker’s F3, however important this
pitch may be. So many factors interact in this music that even an approach as rich
37 I have discussed this technique in “Thematic Contrast and Parenthetical Enclosure in
the Piano Sonatas, Op. 109 and 111,” in Zu Beethoven 3: Aufsätze und Dokumente, ed.
Harry Goldschmidt (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1988), pp. 43–59.
38 The headmotive of the Arietta theme most obviously involves a falling fourth C–G or
a falling fifth D–G, as in the theme’s opening measures, yet this rhythmic motive also ap-
pears in conjunction with a falling half-step near the beginning of the second half of the
theme.
258 beethoven
as Schenker’s easily relapses into an “arbitrary detachment of detail” through its
singling out of individual pitches as particularly significant. In this context, it is
noteworthy that Schenker resorts in his discussion to a rather awkward metaphori-
cal description, suggesting the “stillness” of the triple-trill passage to sound “as if
the dream itself were listening” (“als würde der Traum selbst lauschen”).39
Thomas Mann’s approach to this movement banks heavily on hermeneutic in-
terpretation, and the main weight of his interpretation falls on a different note, the
C sharp that twice decorates the headmotive of the Arietta on dominant harmony
near the end of the coda (Ex. 85). As Hoeckner reminds us,40 this motivic change
was pointed out to Mann by Adorno, and its role was then developed and empha-
sized by Mann, whose fictional spokesman Wendell Kretzschmar attaches various
verbal tags both to the original three-note Arietta motive, and to the expanded,
“leave-taking” five-note motivic form: C–C –D–G–G. Some reasons for Mann’s
elaboration of this idea are clearly more literary than musical, while the matching
of words to motives allows him to acknowledge Adorno’s assistance through in-
corporation of the word “meadowland” (“Wiesengrund”)—Adorno’s middle
name—as one of Kretzschmar’s verbalizations of the motive in its original form.
The notion of leave-taking (“Lebewohl”) indeed has deeper roots in Beetho-
ven’s art, and not only in his Piano Sonata op. 81a, with its use of the “Lebewohl”
motive in the opening movement. Setting aside for the moment Kretzschmar/
Adorno’s speculations about Beethoven’s last sonata as a “farewell to traditional
art form,” we may concentrate here on the “humanizing effect” of this melodic
expansion of the closing motive, echoing as it does through the streets of the
fictional town Kaisersaschern when the little crowd disperses after Kretzschmar’s
lecture. Such decorative touches added to a familiar theme are not so unusual in
Beethoven; a comparable example is offered by the subtle melodic inflections
added to the main subject at the recapitulation of the first movement of the Arch-
duke Trio op. 97. Here, as in op. 111, the addition of appoggiaturas sensitively
enriches the familiar theme.
Kretzschmar’s strategy in elucidating op. 111 is to superimpose on the purely
musical headmotive—encapsulated by him as “Dim-dada!”—a series of pregnant
verbal formulations, which in the expanded five-note version scan “Nun ver-giss
der Qual!”; “Gross war—Gott in uns”; “Alles—war nur Traum”; “Bleib mir—
hold gesinnt.” (“Now for-get the pain!”; “great was—god in us”; “all things—
were a dream”; “to me—do stay close.”) While the specific content of these ver-
bal tags can be largely discounted, it is nevertheless striking to what extent the gist
of Kretzschmar’s delivery resonates with the ethereal atmosphere of Beethoven’s
last sonata.
In this vein, it is worth asking how the added melodic inflection of the C cited
by Kretzschmar/Adorno/Mann contributes to the movement in concrete musical
terms. In the case of Schenker’s F, we recognized how that note indeed assumes im-
39
Sonate C moll Op. 111 (Vienna: Universal, 1971), p. 91.
40Programming the Absolute, pp. 229–30. Hoeckner reproduces a copy of the Arietta
theme in Adorno’s hand, including his annotations to the two versions of the motive.
struggle: 1819–1822 259
continued
260 beethoven
Ex. 85 (continued)
portance in the larger musical unfolding of which it forms a part. Might the same be
true of the C that is so lavishly dwelt upon in the memorable narrative of the eighth
chapter of Mann’s Doktor Faustus? The fact that the inspiration for Mann’s dis-
course was an insightful scholar like Adorno encourages us to weigh this possibility.
The climactic passage with the triple trill springs in mind (Ex. 84). Following
this gesture, the uppermost voice continues its ascent to a crescendo extended over
three measures, until the seemingly endless series of trills reaches its endpoint
struggle: 1819–1822 261
on the giddy height of high D, five octaves above the B in the left hand. This re-
markable passage expressed entirely through trills peaks on the chromatic ascent
from C through C to D. Although the context of Beethoven’s coda is quite differ-
ent, the pitches added to the motive from the Arietta are also C and C , preced-
ing the primary motive on the dominant: D–G–G.
Beethoven’s prominent emphasis here on the dominant stems from his curtail-
ing the thematic structure in the coda so that the main weight falls on the phrases
corresponding to the end of the first half of the Arietta. The “Dim-dada!” motive
shouted out by Kretzschmar in his lecture recital and then matched to text in its
leave-taking, expanded version is drawn from this part of the original theme, and
only these phrases of the coda are emphasized through varied repetitions, with
two statements of the D–G–G motive echoed by the twofold occurrences of the
five-note form, with C and C preceding D–G–G.
The ecstatic, yet contemplative, character of the end of the Arietta movement
and its extraordinary sense of culmination owe much to the formal design of the
movement as a whole, whereby each variation introduces new stages of develop-
ment based on rhythmic diminution, contrapuntal activity, and registral expan-
sion. The systematic intensification of rhythm of the opening variations leads to
the agitated, jazz-like idiom in 12/32 meter embodied in Variation 3. These open-
ing variations thus lead to a thorough transformation of the slow, chorale-like
theme, but not yet to a state of blissful plentitude. Variation 4 explores rhythmic
textures expressed as tremolos and mysterious arabesques, while contrasting the
low and high registers in each half of the variation. Its further rhythmic diminu-
tion involving chains of triplet thirty-second notes carries the process of subdivi-
sion so far that the following stage can only be expressed by an unmeasured rapid
motion that can also stand for an inner stillness: the trill.
If the cadenza-like interpolation develops the trill as a logical outcome of the
large-scale process of rhythmic diminution embodied in the preceding variations,
the ensuing recapitulatory Variation 5 signals the consolidation of the overall form.
By bringing together components that had earlier been heard separately, this vari-
ation achieves a synthesis. The Arietta theme returns here in its original register,
but the rhythm of the other parts of the texture recall Variations 1 and 4, enabling
us to experience as a simultaneity what had earlier been heard successively. Being
and Becoming are forged here into a single entity, as the enduring structure of the
theme is blended with the dynamic succession of changing rhythmic textures.
Hence the guiding idea of the last variation in the finale of op. 109 is magnified
here, expanded to the level of an entire movement. Whereas the principle of rhyth-
mic diminution within that single final variation of op. 109 had been used to grad-
ually transform the theme, each variation in op. 111 brings a new stage in an anal-
ogous process. Differently than in op. 109, the reprise of the original theme is
placed not at the end of the movement as a da capo repetition, but it is instead
embodied here in a more central part of the design: the recapitulatory fifth varia-
tion. Following the uncanny, drifting, modulating passage in the interpolated ca-
denza, this recapitulatory variation reestablishes a sense of momentum. Its un-
folding displays a powerful directionality and climax structure.
262 beethoven
Beethoven’s treatment of the second half of Variation 5 gives much emphasis
to the dominant, particularly after the melody passes to the right hand in the lofty
high register in measure 153 (Ex. 85). Beginning in the following bar, he writes a
long crescendo over five measures, a passage that reaches its outcome at the
major-ninth chord on the dominant marked forte in measure 158. This climax on
the major-ninth chord brings to sound a rich dissonance, as the high A is heard
against G, F, and B in the other voices.
In the ensuing moments, Beethoven outlines a twofold melodic descent from
this high A, first as a diatonic fall through G–F–E in bar 158 and then as a more
emphatic chromatic version that reaches D at the end of bar 159, with that pitch
sustained as a trill in the following bar. The end of the Arietta theme had closed
with a melodic inflection rising from D to an accented G and then falling gently
to E, the third of the tonic triad. Beethoven reproduces this familiar contour at the
end of Variation 5, with the trill on D lifted to an accented high G sustained by a
trill in bar 160. The prominent voicing of the third, E, in bar 161 already belongs
to the next formal unit, however. In this instance, the end of the variation does not
itself include a resolution to the tonic triad. That resolution is supplied only at the
beginning of the incomplete final variation that serves as coda to the movement.
The tremolo texture in triplet thirty-second notes alternates here between E
and C, with the metrically accented first notes of each triplet group of the 9/16
meter shifting between those two pitches. Out of the gently pulsating movement
of this figuration, a larger triplet pattern emerges, unfolding once with each group
of nine smaller notes. A mysterious, almost hypnotic, bell-like resonance results,
as undulating intervals vibrate as parts of themselves on different temporal levels.
Most remarkable is how the high trill on G is sustained, sounding through all of
the next eleven bars, with a drop of an octave in bar 165. Like Variation 5, this final
half variation, with its “farewell” echoes of the phrase on the dominant, represents
a synthesis of rhythmic and textural levels: a reprise of the original theme in the
highest possible register combined with the ethereal passagework in triplet six-
teenths from Variation 4, as well as with the sustained trill, which recalls the ca-
denza-like passage following the fourth variation. This exquisite texture is followed
by just six concluding measures, in which the triplet thirty-second-note passage-
work is first carried upward, touching the registral ceiling of the entire piece—high
C—in bar 174, before echoes of the original opening motto from the Arietta bring
the sonata to a quiet, understated close, opening into the ensuing silence.
There is an unmistakable parallel here to the last variation of op. 109, in that
a culminating effect arises from the use of a sustained trill sounding the fifth and
sixth scale degrees. In op. 111, it is as if the emphatic collision of G and A in the
major-ninth chord of bar 158 is so decisively radiant as to preclude a decay of that
sonority.41 Through the prolonged trill, these pitches continue to sound together,
41 Uhde describes this moment as the “goal of the entire movement” (“Zielpunkt des
ganzen Satzes”), adding that it offers long-range orientation to the performer like a guid-
ing lighthouse (“Schon wenn man das Adagio beginnt, sollte dieser ‘Leuchturm’ die Orien-
tierung bestimmen”). Beethovens Klaviermusik, vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1971), p. 613.
struggle: 1819–1822 263
ringing throughout the ensuing passage. For the sensitive listener, there can be no
resolution to this penetrating gesture, which continues to resonate in the memory.
The rapport with silence at the end of op. 111, which has been noted by many
commentators, is not a transition into blankness, but a shift into a mysterious
space filled with after-resonances, most prominently the remembered echoes of
the long culminating trill on G.
In this context, surely neither Schenker’s F nor Kretzschmar’s C bear as much
of the burden of expression as does the protracted trill on G. This gesture is es-
sentially an intensification of the accented melodic inflection from the very last bar
of the Arietta. If each of the variations had revisited this telling gesture, the join
between the recapitulatory fifth variation and the incomplete sixth variation
transforms the moment through a refusal of closure—omitting the expected, re-
solving shift to the tonic chord while releasing the energy of the unending trill.
And although the tonic C major is later asserted—already at the outset of the ethe-
real, pianissimo texture of the final half variation, and later with the deep tonic
pedal point in bars 169–71, and the final cadences—the sheer sonorous opulence
of the coda stands apart, as a fitting climax and, in Kretzschmar’s words, “end
without any return.”
In Adorno’s view, the “close of the Arietta variations has such a force of back-
ward-looking, of leave-taking, that, as if over-illuminated by this departure, what
has gone before is immeasurably enlarged.”42 This “backward-looking” quality is
bound up with what we have recognized as a synthesizing, recapitulatory quality,
whereby earlier stages in the movement are recalled and combined. At the same
time, the overall formal trajectory is directional, and a sense of goal-directedness
or even apparent inevitability is conveyed through the achievement of a texture of
plentitude in the recapitulatory fifth variation and the coda. There is an exhaus-
tiveness to this procedure, in that the limits of register and execution are tested;
nothing more could seem to follow the coda, after such climactic distillation of
content drawn from the movement as a whole.
Can all of this be taken to imply Beethoven’s awareness of a “unity lying be-
hind the diversity of the phenomena of human existence,” in Martin Cooper’s for-
mulation? The sense of a diversity of character here is far less than in the encyclo-
pedic Diabelli Variations, but the agitated Variation 3 still provides an impressive
large-scale contrast, while also serving as an indispensable middle stage in the
overall framework of rhythmic development. If the last sections of the Arietta
movement depended for their expressive impact mainly on Schenker’s F or Adorno’s
C , it would be unjustified to speak of a transformation or “Verwandlung” in this
work. Yet much more is involved, conveying a process of seemingly irreversible
change combined with resistance to transience and decay. The “leave-taking”
phrases resonate together with the long trill and the ethereal, transfiguring texture
in triplet thirty-second notes. This unprecedented, “over-illuminated” blending of
elements indeed sounds like a metamorphosis, yet the individual components of
42
Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, p. 175.
264 beethoven
the synthesis are not new, as we have seen, and even the C has a precedent in the
earlier cadenza-like passage.
The aging Beethoven’s preoccupation with variation form was clearly con-
nected to “unity lying behind . . . diversity” as well as to the related idea of trans-
formation or metamorphosis. The end of the Arietta movement of op. 111
achieves a unique balance between unity and diversity. If apparently divergent
phenomena reveal themselves here as related manifestations, a successive blend-
ing of such phenomena nevertheless overflows a self-contained, linear narrative.
Such a work is a tensional vessel for forward- and backward-looking processes,
becoming and being, transformation and memory.
In the performance of the variations, it is essential to sustain continuity be-
tween the still, contemplative aura of the theme and the gradual transformation
in character effected by the intensification of rhythm and expansion of register
and contrapuntal texture in the first three variations. The highly agitated charac-
ter of Variation 3 leaves room, in the piano phrases at the beginning of its second
half, for a subtle anticipation of the ethereal quality of later passages; the extro-
verted energy expressed in the jagged, accented rhythms of this variation is then
reshaped in Variation 4 to become an even faster yet now suspended, inward pul-
sation. Important as well is an identity in tempo between the original theme and
the recapitulatory fifth variation and coda. As the theme is recaptured, so too are
various developmental stages recalled from the intervening variations.
The Arietta theme itself is one of the most sublime examples among Beetho-
ven’s piano works of that hymn-like character that often inspired reflective slow
movements surrounded by contrasting outer ones. Here, however, the inward vi-
sion is more sustained and far more affirmative and ecstatic than in earlier slow
movements; yet, this variation framework is not incompatible with dynamic proc-
esses, such as the system of rhythmic diminutions and the modulating cadenza pre-
ceding the recapitulatory fifth variation. Being and Becoming are merged here into
a unified structure. The uplifting and visionary quality of the second half of the
Arietta derives not only from the transformation of the theme and from the cul-
minating effect of synthesis and recapitulation, but also from the role of this
movement as a transcendence of the turbulent Allegro movement and all it im-
plies. In many respects, the Arietta strives toward perfection, whereas the Allegro
is obviously imperfect; even the progression from the duple meter of the opening
movement to the triple meter of the Arietta movement, with its many subdivisions
in groups of three, is significant in this connection.
Various commentators have rightly perceived a philosophical and even reli-
gious dimension in this great work. As Alfred Brendel has pointed out, the di-
chotomy embodied in the two movements of op. 111 has been variously described
in terms of “Samsara and Nirwana” (von Bülow), the “Here and Beyond” (Edwin
Fischer), and “Resistance and Submission” (Lenz); Brendel also mentions the di-
chotomy of “Male and Female Principles” (of which Beethoven sometimes spoke)
and that of the real and the mystical world.43 It is revealing in this connection to
43
“Beethoven’s New Style,” in Music Sounded Out, p. 71.
struggle: 1819–1822 265
compare op. 111 with some of Beethoven’s other works from the 1820s. In the
Ninth Symphony, by contrast, the contemplative, inwardly absorbed slow varia-
tion movement leads to a reconfrontation with the “external world” in the form
of the dissonant Schreckensfanfare and the ensuing setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy
in the choral finale. In op. 111, of course, the reflective modality governs the con-
clusion; there are few hints here of a strife-ridden “world background,” such as
the music of war that haunts the Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis.
The conclusion of the preceding sonata, op. 110, for all its transcendental char-
acteristics, projects a greater sense of an “absorption of the world” through its
distortion of the fugal subject in the double-diminution passage and its ensuing
emergence out of the fugal labyrinth in the closing passages of apotheosis. But any
convincing assessment of op. 111 has to stress more than the remarkable power
and coherence of Beethoven’s transformations of the Arietta, with their cumula-
tive sense that the contemplative vision has become more real than the “external”
world symbolized in the Allegro; crucial as well is the complementary relationship
of the two movements. As we have seen, Beethoven’s use of parenthetical enclo-
sure places a foreshadowing of the Arietta into the midst of the first movement;
in the recapitulation and coda this tentative foreshadowing grows into a transi-
tion to the Arietta itself. At the same time, in his coda Beethoven balances and
transforms important passages heard earlier in the movement, such as the begin-
ning of the slow introduction and the assertion of diminished sevenths that had
cut off the lyrical second subject in the exposition. The symbolism projected in op.
111 thus has two principal moments: the acceptance and resolution of conflict
embodied in the Allegro and transition to the Arietta; and the rich, dynamic syn-
thesis of experience projected in the ensuing variations.
Beethoven’s last piano sonata is a monument to his conviction that solutions
to the problems facing humanity lie ever within our grasp if they can be recog-
nized for what they are and be confronted by models of human transformation.
Maynard Solomon has argued that “Masterpieces of art are instilled with a sur-
plus of constantly renewable energy—an energy that provides a motive force for
changes in the relations between human beings—because they contain projections
of human desires and goals which have not yet been achieved (which indeed may
be unrealizable).”44 Among Beethoven’s instrumental works op. 111 assumes a
special position as an “effigy of [the] ideal,” in Schiller’s formulation; and every ad-
equate performance must reenact something of this process, reaching as it does be-
yond the merely aesthetic dimension to touch the domain of the moral and ethical.
44 Beethoven, pp. 315–16.

10
RTriumph: 1822–1824
R
“Das Moralische Gesetz in uns, u. der gestirnte Hıim̄¯el über uns” Kant!!!
This epigraph is an entry made by Beethoven in a conversation book at the begin-

ning of February 1820: “The moral law within us, and the starry heavens above
us.”1 Beethoven’s citation, with its enthusiastic attribution to Immanuel Kant, has
been often re-cited and commented on. The conversation-book entry takes on
new significance, however, when considered in relation to the genesis of the com-
position that was occupying—or, rather, consuming—him at the time: the Missa
solemnis. The issues raised are crucial to the structure and expression of the Mass,
especially in its later movements, the Credo, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. The sym-
bolic ideas that surface here are not confined to the Mass, moreover, but reemerge
in other major compositions that he wrote between 1823 and 1825. These mat-
ters are so central to our investigation as to require more detailed scrutiny than
we have given to much of Beethoven’s earlier music. The works he wrote from
1820 to 1826 are not large in number but they pose formidable aesthetic chal-
lenges. A richer context for discussion of the Missa solemnis can be gained if we
consider not only the existing score, which was virtually complete by 1822, but
also the compositional genesis of this great work.
The sketchbooks show that when Beethoven copied down this quotation from
Kant he had already worked intensely on the Mass for most of a year but was far
from finished. At this point in the compositional process he had not yet devised
one of the most impressive symbolic and structural musical elements of the Mass:
the use of specific related sonorities to serve as a focal point of the musical setting
in the Credo and Benedictus. Subsequently, after completing the Mass, he ab-
sorbed and implanted this network of referential sonorities into his next great
choral orchestral composition, the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony, in the
treatment of a text strikingly similar to the dictum from Kant cited above.
A distinctive harmonic feature of the finished Credo is its use of the subdomi-
1
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, p. 235. According to the editors,
this entry was copied not directly from the conclusion of Kant’s Critique of Practical Rea-
son but from the article “Kosmologische Betrachtungen” by the astronomer Joseph Lit-
trow, printed in the Wiener Zeitschrift on 20 January and 1 February 1820.
266
triumph: 1822–1824 267
Ex. 86 Missa solemnis op. 123, Credo
nant E triad in place of the tonic B as the first vertical sonority of the movement
(Ex. 86). An upward leap of an octave reaches to this high, sustained E chord,
which resolves to the dominant of B in the second bar. The position of the E
chord, with the third, G, uppermost, is noteworthy, as is its orchestration, em-
ploying the oboes and flutes in the high register. Particularly arresting is the
rhythm of the passage: the chord is prolonged for six beats, resolving to the F
major triad only in the middle of the second bar. As a result, the introduction acts
as a metrical unit of two bars anticipating in rhythmic augmentation the dotted
rhythm of the “Credo” motif heard in bar 3. This rhythmic relationship, as well
as the distinctive spacing of the initial chord and its unusual harmonic basis on
the subdominant, all serve to bring the introductory gesture strongly into relief.
Beethoven’s decision to place this introduction at the beginning of the Credo
raises issues that concern the musical organization of the entire movement. For a
closer examination of the Credo reveals that the initial E chord, in its original
register and spacing, is treated not only as a ritornello but as an important the-
matic element throughout the movement. It assumes special prominence at the cli-
max of the “Et vitam venturi” fugue and in the closing “amen” section. Sketches
from the spring and early summer of 1820 record Beethoven’s first use of this
high, protracted E sonority as part of the concluding plagal cadence to “amen,”
as well as his employment of a closely related progression at the earlier cadence
to “amen” that immediately precedes the fugue.2 In sketches for the opening sec-
tion of the Credo in the same sources the high sustained E chord is conspicuously
absent, however. The evidence from the sketchbooks implies that in this instance
Beethoven worked backward, by making this crucial sonority associated with the
end of the movement serve also as an introduction and ritornello in the first half
of the Credo. The full musical significance of the opening gesture of the Credo can
be assessed, then, only in the context of the whole movement.
2
For detailed citations of the sketch sources, see my article ‘Beethoven’s Symbol for the
Deity in the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony.”
268 beethoven
We are dealing here with an outstanding example of Beethoven’s characteristic
device of anticipation—the foreshadowing, early in the work, of important musi-
cal events to come. Another familiar example is the opening section of the finale
of the Ninth Symphony, where the Schreckensfanfare, the orchestral recitative
passages, and the citation and rejection of the earlier movements are fully intelli-
gible only in light of the following choral sections of the movement. In the Credo,
by contrast, the anticipation of events to come is concentrated in the orchestral
ritornello beginning with the opening E chord. Analysis of the broader role of
this E sonority brings us into the midst of the musical architecture that embraces
the entire movement, a formal symphonic organization quite unusual in settings
of the Credo, with its lengthy doctrinal text.
The form of the Credo falls into four main parts: the opening Allegro ma non
troppo up to “descendit de coelis,” in B ; the section in slow tempo from the In-
carnatus up to the Resurrexit, with a basic tonality of D; the Allegro molto begin-
ning at “et ascendit in coelum” and leading into the recapitulation of the Credo
in F major; and finally the fugue and coda on “et vitam venturi saeculi, amen,” in
B . Within this framework the second section in slow tempo makes the strongest
possible contrast to the rest of the movement, a contrast made even more startling
by the use of modality—the Dorian mode in the Incarnatus and the Mixolydian
(briefly) in the Resurrexit, which is heard as unaccompanied vocal polyphony.
Overlapping cadences and unity of key center link the internal episodes: the D
Dorian of the Incarnatus is followed by D major at “homo factus est” and D
minor in the Crucifixus. Set apart by its archaic modality, by the entry of the vocal
soloists, by the secondary key center of D, and by the absence of thematic mate-
rial associated with the rest of the movement, this section represents an interpo-
lation within the larger framework of the whole Credo.
Surprisingly, the symbolic aspect of this musical setting has been overlooked by
critics, who have confined their attention to the conventional tone painting in the
setting of the words “descendit” and “ascendit.”3 The more profound symbolism
is expressed through the utter contrast—in texture, thematic material, register,
and key—between all the music from the Incarnatus to the Resurrexit on the one
hand, and the rest of the Credo on the other. The large interpolation in the musi-
cal form assumes a rhetorical or symbolic function, for it reflects musically the
descent of Christ from heaven to earth, with his subsequent ascent after the
crucifixion and burial being embodied in the return and continuation of music
heard earlier in the movement. This feature is of special interest in view of Bee-
thoven’s enthusiasm for the dictum from Kant cited above, since it involves the
association of a specific high sonority with heaven or the heavens which imparts
a symbolic association to the larger musical context.
In order to establish an audible musical relationship between descent and as-
cent, Beethoven employs a device prominent in other works from his later years—
3 See, for example, Kirkendale, “New Roads to Old Ideas in Beethoven’s Missa solem-
nis,” pp. 665–701.

triumph: 1822–1824 269
Ex. 87 Missa solemnis op. 123, Credo, bars 112–26
a grandiose interrupted cadence. The musical setting of the words “descendit de

coelis” is a powerful seven-bar phrase, closing with an emphatic cadence in B in
the highest register on the word “coelis.” The orchestra repeats the phrase, reach-
ing the dominant of B in the last bar before the Adagio (Ex. 87). This time, how-
ever, the highest pitch, A, of the F major triad does not resolve upward to B ;
instead, the cadence is cut off and the F major sonority altered to become the
dominant of D. Here the full orchestral forces drop out, with a precipitous plunge
in register for the Incarnatus, which is scored at first only for low strings. The de-
scent from heaven is thereby reflected in a sudden transformation of the musical
texture.
Then, throughout the ensuing slow movement, higher pitch registers are used
sparingly; where they do appear in the solo flute in the Incarnatus it is with spe-
cial symbolic intent, to evoke the hovering of the dove. The orchestration is also
lighter here than in the rest of the movement, due in part to the absence of brass
and timpani. Only at “et ascendit in coelum” do the full orchestral forces return
with the arrival at the F major chord that serves as the goal of the long series of
rising scales (Ex. 88). This sonority is emphasized dynamically and sustained for
270 beethoven
four bars, but its importance extends well beyond the immediate musical context.
To begin with, it is the same sonority, in an identical register and very similar or-
chestration, that served as the point of transition at the interrupted cadence in the
“descendit” passage (cf. Ex. 87). The use of a matching sonority is symbolically
fitting, for this high F major chord with A at the top was there used for the word
“coelis,” and on its return here, at the end of the rising scales, it is used for the
same word, “coelum.”
The ascent into heaven coincides with the resumption of the musical texture
from the opening Allegro section of the Credo, with the F major chord serving
as a point of reference back to the suspended, unresolved sonority at the end of
“descendit de coelis.” But at this point the sonority assumes yet another function:
it forms the beginning of an extended thematic unit, which is later repeated
sequentially—with a parallel sonority—as the music for “cujus regni non erit
finis,” the passage leading up to the recapitulation (cf. bars 202–21 and 240–63).
This passage is decidedly developmental in character, owing to its modulations
and persistent syncopations, a hallmark of Beethoven’s later development proce-
dure. The F major sonority used for the word “heaven” is thus a cornerstone in
the formal architecture of the Credo, linking its first and third sections and initi-
ating the development, while at the same time creating a symbolic role for the
music that transcends any details of tone painting.
In view of the formal importance of this F major chord, it is interesting to note
that in Beethoven’s early drafts for the Credo the orchestral repetition of the phrase
“et descendit de coelis” and the interrupted cadence are absent; other, unused at-
tempts at a transition appear. It was later in the compositional process that Bee-
thoven strengthened the link between the first and third sections of the Credo—a
link centered on a single, crucial sonority rooted in the broad formal structure of
the music which at the same time served the symbolic function of relating the
music more closely to the Mass text.
triumph: 1822–1824 271
Much the same procedure seems to have been at work in Beethoven’s decision,
again late in the process of composition, to employ the E sonority as a unifying
element for the entire movement. We are now in a position to examine the formal
and symbolic implications of this chord, which occurs for the first time in the in-
troductory orchestral gesture at the very beginning of the Credo and recurs sub-
sequently no fewer than eleven times.
As we have said, this opening orchestral gesture is treated as a ritornello, pre-
ceding the “Credo” motif. As such, it appears three times in the movement,
reflecting the threefold affirmation of belief in the Trinity (as is well known, Bee-
thoven emphasized this by adding two extra statements of “Credo” to the Mass
text, before the words “in unum Dominum Jesum Christum” and “in Spiritum
Sanctum”). At the beginning of the movement the orchestral ritornello and imita-
tive statements of the “Credo” motif occupy ten bars, to the text “Credo in unum
Deum.” On its second appearance (bar 34) the initial E chord is sustained for
only two beats instead of six, so that the entire passage occupies nine bars, to the
text “Credo in unum Dominum Jesum Christum.”
The next appearance of the E chord occurs not as part of the ritornello but in
the powerful seven-bar repeated phrase to “descendit de coelis” discussed above
(see Ex. 87). It is this sonority, in fact, that resolves to the tonic of B three bars
before the interrupted cadence. The E chord is thus directly linked here with the
music of descent/ascent, with its unmistakably symbolic implications.
On their third appearance, later in the movement, the ritornello and statements
of the “Credo” motif assume the role of a recapitulation and are expanded to
about 30 bars. Here the return and development of the “Credo” motif carries
the music through the most doctrinal parts of the Mass text, where the words are
rattled off syllabically, rendered inconspicuous by the many imitative entries of
the “Credo” motif. The selective emphasis given the Mass text is indeed striking;
beginning with the words “Credo in Spiritum Sanctum,” the last third of the text
is covered in only 42 bars of music, whereas the five closing words, “et vitam ven-
turi saeculi, amen” (“and the life to come, world without end, amen”), occupy
166 bars, comprising the fugue and the coda.
Since the recapitulation has been in the dominant, F major, this third appear-
ance of the orchestral ritornello is not at the original pitch level. The motif from
the ritornello returns, however, as part of the emphatic cadence on the word
“amen” that closes the section (bars 300–302), just before the “Et vitam venturi”
fugue, and here it relates clearly to the E chord at the beginning of the movement.
The rhythmic context is the same, with the chord sustained for six beats, as
previously; once again, G is uppermost, and the chord appears in the same high
register in similar orchestration. The correspondence in sonority is thus unmistak-
able, in spite of the new harmonization of the high G within the dominant seventh
of F. Subsequently, yet another harmonization of this motif is heard as cadence to
the first part of the fugue.
Only at the climax of the fugue and in the coda, however, is the full significance
272 beethoven
Figure 4. Descending thirds in the fugue subject of the Credo of the Missa solemnis
of the E chord revealed. It is important at this point to consider the thematic ma-
terial of the Credo, especially in the latter parts of the movement. For in the fugue
and coda it becomes evident that the E chord is not merely a recurring harmony
heard from the beginning but a sonority closely related to the thematic material
on which much of the music is based.
Like the Hammerklavier Sonata, the Credo of the Mass relies heavily on the in-
terval of a descending third. This is nowhere more evident than in the fugue sub-
ject, which is based on a chain of seven descending thirds (the fourth inverted to
form a rising sixth) outlining the tonic, subdominant, and dominant triads (see
Fig. 4). The “Credo” motif is related to this configuration of thirds. Most strik-
ing, however, is the parallel between the series of descending thirds passing
through the subdominant on the one hand, and emphasis on an analogous har-
monic progression through the subdominant on the other, which allows Beetho-
ven to combine the harmonic progression from the orchestral ritornello with the
motivic descending thirds of the fugue. This synthesis occurs as early as the cru-
cial “et descendit de coelis” passage and later becomes the basis for the climax of
the fugue.
The fugue has an unusual two-part structure, with the second part undergoing
a process of rhythmic intensification created from diminution of the original sub-
ject, a procedure Beethoven used again, with some modification, in the fugue of
the Diabelli Variations. The climax occurs in the second part, where the longer
note values of the original subject are superimposed on the complex texture of
other voices treating a diminution of the subject, all over a sustained dominant
pedal. Here the series of descending thirds is extended and rearranged as a rising
sequence, leading to a climactic subdominant sonority, repeated four times, to the
words “saeculi amen” (Ex. 89). This sonority, which may be regarded as the cli-
max of the entire movement, is identical with the striking E chord of the orches-
tral introduction (cf. Ex. 86). The rhythmic context is also similar, since the chord
is protracted for a bar and a half on each of its four appearances. In the fugue,
triumph: 1822–1824 273
however, it is glorified by the presence of motivic elements from the fugue subject,
both in the original note values and in diminution.
Just as this sonority serves as the goal and climax of the fugal development, its
arrival also signals the dissolution of the fugue. The motif formed from the E
chord and its harmonic resolution, treated sequentially, serves as transition to the
coda, marked Grave, which immediately brings a return of the same E chord. It
is now approached in the lower instruments by the upward leap of an octave de-
rived from the opening orchestral ritornello. This motivic reminiscence of the be-
ginning of the Credo is most prominent in the organ part, where it may have been
added late in the compositional process, since it is absent from the autograph
score.
As in the analogous passage toward the end of the finale of the Ninth Sym-
phony, there follows an extended cadenza for the soloists, who sing a series of ris-
ing scales to the word “amen.” The scales pass into the lowest register of the
orchestral texture in the strings, gradually rising to the highest register in the flute.
An emphatic fourfold repetition of the tonic triad of B to the choral “amen” then
generates a second, more elaborate series of rising and descending scales (see Ex.
90). The descending scale pattern passes through two fifths, from F to B , which
is twice repeated, and from B to E , repeated once. This descending scale thus cor-
responds to the structure of the fugue subject; the descending thirds are here filled
in with stepwise movement. Just as this descending scale reaches the subdominant
E in the bass, the ascending scales in the winds come to rest on the high E chord
that has played such an important role throughout the Credo. As the soprano
and alto enter on G and E , four bars before the end, the ascending scales are
heard again, in the orchestra, in rhythmic diminution, quietly rushing upward to
the resolution of the plagal cadence on “amen” in the highest register. With this
274 beethoven
Ex. 90 Missa solemnis op. 123, Credo, bars 463–end
triumph: 1822–1824 275
high B major chord, and a final reminiscence of the head of the fugue subject in
the lower strings and timpani, the movement ends.
We may now schematize the formal organization of the Credo, showing the ap-
pearances of the E sonority, as well as the F major chord associated with “coelis”
(see Fig. 5).
Let us now consider the symbolism inherent in the musical architecture of Bee-
thoven’s Credo. Tovey once described the extreme contrasts of the Mass as “Bee-
thoven enraptured at the thought of the Divine Glory, but immediately prostrated
by the sudden consciousness of the nothingness of man.”4 This dichotomy applies
particularly to the first Allegro section of the Credo, which motivates abrupt con-
trasts that have posed difficulties for many listeners and critics. Subsequently,
through the interpolation of the composite slow movement within a larger formal
context, Beethoven achieves the musical equivalent of the disjunction between
heaven and earth. A symmetry of form is created through the subsumption of the
most doctrinal parts of the text into the recapitulation and through the develop-
ment of the “Credo” motif. After the dominant recapitulation, the movement is
crowned by the great fugue in B , the climax of which had been foreshadowed by
the very first chord of the Credo. In the coda, finally, this crucial sonority becomes
the penultimate chord of the plagal cadence, arising out of the same thematic
material that had generated the fugue. Those parts of the music associated with
the godhead and eternal life—the references to the Trinity, the descent from
and ascent into heaven, and the setting of the closing words “et vitam venturi sae-
culi, amen”—present a remarkably coherent formal structure spanning the entire
movement.
One moment in the creation of this formal structure has been documented by
reference to the sketchbooks—Beethoven’s decision to employ, as an opening or-
chestral ritornello, the same high E sonority that was later to serve as the climax
and plagal close of the movement. What is noteworthy is the manner in which
Beethoven isolates and develops this particular sonority, treating it as a unifying
element throughout the movement. Its role in the Mass also has symbolic impli-
cations, which are clarified by the close musical affinity between the Credo and
another of the Mass movements, the Benedictus. The high chord that opens the
Benedictus appears like a ray of light, breaking the darkness of the long descend-
ing progression of the Praeludium. Mellers has drawn attention to the similarity
between the penultimate E chord of the Credo and this initial sonority of the
Benedictus—a high G major chord in first inversion (see Ex. 91, where it appears
just before the Andante molto cantabile e non troppo mosso).5 The parallel is con-
vincing, and is supported by features of the music not cited by Mellers, parti-
cularly the presence of the thematic material based on descending thirds. The be-
ginning of the celebrated dolce cantabile theme in the solo violin, with its
descending third and rising sixth, the thirds filled in by stepwise movement, is al-
most identical in structure to the fugue subject of the Credo. The G major chord,
4 Essays in Musical Analysis: Vocal Music, p. 167.

5 Beethoven and the Voice of God, pp. 334, 342.
Figure 5. Formal outline of the Credo in the Missa solemnis
triumph: 1822–1824 277
Ex. 91 Missa solemnis op. 123, Benedictus, bars 106–21
on the other hand, is treated analogously with the E chord of the Credo as a
referential sonority—it begins and closes the movement and appears repeatedly,
always with the solo violin on high G. The highest pitch of the E chord from the
Credo is retained in the Benedictus to become tonic in the new sonority, signaling
the arrival of the divine messenger. From this sonority the violin solo emerges;
thus the network of referential sonorities becomes closely identified with this very
unusual feature of the orchestration in the Mass—the assignment of the single
most prominent solo part not to one of the vocalists but rather to the violin. The
violin solo of the Benedictus effectively symbolizes the absolute, ideal quality of the
divine presence, using the high G major chord as a point of departure and return.
In his sketches for this passage Beethoven contemplated an earlier entry of the
solo violin in a lower register, followed by a gradual ascent in pitch. By eliminat-
ing this transition he highlighted the initial chord of the Benedictus by means of
an astonishing disjunction in pitch. In a sense, this sudden upward shift in regis-
ter is analogous to the sudden downward shift at the Incarnatus in the Credo,
278 beethoven
where Beethoven also contemplated, and rejected, a transition in sonority. At the
end of the Credo, on the other hand, Beethoven emphasizes the high E chord in
a different manner from the Benedictus, making it the goal of the long series of as-
cending scales beginning in the lowest register. In each case these high sonorities
evoke celestial regions that transcend earthly existence; their symbolic importance
is unmistakable.
As we have seen, Beethoven’s interest in the “starry heavens above” is already
reflected in a piece like the slow movement of the String Quartet in E minor op.
59 no. 2, from 1806. Another such example, from the period when the Missa
solemnis was being composed, is his song Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel
WoO 150, whose autograph score is dated 4 March 1820; here a high E major
sonority in the piano begins and ends the piece, acting as a symbolic framing ges-
ture. In the Missa solemnis this significant image content is merged with the the-
matic and formal structure to shape an unconsummated symbol; there is no con-
tradiction here between structure and expression, but rather an interdependence
of the syntactic and semantic aspects of artistic meaning. The Agnus Dei of the
Mass displays symbolism of a much less affirmative nature. Beethoven sets
the Agnus Dei in the “black” tonality of B minor, and underscores his setting of
the “miserere nobis” with poignant chromaticism, syncopation, and dark or-
chestral textures. The shift to the 6/8 D major Allegretto vivace for the “Dona
nobis pacem” brings a drastic contrast, as a prayer for peace is juxtaposed with
the awareness of worldly strife. The series of themes employed in the “Dona” cul-
minates in a moving phrase sung by the voices a cappella. In its contour and
rhythm this intimate melody is reminiscent of his setting of “Nimm sie hin denn,
diese Lieder” (“Take these songs to your heart then”) in the last song of An die
ferne Geliebte.
Beethoven exposes this fragile prayer to threats, initially in the form of the
music of war embodied in the Allegro assai. The approach of the military proces-
sion in B motivates the return of the text “Agnus Dei, miserere nobis” which is
sung “fearfully” (“ängstlich”) in recitative. This passage underscores the un-
fulfilled nature of our hopes for peace. Even after the D major music of the “Dona
nobis pacem” is restored, the threats to peace never entirely recede from the hori-
zon of the work. The agitated, hurly-burly presto orchestral episode at the heart
of the movement may represent a threat to “inner peace”; this passage eventually
leads into a powerful resumption of the bellicose trumpet-and-drum fanfares.
(Plates 24–25 show Beethoven’s substantial revisions in the passage that first jux-
taposes the “Dona nobis pacem” in D major with approaching sounds of war in
B major: the drum taps on F are written on the eighth stave from the top of each
page. After making numerous preliminary sketches for this transition on other pa-
pers, Beethoven wrote out and revised fol. 18v of the score; on stave 12 his era-
sures wore a hole in the thick paper. Then he cancelled fol. 18v altogether, and re-
placed the original fol. 19 by the second leaf shown (p. 221). Two extra bars of
music were written on each side of this leaf, so that the twelve bars of music origi-
nally contained on three pages could be compressed onto two.)
While sketching the Agnus Dei Beethoven contemplated a symphonically con-
triumph: 1822–1824 279
ceived coda, only to reject that option at an advanced stage in composition.6 His
decision was surely bound up with the open conclusion to the Mass, which is
strangely shadowed by hints of the music of war in the form of distant drum rolls.
In an inscription to one of his sketches Beethoven referred to the withdrawal of
the sounds of war as a “sign of peace”; still, it is striking how close to the end of
the movement the disquieting drum rolls appear. There is an almost epigrammatic
quality to the end of the Missa solemnis. The chorus concludes with a concise
statement of the lyrical phrase originally heard a cappella, but now heard with the
support of the strings and winds. An orchestral echo of the vocal phrase “pacem,
pacem” leads to the terse, four-bar conclusion in the full orchestra, played fortis-
simo. The end of the Mass is left ambiguous, since a prayer for peace is far from
being its fulfillment. In the Missa solemnis the ultimate goal for human aspiration
is located in a transcendental quest, as is reflected symbolically above all in the
lofty referential sonorities of the Credo and the Benedictus.
S S S
After the virtual completion of the Missa solemnis in the summer of 1822 Beetho-
ven turned his energies in the autumn to the last of his dramatic overtures, Die
Weihe des Hauses (The Consecration of the House) op. 124. Parts of the Missa
solemnis, and especially the Gloria, reflect his professed admiration of Handel in
their choral textures and rhetoric, but no other work displays this influence more
clearly than Die Weihe des Hauses, in its lucid counterpoint, formal breadth, and
festive solemnity. Beethoven’s lifelong admiration for Handel is amply docu-
mented; his extensive acquaintance with Handel’s music dates back at least to the
1790s, when he attended the musical gatherings at Baron van Swieten’s home and
wrote his Twelve Variations for Violoncello and Piano on a theme from Handel’s
Judas Maccabaeus WoO 45. When asked by a visitor in 1817 to name the greatest
of past composers Beethoven is supposed to have placed Handel above all others.
According to Schindler, whose testimony for once we can accept, Beethoven en-
tertained a “long cherished idea of writing an overture specifically in the style of
Handel,”7 an ambition finally realized in 1822 in Die Weihe des Hauses. Beetho-
ven contemplated another overture, on B–A–C–H, in homage to the other great
Baroque master, but that project did not advance beyond the stage of sketching.
It is tempting to associate a conversation-book entry from 1820 concerning
Beethoven’s intention to write variations on the “Dead March” from Handel’s
Saul with the stately, majestic march in C major near the beginning of the Weihe
des Hauses overture.8 The affinity with Handel does not involve direct quotation
but suggests a more generalized stylistic kinship. Beethoven’s piece opens with a
slow section suggestive of French overture style that leads without break into an
imposing double fugue. Fugues that begin with such paired entries of subject and
6
Cf. Drabkin, “The Agnus Dei of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis,” pp. 154, 156–57.
7
Beethoven As I Knew Him, p. 324.
8
Cf. Göllner, “Beethovens Ouvertüre ‘Die Weihe des Hauses’ und Händels Trauer-
marsch aus ‘Saul’”; Bruner, “The Genesis and Structure of Beethoven’s Overture Die Weihe
des Hauses, Op. 124,” pp. 33, 121–24.
280 beethoven
countersubject are characteristic of Handel but uncommon in Beethoven; a rare
example is the fugue forming the penultimate variation in the Diabelli Variations.
One of the quintessentially Beethovenian passages in op. 124 is the transition
from the slow introduction to the double fugue, where a long ascent featuring a
motivic rising fourth leads to a pivotal reversal of direction at the outset of the
fugal Allegro, as the fourths are integrated into a stepwise descent in two voices.
Beethoven’s control of the dynamics and orchestration, as well as the stringendo
or acceleration in tempo, all act to heighten the dramatic impact of the emergence
of the double fugue, whose insistent syncopations endow the theme with an ex-
citing metrical tension.
A few weeks after completing the overture in early October 1822 Beethoven’s
thoughts turned to an unfinished major project that had been put aside about
three and a half years earlier: the Diabelli Variations. In November the composer
wrote to Anton Diabelli that “The fee for the variations would be 40 ducats at
most, provided they are worked out on as large a scale as is planned. But if this
does not materialize, then I would quote a smaller fee.”9 (In Beethoven’s own
words, “im Falle sie so gross ausgeführt werden als die Anlage davon ist; sollte
dies aber nicht statthaben.”) As Beethoven himself implies in this letter, the “An-
lage,” or plan for the variations, was large; it included the twenty-three variations
of Beethoven’s early draft. During the first months of 1823 the piece was worked
out on an even larger scale than Beethoven had planned, becoming in the process
the biggest of all his compositions for piano.
One of Beethoven’s guiding inspirations when he expanded the early draft of
the Diabelli Variations shows a curious parallel with a formal device he used in
the large-scale design of the Credo of the Missa solemnis: the occasional recapitu-
lation of the work’s initial sonority in later passages. This is given a comic twist
in the Variations. In the Mass, as we have seen, the high, protracted E chord as-
sumes both formal and symbolic importance; its recurrences in the Credo are as-
sociated with a sublime vision of the celestial. Diabelli’s waltz, by contrast, is
firmly rooted in the everyday world of the commonplace. Accordingly, in his early
draft Beethoven was much concerned with the transformation and aesthetic im-
provement of the waltz, and he was attracted as well by the possibilities of cari-
cature offered by Diabelli’s “cobbler’s patch.”
In his late work on the Variations Beethoven introduced another kind of trav-
esty as distinct from the examples we have discussed in Variations 13 and 21 (see
chapter 9). Here he harps on the actual substance of the waltz itself—specifically
those features of it that are particularly trite—and reproduces them in comically
exaggerated form so that they become insufferable. It is this form of parody that
is most important for the overall progression of the Variations, because Beetho-
ven’s criterion for criticism is precisely the melodic outline of Diabelli’s theme.
Most of the other variations thoroughly reshape the surface of the theme, and,
though motivic materials from the waltz are exploited exhaustively, its affective
model is left far behind. In these late parody variations, however, the waltz’s

triumph: 1822–1824 281
melodic outline and supporting context are restored—recapitulated, in a sense—

and they stand out because of Beethoven’s consistent suppression of them in the
other variations. Only in these added variations, furthermore, does the melodic
outline reappear in its original register, which strengthens the thematic reference.
Diabelli returns, as it were—the material is not Beethoven’s—but he returns in a
different Stimmung, a kind of Lisztian transformation.
When Beethoven returned to the Variations in 1822–23 he confronted a unique
formal dilemma. He normally strove to endow the opening of any major work with
a pregnant tension and significance; the op. 120 Variations are the great exception,
an outstanding example of a major work with origins in the commonplace. But
these variations are not confined to the possibilities of Diabelli’s theme per se. The
nature of the theme in no way anticipates the scope and immensity of the Variations.
How then was Beethoven to establish a relationship between the theme and varia-
tions such that the waltz was not rendered superfluous, a mere prologue to the
whole? This implicit contradiction may have had something to do with Beethoven’s
uncharacteristic decision to lay the work aside for several years. But in any case the
apparent absurdity of building a monumental edifice on such slight foundations
had, by 1823, supplied an unexpected stimulus to his own imagination.
By parodying the waltz theme directly, with its melodic contours intact, Bee-
thoven made it into an indispensable foundation for the overall musical progres-
sion. In fact, in the work’s final form, the supporting pillars of the total structure
depend on the recapitulation of the melodic shape of Diabelli’s theme. Thus the
listener’s first impression of the theme is utilized in a manner not unlike that in
Beethoven’s other variation sets, such as the C minor Variations WoO 80, in
which a series of recapitulatory references to the theme embraces the work as a
whole. In the Diabelli Variations, moreover, the last of these references presents
an ideal point of departure for an evolutionary progression toward a final, culmi-
nating experience. The project was, therefore, in a peculiar way, tailor-made to fit
the revolutionary aesthetic of Beethoven’s third period.
A conspicuous characteristic of the waltz recalled in these added variations of
1823 is the repeated tonic chord with G at the top that opens the dance (Ex. 92);
this G, repeated ten times in the first four bars, continues as the highest note of
the dominant-seventh chords in the next four-bar phrase. With their persistent
emphasis on G, these repeated chords serve to underscore the waltz’s static har-
monic scheme. It is not surprising that in most of his variations Beethoven should
wish to depart from this aspect of the waltz. What is remarkable, however, is that
in the variations added later he adopts and exaggerates precisely these features.
We are now in a position to judge why Beethoven inserted a vigorous, majes-
tic variation Alla marcia maestoso immediately after Diabelli’s waltz. The refined
third variation, originally planned as the first, did nothing to smooth over the dis-
crepancy between theme and variations, since it already transforms the theme so
thoroughly. But in his singular solution of adding the march variation Beethoven
achieved a sense of gesture, of grand anticipation—albeit tinged with irony, since
the melodic contours of Diabelli’s theme are so clearly preserved (Ex. 93). This
pointed reference to the waltz is unmistakable: Beethoven would not otherwise
282 beethoven
Ex. 92 Diabelli Variations op. 120, Theme
have allowed himself nine consecutive repetitions of the tonic triad in root posi-
tion in the right hand, while the left solemnly spells out the descending fourth of
the waltz, creating accented harmonic clashes with the treble. The grand gesture
is simultaneously a parody of the theme.
It is only after this opening march variation that the melodic outlines of Dia-
belli’s theme—with its falling fourth and fifth and persistent emphasis on the
dominant note G—are avoided. In some variations, such as the third and the
eighth, the melodic line is reshaped as a descent from the third, E, of the tonic
triad. In others, manifold changes in texture, harmony, and rhythm leave only a
tenuous link between the melody and its successive transformations. It is there-
fore a significant event when Beethoven finally recapitulates the melodic contour
of the theme in Variation 15, the Presto scherzando, and then again in the paired
variations that follow it. Variation 15, unlike the paired variations, also brings a
return of the original register. Variations 16 and 17 were present in the draft of
1819, as we have seen; but Variation 15, like Variation 1, was an afterthought,
added as the piece was nearing completion.

triumph: 1822–1824 283
If the opening march variation is a mock-heroic gesture bearing the seeds of

irony, this Presto scherzando (Ex. 94) is an even more obvious caricature. Its role
as a miniature juxtaposed with two of the most massive variations (no. 14 and the
pair nos. 16–17) reinforces its parodistic quality, as does its unusually static har-
monic plan: the first half actually closes on the tonic! Furthermore, its harmonic
rhythm is rather peculiar in alternating the tonic triad with an augmented triad
on the dominant. In its overall linear-harmonic structure it mimics the simple
C(I)–D(V)–E(I)–D(V)–C(I) progression of Diabelli’s theme, and this is under-
scored by a capricious increase in spacing in the second half, which has provoked
attempts at “correction” by solemn editors.
This reference to the theme is broadened into a more general allusion in the
pair of march variations, nos. 16 and 17, that immediately follows. The sequence
of nos. 15–17 is counterpoised to the sequence of the theme and Variation 1,
which is also a march (though admittedly of a rather different, more stilted char-
acter); and in a curious, elusive way this long-range correspondence draws Dia-
belli’s theme more closely into the fabric of the work.
The waltz finds its final reincarnation in Variation 25, in the guise of a German
dance, with the rhythm of Diabelli’s bass shifted to the treble. Beethoven’s tongue-
in-cheek attitude is perhaps even more obvious here than in no. 15: monotony of
rhythm, dissonant clashes between treble and bass, and aimlessness in the voice-
leading confirm his humorous intentions. At the end of the first half he goes so far
as to omit a bar before the cadence, causing the music to stumble prematurely
back to the beginning (Ex. 95).
This lumbering caricature of Diabelli’s theme is actually the first of an un-
broken succession of variations (nos. 25–33) leading to the coda and culmination
of the work. In fact, a thread of continuity, tracing the path from banality to
sublimity—from the world of Diabelli’s ditty to the world of the Arietta of op.
111—sounds through all these last nine variations. By extraordinary means, Bee-
thoven first obliterates his distorted image of the theme and then gradually recon-
284 beethoven
stitutes its essence in a series of variations that culminates in the last of the slow
minor variations, the penultimate fugue, and the concluding minuet and coda.
Through the three parody variations 1, 15, and 25 Beethoven has established
a series of periodic references to the waltz that draw it more closely into the inner
workings of the set, and the last of these gives rise to a progression that transcends
the theme once and for all. This is the central idea of the Diabelli Variations. The
artistic journey embodied in the great chain of variations is enormously wide-
ranging, however, and Beethoven fully exploits the potential of the form to incor-
porate allusions to various musical styles. After the witty reference to Mozart’s
Don Giovanni in Variation 22 (see chapter 9), the following variations, like Lepo-
rello, gain the capacity for disguise. No. 23 is an étude-like parody of pianistic vir-
tuosity alluding to the Pianoforte-Method by J. B. Cramer, whereas no. 24, the
Fughetta, shows in its intensely sublimated atmosphere an affinity not only with
the fugue of op. 110 but also with some organ pieces from the third part of
J. S. Bach’s Clavierübung. In no. 25, as we have seen, the waltz is reincarnated as
a humorous German dance, but this image is gradually dispersed in the series of
interconnecting fast variations culminating in no. 28, in which harsh dissonances
dominate every strong beat.
The process of rhythmic intensification from no. 25 to no. 28 merits detailed
attention. Beethoven spreads the sixteenth-note motion drawn from the bass of
the waltz parody (no. 25) over all the pitch registers in the ensuing variation (no.
26). The legato phrasing embraces paired groups of three sixteenths each, suggest-
ing a meter of 6/16, but Beethoven retains the 3/8 meter (as well as the basic
tempo) of no. 25. The rhythmic impulses of the triple meter thus fall on the sec-
ond and fourth sixteenths of each group of six notes, with the phrasing extended
triumph: 1822–1824 285
over the bar lines throughout. This shifting pattern of metrical impulses imparts
dynamic tension to the figuration, enhancing the upbeat character of the first half
of each phrase. Then, in no. 27, Diabelli’s “cobbler’s patch” sequences of a rising
semitone and a third become the basis for the figuration in rhythmic diminution,
expressed in rapid triplet sixteenth notes. Diabelli’s motif is written in steady
quarter notes, but Beethoven compresses his motivic variant so radically that it
appears no fewer than twenty-four times in the opening eight bars of the varia-
tion! The dissonant semitone relation derived from the theme infuses the music
with an intense energy, generating a frenzied chain of imitative motivic entries
driving into the highest register in the second half of the variation. This climactic
passage is Beethoven’s ultimate parody of the “cobbler’s patch” sequences from
the waltz. Variation 28 then carries Beethoven’s rhythmic development to yet an-
other stage, as the process of foreshortening motivates a compression of the meter
to shorter bars of 2/4 time, while reducing the basic content of the music to the
dissonant semitone—now expressed in the multiple contrapuntal voices embod-
ied in the accented diminished-seventh and augmented-sixth chords.
After Variation 28 we enter a transfigured realm in which Diabelli’s waltz and
the world it represents seem to be left behind. A group of three slow variations in
the minor culminates in no. 31, an elaborate aria reminiscent of the decorated
minor variation of Bach’s Goldberg set but also foreshadowing Chopin. The fol-
lowing energetic fugue in E is initially Handelian in character; its second part
builds to a tremendous climax with three subjects combined simultaneously, be-
fore the fugue dissipates into a powerful dissonant chord. An impressive transi-
tion leads to C major and to the final, most subtle variation of all: a Mozartian
minuet, whose elaboration through rhythmic means leads in the coda to an ethe-
real texture that unmistakably recalls the fourth variation of the Arietta of op.
111, Beethoven’s last sonata, composed in 1822. The parallels between op. 111
and the final Diabelli variation are structural in nature: they extend to the the-
matic proportions and to the use of an analogous series of rhythmic diminutions
leading, in each case, to a suspended, ethereal texture. But the most obvious simi-
larity surfaces in the concluding passages, outlining the descending fourth C–G
that is so crucial to each work (Ex. 96a and b). Herein lies the final surprise: the
Arietta movement, itself influenced by the Diabelli project, served in turn as Bee-
thoven’s model for the last of the Diabelli Variations. The final allusion thus be-
came a self-reference, a final point of orientation within an artwork whose vast
scope ranges from ironic caricature to sublime transformation of a commonplace
waltz.
Like the close of the Missa solemnis, that of the Diabelli Variations is ambigu-
ous, and pregnant with implications. It ends, essentially, in the middle of the the-
matic structure, poised before an open door, which leads, if it leads anywhere, into
the midst of the Arietta of op. 111. At the same time in these closing moments Bee-
thoven looks back and across the entire vast cycle of variations and delicately re-
captures the repeated stress on G in the waltz that had earlier provoked his scorn
and stimulated his imagination. As Brendel observed, the following sentence from
286 beethoven
Ex. 96 (a) Diabelli Variations op. 120, Variation 33, bars 42–44
(b) Piano Sonata op. 111/II, coda
Kleist’s essay “On the Marionette Theater” suits the conclusion of the Diabelli Vari-
ations: “When perception has passed through infinity, gracefulness reappears.”10
Beethoven produced only one important work for piano after the Diabelli Varia-
tions: the “Cycle of Bagatelles” op. 126, in 1824. He had long been interested in
the genre of the bagatelle, a short, intimate piano piece making modest technical
demands on the performer. The popular Für Elise WoO 59 is an example, and in
his op. 33 from 1802 Beethoven had already published a group of seven bagatelles.
Several other unpublished bagatelles from earlier years were revised and included
in the eleven bagatelles of op. 119 that appeared in 1823, together with newly
composed pieces, two of which were actually byproducts of the Diabelli Varia-
tions. As we have seen, even the first movement of the Sonata op. 109 may origi-
nally have been conceived as a bagatelle.
Beethoven’s sketchbooks bear witness to his keen interest in short, aphoristic
pieces for piano. The Artaria 195 Sketchbook from 1820 contains draft versions
of the bagatelles that were eventually issued as op. 119 nos. 7–11, a group of five
small pieces that he wished to publish as a unit. However, his Leipzig publisher,
Carl Friedrich Peters, emphatically declined to publish these bagatelles. Peters ex-
plained to Beethoven that he “imagined having cute little pieces” but was disap-
pointed that they were “entirely too small” and claimed that “Not one person
wants to believe that these are by you.”11 In response to this situation, Beethoven
10
Music Sounded Out, p. 53.
11Theodore Albrecht, ed. and trans., Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), vol. 2, L. 313 (dated 4 March 1823).
triumph: 1822–1824 287
combined this group of five bagatelles with the other pieces used in op. 119. Ad-
ditional short pieces that he composed in the sketchbook remained unpublished.
While the Bagatelle in A major op. 119 no. 10 is the shortest piece Beethoven ever
composed, two still shorter versions of this bagatelle are found in Artaria 195,
alongside several other brief pieces that were first published in 2003, in the first
edition of this sketchbook.12 As these pieces remind us, Beethoven’s tendencies to-
ward artistic expansion and magnitude coexisted with a tendency toward extreme
concision, suggesting at times an aphoristic and almost Webern-like compression
and density.
While opp. 33 and 119 are collections of individual pieces, op. 126 suggests an
integrated cycle, as the sketches reveal; Beethoven took special pains in ordering
this group of six pieces. Lyrical pieces in slow or moderate tempos alternate with
more rapid, agitated ones, up to no. 6, in which a short, furious Presto frames a
reflective Andante amabile e con moto. The bagatelles are characterized by direct-
ness of expression and use of three-part song form, yet the apparent simplicity is
deceptive: almost all the reprise sections, for instance, vary the initial passages and
offer significant reinterpretations. In the middle section of no. 1, where the meter
changes from 3/4 to 2/4 (bar 21) the music seems to turn inward, arresting the for-
ward momentum through meditation on the motif from the preceding bar, now
rhythmically elaborated to lead into a cadenza. In the ensuing recapitulation Bee-
thoven places the head of the opening theme in octaves in the bass against a new
chordal texture in the treble, which leads to an imitation of the theme in the high-
est register. The opening material of the bagatelle is compressed, and a cadential
phrase with close motivic links to the theme appears in imitation in the final bars.
Beethoven thus conspicuously avoids a literal restatement: in the reprise the trans-
formation in texture, broadening in register, and many other changes produce an
effect of the theme being explored from a new, heightened perspective. This is not
unlike the enhanced recapitulatory techniques used in the variation movements of
Beethoven’s later years.
The fifth bagatelle, a quasi Allegretto in G major, evokes an atmosphere of
childlike naïveté, especially in its middle section, beginning in C major. Here, as
elsewhere, the effect of simplicity results from the utmost purity of the musical
language: the parallel thirds in the treble (bars 17 ff.) derive from the bass of the
first section, while the return to the C major sonority in bar 20 is enhanced by
means of the C in the tenor voice and the asymmetrical phrasing. The pedal on
C contributes to the static, idyllic quality of the passage and sets off the more ac-
tive continuation in bars 20–30, with its crescendo, modulation to G major, and
expansion in register. The yearning character of the ascent into the high register
carries over into the ensuing reprise of the opening, now stated in the upper
octave.
The framing device of the Presto in the final bagatelle seems to draw attention
12 William Kinderman, ed., Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solem-
nis and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 2003).
288 beethoven
Ex. 97 Bagatelle op. 126 no. 6
to the boundary separating inward, subjective feeling from external reality—or

art from life. The relation of his art to society was of course an important theme
for Beethoven, one he addressed most explicitly in Fidelio, the Missa solemnis,
and the Ninth Symphony. His aesthetic convictions were far removed from
the doctrine of l’art pour l’art. In the case of op. 126 no. 6 we are reminded of
Czerny’s account of Beethoven’s practice, after moving his listeners to tears
through his improvisations, of bursting into loud laughter and mocking his hear-
ers’ emotion, saying “You are fools!”13 The easy sentimentality that Beethoven
scorned is indeed alien to his musical style, but depth of emotion is essential to it.
And although the framing gesture of the Presto in the last bagatelle effects a bold
contrast that is almost ominously like a kick downstairs, the music so enclosed in
the Andante amabile e con moto assumes an intensely meditative character while
transforming the material from the Presto.
The beginning of the Andante amabile e con moto clearly derives from the
opening gesture: the bass pedal on E and B comes from the sustained tremolos
of the Presto, while the register of the treble line and the harmonic texture in
thirds are outlined in its rapid eighth-note figures (Ex. 97). But in contrast to the
Presto, the music of the Andante has taken on a contemplative quality, and in
the course of the piece it undergoes a further evolution. Beethoven places the
reprise section in the subdominant, A major, and arranges the pedal figure into a
pattern of sixteenth-note triplets reminiscent of the Arietta movement of op. 111.
The initial six-bar phrase now reappears in varied form, so that its disjunct inter-
vals are filled in by conjunct motion, bringing the thematic profile closer still
to the initial Presto. Then, after the repetition of the second section of the form,
the music reaches a climax on high C (bars 55–56), the registral ceiling of the
bagatelle.
The descent from this climax embraces three levels of experience as the adorn-
ments of art are progressively stripped away. In bar 64 the elaborate texture in six-
teenths and sixteenth-note triplets is suddenly broken off to reveal the music from
the beginning of the Andante, corresponding to bars 10–12 but with the pedal
13
triumph: 1822–1824 289
Ex. 98 Bagatelle op. 126 no. 6, bars 61–end
now placed initially on the dominant instead of on the tonic (Ex. 98). A varied se-
quence of these bars carries the progression into the low register, leading to an
exact restatement of the framing gesture in presto tempo. Whereas previously the
Presto had offered raw material out of which the Andante had been shaped, Bee-
thoven now reverses the process: the Andante is dissipated into the frenetic activ-
ity of the Presto, whose fanfare of chords on the E tonic concludes the bagatelle.
A humorous or ironic quality arises here through Beethoven’s juxtaposition of
highly introspective music with a gesture more evocative of the common daylight
of outward events. And, inasmuch as this passage implies humble or low origins
for the work of art, like the use of Diabelli’s waltz in op. 120, it also embodies a
universal breadth of experience that is typical of Beethoven.
S S S
Beethoven’s main compositional preoccupation during 1823 was his Ninth Sym-
phony in D minor op. 125, the grandest of his symphonies and most influential of
all his works. The Ninth Symphony has become an unsurpassable model of affir-
mative culture, embodying as it does a mythic narrative that depicts inescapable
problems of modern life and envisages a potential solution. Broadly considered,
the symphony seems to respond to the dualistic world picture that emerged from
the collapse of older certainties. The process was double-edged. As the human
mind came to construe the universe as impersonal, mechanistic, and soulless, ex-
propriating higher consciousness to itself, it participated in the ultimate anthro-
pomorphic projection. The mechanization of the world picture greatly aided the
goals of natural science, but it also contributed to an increasing sense of existen-
tial isolation. For if, as Kant argued, we have access only to appearances, not
to things-in-themselves, then the ultimate ground of the world lies beyond us,
mysterious and unknowable.14 It is hardly coincidental that the early nineteenth
century brought new sensitivity to the polarity between impersonal nature and the
introspective individual human being. In Kant’s famous formulation this polarity
was viewed positively, as a sublime contrast between “the starry heavens above us
14 An analysis of the dualistic world picture is offered by Richard Tarnas in the epilogue
of his book The Passion of the Western Mind.

290 beethoven
and the moral law within us.” The familiar Romantic image of the wanderer con-
fronting the elements, as in Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, for instance, is less
comforting and more mysterious, wrapped in an aura of opaque impressionistic
landscape and archaic ruins. The closest musical counterpart to Friedrich is prob-
ably Beethoven’s Viennese contemporary Franz Schubert.
In a work like Schubert’s Winterreise of 1827 the existential tension concen-
trated in the wanderer archetype absorbs tragic qualities, since the epistemologi-
cal gap between the self and the external world seems absolute and unbridgeable.
As Peter Gülke points out in his book on Schubert, the protagonist of Schubert’s
earlier song cycle Die schöne Müllerin is rooted in concrete poetic images, which
are largely withdrawn in the Winterreise.15 The wanderer figure of The Winter’s
Journey is not “poetized” in descriptive terms but himself becomes the poet. His
identity and background remain shadowy. Attention focuses on points of corre-
spondence between his inward sensibility and outward natural objects such as the
frozen stream, cold wind, circling crow, or howling dogs. As in Friedrich’s paint-
ings this wanderer does not face us but peers into the unknown and unfath-
omable. The ultimate destination of the journey in Winterreise is identified with
“the path from which no one has ever returned,” that is, death.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony points to a way out of this dualistic dilemma,
avoiding a tragic or solipsistic posture while safeguarding itself against the gravest
risk of affirmative art—the danger of a lapse into ideology, or even kitsch. As we
have seen in connection with Beethoven’s Congress of Vienna works, the charac-
teristic mark of kitsch is the presence of a false or overextended artistic pretence.
Miraculously, this pitfall is avoided in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The very
frequent use of the “Joy” theme in television commercials for beer or food intro-
duces such an overextended pretence, since the supposed excellence of the prof-
fered commodity is too facilely associated with an artistic exaltation taken out of
context; as so often in advertisement, simplification or even deception is the very
point of the message. The same failure invests certain pieces by Beethoven him-
self, as we have seen in the case of Der glorreiche Augenblick, but the Ninth Sym-
phony and its companion works of Beethoven’s last years earn our trust by pay-
ing dearly for their sustaining visions of perfection and aspiration. The narrative
design of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony unfolds as a tensional balance containing
powerful regressive elements that resist the utopian import of the choral finale and
against which the meaning of the finale must be gauged. As Solomon has stressed,
the vision of brotherhood in Schiller’s text is conditional; “alle Menschen werden
Brüder” (“all men become brothers”) is expressed neither in the present, past, nor
even the future tense, but in a process tense, implying what will happen “if.”16
The choral finale is placed as it were in the subjunctive, on the horizon of possible
realization, not yet quite within our grasp.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a great work of synthesis, at once retrospec-
tive and futuristic in orientation. Beethoven’s lifelong interest in Schiller’s famous
15 Franz Schubert und seine Zeit, pp. 236–39.

16 “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: A Search for Order,” p. 30.
triumph: 1822–1824 291
poem began at Bonn; it probably predated by several years Fischenich’s letter of

January 1793 reporting the young composer’s intention to set An die Freude,
whose designation as an ode stems from Beethoven rather than from Schiller. Bee-
thoven returned repeatedly to the poem, first around 1798, and later during the
initial labors on his opera Fidelio—two lines from Schiller’s An die Freude found
their way into the text of the opera’s finale (see Plate 9). In the Petter Sketchbook
of 1811–12 Beethoven made the following entries: “Freude schöner Götterfunken
to be worked out as an overture”; “selected lines like Fürsten sind Bettler [princes
are beggars] etc. not the whole”; “selected lines from Schiller’s Joy brought to-
gether into a whole.” As Otto Baensch suggested, these entries probably imply not
a choral overture but rather a larger work, or “whole” (“Ganzen”) that would
need to be preceded by an “overture.”17 By 1812 Beethoven apparently recog-
nized the need to realize his long-desired setting of Schiller’s ode not as a song but
as a major choral-symphonic work.
At about this time Beethoven also contemplated a symphony “in D minor” as
a possible companion to the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, but it is not clear
that the anticipated symphony was to have incorporated a setting of Schiller’s text.
In 1815, while at work on the Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 2, he sketched the theme
later used in the scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, and by 1817 he entertained
thoughts of two new symphonies to be written for London. His most detailed no-
tation of these plans is as follows:
Adagio Cantique—Frommer Gesang in einer Sinfonie in den alten Tonarten—
Herr Gott dich loben wir—alleluja—entweder für sich allein oder als Einleitung in
eine Fuge. Vielleicht auf diese Weise die ganze 2te Sinfonie charakterisirt, wo als-
denn im letzten Stück oder schon im Adagio die Singstimmen eintreten. Die Orch-
ester Violinen etc. werden im letzten Stück verzehnfacht. Oder das Adagio wird
auf gewisse Weise im letzten Stücke wiederholt, wobei alsdenn erst die Singstim-
men nach und nach eintreten—im Adagio Text griechischer Mithos Cantique
Ecclesiastique—im Allegro Feier des Bachus.
[Adagio Cantique—devout song in a symphony in the old modes—our Lord we

praise you—alleluja—either by itself or as introduction to a fugue. The whole sec-
ond symphony could perhaps be characterized this way, whereby the voices enter
in the last movement or already in the Adagio. The orchestral violins, etc., will be
multiplied tenfold in the last movement. Or the Adagio will be in this way repeated
in the last movement, whereby only then the voices enter gradually—in the Ada-
gio a text of a Greek myth Cantique Ecclesiastique—in the Allegro the celebration
of Bachus.18]
Many special qualities of the Ninth Symphony are alluded to in this remark-
able inscription. The notion of an “Adagio Cantique . . . in the old modes” relates
to the slow sections of the choral finale as we know it, namely the Andante
maestoso and especially the Adagio ma non troppo, ma divoto. In the end this sec-
17
Aufbau und Sinn des Chorfinales in Beethovens neunter Symphonie, pp. 44–45.
18
292 beethoven
tion did serve as “introduction” to a fugue—it leads to the double choral fugue
(see Plate 27) in which the “Joy” theme is combined with the main subject of the
Andante, set to the words “Seid umschlungen Millionen” (“Be embraced, mil-
lions”). At this early stage Beethoven had not yet envisaged how a series of such
interrelated symphonic and choral movements could be brought together into a
whole. It was surely in response to this basic problem that he eventually resorted
to the effective solution embodied in the completed work: the entry of the voices
is delayed until the finale, or last main stage in the narrative progression between
movements, with this finale in turn devised as a composite form embracing its
own progression of four basic movements.
The allusion in Beethoven’s inscription to “the celebration of Bac[c]hus” re-
calls his rudimentary sketches for a pastoral opera on Bacchus in the Scheide
Sketchbook of 1815, as well as those verses of Schiller’s An die Freude that ex-
press Dionysian sentiments. However, Beethoven eventually excluded from the
text such overtly Dionysian images as “the brimming cup [whose] foam to heaven
mounts up.” Nor did he follow up the provocative remark contained in his
sketches for the “Bacchus” opera:
Dissonances perhaps [to be left] unresolved in the entire opera or [treated] entirely
differently since in these uncultivated times our refined music is unthinkable.19
The “uncultivated times” of mythic antiquity held no such musical consequences

for the choral finale. Instead, Beethoven fused archaic and visionary aspects into
a depiction of humanity and nature in the spirit of Rousseau and Goethe,
affirming the compatibility of civilized refinement with mythic universality.
Studies of the Artaria 201 Sketchbook by Robert Winter and Sieghard Bran-
denburg have indicated that Beethoven devised a melody for the Ode to Joy and
a basic outline of the layout of the symphony by about October 1822.20 Never-
theless, he wavered in his intention to crown the work with the choral finale, and
alternative sketches for an “instrumental finale” appear even at an advanced
stage; the unused theme was eventually incorporated into the finale of his String
Quartet in A minor op. 132, composed in 1825.
Beethoven’s evolving plans for the intermovement narrative progression are
clarified by those entries in the Landsberg 8 Manuscript from 1823 that contain
his sketches for the recitatives and quotations from earlier movements at the
threshold of the choral finale. These entries make clear the reasons for the rejec-
tion of each of the preceding movements. The first, for instance, is rejected be-
cause “it reminds us of our despair,” whereas the second “is not better, but only
somewhat more cheerful,” and the third “is too tender,” too far removed from ac-
tion. In the finished work Beethoven left this first group of recitatives in a purely
instrumental form, without text. As we have seen, this process of anticipating the
later appearance of the human voice through accents and inflections of instru-
19
Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, p. 329.
20
Winter, “The Sketches for the ‘Ode to Joy’”; Brandenburg, “Die Skizzen zur Neunten
Symphonie.”
triumph: 1822–1824 293
ments alone had an exact counterpart in the Choral Fantasy op. 80, where Bee-
thoven devised an introductory horn call to precede the main theme set to the text
“Hört Ihr wohl” (“Hear ye well”), words that were subsequently suppressed
while the musical motif remained. In a formal sense the treatment of the citations
and the eventual discovery of the “Joy” theme in the Ninth Symphony are also
reminiscent of several earlier works from the period 1815–18, including An die
ferne Geliebte, the Cello Sonata op. 102 no. 1, the Piano Sonata op. 101, and
most of all the Hammerklavier Sonata. In each of these the finale is reached as the
outcome of a quest for new possibilities, a process that is underscored by a cyclic
relationship to earlier parts of the work, often involving explicit quotation of fore-
going passages at the threshold to the finale. In the Hammerklavier explicit quo-
tation is not involved, but the three parenthetical glimpses of “other musics” in
its transition are close, in their formal and symbolic function, to the threefold ci-
tations of preceding movements in the transition to the choral finale of the Ninth.
Each of the four movements of the Ninth Symphony is conceived on a vast
scale, and each expands the forms and textures of Beethoven’s earlier symphonic
works. The closest counterpart to the opening Allegro, ma non troppo, un poco
maestoso of the Ninth is the first movement of the Eroica. As in the Eroica, the
development and coda are unusually extended and closely interrelated, with the
latter acting in part as a recapitulation of the former. The opening of the Ninth
Symphony, however, has no parallel in Beethoven’s earlier symphonies: it is the
outstanding example of a work that takes its origin from a rapport with silence.
Beethoven showed a truly modernistic concern with the boundaries of art—the
manner in which the artwork confronts the world. We have noted instances of this
sensitivity in connection with the A major Piano Sonata op. 101, with its opening
in medias res, and the last bagatelle of op. 126, with its startling transformation
of the anaesthetic into the aesthetic.
In the Ninth, the arrival of the main theme in D minor is delayed until the
upbeat to bar 17. The opening passage presents a trajectory toward this event,
disclosing an ongoing process rather than a fixed and determined entity (Ex.
99). The hushed beginning, with its ambiguity of key, mode, and even rhythm,
shows the impress of the journey out of the sphere of the inaudible into that of the
audible. The seminal upbeat rhythm is first heard sotto voce at the upbeat to bar
3; this rhythmic motif spreads itself over falling open fourths and fifths on the
dominant of D minor, while the wind instruments simultaneously build up the
same harmonic sonority in the upper pitch registers. Only at bar 11 does Beetho-
ven prescribe a crescendo, as a process of rhythmic diminution and motivic in-
tensification shapes the transition to the outbreak of the powerful principal theme,
played fortissimo and in unison by the full orchestra.
This vehement theme thus emerges as the dramatic outcome of the opening
passage, and its musical continuation retains in turn a memory of the quiet, mys-
terious accents whence it arose. Not only does Beethoven soon restate the pianis-
simo opening before presenting a varied return of the theme, modulating to B ,
but in addition the second subject group is characterized by an unusually subtle
interplay of dramatic and lyrical phrases. In the entire Classical repertory, as
294 beethoven
Ex. 99 Ninth Symphony op. 125/I
William Caplin has observed, there is no more complex formal structure within
the second subject area of a sonata design.21 In part, this richness of hierarchical
relationships is bound up with Beethoven’s far-reaching narrative design, which
involves thematic forecasts and reminiscences in all four movements. The dolce
theme in the first movement, immediately before the change in key signature to B
in bar 80, is the first subtle foreshadowing of the “Joy” theme, and later episodes
in D major, particularly the horn passage in the coda, may also be heard as antici-
pating the choral finale.
The thrust from D minor into D major is a conspicuous feature of the sym-
phony as a whole, and this modal tension is given unforgettable expression in the
first movement. At least as early as the op. 18 Quartets Beethoven showed a
21 “Structural Expansion in Beethoven’s Symphonic Forms,” p. 53.

triumph: 1822–1824 295
Ex. 99 (continued)
marked tendency to enhance the moment of recapitulation; in some later pieces,

such as the first movement of the Eighth Symphony, he tended to diffuse or
broaden its impact. The first movement of the Ninth Symphony provides one of
the most compelling instances of a recapitulation conceived as a dramatic reinter-
pretation of the opening of a work. The structural downbeat marking the recapitu-
lation occurs at a return not of the main theme but of the opening passage, which
296 beethoven
is now utterly transformed through the impact of the powerful rhythmic arrival.
Instead of the faint, barely audible sonic vibrations heard at the outset, we hear a
blazing fortissimo in the full orchestra on the sonority of D major, but with the
third, F , in the bass. As Heinrich Schenker pointed out, this D major tonality is
not real but only apparent;22 the unstable position of the chord allows it to be
heard in retrospect as dominant of G minor. Beethoven has intensified here the ef-
fect of tragic irony evident in a passage from the recapitulation of the first move-
ment of the Appassionata Sonata, in which a single emphatic fanfare of chords is
heard unexpectedly in the tonic major in place of the tonic minor. Instead of se-
curing a breakthrough into the major, the music is now drawn with renewed
strength into the darkness of the minor, with unmistakable expressive overtones
of “Verzweiflung,” or despair.
Unlike the corresponding passages in the Fifth Symphony, the recapitulation
remains rooted in the tonic minor; as in the exposition, however, much harmonic
stress is laid on the Neapolitan degree, a semitone above the tonic. Beethoven re-
serves the major mode of D for the dolce passage for horn and other winds begin-
ning in bar 469 of the coda, with its remarkable development of bars 3–4 of the
main theme, but the music soon reverts to the minor, reapproaching, with a
prominent slowing in tempo, that great pivotal cadence that had initiated the fu-
gato passage of the development (cf. bars 218 and 513). There is an abysmal, al-
most funereal character to this impressive passage, in which the chromatic bass
gradually comes to dominate the entire orchestral texture, leading to the emphatic
reassertion of the main theme at the close.
As in the Hammerklavier Sonata, Beethoven places the scherzo before the slow
movement, and he gives it a somewhat parodistic role in relation to the opening
Allegro. The falling fourths and fifths from the outset of the first movement are
mimicked in the opening fanfare of the scherzo, and Beethoven at once highlights
the timpani in F, which are to assume a marked prominence. The tuning of the
timpani on F is linked to the modulatory plan, with its move from the tonic D
minor to C major in the exposition and to F major in the development. This
scherzo is in a fully developed sonata form, like that of the Piano Sonata op. 31
no. 3, and it also incorporates an important trio in D major, the key of the choral
finale. Beethoven adds weight to the opening section of the scherzo by treating it
as a fugal exposition, with thematic entries spaced four bars apart. The basic four-
bar theme is virtually identical to Beethoven’s 1815 sketch; but by 1823 he had
discovered extraordinary rhythmic and metrical means of developing his idea.
The heart of the scherzo lies in its development, in the passages marked “Ritmo
di tre battute” (“rhythm of three bars”)—Beethoven’s acknowledgment of what
some recent theorists have termed “hypermeter.” He first shortens the four-bar
phrases beginning with the characteristic dotted rhythm to groups of three bars,
which he then skillfully manipulates. The music passes from E minor into A
minor, with the motivic tag sporting the dotted rhythm placed on E. At this mo-
ment the timpani vividly interject the head motif on F, pulling the music into the
22 Beethovens Neunte Sinfonie, pp. 96–97.

triumph: 1822–1824 297
key of F major. This driving, galloping movement is one of Beethoven’s most fas-
cinating essays in metrical manipulation and rhythmic intensification, not the
least in the stringendo il tempo passage that pushes the music over the threshold
into the alla breve duple meter of the trio.
Beethoven would not have intended the designation “Presto” at the climax of
the stringendo il tempo to apply strictly to the trio, which assumes a relaxed, pas-
toral character while repeating over and over the same configuration of notes that
coalesces into the “Joy” theme in the finale. The closing passage of the trio, in
which tonic and dominant are incessantly reiterated over a pedal in the bass,
sounds reminiscent of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony. Beethoven’s
decision not to repeat the entire trio and scherzo, as in the Seventh Symphony, was
probably dictated by considerations of overall length, but he does bring back the
stringendo il tempo passage leading to a brief recall of the trio, which is framed
by abrupt reaffirmation of the climactic Presto gesture.
The contemplative Adagio molto e cantabile is in B major, a conspicuous sec-
ondary tonality in the outer movements. In the Adagio, as so often in Beethoven,
the flat sixth serves as a key of inward reflection whose contemplative mood is
eventually to be shattered at the later emergence into “action,” when the tonic
minor is reasserted. B major shares two pitches with D minor—D and F; the cru-
cial semitone that joins these triads is B –A—precisely the initial pitches of the in-
troduction played in the bassoons and immediately imitated in the clarinets. This
opening gesture foreshadows the second theme of this double-variation move-
ment, marked Andante moderato, whose vocal aura, linear contour, and initial
key of D major all presage in turn the “Joy” theme of the finale.
Slow variation movements employing two themes are characteristic of Haydn
but uncommon in Beethoven. The most analogous earlier example is the Andante
of the Fifth Symphony, which not only displays a similar shift in key to the over-
all tonic at the secondary theme but also assigns to it a similar narrative function—
that of prefiguring the principal subject of the finale, just as in the Ninth Sym-
phony. In both slow movements we glimpse the finale from afar, as it were, as the
thematic foreshadowing combines with an anticipation of the key that is to be tri-
umphantly attained in the final stages.
The main theme of the Adagio has a serene, hymn-like character; its lyric
breadth is enhanced by exquisitely scored echoing of the string phrases by the
woodwinds. As in the Archduke Trio and the Arietta movement of op. 111, suc-
cessive returns of the theme are enhanced by figurative elaboration; at the same
time the recapitulatory effect of these variations is set off by excursions to D
major and G major at the appearances of the secondary theme. Beethoven even
interpolates a further modulatory development after the G major episode, which
culminates in a transparent texture for horn and winds and finally a solo for horn
in C major, Neapolitan to the B major tonic of the ensuing recapitulatory varia-
tion of the main subject. Here the theme unfolds in a broad 12/8 meter, as sixteenth
notes yield to triplet sixteenths and ultimately to trills in the violins, while the
winds sound the sustained original version of the theme against this embroidered
texture.
298 beethoven
Beethoven does not grant his theme closure in the tonic B but twice interrupts
the imminent cadence by disruptive fanfares with trumpets and drums. These
seem to evoke a call to action and contribute to a strangely disquieting atmo-
sphere in the coda. The inflections of the minor mode and the low tremolos in
triplets beginning seven bars from the conclusion disturb the serenity; even the
final cadence is undermined by being completed in a weak rhythmic position, in
the second half of a bar. The stage has thus been set for a pivotal event of poten-
tially catastrophic impact.
S S S
That event, of course, is the “terror fanfare,” or Schreckensfanfare, the frenzied
presto passage that arises out of the dissonant combination of the tonic triads of
the slow movement and the symphony as a whole—B major and D minor. The
Presto should follow the Adagio without much pause (certainly not after an inter-
ruption to bring out the chorus and soloists!). For the impact of this shocking pas-
sage is to destroy the peaceful contemplation of the Adagio, precipitating a crisis
in the inner workings of the artwork itself. How is it to continue? The ensuing re-
view of the earlier movements implies not only their insufficiency but also in some
sense their continued valid presence at the threshold of the finale: these stages in
the narrative design have not been forgotten, but what can succeed them?
As in the last piano sonatas, the artistic quest leads to the discovery of a seem-
ingly simple, eminently lyrical tune, which supports an unsuspected wealth of de-
velopment. Perhaps no other work, not even Fidelio or the Missa solemnis, car-
ries such important social and political connotations as the finale of the Ninth
Symphony. As we have seen, the work as a whole embraces numerous transfor-
mations in character and embodies a narrative pattern unusually rich in its fore-
shadowings and reminiscences of themes. These qualities are, of course, typical of
Beethoven’s music in general; a work such as the Piano Sonata in A op. 110 dis-
plays a somewhat analogous narrative design compressed into much smaller di-
mensions. What is unusual in the choral finale is Beethoven’s incorporation of a
more radical type of transformation, from instrumental into vocal music. Only in
the Choral Fantasy had he attempted anything similar. A guiding principle of both
pieces is the adoption of a concerto-like plan exploiting the capacity of instru-
ments to evoke vocal expression. Thus, in the Choral Fantasy, the horn motif im-
plying “Hear ye well?” prefaces the main theme in the solo piano, setting up the
later vocal presentation of the theme. In the Ninth Symphony it is the recitative in
the low strings that evokes vocal expression without yet requiring words. Here,
as in the Choral Fantasy, Beethoven decided to remove the text he originally con-
templated for the initial recitatives.
The vocal recitative is thus confined to “O friends, not these sounds! let us cre-
ate more pleasant and happier ones!” (“O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! sondern lasst
uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere”). Which “sounds” are meant? In
the most immediate sense, it is the preceding Presto, or “terror fanfare,” that the
baritone seeks to negate. In the broader context, a continuation to the sequence
of movements has been sought and discovered; yet this progression had reached
triumph: 1822–1824 299
a crisis in the passage leading up to the Schreckensfanfare. The initial series of in-
strumental variations lacks the strength to sustain the musical development of the
“Joy” theme and eventually breaks down, as does the first fugue in op. 110.
At this juncture, as in the disquieting passage near the end of the slow move-
ment, Beethoven alludes or reverts to musical textures drawn from earlier pas-
sages. Thus the triplet-sixteenth figures of the Adagio recall the more rapid vibrat-
ing string textures from the outset of the opening Allegro. Now, just before the
return of the Schreckensfanfare, he makes subtle reference to the succession of
movements. First he stresses in bars 201–2 in the full orchestra the falling fourth
A–E, the pitches around which the music of the first movement had come into
focus. This strident gesture is given an inward, lyrical response in the ensuing pas-
sage, marked poco ritenente and slowing to poco adagio. The orchestration, fea-
turing flutes and oboes, the expressive appoggiaturas, and the ritardando all
relate to the earlier focus of inward lyricism in the symphony as a whole, the Ada-
gio molto e cantabile. The intervallic contour, however, with its fall through a fifth
and stepwise ascent to the third degree, relates audibly to the “Joy” theme (Ex.
100a and b). This is one of those gripping narrative moments in Beethoven’s
music that looks backward and forward at one and the same moment, creating a
connective bond between the reflective contemplation of the Adagio and the ar-
chetypal symbol of the “Joy” theme. But only when Beethoven gathers together
his full orchestral forces in the main tempo of Allegro assai is the imminent turn-
ing point sufficiently prepared. The extreme collision of lyrical, idealistic music
with the dissonant fanfare motivates the emergence of the human voice to render
explicit what had up to this point remained implicit.
We should now reassess the implications of Beethoven’s narrative succession of
movements. After the tragic and parodistic modalities of the first two movements,
the Adagio turned inward, to a contemplative mood. Such subjectivity is by its very
nature private and ultimately passive; it does not intrude into the public sphere of
social activity, which can be engaged artistically only through the seemingly univer-
sal archetypes of shared human experience. It is the function of Beethoven’s choral
finale to depict such symbolic archetypes, and in so doing to provide a potential
model for the transformation of society. There is evidence that Beethoven himself
may have regarded the project in these terms. In 1820 Beethoven’s acquaintance
Friedrich Wähner made the following entry in a conversation notebook: “Philoso-
phie und Musik sollen leben! Den Plato müssen Sie in der deutschen Übersetzung
von Schleiermacher lesen. Sie müssen, ich bringe ihn Ihnen. Er und der Schelling sind
die Grössten!” (“Long live philosophy and music! You have to read Plato in the Ger-
man translation by Schleiermacher. You must, I’ll bring it to you. He and Schelling
are the greatest!”).23 We have already seen the relevance of Schelling’s thought to
Beethoven’s artistic enterprise, but have yet to consider the role of Plato, whose Re-
public may well have influenced the choral finale, as Baensch has suggested.
One of Plato’s fundamental points in The Republic concerns the need for com-
23 Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, p. 350. Earlier editors and com-
mentators attributed this entry to Beethoven’s erudite friend August Friedrich Kanne.
300 beethoven
Ex. 100 Ninth Symphony op. 125/IV
(a) bars 203–7
mon human experience as the basis for common action, based on agreement
about ends and means. In Book 5 Socrates asks “Is there any worse ill for a state
than to be divided or a greater good than being united?,” whereas in Book 9 he
claims that “the best is for everyone to be ruled by a wise and godlike power, if
possible seated in his own heart; if not, let it act upon him from without; in order
that we may all be, as far as possible, like one another and friends, being all guided
triumph: 1822–1824 301
Ex. 100 (continued)

(b) bars 237–44
302 beethoven
by the same pilot.” Plato is, however, extremely guarded about the conditions
under which such harmony can be achieved. The centerpiece of the entire dialogue
is Socrates’ paradoxical solution to the political dilemma:
Till philosophers become kings, or those now named kings and rulers give them-
selves to philosophy truly and rightly, and these two things—political power and
philosophic thought—come together, and the commoner minds, which at present
seek only the one or the other, are kept out by force, states will have not rest from
their troubles, dear Glaucon, and if I am right, man will have none. Only then will
this our republic see the light of day.24
We need not accept all of Baensch’s analogies between Plato’s philosophers and
guardians and Beethoven’s shaping of specific sections in his choral finale, but the
general relevance of The Republic seems almost inescapable, even if it was merged
in Beethoven’s conception with a variety of other influences. As Baensch reminds
us, the ageing Beethoven who arranged his text from Schiller’s early poem was a
seasoned artist who contemplated the material from a retrospective and elevated
point of view, with the benefit of critical insight presumably derived in part from
Schiller’s own later writings, such as the Aesthetic Letters.25 The need for a “se-
lection of lines” from Schiller’s ode was already specified in Beethoven’s sketch in-
scription from around 1812. In the end he removed all the most obvious refer-
ences that mark the Ode to Joy as a glorified drinking song, while preserving a
series of powerful and direct images with universal social connotations.
In a letter to Johann Kanka from the period of the Congress of Vienna, Beetho-
ven once compared his artistic enterprise to the political sphere by indulging in
one of his characteristic puns. He wrote, “I shall not say anything to you about
our monarchs . . . I much prefer the empire of the mind, and I regard it as the high-
est of all spiritual and worldly monarchies.”26 His experience with political art at
that time seemed to confirm this implied dissociation between politics and art. Yet
in the Ninth Symphony, completed a decade later, Beethoven produced a work that
fills the gap, bridging the apparently impassable gulf between artistic truth and
political relevance. According to the Schillerian concept embraced by Beethoven, as
we have seen, freedom is manifested in a resistance to despair or suffering,
modalities associated in this case with the first movement or with the Schreckens-
fanfare. The message of the Ninth Symphony is positioned between the “nega-
tive” and “positive” concepts of freedom associated, for instance, with John Locke
and John Stuart Mill on the one hand and with Karl Marx on the other. The for-
mer tradition has regarded liberty as a matter of individual rights based particu-
larly on the right to property; the latter replaced the emphasis on isolated individ-
uals and their abstract rights by a collectivist view, whose basic insight into “man
as an ensemble of social relations” retains a core of validity, despite the disastrous
authoritarian misapplications of the principle in this century. Some recent com-
24 Plato’s Republic, ed. and trans. I. A. Richards, p. 97.

25
Aufbau und Sinn.
26
triumph: 1822–1824 303
mentators have recognized the shortcomings of both concepts of liberty, and seen
“the formation of the common will in a rational discussion” as the basis of social
freedom, a proposal not easily realized in a contemporary consumer society that
encourages the pursuit of security rather than social responsibility.27 The rele-
vance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to calls for a revitalized ethical conscious-
ness in politics (such as Michael Harrington’s “visionary gradualism”) has a
double aspect, since it is rooted not merely in the social accessibility of the work
but also in the challenge of an “unconsummated symbol” that resists facile appro-
priation. As Herbert Marcuse argued in his book Eros and Civilisation, the Schil-
lerian “aesthetic education of mankind” involves a rejection of the tyranny of rea-
son over sensibility; the sway of a merciless rationalization of means is thereby
held in check. In his Schiller setting in the Ninth, Beethoven achieved an interpene-
tration of the rational and sensuous in a composite design with universal social
implications, a work whose adequate performance contributes to the formation
of a common will through an integrated process of artistic symbolization.
Robert Winter has shown how painstakingly Beethoven labored to devise the
“Joy” theme itself; the memorable shape of this famous tune, with its conjunct
vocal motion and circular pattern, was the product of sustained reflection.28 The
heritage of “popular” style stemming from some of Haydn’s symphonic finales or
Mozart’s Zauberflöte, as well as Beethoven’s extensive experience with folk song,
may have helped prepare him for the task, but most important, as Richard
Kramer has noted, is the emblematic or symbolic role of the theme “as a purge to
the troubled music of earlier movements.”29 The emblematic character of the tune
invites figurative decoration more than thoroughgoing transformation, and Bee-
thoven’s initial choral variations, like the preceding three instrumental variations,
remain close to the original theme. Only at the section in B major and 6/8 meter
does he transform the hymn-like theme into a parodied version, whose displaced
accents confirm their humorous effect at the hasty cadences. The unforgettable
vividness of this scherzo section owes much to the Shakespearean juxtaposition of
a comic military march with the solemnity of the grand pause on the words “und
der Cherub steht vor Gott” that immediately precedes it (the juxtaposition of key
contributes substantially to this, too). Following the incomplete orchestral varia-
tion and choral variation with tenor solo in B is an exciting double fugue for or-
chestra, which leads to the most emphatic presentation yet of the “Joy” theme: a
recapitulatory variation for full chorus and orchestra in the tonic D major. Bee-
27 See Árnason, “The Discourse of Freedom,” Rechtstheorie 19 (1988), pp. 491–501
(the quotation is from p. 499); a classic study of related issues is Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays
on Liberty from 1969.
28
“The Sketches for the ‘Ode to Joy.’”
29 Review of Beethoven, Performers, and Critics, in Journal of Music Theory 27 (1983),
p. 301. Küthen attempts to explore the emblematic ramifications of the “Joy” theme in two
articles, which deserve consideration, even if his proposal of a Mozartian model for the
theme is not accepted: “Schöpferische Rezeption im Finale der 9. Symphonie von Beetho-
ven” and “Mozart—Schiller—Beethoven: Mozarts Modell für die Freudenhymne und die
Fusion der Embleme im Finale der Neunten Symphonie.”
304 beethoven
thoven then incorporates the slow Andante-Adagio section, whose archaic, modal
qualities and religious text suggest the “Cantique Ecclesiastique” of his early plan.
What remains is the brilliant combination in a double choral fugue of the “Joy”
theme with the “Seid umschlungen Millionen” subject from the slow section (see
Plate 22), as well as the weighty final sections that reiterate earlier parts of the text.
The overall form of the choral finale combines aspects of concerto and sonata
form with the basic chain of variations and the suggestion of a four-movement de-
sign encapsulated in a single movement. Concerto-like features include the “double
exposition” of instrumental followed by choral variations, as well as the cadenza in
B major for the vocal soloists near the conclusion. The analogy with sonata form
lies in the developmental character of the variations in B and of the ensuing orches-
tral fugue, in relation to which the following choral variation acts like a decorated
recapitulation; the later double choral fugue also serves a recapitulatory function by
restoring the tonic key of D major while synthesizing the two main themes. At the
same time, the following overall sequence may be seen as outlining a “multimove-
ment” plan: (1) the theme and initial variations in D major; (2) the 6/8 scherzo sec-
tion with “Turkish” orchestration; (3) the archaic Andante–Adagio passages featur-
ing trombones and modal tendencies; (4) the final sections beginning with the choral
double fugue. The choral finale is the most celebrated single example in Beethoven
of a composite form that successfully blends the possibilities of different genres. It
was an important progenitor of later efforts along these lines, ranging from Liszt’s
symphonic poems to Bruckner’s grandiose symphonic finales. The enhanced orches-
tral and vocal forces and the formal grandeur of Beethoven’s Ninth helped point the
way to Wagner’s later works, as well as to the monumental compositions by Mahler
and Schoenberg from the beginning of this century.
For Beethoven himself, the single most decisive compositional model for the
choral finale was his own Missa solemnis. Its influence is felt particularly in those
parts of the choral finale that have a religious text, such as the pivotal phrase “und
der Cherub steht vor Gott,” the setting of which forms the first great climax of the
movement. Beethoven’s treatment here of the modulation from D to B and
the ensuing military processional music recall the Agnus Dei of the Mass, despite
the different expressive connotations of the Alla marcia section in 6/8 in the sym-
phony. At the same time, the setting of “Gott” as a long-protracted sonority, with
A at the top, corresponds with the climax on the dominant of B in the Credo. In
orchestration and register the two sonorities are nearly identical, with the rise to
high A motivated by the word “God” in the symphony and “heaven” in the Mass.
But their placement within the larger formal context of each work is also closely
parallel. We have already seen that in the Credo this chord occurs at an inter-
rupted cadence, involving a drastic downward shift in register for the earthbound
music of the Incarnatus. In the symphony the corresponding cadence, to B , is
completed, but there is a very similar disjunction in register, at the appearance of
the “Turkish” music in B and its parodied version of the hymn-like “Joy” theme.
Beethoven thus concentrates aspects of both these passages from the Mass into his
setting of “vor Gott” in the symphony (Ex. 101; cf. Ex. 87).
triumph: 1822–1824 305
Ex. 101 Ninth Symphony op. 125/IV, bars 326–30
A similar process of concentration based on the network of referential sonori-

ties from the Mass can be observed in Beethoven’s setting of the very last line of
his text in the Adagio ma non troppo, ma divoto, “Über Sternen muss er wohnen”
(“Above the stars he must dwell”), often regarded as the climax of the entire sym-
phony. The first section of the Adagio has brought a drop in register, a shift
motivated by the text “Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?” (“Do you fall on your knees,
millions?”). In its rhythm, texture, orchestration, and thematic material this pas-
sage bears comparison to the Preludium of the Benedictus in the Mass. There fol-
lows a long, gradual ascent in the music which sets the last three lines of text:
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?
Such’ ihn über’m Sternenzelt
Über Sternen muss er wohnen.
[Do you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the canopy of stars
Above the stars he must dwell.]
The rise in pitch is accomplished only gradually, the music twice falling back
earthward before its long, melodic ascent continues chromatically to reach F , the
leading note of the tonic G minor, at “über’m Sternenzelt.”
At this point the long ascending progression reaches its goal, arriving at the
very same E sonority that had played so crucial a role in the Credo (Ex. 102; cf.
Exx. 86, 89, 90). As in the Credo, this chord assumes a symbolic importance in
relation to the idea of a divine presence above the stars. The sonority is repeated
eight times, to accompany each syllable of the text. It seems static and immutable,
becoming in effect an audible monolithic symbol; even when it is transmuted to a
diminished seventh in the orchestra and moments later to a minor ninth chord,
the high G is retained. In its controlling idea the entire passage is thus remarkably
close to that in the Missa solemnis, using the same symbolic contrast in register
and even an identical referential sonority. One measure of the significance of this
passage is the continuing sway of its high register over some following sections of
306 beethoven
Ex. 102 Ninth Symphony op. 125/IV, bars 643–50
the choral finale, where Beethoven reuses parts of his earlier text. He seems to
have fixed the monolithic setting of “Über Sternen muss er wohnen” only late in
the compositional process; a sketch for the passage is found in a conversation
book from early April 1824, just a few weeks before the first performances.30 As
Solomon has pointed out, Beethoven himself alluded to the symbolic character
of this passage in an inscription on an earlier sketch, where he wrote: “The height
of the stars [can be pictured] more by way of the instruments.”31 The symbolism
is therefore literal and explicit, but it nevertheless retains an idealistic character
since it depicts boundlessness and infinitude, concepts that by their very nature are
incapable of direct representation.
An affinity with Kant can be felt here in the consistent use of a musical symbol
associated with the naturalistic realm of phenomena to stand for the Deity. Kant
argued that we cannot have knowledge of God, even when his existence is posited
as the guiding moral ideal of the summum bonum (the highest good). “The starry
heavens above me, and the moral law within me”: this dictum from Kant, em-
braced by Beethoven, gives expression, in terms not of speculative or received doc-
trine but of concrete experience, to the relationship between eternal, infinite na-
ture on the one hand and man’s subjective inwardness on the other. This polarity
resonates throughout the Mass, and especially in its later movements. The pas-
sages we have discussed from the Credo and the Benedictus allude emphatically
to the heavens as a symbol of perfection and a goal for spiritual aspiration. Other
passages of restless, questioning character, such as the fragile prayer for peace jux-
taposed with threats of war in the Agnus Dei, may be associated with the Kant-
ian notion of the moral law and its inevitable conflict with earthly realities. In
these instances the Mass text is not simply affirmed in its literal content but is in-
30
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 6, pp. 19–20.
31
“Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: A Search for Order,” Beethoven Essays, p. 25. The in-
scription is transcribed in Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, p. 186. Also see Ludwig
Nohl, Beethovens Leben, vol. 3, p. 395.
triumph: 1822–1824 307
terpreted by means of universal images, thereby imposing a broader humanistic

perspective on the received doctrines.
The Kantian vision of the heavens is thus absorbed, in the Mass, into a tran-
scendental musical symbol, secular in its naturalism yet sacred in its role as a focus
for the awe and devotion of humankind. In the choral finale of the Ninth Sym-
phony this symbolic musical gesture reappears, and its universality and independ-
ence of religious dogma are affirmed through its association with Schiller’s text. It
provides a climax to the choral finale, and to the entire symphony, through its ef-
fective depiction of a fundamental aspect of human experience: our confrontation
with the infinitude and mystery of creation. At the same time the idea retains close
links with Beethoven’s instrumental idioms in works such as the last piano sonatas
and the great variation movement of his next major composition, the String Quar-
tet in E op. 127. These connections remind us of the central position of the choral
finale in Beethoven’s art in general, as well as of the presence in his instrumental
music of layers of symbolic and associative meaning beyond the reach of a merely
formalistic aesthetic.
The triumph of the Ninth Symphony took time. Although the work received
enthusiastic accolades when first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824, together
with the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei of the Mass and the Overture to Die Weihe
des Hauses, the quality of the performance cannot have been very satisfactory,
and Beethoven was disappointed and even embittered about the financial return.
A second performance that month was poorly attended. As Karl-Heinz Köhler has
written, “the shining hour of music history in which the Ninth Symphony began
its victorious march around the globe came amid summer lightning storms of
hypersensitivity, misunderstandings, and pettiness.”32
One of the “shining hours” commemorated by Beethoven’s Ninth was the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when Leonard Bernstein conducted the work with a
crucial change of text, changing “Freude” (“joy”) to “Freiheit” (“freedom”). It has
sometimes been speculated that this was the text that the young Schiller originally
intended and that he was discouraged by censorship from publishing the poem in
this form in 1785, four years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. The
known use of the poem as a Revolutionary or Masonic ode supports this interpre-
tation, but no documentary evidence for a change in text has been uncovered. Bee-
thoven’s own convictions, like Plato’s, or Schiller’s at a more advanced age, were
better represented by “Freude,” with all due acknowledgment of the liberating ef-
fects of the “effigy of [the] ideal.” For one protection against the possible ideologi-
cal misuse of “brotherhood” in the Ninth Symphony is its explicit precondition
of a state of “Freude,” the character of which is inextricably interwoven into the
narrative design of the symphony as a whole. Beethoven, like Plato, was no advo-
cate of unbridled freedom without responsibility, but he despised tyranny, and he
would presumably have approved of Bernstein’s decision. The Ninth Symphony
is a magnificent refutation of Plato’s skepticism about the social and political
value of art, and an enduring monument to the compatibility of beauty and truth.
32
“The Conversation Books: Aspects of a New Picture of Beethoven,” p. 154.
11
R
The Galitzin Quartets:
1824–1825
R
The composition of Beethoven’s last important group of works, the five final quar-
tets, is bound up with a commission from the Russian prince and amateur cellist
Nikolaus Galitzin in St Petersburg. Beethoven had already been thinking of com-
posing quartets (and had received an enquiry from Carl Friedrich Peters about
one) prior to Galitzin’s request, but the prince seems to have acted as the major
catalyst. In November 1822 Galitzin wrote to Beethoven requesting the composi-
tion of as many as three new quartets. Beethoven accepted the proposal in Janu-
ary 1823; but the actual composition of the first of these new quartets was delayed
for more than a year by other projects, notably the Ninth Symphony. On 29 No-
vember 1823 the prince wrote to Beethoven:
I am really impatient to have a new quartet of yours, nevertheless, I beg you not
to mind and to be guided in this only by your inspiration and the disposition of
your mind, for no one knows better than I that you cannot command genius,
rather that it should be left alone, and we know moreover that in your private life
you are not the kind of person to sacrifice artistic for personal interest and that
music done to order is not your business at all.1
In the end Galitzin’s patience was richly rewarded. He had meanwhile sub-
scribed to Beethoven’s Missa solemnis and organized its first complete perform-
ance, which was given in St Petersburg on 7 April 1824. A few weeks later, after
the first performance of the Ninth Symphony in Vienna in May, Beethoven was
finally able to begin sustained work on the Quartet in E major op. 127. It became
his chief preoccupation between June 1824 and February 1825; as the sketches
show, his most concentrated work took place in the late summer and autumn of
1824. Like so many of his pieces of these years, op. 127 was to assume large
dimensions and display original, even unprecedented features. It is a pivotal com-
position among the masterpieces of his last creative period, one in which struc-
tural and symbolic aspects from his two great choral-orchestral works are ab-
sorbed into the sphere of chamber music.
1
308
the GALITZIN quartets: 1824–1825 309
New light on the genesis of this quartet has been shed by Brandenburg, who
reassessed the sketch sources first examined by Nottebohm more than a century
ago.2 Nottebohm was especially impressed by the immense quantity of sketches
for the second movement—a great set of variations on a slow theme of sublime
character. The overall design of the finished quartet still adheres to the traditional
four-movement plan, but Brandenburg has pointed out that Beethoven considered
including two additional, alternative movements—a character piece in C major
entitled “La gaieté” that was evidently planned at one point as the second move-
ment, and a slow introduction to the finale in the key of the Neapolitan, E major.
These preliminary plans show how Beethoven’s attempts to shape the work as a
cyclic whole were already anticipating elements akin to those of his later C minor
Quartet op. 131, which has seven interconnected movements.
The quartet opens with a thematic statement suggestive of a motto: a six-bar
Maestoso segment featuring rising melodic fourths leads to a sustained trill. Only
then, at the Allegro, does Beethoven strike a more intimate tone: teneramente,
sempre piano e dolce (Ex. 103). This thematic juxtaposition embodies a shift from
a receptive, distanced gesture in the Maestoso to the more direct and spontaneous
character of the Allegro. The massive, chorale-like setting of the Maestoso con-
tributes to its solemn intensity, as does the unusual rhythmic structure. Beethoven
sustains the tonic throughout the first and third bars, changing the harmony only
at the accented syncopated chords in bars 2 and 4. Consequently, the rhythmic
structure of the two-bar groups falls into a pattern of 5 ⫹ 3 eighth notes; the met-
ric pulse, however, unfolds in quarter notes. A challenge in performance is to
avoid making the syncopated changes in harmony sound like downbeats, while
realizing the six-bar motto as a single unified gesture. In voicing the chords it is
necessary to convey the imposing linear ascent that is shared between the voices:
the cello rises from E to F in bar 2, whereas the next step, to G in bar 3, is given
to the violins, and the following one, to A in bar 4, to the cello. Each of the six
bars stresses a rising step, until C, the sixth degree above the tonic, is attained and
elaborated as a trill at the end of the motto.
The rhythmic pattern of short and long notes in each second bar of the motto
may be a subtle foreshadowing, in augmentation, of the relentless iambic rhythm
of the second movement, the scherzo (Fig. 6). Beethoven adjusts this pattern in the
penultimate bar of the Maestoso to emphasize the subdominant—the first non-
tonic chord to be heard on a downbeat. The rhythmic and harmonic context of
this A chord enhances its impact as both culmination of the Maestoso and point
of transition into the lyric continuation. The significance of the opening motto is
far-reaching and extends well beyond its twofold return in the development. The
monolithic gesture of the Maestoso serves not merely as introduction to the first
movement but as preface to the work as a whole.
Beethoven reverses the rising linear progression of the Maestoso in the ensuing
2Brandenburg, “Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Streichquartett

Es-Dur Op. 127,” pp. 221–76; Nottebohm, “Skizzen zum zweiten Satz des Quartetts Op.
127,” Zweite Beethoveniana, pp. 210–20.
310 beethoven
Ex. 103 String Quartet op. 127/I
Allegro, which is based on a stepwise descent starting on C in the first violin and
A in the cello, two octaves lower; this relaxes the tension of the motto. The basic
character of the Allegro is intimate, despite the occasional eruption of vigorous
passages, notably in the middle of the development. The texture is contrapuntal,
above all in the first half of the development, where an impressive chain of canons
probes the thematic substance from within before an agitated, fortissimo—and
still canonic—continuation leads dramatically to the last, curtailed appearance of
the Maestoso, in C major. Kerman described these passages as “one of Beetho-
ven’s most extraordinary conceptions for a development section, comparable only
to the first-movement development in the Quartet in B , op. 130.”3
The climactic canonic passage leading to the Maestoso in C major opens a di-
mension with symbolic implications, one that is deepened further in the following
variation movement, the Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile (see Plates 23
and 24). Before we examine this relationship in detail, however, it is important to
assess the formal analogy between the slow movement of the quartet and the
choral finale of the Ninth Symphony, the work Beethoven completed immediately
before op. 127.
The Adagio movement in the quartet, in A major, contains five variations on
its broadly lyrical theme, with an episode in D major/C minor and a coda. Both
of the last two variations have a recapitulatory character and follow passages in
foreign keys. After the hymn-like third variation in the flat submediant, E major,
the fourth variation brings a return to the tonic and the original version of the
theme, which is animated rhythmically by the substitution of sixteenth notes for
eighth notes in the melody and by trills in the accompaniment. This variation also
restores the 12/8 meter of the theme, after changes in meter in the second and
3
The Beethoven Quartets, p. 206.
Figure 6. Rhythmic patterns in the String

Quartet op. 127
third variations. The recapitulatory variation is then followed by the mysterious

episode in the subdominant, a passage Beethoven sketched and revised more than
almost any other, entering changes even into the autograph score. A final half-
variation in the tonic and a coda of the same length complete the design. The half-
variation, while not strictly recapitulatory in function, remains audibly close to
the original melodic shape of the theme, which is decorated in flowing sixteenth
notes in the violin, in a texture reminiscent of the second variation of the princi-
pal theme in the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony.
In the choral finale of the Ninth, as we have seen, the basic framework of ten
variations on the “Freude” theme encloses two main episodes: the double fugue
for orchestra in B (the flat submediant); and the slow section in G (the subdom-
inant), set to the last two stanzas of the text, beginning “Seid umschlungen
Millionen.” Each of these passages is followed by a variation of recapitulatory
character in the tonic, D major. After the orchestral fugue, Variation 9 brings an
emphatic return to the original melodic shape of the “Freude” theme, heard in the
full chorus and orchestra. Subsequently, after the slow section in G, a double
fugue for chorus and orchestra combines the head of the “Freude” theme with
the setting of “Seid umschlungen Millionen.” In both quartet and symphony,
therefore, the penultimate variation recapitulates the theme after a contrasting
section in the submediant, while the final variation again restores the tonic key
and the basic thematic material after an episode in the subdominant.
The relationship between these works is by no means confined to their tonal
plan, however, and bears on the actual character and thematic substance of the
E major variation in the quartet, which Kerman has described as the “spiritual
crown” of the entire work.4 Martin Cooper suggested in this regard that the ris-
ing third C –E at the beginning of the variation acts like a pedestal, lifting the en-
suing passage above the preceding music in a manner similar to the rising third at
the beginning of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier Sonata.5 The image of
5 Beethoven: The Last Decade, pp. 428–29.
312 beethoven
the pedestal is especially apt in this case, in view of the aspirational character of
the music. There is a parallel here with a specific passage in the choral finale of the
Ninth Symphony, as well as with a related movement in the Missa solemnis. The
corresponding passage in the symphony is the second part of the slow section in
G, set to the last stanza of the text, from “Ihr stürzt nieder” to “Über Sternen muss
er wohnen”; this is the passage that is itself so strongly reminiscent of parts of the
Missa solemnis and which exploits a vivid contrast in register between the earth-
bound music of “Ihr stürzt nieder” on the one hand and, on the other, a gradual
but inevitable rise in pitch to symbolize the divine presence above the stars. The
climax at the words “Über Sternen muss er wohnen” reaches the high, monolithic
E major chord with G at the top, the same sonority that Beethoven used, with
similar symbolic implications, in the Credo of the Mass.
In his chamber works Beethoven tends to employ the key of E major in music
associated with the heavens, as in the slow movement of the second Razumovsky
quartet and the song Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel. As we have seen, he
is supposed to have conceived the slow movement of the Razumovsky quartet
“while contemplating the starry heavens and thinking of the music of the
spheres.” In fact, as Warren Kirkendale has pointed out,6 there is a musical kin-
ship between that movement and the Benedictus of the Missa solemnis, in which
the descent of the solo violin from high G symbolizes the arrival of the divine mes-
senger. Yet another related piece is the Adagio of the op. 127 quartet. The theme
of the Adagio, like that of the Benedictus, is characterized by iambic rhythm in
12/8 meter, and the similarities of the two themes extend to their melodic profiles
and even to their instrumentation, in view of the role of the solo violin in the Bene-
dictus. In the light of the character and probable associations of the Adagio
theme, then, it is not surprising that Beethoven should have included a variation
evoking the contemplation of the heavens as a centerpiece, set apart by the sud-
den modulation to E major.
In the Ninth Symphony the rise in pitch from “Ihr stürzt nieder” to “Über Ster-
nen muss er wohnen” is from the E above middle C to the G two octaves higher.
This is exactly the compass of the melodic ascent in the E major variation in the
quartet, regardless of the difference in key (Ex. 104). Whereas in the symphony
the final part of this ascent into the highest register is abrupt and reserved for the
orchestra, in the quartet the first violin gradually rises to the high G, which is the
goal and endpoint of the progression. The E is still part of the pedestal that intro-
duces the variation. From it the first violin ascends, and, as in the passage in
the symphony, the melody falls earthward momentarily before rising again. In the
fifth bar of the variation (bar 63) the repetition of the first phrase in the cello sub-
stitutes G for G , foreshadowing the turn to the flat sixth two bars later.
The climax itself involves an emphatic shift to a C major chord in root posi-
tion with the first violin on high G in the eighth bar of the variation (bar 66). This
is the moment corresponding in the symphony with the arrival on the E major
chord at “Über Sternen muss er wohnen,” where the same high G is reached
6 “New Roads to Old Ideas in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis,” pp. 690–91.

Ex. 104 String Quartet op. 127/II, bars 57–72
through a similar turn to the flat sixth in the larger tonal context of G minor. Since
this ascending melodic progression to the climax is built directly into the structure
of the variation in the quartet, it is restated, with some modification and intensi-
fication, in the second half of the variation. The treatment of high G as the goal
and endpoint for each half is reminiscent of the Benedictus of the Mass, where the
same pitch provides a consistent point of return for the solo violin. It is indica-
tive of the scope of Beethoven’s variation procedure in his final years that even the
symbolic “Blick nach oben” is assimilated here into the variation form.
We are now in a position to return to the first movement to reconsider the third
and last appearance of the opening Maestoso motto, which appears in C major
(bars 135–40). Beethoven sets apart this presentation of the Maestoso by intensi-
fying the dynamics to fortissimo and by harmonic means, avoiding the turn to the
subdominant that characterized its earlier appearances. As a consequence the
sonority of C major is stressed three times, in a chorale-like configuration with
the broadest possible spacing, in which the first violin ascends to high G for the
last statement. What is striking here is the parallel with the threefold articulation
of C major in Variation 3 of the ensuing Adagio. There are no further appearances
of the motto, which has puzzled some commentators. But the significance of the
314 beethoven
Maestoso goes beyond its role in the first movement: like the opening motto of op.
110, it prefigures momentous events to come, pointing toward the symbolic cli-
max of the Adagio, one of the weightiest and most perfectly conceived of all Bee-
thoven’s slow movements.
The following Scherzando vivace strikes a note of ironic detachment and grim
humor after the contemplative experience of the variations. The transition from
the end of the Adagio is reminiscent of the shift in op. 101 from the opening Al-
legretto ma non troppo to the Vivace alla Marcia—a movement similar in its
rhythm and counterpoint to this scherzo. One is reminded as well of the scherzo
of the Hammerklavier Sonata, and still more of that of the Ninth Symphony. After
the opening pizzicato fanfare—as Kerman notes, “there are no timpani in a string
quartet!”7—the movement unfolds contrapuntally, even fugally. Beethoven origi-
nally sketched the principal motifs in even eighth notes, only later introducing the
jagged upbeat rhythm that permeates the scherzo sections. The fugal texture is in-
terrupted periodically by sudden fits and starts, massive unison passages, and recita-
tive-like gestures; a strong disruptive energy infuses the whole. The Scherzando
vivace assumes a crucial role in the whole quartet by bringing together forces of
rhythmic tension and dramatic qualities that are largely absent from the other
movements.
The trio arises out of an acceleration of the rhythm of the scherzo. This whirl-
wind Presto contains the swiftest and hardest-driven music in the quartet and ex-
poses some of its sharpest contrasts. The shadowy opening section in E minor
soon yields to a loud, somewhat coarse dance parody over a heavily accented
pedal in D major; this juxtaposition is then repeated to lead through different
keys, three times in all. The alternation could seemingly continue indefinitely, but
Beethoven breaks the pattern by repeating a melodic figure from the dance par-
ody in the first violin in the high register. The trio dissolves into silence before the
scherzo reemerges softly in the same high register. As in the Ninth Symphony Bee-
thoven recalls the trio in curtailed form just before the end of the movement.
Rhetorically, the device is handled with special subtlety: after cutting short the be-
ginning of the Presto, he first restates the pianissimo transition to the trio and then
caps the movement with an emphatic fortissimo cadence based on the seminal up-
beat rhythm.
As we have seen, Beethoven made sketches for an introductory slow movement
in E major preceding the finale. In the end, he reduced the introduction to four
unison bars, which preface the principal theme and return in somewhat extended
form at the beginning of the development. The crux of the gesture is the semitone
G–A , an interval of outstanding importance. The main theme is characterized by
a linear motion passing from G through A to an A , an expressive dissonance that
is resolved through the further rising step B –C that forms the peak of the melody.
The ambiguity in Beethoven’s phrasing—two occurrences of the initial triadic
motif are joined to A , while the third statement contains the climactic A —lends

tension to the tune. Its expressive character, however, is relaxed, even folk-like. As
in the first movement, a lyrical rather than a dramatic sensibility permeates the
whole.
The broad first subject group shows a ternary design; in the quiet thematic re-
statement beginning in the cello the opening phrases are absorbed into a contra-
puntal texture. The humorous character of the second subject group arises from
repeated detached notes, surprising accents, and massive fortissimo chords, ac-
companied by triplet figuration in the first violin. In the following transition Bee-
thoven emphasizes motifs containing a falling semitone, repeatedly using the step
A –G, the inversion of the crucial G–A semitone. At this point the introductory
gesture is recalled, and its unison assertion of G–A marks the beginning of a con-
cise development based on a contrapuntal combination of the two main themes.
The most remarkable formal aspect of Beethoven’s finale is surely its recapitu-
lation in the subdominant, A major. Indeed, the length of this “false” reprise—
thirty-two bars—must exceed any other in the entire Classical quartet repertoire,
as Kerman has observed.8 Its effect, however, is completely different from the
familiar device of a “false” recapitulation. Beethoven showed a general tendency
during his last decade to reshape the traditional relationship between develop-
ment and recapitulation in his sonata forms, and his use of nontonic recapitula-
tions is but one aspect of this tendency. The finale of op. 127 is not an isolated ex-
ample. The first movement of the A minor Quartet op. 132, for instance, contains
a recapitulation in the dominant, as does the Credo of the Missa solemnis.
In op. 127, by contrast, placement of the recapitulation in the subdominant has
a softening effect, casting the theme in a new light, and the procedure might also
be heard as a vast formal expansion of the subdominant stress within the theme
itself. At the subdominant reprise the tune begins in the highest register of the
viola, above a trill in the first violin. As the theme unfolds Beethoven introduces
subtle changes and new touches in scoring. The material of the ensuing “true” re-
capitulation in the tonic is also treated in ever new ways. The repetition of the
opening phrase, for instance, is heard doubled in the second violin and viola, with
motivic imitations and decorations in the first violin in an ethereal high register.
The second subject group, on the other hand, is transposed in virtually unchanged
form to the tonic.
What follows is one of Beethoven’s most magical codas. This Allegro com-
modo in 6/8 time is reached through a transformation of the repeated notes from
the end of the recapitulation, which coalesce into trills. Transformed as well is the
main theme itself: stripped of the repetition of its first bar and broadened in rhyth-
mic contour, it becomes less droll and more expressive, even coyish. It is now en-
hanced by an accompanying texture of triplet sixteenth notes (Ex. 105). Remark-
able is the series of key changes through falling major thirds, from C major to A
major to E major. The harmonic energy for these modulations comes from the
semitone motif in the theme. Indeed, the entire series results directly from Beetho-
8
The Beethoven Quartets, pp. 236–37.
316 beethoven
Ex. 105 String Quartet op. 127/IV
ven’s development of these rising semitones (the last group is extended to effect
the return of the tonic, E major):
C major: F–F –G–A
A major: D –D –E –E
E major: A–B –B–C–D –D –E
The keys of these modulations are of much importance in the work as a whole.
C major and E major were, of course, the keys of the additional movements that
Beethoven sketched, and they are prominent in the finished quartet as well. One
recalls the C major Maestoso in the first movement, the A Adagio with its memo-
rable central variation in E major, and the enormous A recapitulation in the
finale. But entirely apart from their relationship with earlier movements, these
tonal excursions through the circle of major thirds represent new and extraordi-
nary aesthetic ramifications that derive strictly from the thematic structure. This
is one of those passages in late Beethoven in which we can hear structure as we
can in the work of no other composer.
In the remainder of the coda Beethoven sounds echoes of the rising semitone,
accompanied by the pulsating triplet sixteenth motion. He had employed a simi-
lar suspended texture over pedal points in some of his last piano works, such as
the Arietta movement of op. 111 and the coda of the Diabelli Variations. In no
other quartet, however, had he achieved this kind of closing transfiguration of the
basic thematic substance. By contrast, the brilliant, exhilarating coda in the major
mode of the finale in the Quartetto serioso in F minor op. 95 is problematic, since
it blithely ignores the dramatic tensions of the work up to that point.
The coda of the finale in op. 127 is most deeply grounded in the musical struc-
ture precisely when it appears most visionary and fantastic. There is no contradic-
tion here between imagination and reason, but an irreducible synthesis of feeling
and thought. Out of this tensional balance between expression and structure
arises a spirit of high comedy that is neither Haydnesque nor Mozartian but close
to a blend of both. In the closing moments of the quartet finale Beethoven con-
veys this quality of refined gaiety above all through his treatment of the mischie-
vous, unsettling A . The thematic outline is distilled one last time, as the music
reaches A in the cello, and A in the first violin, before the rising semitone to B
sets the stage for the emphatic final cadence.
Op. 127 was one of the last compositions whose performance Beethoven wit-
nessed, and its early performance history is of special interest. The first hearing,
led by Schuppanzigh on 6 March 1825, was not satisfactory, producing only a
“weak succès d’estime,” in the words of the violinist Joseph Böhm, the leader of
the quartet concerts in Vienna during Schuppanzigh’s long absence from the city.
Böhm reported:
When Beethoven learned of this—for he was not present at the performance—he

became furious and let both performers and the public in for some harsh words.
Beethoven could have no peace until the disgrace was wiped off. He sent for me
first thing in the morning—In his usual curt way, he said to me. “You must play
my quartet”—and the thing was settled.—Neither objections nor doubts could
prevail; what Beethoven wanted had to take place, so I undertook the difficult
task.—It was studied industriously and rehearsed frequently under Beethoven’s
own eyes: I said Beethoven’s eyes intentionally, for the unhappy man was so deaf
that he could no longer hear the heavenly sound of his compositions. And yet re-
hearsing in his presence was not easy. With close attention his eyes followed the
bows and therefore he was able to judge the smallest fluctuations in tempo or
rhythm and correct them immediately. At the close of the last movement of this
quartet there occurred a meno vivace, which seemed to me to weaken the general
effect. At the rehearsal, therefore, I advised that the original tempo be maintained,
which was done, to the betterment of the effect.
Beethoven, crouched in a corner, heard nothing, but watched with strained at-
tention. After the last stroke of the bows he said, laconically, “Let it remain so,”
went to the desks and crossed out the meno vivace in the four parts.9
Böhm performed the quartet several times subsequently, with notable success.
His own report about the initial performance by Schuppanzigh was reaffirmed in
an article on 28 April in Bäuerle’s Theaterzeitung, which included the following
words of praise for Böhm’s interpretation:
. . . then a steadfast patron of art and noble connoisseur brought about a new per-
formance of this quartet by the above named man [Schuppanzigh] with the substi-
tution for first violin of Herr Prof. Böhm, since this group in the meantime had
played the new quartet for a small group of art lovers with particular success. This
professor now performed the wonderful quartet, twice over on the same evening,
9
318 beethoven
for the same very numerous company of artists and connoisseurs in a way that left
nothing to be desired, the misty veil disappeared and the splendid work of art ra-
diated its dazzling glory.10
S S S
This was but the first of several successful performances of the Galitzin Quartets
during Beethoven’s final years. These works did not come into existence as wholly
isolated endeavors of the solitary deaf composer but were heard by small yet de-
voted audiences. The broader public interest in such challenging music was se-
verely limited, and few performances of the last quartets followed during the next
decades. As with the Hammerklavier Sonata and the Diabelli Variations, appreci-
ation and critical recognition of the quartets has grown through a long and grad-
ual process.
The second quartet, in A minor, occupied Beethoven until July 1825; it was
eventually published with the deceptively high opus number 132. This work has
often been regarded as forming a “triptych” together with the two quartets that
followed it, op. 130 in B major and op. 131 in C minor. Paul Bekker advanced
this notion in 1912, arguing that the three middle quartets differ strikingly from
the preceding work in E and the final Quartet in F major op. 135.11 The justi-
fication for such a grouping rests not in the increasing number of movements in
each quartet (five in op. 132, six in op. 130, seven in op. 131) but rather in their
motivic structure: for each prominently displays intervallic relationships high-
lighting the semitones from the leading note to the tonic and from the lowered
sixth degree to the dominant. This configuration is heard in the cello at the out-
set of op. 132, and variants of these intervals appear in the fugue subject that be-
gins op. 131 and in the Grosse Fuge, the original finale of op. 130.
Deryck Cooke traced such patterns in all five of the last quartets, but he tended
to overemphasize the “unifying” role of these relationships in pieces in which
sharp individuality of character is the most prominent feature.12 Curiously, Bee-
thoven’s engagement with this intervallic pattern in his sketches surfaces in entries
for the slow introduction to a projected piano sonata for four hands that he never
completed; the motivic material and sequential pattern, transposed from C minor
to E major, found its way into the scherzo of op. 127 (Ex. 106a and b). This
sketch, from about August 1824, reveals that the basic intervallic configuration
so prominent in the last quartets arose during Beethoven’s reflection on another
project altogether, in a different key. The topos in question stems from the
Baroque, and it was familiar to Beethoven in part from some of Mozart’s C minor
works, such as the Fugue for two pianos that Beethoven had copied out in score
many years earlier.
Studies of Beethoven’s manuscripts have helped clarify various affinities between
these quartets, particularly affinities connected to their extension beyond the con-
ventional classical framework of four movements. As Sieghard Brandenburg has
10
Ibid., p. 941.
11
Beethoven, pp. 532–34.
12 “The Unity of Beethoven’s Late Quartets,” pp. 30–49.
Ex. 106 a. Autograph 11/2, fol. 5v
b. String Quartet op. 127/III, bars 2–4
shown, Beethoven already envisioned such an expansion of the formal design dur-
ing his composition of op. 127.13 During the process of composition, this quartet
was envisioned in as many as six movements, including a character piece in C major
entitled “La gaieté,” planned at one point as the second movement, and a slow in-
troduction to the finale in the key of the Neapolitan, E major. In the end, Beethoven
retained the four-movement plan for op. 127, but his flirtation with such an expan-
sion of the narrative chain of movements bore fruit in the following trilogy of quar-
tets in A minor op. 132, in B major op. 130, and in C minor op. 131. (Despite its
misleading opus number, op. 132 was the second in order of composition.) The A
minor Quartet is usually regarded as having five movements, but Beethoven himself
regarded it as having six, since he counted the recitative transition to the finale as a
separate movement.14 The B major Quartet employs a six-movement design, in-
cluding the multisectioned fugal finale, whereas the unique design of the C minor
Quartet embraces seven movements. Yet we now know from studies of the auto-
graph manuscripts and sketchbooks that each of these pieces was originally con-
ceived on a still larger scale. In different ways, Beethoven ultimately limited the size
of each of these huge works by rearranging or abridging his material.
The A minor Quartet op. 132 was initially larger because of its inclusion of the
Alla danza tedesca movement in penultimate position, which was replaced only
at the autograph stage by the concise march-like intermezzo, the Alla Marcia,
assai vivace.15 The following Quartet in B major absorbed the Alla danza tedesca
13
“Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Streichquartett Es-Dur Op.
127,” Beethoven-Jahrbuch 10 (1983), pp. 221–76.
14 This is clear from Beethoven’s letter to his nephew Karl of 11 August 1825, where he
expresses concern about the possible loss of the autograph score of the third to sixth move-
ments, which Karl Holz had removed from Beethoven’s lodging for purposes of copying.
See Beethoven Briefe, vol. 6, L. 2029.
15 See in this connection Sieghard Brandenburg, “The Autograph of Beethoven’s String
Quartet in A Minor Opus 132,” in The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven:
Studies of the Autograph Manuscripts, ed. Christoph Wolff (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Department of Music, 1980), pp. 278–300.
320 beethoven
(which was transposed for this purpose from A major to G major), yet the piece
as a whole was eventually curtailed through Beethoven’s removal of the Grosse
Fuge (Great Fugue) in favor of the substitute finale. Even the C minor Quartet
op. 131 was to have been capped by a resolving section in D major at the end of
the finale—material that Beethoven withheld from this quartet but that formed
the nucleus for the Lento assai in that key in his final Quartet in F major op. 135.16
Thus, in writing each of these works, Beethoven conceived material that spilled
over beyond the composition immediately at hand. His fertility of invention re-
fused to be contained within the boundaries of the singular work.
The incorporation of the Alla danza tedesca as the fourth of six movements of
op. 130 marked a decisive development in the genesis of the A minor and B major
Quartets. To judge from the sketches, Beethoven may have remained undecided
for several months about what movement would follow the great slow movement
of op. 132, the “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der
lydischen Tonart” (“Holy Song of Thanks of a Convalescent to the Godhead, in
the Lydian Mode”). The “Dankgesang” was composed at Beethoven’s summer
lodgings in Baden near Vienna in May of 1825, following his sustained period of
illness beginning in mid-April. By July op. 132 was finished in the autograph, in
a version with the Alla danza tedesca as its fourth movement. Only in August did
Beethoven settle on a six-movement plan for the following Quartet in B , in which
the Alla danza tedesca found its new home.
Another connection of this kind exists between rejected thematic material for
the finale of the Ninth Symphony and the finale of the A minor Quartet. Beetho-
ven repeatedly weighed the option of an instrumental finale, even while he was
composing the choral finale of the symphony.17 In turn, the abandoned theme
for a “finale instromentale” in the Ninth was transposed from D minor to A
minor and incorporated into the quartet as the main theme of its rondo finale.
The parallel can be extended: like the choral finale of the Ninth, the final move-
ment of op. 132 is introduced by a passionate recitative transition. A violin
recitative is heard here above tremolo textures in the other strings, suggesting
an almost operatic setting. The most poignant phrases stress a descending semi-
tone figure that rises sequentially at the breathless, destabilizing accelerando
passage, with a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo within just two bars.
This climactic gesture could hardly be more extreme: a piercing, syncopated di-
minished-seventh chord with the first violin on high F yields at the Presto to a
cadenza-like fall through three octaves before it resumes the earlier recitative
16 See Robert Winter, The Compositional Origins of Beethoven’s Opus 131 (Ann Arbor:
UMI Research Press, 1982), pp. 121–24, 167–74, 206–9; also Laura Bumpass, “Beetho-
ven’s Last Quartet” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1982), vol. 1,
pp. 222–24.
17 Cf. Sieghard Brandenburg, “Die Skizzen zur Neunten Symphonie,” in Zu Beethoven:
Aufsätze und Dokumente, vol. 2, ed. Harry Goldschmidt (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik,
1984), esp. pp. 128–29; and Gustav Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana: nachgelassene
Aufsätze (Leipzig: Peters, 1887), pp. 180–81.
texture, which had been torn asunder by the force of this dissonant interjection
(Ex. 107b).
This passage represents a turning point within the narrative design of the
whole quartet, linking the first and last movements. Near the outset of the open-
ing movement, at the first juxtaposition of the contrasting tempi Assai sostenuto
and Allegro, Beethoven had already exposed the F–E relationship in the strikingly
similar way; Kerman fittingly referred to the gesture as “a scream.”18 The 6–5
scale step is fundamental to the emblematic four-note configuration played in the
cello in the first moments of the piece (Ex. 107a). The A minor Quartet shows
its Janus face at once, as the understated flatness of the contrapuntal cantus fir-
mus yields without transition to this painfully impassioned continuation. The
mysterious objectivity of the slow music is pitted against the emotional force of
the Allegro.
In tonal music unstable tones, or dissonances, are inherently more expressive
than consonances. The latter provide the stable framework against which disso-
nances make their mark. In this sense, musical structure finds its very raison
d’être in relation to the tensional pressure that is exerted against it. An old rule
of thumb in the voicing of dissonances specifies that these should be played
louder than consonances, since the “passions should be generally aroused by dis-
sonances.”19 This principle was subsumed into Beethoven’s entire treatment of
contrasts and dynamics in his music, but the beginning of op. 132 offers a par-
ticularly striking example.
At the shocking Allegro interruption in bar 9, the first violin swoops through
two octaves in a driving rhythm, outlining a diminished-seventh chord, and the
gesture is underscored by the intensification to forte and the strong downbeat
after the double bar. The controlling idea of the violin gesture is the semitone step
F–E, involving a consistent treatment of register. In the last bar of the Assai
sostenuto, the first violin plays these notes as a rising semitone, as the faster pac-
ing in quarter notes is introduced. The crescendo marking in this bar is easily mis-
understood, since it does not connect directly to the dynamic level of forte in the
next bar—the sharp contrast remains largely unmediated, and a real transition
is not accomplished. Here, as often in his later works, Beethoven is concerned
with nonadjacent connections, whereby even powerful contrasts can be subsumed
into larger continuities. At the end of the second bar of the Allegro, after the
cadenza-like “scream,” the first violin returns to these same pitches with the
18
The Beethoven Quartets (New York: Norton, 1966), p. 244. Kerman writes that “The
violin arpeggio in bar 9—prolonging that F—is like a scream; the premature tonic chord in
bar 10 is like a hand clapped over the mouth.”
19
The larger context of this quotation, from Daniel Gottlob Türk’s Clavierschule of
1789, is as follows: “Good taste has made it a rule that dissonances or dissonant chords
must generally be struck with more force than consonant ones, for the reason that the pas-
sions should be generally aroused by dissonances.” Translated by R. H. Haggh as School
of Piano Playing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), p. 340.
322 beethoven
Ex. 107 a. String Quartet op. 132, beginning
falling semitone F–E in the same register. The dynamic level here of piano corre-
sponds with the intensity of sound at the earlier crescendo from pianissimo. Thus
the two-bar violin flourish is essentially parenthetical, with the resumption of the
musical discourse occurring as the crucial semitone is recaptured.20
To regard such passages as emblematic of “shattered subjectivity,” as does
Susan McClary, seems wide of the mark, since so many audible features of the
music bridge its disruptive contrasts.21 The prolonged E in the first violin in the
third bar of the Allegro corresponds in its extended duration to the long notes
of the Assai sostenuto; the repeated figures stressing the falling half step F–E in
dotted rhythm in bars 14–15 recall the descending half steps heard in all the
20
For a discussion of parenthetical structures in Beethoven’s later music, see my essay
“Thematic Contrast and Parenthetical Enclosure in the Piano Sonatas, op. 109 and 111,”
in Zu Beethoven, vol. 3, ed. Harry Goldschmidt and Georg Knepler (Berlin: Verlag Neue
Musik, 1988), pp. 43–59.
21
Susan McClary, Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 2000), p. 119.
Ex. 107 (continued)

b. String Quartet op. 132, transition to beginning of finale
voices in that section. By later placing an adagio bar before a recall of the
“scream” in the first violin at bar 22, Beethoven restated the pairing of contrast-
ing tempi, while the violin elongates the F–E semitone as two whole notes in bars
23–24. To understand such “unpredictable shifts of musical thought” as part of
“an ultimately integrative process,” as does Robert Hatten, is not to denature the
324 beethoven
music.22 On the contrary, it is as if an enlarged subjectivity enabled us to con-
front shock and dislocation without any sacrifice of the integrity of the artistic
form. Although the piercing violin gesture assumes unusual importance in the first
movement, its reincarnation at the threshold to the finale surpasses these passages
in intensity (Ex. 107b). The syncopated fortissimo in all four instruments employ-
ing double stops and with the first violin on high F goes beyond the similar inter-
jections in the first movement. Beethoven even employs an accelerando here, as
well as a crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo. Here again, the F–E semitone
is the crux of the matter, and modulations in preceding phrases of the recitative
help bring this long-range pitch relationship sharply into relief. Unlike the first
movement passages, however, Beethoven leaves the dissonance on F unresolved in
the two higher registers before the music, regaining composure in the middle reg-
ister, broadens to poco adagio. The highest F at the presto outbreak and the F on
the downbeat at the resumption of the recitative texture four bars later are both
left hanging; the pitch of resolution, E, is denied. At the poco adagio, at last, the
semitone figure emerges as the outcome of this extreme passage.
Then, in the ensuing Allegro appassionato, which is played attacca, these same
pitch relations are recaptured in the same registers (see Fig. 7). The second violin
takes from the first the F–E semitone, now treated as an ostinato, and Beethoven
emphasizes the point by including two bars of accompaniment before the expres-
sive main theme begins to unfold in the first violin (Ex. 107b). As the theme is re-
stated an octave higher, this semitone figure migrates upward as well, initially re-
iterating the F–E scale step before shifting to other scale degrees. After all of the
eight-bar phrases of the theme are restated, the continuation pits the highest F
against E in consecutive two-bar phrases, starting in bar 35. Beethoven not only
recalls the first movement in his recitative-transition, but allows this passage to
take on special importance in the narrative design of the whole quartet. Motivic
echoes of the dissonant F–E scale step of the recitative sound throughout the clos-
ing Allegro appassionato. These remind us that in the quartet Beethoven has in-
verted the function of the recitative in the Ninth: instead of opening up utopian
possibilities, this recitative forces a renewed confrontation with the music of
pathos that was already heard in the opening gestures of the first movement.
This brief but weighty passage of recitative with its catastrophic climax and
transition to the Allegro appassionato is seldom rendered adequately in perform-
ance. Particularly challenging is the need to convey convincingly the expressive
duplication of the unresolved hanging Fs in the Presto, the distillation of the F–E
relationship at the poco adagio, and the assimilation of this motive into the ac-
companiment and the melody of the rondo finale. The psychological process of
transition demands a rigorous shaping of the small motivic units in order that
these be heard in relation to one another, even when they are not directly juxta-
posed in the temporal unfolding of the music. Here, as often in Beethoven, but
22 Robert Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beetho-
ven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 270.

Figure 7. The F-E semitone in the Presto and finale theme of op. 132
especially in his later music, a close attention to such nonadjacent connections is

essential.
The serious, and even agonizing expressive character of the A minor Quartet
was probably a factor in Beethoven’s choice of the Alla Marcia, assai vivace to
serve as a contrasting buffer zone between the “Heiliger Dankgesang” and the
recitative and finale. We know when Beethoven seems to have first considered this
juxtaposition of movements. In a musical sketch entered into a conversation book
on 27–28 May 1825, he writes the end of the “Dankgesang,” marked “Dor[isch]”
(“Dorian”), followed by the Alla marcia on the reverse of the same page.23 Yet in
other sources from this period, such as on the very first page of the Moscow
Sketchbook, entries for the “Heiliger Dankgesang” are juxtaposed instead with
the Alla danza tedesca, which is written in the key of A major.24 Beethoven
weighed these two alternatives. After having first decided to use the Alla tedesca
in op. 132, he changed his mind and restored the Alla marcia. It has been sug-
gested that Beethoven was motivated here by a desire for metric contrast: the sec-
ond and last movements and parts of the third movement are in triple time, as is
the Alla tedesca, whereas the movement chosen is a march, in duple time.25 In this
context, his emphasis on dotted rhythms recalls the march-like motivic figures of
the first movement, while the prominent descending step in alternate bars also
links this subject to the main theme of the rondo finale. Figure 8 shows several of
the conspicuous motivic relations shared between the first, fourth, and fifth move-
ments of op. 132.
Recognition of the shared affinities between the outer movements of op. 132
helps us to reassess the narrative design of the quartet as a whole, in which the
“Heiliger Dankgesang” assumes such a prominent position. The shocking F3 at
the Presto is undoubtedly a gesture of negation and despair targeted at specific
23
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 7, ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Grita
Herre (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1978), p. 287; also see Brandenburg,
“The Autograph of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132,” p. 284.
24 This sketchbook has been published in facsimile and transcription, with a commen-
tary by Elena Vjaskova, as Ludwig van Beethoven: Moscow Sketchbook from 1825
(Moscow: Gnesins Musical Academy of Russia, 1995).
25
See the comments by Marius Flothuis and Lewis Lockwood in relation to Branden-
burg’s study of op. 132 in The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, p. 301.
326 beethoven
Figure 8. Motivic relations in the Quartet in A Minor, op. 132
earlier passages in the quartet. As Greg Vitercik has observed, this is the same high
f as is heard at the conclusion of the “Heiliger Dankgesang.” As Vitercik puts it,
this “wrenching F111 [⫽ F3] in the first violin . . . recalls, as in a nightmare, the
breathlessly poised F111 [in] the last bar of the ‘Dankgesang.’”26 The “Dankge-
sang” movement consists of a five-part form: three sections based on the Lydian
chorale in duple meter are wrapped around two lively, highly decorated tonal sec-
tions marked “Neue Kraft fühlend” (“feeling new strength”). Of the five phrases
making up the Lydian cantus firmus, it is the first that strongly emphasizes the E–F
semitone that we have discussed in the outer movements. The last section of the
form of the “Dankgesang,” moreover, is based just on this first phrase. Signi-
ficantly, the passage leading to the climax of this Molto adagio emphatically re-
states the opening phrase in the highest register (Ex. 108). The enormous
intensification of sonority in this passage, fortified by canonic imitations of the ac-
cented notes of the hymn, contributes to the impact of music “beside whose
strength the Neue Kraft pales,” in Kerman’s formulation.27
It is revealing in this connection to compare the design of the A minor Quartet
with one of the most impressive of Beethoven’s middle-period works in the minor
mode, the Piano Sonata in F minor op. 57 (“Appassionata”). Its tragic character
is connected to the use of a tonal plan with conspicuous parallels to op. 132.
Whereas the turbulent outer movements are in F minor, the contemplative slow
movement is a set of variations on a serene, chorale-like theme in D major
marked Andante con moto. The motivic semitone figure D to C assumes out-
standing importance in the outer movements, in conjunction with a character of
tragic strife. This is a counterpart to the F–E semitone relation that is so decisive
in the quartet. In both pieces, moreover, Beethoven employs the flat sixth degree
as the tonality for a lyrical theme in the first movement and as the tonic of the slow
movement in the middle of the entire work. (In op. 132, of course, this slow move-
26 “Structure and Expression in Beethoven’s Op. 132,” Journal of Musicological Re-

search 13 (1993), p. 249.
Ex. 108 String Quartet op. 132/III, bars 179–95, climax of final Molto adagio section
ment is set not in F major, but in the Lydian mode, an F mode without B ). Thus
the expressive polarity at the heart of each composition exploits a 6–5 semitone
relation as a source of dissonance and pathos as well as the instability of an inter-
nal tonic in a flat sixth relation to the overall minor tonic key.
In accordance with this compositional strategy, both works contain a particu-
lar moment of tragic reversal when the serenity or spirituality of the slow move-
ment is shattered. In the Appassionata, this occurs at the end of the Andante con
moto, at the harmonic substitution of an arpeggiated diminished seventh beneath
the cadential D , a note that now becomes a crucial dissonance in the context of
F minor. In the Quartet in A minor, the corresponding moment of catastrophic set-
back comes at the fortissimo outbreak in the recitative preceding the finale. Yet,
unlike in the Appassionata, this negating gesture is set at a distance from its
target—the ethereal final passages of the “Heiliger Dankgesang”—separated as
these are from the recitative by the Alla marcia, assai vivace. This circumstance
points to the greater complexity of the quartet compared to the sonata. One as-
pect of the complexity lies in the role of modal contrast in the work, particularly
the placement of the second and fourth movements as well as the coda of the finale
in A major. The polarity of major and minor in op. 132 is emphasized through
Beethoven’s decision to maintain A as tonic in four of the five movements of the
quartet. Several audible long-range connections between movements are bound
up with this modal contrast. The exquisite sound texture of the Presto coda re-
328 beethoven
calls the trio of the second movement, while its stress on F in the cadential phrase
recalls once more not only the ostinato accompaniment of the main theme of the
finale, but also the expressive poignancy of this note in the first movement. The
inflections of pain in the opening Assai sostenuto are not entirely forgotten, and
even the prominent tonal stress on F throughout the quartet—from the second
subject of the first movement to the Lydian “Dankgesang”—resonates faintly in
this telling melodic detail.
Another challenging aspect of op. 132 is the design of the “Heiliger Dankge-
sang” itself, especially its split into the radical duality of the Lydian hymn and
“Neue Kraft fühlend.” In an insightful essay, Kevin Korsyn has probed in detail
how aspects of “feeling new strength” are assimilated into the final modal section
to support the climactic passages we have discussed, enabling the Lydian music to
attain closure for the first time. Yet he ultimately regards it as a matter of inter-
pretation whether this interpenetration be regarded as a “coalescence . . . [or] a
mere coexistence of opposites.” Korsyn asks: “Does Beethoven fuse opposites or
simply narrate the impossibility of their convergence?”28
The same question could be asked of other contrasts in this quartet. The no-
tion of a Classical resolution of tensions is put to the test here, as it will be in dif-
ferent ways in the following quartets. Adorno claimed in this regard that “some-
thing in [Beethoven’s] genius, probably the deepest thing, refused to reconcile in
the image what is unreconciled in reality.”29 Yet Beethoven actually goes far to-
ward “reconciling what is irreconcilable” through his handling of the “Heiliger
Dankgesang” in the Lydian mode together with the animated, dance-like tonal
sections marked “feeling new strength.” If these drastically opposed idioms are at
first juxtaposed, suggesting two independent beginnings, they are also partly inte-
grated in the final section. Regarding the quartet as a whole, one difference of in-
terpretation lies in the extent to which listeners acknowledge what Kerman de-
scribes as “the creation of a psychological progress perhaps more arresting than
in any other work.”30 Daniel Chua, for instance, perceives substantial relation-
ships between the parts of the quartet, asserting that “what happens in the last
three movements of the work is nothing less than an expansion of the first 30 bars
of the quartet into 661 bars; the fusion of the movements and the fissures in their
contrast trace exactly the same semiotic, harmonic, thematic, and gestural patterns
presented at the beginning.”31 Yet after making this rather ambitious claim, he in-
sists at the same time that the work “negates Enlightenment thinking itself” in
delivering a “devastating critique” that contains “no psychological linear progres-
28 See Korsyn, “J. W. N. Sullivan and the Heiliger Dankgesang: Questions of Meaning
in Late Beethoven,” Beethoven Forum 2 (1993), p. 173.
29 See Adorno, “Late Work without Late Style” in Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music:
Fragments and Texts, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Polity Press,
1998), p. 152.
31
The “Galitzin” Quartets of Beethoven, p. 159.
sion.”32 A problem with this argument lies in its unreasonable denial of a psycho-
logical dimension in the narrative design of the music. Expression and structure
are not in contradiction here, as more balanced discussions of the quartet have
recognized.33
A comparison can be made with the Piano Sonata in A major, op. 110, com-
posed in 1820–22.34 Like op. 132, the genesis of the sonata was connected to Bee-
thoven’s recovery from sickness, in this instance an even more prolonged illness.35
Both works display powerful binary oppositions that are associated with sickness
and revitalization, death and life. Beethoven’s title, “Holy Song of Thanks to the
Godhead from a Convalescent,” implies a serious loss of life energies on the part
of the grateful convalescent, and related gestures elsewhere in op. 132, such as the
recitative preceding the finale, show that a sense of foreboding is not confined to
the slow movement. As Kerman has stressed, a quality of anguish or suffering
seems deeply embedded in the quartet. In the finale of the sonata, a counterpart
to the pairing of Lydian “Dankgesang” and “new strength” is embodied in the du-
ality of the Arioso dolente and fugue. Mournful stanzas of the arioso in the minor
mode are juxtaposed with the hopeful, aspiring music of the fugue, whose subject
features a series of rising perfect fourths set in the major. After the first fugal sec-
tion is abruptly broken off, the lament returns in an even more despairing version
in the remote key of G minor. This second presentation of the Arioso dolente, with
its sighing vocal rhetoric reminiscent of Pamina’s “Ach, ich fühl’s,” in the same
key, seems destined to end, as does that aria, in unmitigated despair. Only at the
last possible moment does the miraculous turning point occur, like an evasion of
death: at the final framing cadential gesture in G minor, Beethoven substitutes the
unexpected, and in the immediate context of the arioso, even incongruous sonor-
ity of the major (bar 5 of Ex. 109). That event signals the beginning of an ex-
tended transition, whereby the fugue subject returns in inversion, and only very
32 Ibid, pp. 160, 161. It seems implausible that “exactly the same . . . patterns” are
traced in these three movements.

33 See in this vein the aforementioned studies by Kerman, Korsyn, and Vitercik, the title
of whose study, “Structure and Expression in Beethoven’s Op. 132,” itself affirms that aes-
thetic synthesis which Chua is prone to reject. There is good reason to believe that a synthe-
sis of expression and structure remained fundamental to Beethoven’s art throughout his life.
34 For discussion of the compositional genesis of op. 110, see my studies “Contrast and
Continuity in Beethoven’s Creative Process,” in Beethoven and His World, ed. Scott Burn-
ham and Michael P. Steinberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 215–18;
and Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in
E Major, Opus 109, vol. 1 (commentary) (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2003), pp. 26–31. Earlier studies placed the beginning of Beethoven’s work on the sonata
in late 1821.
35
See in this regard my study “The Evolution of Beethoven’s Late Style: Another ‘New
Path’ after 1824?” Beethoven Forum 8 (2000), pp. 83–84. Radcliffe draws a parallel be-
tween the finale of op. 110 and the “Heiliger Dankgesang” of op. 132 in Beethoven’s String
Quartets, p. 115.
330 beethoven
Ex. 109 Piano Sonata op. 110/III, end of second arioso section
gradually, through a process of contrapuntal and rhythmic development, does the

music recapture the tonic key and ultimately reach a climax of lyric euphoria in
the high register.
This transition in op. 110 might also have carried the inscription “Feeling New
Strength”; Beethoven wrote a similar message above the music: “nach u. nach sich
neu belebend” (“gradually coming anew to life”). In fact, op. 110 and op. 132 are
not alone in absorbing into music such a dialectical expression of the polarity be-
tween death, as a termination of striving and outcome of depressive forces, and
life, as a vitalization of energies culminating in joyful abandon. This symbolic di-
mension surfaces in Beethoven’s instrumental music at least as early as the Piano
Sonata in D major op. 10 no. 3, and it is found in major works including the
Eroica Symphony, the Egmont music, and the Missa solemnis, as we have seen.
The duality stands at the very center of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, where it
was emphasized through the expansion in 1814 of Florestan’s aria in the dungeon,
where the prisoner, close to death, is sustained through his delirious vision of the
“angel of freedom,” Leonore.
Of all his instrumental works in this vein, the Quartet in A minor contains per-
haps the most challenging narrative design, one whose implications can be cau-
tiously explored. In answer to Korsyn’s question, Beethoven seems in the “Heiliger
Dankgesang” to narrate the possibility of a partial convergence of opposites,
achieving thereby the revitalization of the implied subject. And although the de-
spairing recitative retracts this promise, the finale ultimately restores it. The pas-
sage leading to the coda hammers out the crucial F3 on downbeats, with the theme
in the cello in a high, strained position, as the tempo accelerates to presto. This ex-
traordinary passage becomes the gateway to an A major never previously attained.
Here may lie the reason the second and fourth movements—the two dance
movements in the major—“are experienced in a curious and unique way as sub-
sidiary,” as Kerman says. Various commentators have noted a flatness or static
quality in the second movement, the Allegro ma non tanto, and Vitercik writes
about its “obsessive clarity” and “endless permutations” of the counterpoint of
bars 5–6 such that “the mesmerizing insouciance of these repetitions comes dan-
gerously close to trivializing that counterpoint, reducing it to the level of a parlor
trick.”36 Furthermore, the trio of this movement, with its innocent tone, block-
like sectional construction, and collage-like reuse of scraps of music Beethoven
wrote thirty years earlier, is just as provocative as the Alla marcia, assai vivace in
standing aloof from the serious character of the other three movements. The sec-
ond and fourth movements in A major are handled in a somewhat parodistic man-
ner, while the coda of the finale is reserved as the true destination for the psycho-
logical progress of the work as a whole. In his later years, Beethoven was
especially interested in such techniques of parody, and his music with rustic con-
notations, such as the musette in the trio of the second movement, can harbor
deeper meanings. In its texture, meter, and key, this musette anticipates the coda
of the finale of op. 132. Here too, the Piano Sonata in A op. 110 offers a reveal-
ing parallel. Its second movement, a humorous scherzo-like Allegro molto, alludes
to a folk song, Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich (I Am Dissolute, You Are Dis-
solute). That very passage is recalled near the end of the fugal finale of op. 110,
where a texture of double diminution helps point the way toward the closing pas-
sages of resolution. In both works, an energy drawn from the commonplace helps
enable the positive conclusion in the tonic major. Beethoven seems to convey
thereby that an openness to experience is an indispensable condition for the sus-
taining vision of fulfilled life.
S S S
As we have seen, the Quartet in A minor shows points of contact with certain ear-
lier works by Beethoven, particularly the Ninth Symphony and the Piano Sonata
in A major op. 110. At the same time, it displays qualities of nonlinear temporal-
ity that are particularly innovative. Even immediate, dramatic gestures—such as the
violin “scream” at the Presto preceding the finale—seem to be embodied in a for-
mal network stretching over the work as a whole, and the timing of such events is
not always coordinated with their expressive meaning in a singular continuity. Yet
conflicts and gaps in this music need not be understood as “devastating critique”;
they can assume a range of significance reaching far beyond their immediate con-
text. Special devices—such as the controlled use of the very highest register—
help to articulate long-spanned connections between movements. In yet another
way, the parodistic character of the second and fourth movements broadens the
aesthetic scope of the work. Boldest of all is how Beethoven captures a remote or
timeless ethos in the Lydian hymn of the “Dankgesang,” yet the impulse is not an-
tiquarian but essentially modernistic; older models are sought in order to be tested
and strained to their limits.
36 “Structure and Expression in Beethoven’s Op. 132,” p. 246.
332 beethoven
In approaching the Quartet in B major, we shall focus on the original version
of this work with the Grosse Fuge as finale.37 Without recounting in detail the cir-
cumstances that led to the composition of a new finale, we should note that this
was no straightforward substitution, as with the replacement of the Andante fa-
vori as slow movement of the Waldstein Sonata, the reassignment of the finale of
the Violin Sonata in A major op. 30 no. 1 to the Kreutzer Sonata, or the substitu-
tion of the march-like fourth movement of the A minor Quartet op. 132 for the
Alla danza tedesca that Beethoven redeployed in turn as the fourth movement of
op. 130. An analogy might also be made to the severing of the magnificent over-
ture Leonore No. 3 from Fidelio, but the case of the Grosse Fuge remains unique.
There are good reasons for regarding the original version of the B Quartet
with the Grosse Fuge as the most definitive one, and it is this form of the work
that pushes most strongly toward new aesthetic perspectives. Of all Beethoven’s
compositions, the original B Quartet is perhaps the most heavily end-weighted,
with a diverse series of shorter and lighter movements followed by a colossal fugal
essay. One commentator has even suggested an analogy to the sequence of free and
strict pieces from the Baroque, such as Bach’s preludes and fugues, whereby the
fugal finale balances all of the preceding five movements.38 Without the rest of the
quartet, moreover, the Grosse Fuge is effectively orphaned, and the beginning of
its elaborate “Ouvertura” loses the point. The Grosse Fuge is a finale in search of
the work, with which it has now, in modern performances, often been reconciled.
In May 1825, while he was composing op. 132, Beethoven made the notation
on fol. 6r of the “de Roda” sketchbook, “letztes Quartett mit einer ernsthaften
und schwergängigen Einleitung” (“last quartet with a serious and weighty intro-
duction”), which can only refer to op. 130, the last of the three quartets included
in the commission from Prince Galitzin. Eight pages later, on fol. 13v, amid the
first sketches for the slow introduction to the first movement of op. 130, and while
he was still working on the finale of op. 132, Beethoven made an entry for
“letztes Stück des quartetts in B” (“last movement of the quartet in B ”) includ-
37
For a detailed account defending the role of the Grosse Fuge as a suitable finale, see
Klaus Kropfinger, “Das gespaltene Werk Beethovens Streichquartett Op. 130/133,” in
Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammermusik Symposion Bonn 1984, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg
and Helmut Loos (Munich: Henle, 1987), pp. 296–335; see also Kropfinger’s articles
“Streichquartett B-Dur op. 130,” “Fuge B-Dur für Streichquartett ‘Grosse Fuge’ op. 133,”
and “Bearbeitung der ‘Grossen Fuge’ op. 133 für Klavier zu 4 Händen op. 134,” in Beetho-
ven: Interpretationen seiner Werke, ed. Albrecht Riethmüller, Carl Dahlhaus, and Alexan-
der Ringer (Laaber: Laaber, 1994), pp. 299–316, 338–47. Also see in this regard Stefania
M. de Kennessey, The Quartet, the Finale and the Fugue: A Study of Beethoven’s op.
130/133 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), and Richard Kramer, “Between Cavatina
Ouverture: Opus 130 and the Voices of Narrative,” Beethoven Forum 1 (1992), pp.
165–89. A discussion favoring the substitute finale is offered in Barry Cooper, Beethoven
and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 197–214.
38 See Barbara R. Barry, “Recycling the End of the ‘Leibquartett’: Models, Meaning and
Propriety in Beethoven’s Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130,” Journal of Musicology 13

(1995), pp. 364–65.
ing the notation “Fugha” (“fugue”). As Klaus Kropfinger has stressed, this evi-
dence implies that Beethoven was concerned from an early stage in the genesis of
op. 130 with a complex and ambitious project.39 However, it was not until 24 Au-
gust 1825 that Beethoven informed his nephew and Karl Holz that the new quar-
tet would have six movements, and he added in the letter to his nephew that the
piece would be “completely finished in at most 12 days.”40 His prediction was
overly optimistic, and the quartet continued to occupy him until December of 1825.
According to Barry Cooper’s evaluation of the sketches, Beethoven’s plans
for the quartet remained unsettled for a time after the first two movements had
been sketched, and the fourth and fifth movements—the Alla danza tedesca and
Cavatina—were included only after the fugue had begun to assume large dimen-
sions.41 By about late August, Beethoven evidently began to work on the Cavatina
and fugue simultaneously. The sketches show that Beethoven only gradually al-
tered the intervallic structure of the Cavatina to incorporate some of its striking
melodic features, whereas the main fugal subject had been devised earlier, while
he was a work on the E Major Quartet op. 127. One guiding factor in his labors
was surely the thematic motto heard at the outset of the entire quartet, in adagio
tempo, which prefigures musical events in the work as a whole (Ex. 110). For in-
stance, Beethoven recalls this opening, with its falling semitones from B to A ,
when he introduces the change of key to D major for the third movement, the
Andante. Rudolph Reti even proposed that the outer notes of the motto—G and
E —are coordinated with the keys of Beethoven’s fourth and fifth movements, in
G major and E major respectively.42 Despite a difference in tonality, the rising
sixth B –G and third G–(A )–B that begin the Cavatina also display an audible
motivic kinship to the notes of this opening motto. The Adagio molto espressivo
of the Cavatina develops a lyric strain that was latent in the Adagio ma non
troppo in the first movement.
That this opening Adagio is more than a slow introduction made clear from its
return in later passages of the first movement, including the repetition of the ex-
position of the sonata form. Beethoven’s initial idea was to juxtapose just the first
four bars of the Adagio with the Allegro in running sixteenth notes. This is essen-
tially the procedure carried out later in the exposition (bars 21–24) and in the
coda, which is based entirely on this pair of contrasting themes.43 The contrapun-
39
See Kropfinger, “Streichquartett B-Dur op. 130,” pp. 301–4. Kropfinger rejects Barry
Cooper’s argument in his chapter “Planning the Later Movements: String Quartet in B flat,
Op. 130,” in Beethoven and the Creative Process, where he maintains that Beethoven had no
early intention of writing a fugal finale and that “the Große Fuge can be seen as something
of an intrusion into the quartet, rather than the germ from which the work sprang” (p. 214).
40
Beethoven Briefe, vol. 6, L. 2042, 2043.
41
Beethoven and the Creative Process, pp. 197–214.
42
The Thematic Process in Music (London: Faber & Faber, 1961), pp. 228–29. Reti
considers the D tonic of the third movement to substitute for the D in the theme. The tonic
of Beethoven’s fourth movement is mistakenly given as G minor in Reti’s book.
43 The “de Roda” Sketchbook contains a draft for the movement without the interven-
ing bars 5–14. See Cecilio de Roda, “Un quaderno de autografi di Beethoven del 1825,”
334 beethoven
Ex. 110 String Quartet op. 130/I, beginning
tal passage Beethoven added to lengthen the initial Adagio was by no means the
only major revision he made during the compositional process. As Elena Vjaskova
has observed, the astonishing development section of the first movement was
originally conceived on very different lines, as a double fugato reminiscent of the
first movement of the Piano Sonata in C minor op. 111.44 In revising these early
plans, Beethoven introduced elements of whimsy and unpredictability—qualities
not absent from the movements to come. At the beginning of the development sec-
tion as we know it, he repeatedly juxtaposes short fragments of the music in the
two contrasting tempos. The continuation then brings an uncanny motivic dia-
logue played against an ostinato in the middle voices that is derived from an ap-
poggiatura figure in the Adagio (Ex. 111). This dialogue highlights both the head-
motive from the Allegro, with its rising fourth, and a variant of the lyrical second
subject, with its initial ascending interval now widened to an octave and the con-
tinuation compressed into eighth notes instead of quarters. These motives com-
municate in a weirdly inconsistent fashion, reserving the right to disappear at will
into the ostinato background. The lyrical octave ascent in the cello in the third bar
of the Allegro seems to influence the rising headmotive in the first violin three bars
later, where the fourth is expanded to an octave. Just after the change in key sig-
nature to G major the corresponding bass entry is blended into the ostinato figure.
Curiously, the direction of resolution of these motives into the ostinato back-
ground can initiate an inversion in the direction of the prevailing appoggiatura
figure: the F –G ostinato of bars 11–12 thus becomes G–F three bars later. Such
relationships heighten the effect of temporal stasis—the trance-like suspension
characteristic of this remarkable episode—which reveals one possible synthesis of
apparently incompatible themes.
Rivista Musicale Italiana 12 (1905), p. 596. Kropfinger comments on the role of the Ada-
gio in this movement in “Zur thematischen Funktion der langsamen Einleitung bei Beetho-
ven,” in Kropfinger, Über Musik im Bilde, vol. 1, ed. Bodo Bischoff and others (Cologne:
Verlag Christoph Dohr, 1995), pp. 213–29.
44 Ludwig van Beethoven: Moscow Sketchbook from 1825, p. 68.
Ex. 111 String Quartet op. 130/I, Development, bars 104–27
Beethoven reserves his supreme exercise in paradox for the coda. After recall-
ing the beginning of the Adagio ma non troppo in slightly varied form, he dove-
tails the Allegro and Adagio phrases into one another to form a new continuity
(Ex. 112). The chromatic ascent that originates in the Adagio as A–B rises to B–C
and C –D in the following Adagio excerpts, before finding a further continuation
in the Allegro tempo of the cadential passage. These interdependent Adagio and
Allegro sections which make up the coda are held in perfect balance, and Beetho-
ven’s manipulation of the music in contrasting tempos creates a mutually inter-
locking parenthetical structure. The excerpts interrupt one another, and are them-
selves interrupted. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to say what is actually
“parenthetical” under such circumstances. The apparent contradiction is tran-
scended (aufgehoben) in the achievement of the composite theme.
336 beethoven
Ex. 112 String Quartet op. 130/I, coda, bars 214–end
This most radically dissociated movement introduces Beethoven’s most con-

troversial single work: the original, or “Galitzin,” version of the B Quartet with
the Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue) as finale. The Grosse Fuge is the largest and most
difficult of all Beethoven’s quartet movements, dubbed “das Monstrum aller
Quartett-Musik” in Schindler’s derogatory formulation. As is well known, Bee-
thoven eventually decided at the urgings of Karl Holz and the publisher Matthias
Artaria to write a substitute finale for this quartet, separating the Grosse Fuge for
publication as op. 133. Consequently, the B Quartet has usually been performed
without the Grosse Fuge, and debate about the virtues of the two finales has con-
tinued to this day without any clear resolution. In 1963 Warren Kirkendale
argued for an interpretation of the Grosse Fuge as Beethoven’s “Art of the
Fugue,” as a compendium of fugal devices presumably inspired in part by one of
Beethoven’s teachers from his early Vienna years, Johann Georg Albrechts-
berger.45 In accordance with this view, Kirkendale found it entirely fitting to re-
gard the Grosse Fuge as a work in its own right, divorced from the quartet. Other
writers have found Kirkendale’s argument overstated and have stressed the char-
acter of the Grosse Fuge as a finale, as well as pointing to the many motivic and
textural threads that connect it with the earlier movements.
In his book Beethoven and the Creative Process Barry Cooper has concluded
on the basis of sketch sources that since the Grosse Fuge can
be seen as something of an intrusion into the quartet, rather than the germ from
which the work sprang, Beethoven’s decision to replace it with a different move-
ment, more in line with the others and with the finale he had intended while writ-
ing them, must seem entirely justified.46
Nevertheless, during 1826 the B Quartet was discussed, rehearsed, performed,

and even engraved in its original version with the Grosse Fuge as finale. The first
rehearsal of the quartet took place on Tuesday, 3 January 1826, in Beethoven’s
apartment, and many further rehearsals following before the work was premiered
place in a concert on 21 March. The conversation books used by the deaf com-
poser during these weeks are astoundingly informative about the B Quartet, and
especially about the fugue. Beethoven’s violinist friend Karl Holz told the com-
poser that “everything will go easily, except for the fugue” and that this “last
movement must be practiced at home,” for which reason the players needed to
take the parts with them.47 Several entries refer to the difficulty of the Grosse
Fuge, and on one occasion, Schuppanzigh quipped that “Holz has fallen asleep,
since the last movement has made him kaput.”48 Various other topics are dis-
cussed, but the recurrent theme is the formidable challenge of the Grosse Fuge, es-
pecially involving the bowing, clarity, and ensemble of the sections in swift tempo
involving triplets and leaps in register. Holz comments in this vein that the difficul-
ties would be overcome with practice, while “the novelty of playing such passages
makes at first for greater obstacles than are really there.”49
In a conversation book from more than a half year later, September 1826, Holz
45“The ‘Great Fugue’ Op. 133: Beethoven’s ‘Art of the Fugue,’” pp. 14–24.
46P. 214.
47 Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 8, ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler and Grita
Herre (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1981), pp. 243, 245.
48
Ibid., p. 246.
49 Ibid., p. 250.
338 beethoven
tells Beethoven that “You could have easily made 2 [works] out of the B Quar-
tet.”50 This remark was presumably connected to Beethoven’s decision to write a
new finale, as urged by the publisher, with Holz’s support; Beethoven’s first
sketches for the substitute finale date from about this time. In a general way, of
course, Holz’s comment touches on a conspicuous feature not only of op. 130, but
of all of the middle three of the late quartets. These works expand the cycle of
movements beyond the conventional framework that had with few exceptions
served Beethoven adequately throughout his career.51
Various reasons have been proposed to explain Beethoven’s willingness to pro-
vide a new finale: they include the extra fee; his recognition of the difficulties ex-
perienced by the players and listeners (in spite of his comment “Cattle! Asses!,”
when he heard the fugue had not been well received); his depressed and possibly
conciliatory state of mind by the autumn of 1826, when the substitute finale was
written; and even the changing aesthetic perspective brought about by his experi-
ence in composing the last two quartets, opp. 131 and 135. No one of these ex-
planations seems compelling in itself; a proper assessment of the issue must rest
primarily on aesthetic grounds, on our analysis of the music. Still, it is worth not-
ing that Beethoven once before had authorized puzzling changes in a piece that
culminates similarly in an astonishing and extremely difficult fugue—the Ham-
merklavier Sonata. In a letter to Ries of 1819 Beethoven suggested that, “should
the sonata not be suitable for London,” it might be published without the Largo,
or without the fugue but with the scherzo as finale, or even that the first move-
ment and scherzo might form the entire sonata.52 This patently destructive atti-
tude toward the sonata can be at least partly explained as a willingness to allow
arrangement for additional profit of a work that was being properly printed in
Vienna. The motive of arrangement for additional profit would seem to apply as
well to the case of the third “Galitzin” Quartet.
One problem with Cooper’s evaluation of the genesis of op. 130 is his tendency
to identify selected preliminary sketches with the composer’s “intention” without
taking sufficient account of the larger aesthetic context. Beethoven’s sketches
often represent the barest shorthand for very much more; one challenge in inter-
preting them is to conjure something of this missing context, and not to take them
merely at face value, which risks conveying a misleading impression of their func-
tion and content. Cooper’s “completion” of the first movement of Beethoven’s
Tenth Symphony displays some shortcomings of his approach: the outcome might
more accurately be described as an elaboration by the editor on motifs from Bee-
thoven’s sketchbooks than as Beethoven’s “symphony,” since too little material
survives to permit a proper realization.
By identifying Beethoven’s “intention” in op. 130 with unrealized finale
sketches that are “not unlike the substitute finale,” Cooper comes to regard the
50Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 10, ed. Dagmar Beck (Leipzig:
Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1993), p. 185.
51
One exception is the Sixth Symphony, with its use of five movements.
Grosse Fuge as “something of an intrusion into the quartet,” but this reasoning
fails to take sufficient account of the provisionary nature of the sketches and the
evolving nature of intention as commitment to an artistic process. For another ex-
ample, let us consider Beethoven’s sketches for the Arietta theme in the final move-
ment of his sonata op. 111. Many of these sketches contain dance-like entries in
3/8 time akin to the world of Diabelli’s waltz; the slow, chorale-like setting of the
Arietta theme surfaces only in advanced sketches.53 Would it then be correct to
speak of the Arietta theme as representing “something of an intrusion into the
sonata”? On the contrary, the work of art we know as op. 111 first came into ex-
istence only after very extensive sketching by Beethoven. The existence of sketches
does not guarantee ipso facto the existence of the work.
The aesthetic problems raised by the “Galitzin” version of the B Quartet have
been reassessed by Richard Kramer, who looks beyond the analysis of thematic
relationships to address the narrative implications of Beethoven’s pairing of the
Cavatina and the Grosse Fuge. For all its radical features, the B Quartet bears
comparison with a number of other compositions from Beethoven’s later years. A
sequence of shorter inner movements—two dance movements surrounding the
exquisite Andante con moto—leads up to the Cavatina in penultimate position.
Then, in direct juxtaposition to the heartfelt, lyrical, even operatic expression of
the Cavatina, the transition to the finale annihilates this frame of reference. As
Kramer points out, the moment of narrative intervention is the octave G that be-
gins the “Ouverture” to the fugue, a note that does not yet belong to the preview
of themes to follow (Ex. 113): “Wrenched from the pathos of the Cavatina, its
graceless grace notes wrest the two middle-register Gs from that famous simul-
taneity with which the Cavatina expires and inflate them to an expanse of four
octaves.”54 As in the Ninth Symphony or the Hammerklavier Sonata, we encoun-
ter here a turning point in the work as a whole, a moment of crucial narrative
significance.
According to Holz, Beethoven said that the mere thought of the Cavatina
brought him to tears; the ensuing “Ouverture” seems to reject such sentiment in a
way somewhat reminiscent of Czerny’s report, many years earlier, about Beetho-
ven’s mocking laughter in response to the listeners who wept at his improvisations.
An analogous moment is perhaps the passage from the 20th to the 21st variation—
from the Andante to the Allegro con brio—in the Diabelli Variations, where an
inward sanctuary of reflection is rudely flooded by the glaring light of ordinary re-
ality. The transition to the Grosse Fuge lacks the parodistic dimension of the Dia-
belli Variations, but it dispels the preceding lyrical music with equal vehemence.
The parade of fugal themes in the “Ouverture” anticipates the main sections
of the great finale in reverse order. As Kramer points out, this sequence proceeds
from the clearest thematic statement to the most obscure—the gapped form of the
subject that serves as countersubject in the huge opening section in B . Conversely,
53The sketches for the Arietta movement are discussed and transcribed by William
Drabkin in “A Study of Beethoven’s Opus 111 and Its Sources.”
54 “Between Cavatina and Ouverture,” p. 178.
340 beethoven
Ex. 113 (a) String Quartet op. 130/V, bars 61–end
(b) Grosse Fuge op. 133
the main sections of the fugue unfold with a sense of progress from the obscure to
the coherent; the most basic form of the subject is withheld until the final pas-
sages. The most emphatic assertion of this principal fugue subject in the tonic B
occurs only in the closing section marked Allegro molto e con brio, where it is
prefaced by brief reminiscences of two of the other main sections (now recalled in
the proper order). In the Grosse Fuge Beethoven combines smaller movements
into a composite form using variation technique, while employing unusually elab-
orate rhetorical devices of premonition and reminiscence. In these respects the
quartet finale bears comparison to the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony.
Various thematic, harmonic, and structural relationships link the Grosse Fuge
to the earlier movements of op. 130, but these do little to negate the impression
of powerful, even bewildering contrasts. As with some of Beethoven’s comic
pieces, the integrity of this quartet resides in a tension between eccentricity and
normality. The music shows us that more lurks behind the surface of things than
might appear. Near the end of the fourth movement, the Alla danza tedesca, for
instance, Beethoven juggles the measures of the dance in a free retrograde pattern,
delightfully subverting our expectations. In the first movement, the most balanced,
integrated, and hence “normal” thematic presentation proves to be the coda—
paradoxically, the passage that shifts gears most of all. In this context the Grosse
Fuge provides a much more compelling culmination than the substitute rondo
finale. The rondo, with its milder manners and Haydnesque character, sounds an-
ticlimactic after the extraordinary chain of movements leading up to the Cavatina,
whereas the fugue opens new territory, heightening the character of unpredictabil-
ity that had invested the quartet from the outset, while broadening its expressive
range to the utmost. As Kramer writes, the Grosse Fuge both reconciles and re-
nounces “all those disparate musics in op. 130.”55
Beethoven’s severing of the Grosse Fuge from op. 130 raises fundamental ques-
tions about the role of the finale in his late style. Solomon compares the removal
of the quartet fugue to Beethoven’s concern, as reported by Czerny, that to close
the Ninth Symphony with a choral finale was a mistake. A principle of “alterna-
tive narrativity” may be at work here. In the choral finale or the Grosse Fuge,
though not in the substitute finale, the modalities of earlier movements seem to be
superseded and annulled; an organic relationship is thereby overstepped. Yet, as
Solomon writes about the Ninth Symphony, “The earlier movements are not
wholly rejected; they are found insufficient to stand unsupported against evil.”56
Beethoven’s doubts about his most radical finales may have been connected to the
ultimately unfulfilled nature of their depiction of the sublime, whose tensional
structure harbors an ethical core.
55 Ibid., p. 188.
56 “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: The Sense of an Ending,” p. 151.
12
R
The Last Phase: 1826–1827
R
With the completion of the B Quartet in November 1825 Beethoven at last
fulfilled Galitzin’s commission. As so often, his artistic response followed his own
laws, quite apart from Galitzin’s request for three quartets. For near the end of the
year he began to sketch yet another quartet: this was the work in C minor op.
131, which he reportedly considered his greatest, because “there is less lack of
fantasy than ever before.” Beethoven labored on the C minor Quartet until July
1826. It was followed by only two pieces: the final Quartet in F major op. 135
and the substitute rondo finale of the B Quartet op. 130, both completed at
Gneixendorf during the autumn of 1826.
The Quartet in C minor is perhaps the most fully realized of all Beethoven’s
intrinsically musical narrative designs. In op. 131 he merges tendencies from some
of his earlier works to forge a unique seven-movement sequence without any
breaks between movements. The large-scale rhythmic continuity is only one as-
pect of the integrated network of relationships that holds together these seven
movements, which are explicitly numbered in the score. In approaching this quar-
tet it is helpful to recall some of the compositional strategies from Beethoven’s ear-
lier pieces that have been brought into play.
As early as the fantasy sonatas op. 27 Beethoven had shifted the overall dra-
matic weight from the first to the last movements of the sonata cycle, and in the
E Sonata he had recalled the slow movement in the finale. His later compositional
style tends to explore further this reversal of the classic aesthetic sequence, in part
through his resourceful use of anticipation, quotation, recitative, and other
rhetorical devices. In both the C major Cello Sonata and A major Piano Sonata
op. 101, as we have seen, the lyrical opening movement is recalled at the thresh-
old of the finale. In the Hammerklavier Sonata and Ninth Symphony a series of
musical possibilities is glimpsed or reviewed before the discovery of the finale.
Such directional tendencies also surface in the last sonatas, as well as in the origi-
nal version of the B Quartet, with the Grosse Fuge as finale.
In several pieces, including the D major Cello Sonata, the Hammerklavier
Sonata, the A Sonata op. 110, the Gloria and Credo of the Missa solemnis, and
of course the B Quartet, fugue is treated as the culmination of an extended cyclic
form rich in contrast. The fugal subjects often display a unified structure elabo-
342
the last phase: 1826–1827 343
Ex. 114 String Quartet op. 131/I
rating a single crucial interval. In the Gloria and in op. 110 these themes are based
on a series of ascending fourths; the Credo fugue subject elaborates a chain of de-
scending thirds, a framework that also lurks beneath the surface of the fugal sub-
ject in the Hammerklavier Sonata.
In the C minor Quartet, by contrast, Beethoven inverts the position of the
fugue, treating it as the point of departure instead of the outcome of the work.
The fugue subject in op. 131 is more dissonant and harmonically ambiguous than
the subjects of his fugal finales, including even the Grosse Fuge, a fact only partly
explained by its being in the minor mode. An extraordinary feature of this fugue
subject is the way Beethoven has adapted the basic trope recorded in his early C
minor sketch for the four-hand sonata: the motivic figure outlining 5– 6–1–7
(G–A –C–B). In op. 131 he arranges these steps so as to emphasize the drooping
flat sixth degree, A in C minor: 5–7–1– 6 (G –B –C –A) (Ex. 114). A is heard as
crux of the theme, partly on account of its strong rhythmic position and accent,
which are underscored as well by the crescendo; the second half of the phrase re-
sponds to the primacy of this sensitive pitch by gently decorating the downward
resolution of the A to G .
This dissonance contributes to the atmosphere of bleak melancholy at the out-
set of the fugue, and to the expressive tension throughout. But most impressive
are the far-reaching consequences that the initial gesture and its fugal develop-
ment hold for the quartet as a whole. Beethoven infuses a profound instability
into his fugue subject, and follows up the implications with sure instinct. Because
of the stress on A and the positioning of the turn figure in bar 3 on F , the sub-
ject displays a strong drift to the subdominant; it is poised, as Kerman notes, half
in the subdominant, half in the tonic.1 Beethoven sustains this tension by placing
the fugal answer in the subdominant, so that its sensitive accented pitch becomes
D, the Neapolitan degree a semitone above the tonic C . In the closing moments
of the fugue this semitone D–C is emphasized in the most striking manner, with
a subdominant entry in the cello answered in stretto in the first violin, which then
returns to the crucial D in the following bar for added emphasis (Ex. 115).
Why does Beethoven single out these pitches, even deleting the turn figure from
the original subject in order to further highlight the Neapolitan degree, D? An an-
1
344 beethoven
Ex. 115 String Quartet op. 131/I–II
swer to this question is supplied moments later, as he first distils the content of the
music to a soft, pianissimo octave on C , before shifting the octave motif up a
semitone to D to initiate the second movement, the gentle Allegro molto vivace.
The music carries its own continuity within itself; the expressive tension within
the fugue implies a further musical continuity that lies paradoxically beyond its
confines, one that is to inhabit the tonality so clearly prepared by the opening
movement: D major.
This is an unusually resourceful example of Beethoven’s practice in some earlier
intermovement transitions of anticipating the music to come. Several of the closest
parallels are found in the piano sonatas. In the Waldstein, for example, the high G
that forms the melodic peak of the rondo theme has already been sounded at the
very end of the slow Introduzione and serves as a harmonic and melodic pivot be-
tween the two movements. Structurally, an even closer comparison can be made in
the Hammerklavier Sonata, with the B major modulation in the development of
the first movement; here the preceding series of harmonic descending thirds is fol-
lowed by a modulation to the key a third below, as the energy generated by the
chain of falling thirds is transferred to the level of the tonal plan. In op. 131 there
is an analogous pivotal shift from harmonic to tonal structure in service of the first
transition between movements; yet much more is at work here than an application
of the structural intensity forged in the Hammerklavier Sonata to the problem of
a transition between movements. A more revealing analogy is offered by the first
movement of the A Sonata op. 110, which shows some surprising latent similari-
ties to op. 131. That comparison, in turn, offers a context in which to survey the
broader significance of the narrative designs in many of Beethoven’s compositions.
An analysis of the final six bars of the first movement of op. 110 entails con-
sideration of threads of connection that reach across the entire work. The passage
is at once a reminiscence and a foreshadowing (Ex. 116). The motif in thirds in
the left hand five bars from the end, for instance, recalls a passage near the begin-
ning of the recapitulation. At the cadence Beethoven retains the original poly-
phonic texture, register, and upper melodic outline of the motto from the very be-
ginning of the sonata—now reduced to the rising and falling semitones C–D and
D –C—while simultaneously preparing the sonority and spacing that is to begin
the Allegro molto, namely the third C–A , which is about to be reharmonized in
F minor in the ensuing scherzo-like movement. At the same time, the penultimate
dissonant diminished-seventh chord containing F (bar 115) foreshadows the cli-
mactic dissonant sonority that will be resolved into the closing A chord at the
very end of the concluding fugue.
Ex. 116 Piano Sonata op. 110/I, bars 110–end
346 beethoven
But we have not yet considered the aspect of Beethoven’s coda that points most
provocatively toward what is to come. In the alto voice, three bars from the close,
he prefigures the fugue subject on the dominant, with the succession of ascending
fourths—E –A and F–B —broken off at the dissonant F of the penultimate
chord. The rhythmic configuration of this foreshadowing, with the first note aug-
mented, corresponds to the fortissimo bass entry beginning on the dominant of C
minor in the middle of the first fugue, where the pattern is written in longer note
values. This incomplete presentation of the fugal subject is in keeping with the
general character of the first movement—suggestive of expectation or unfulfilled
yearning. But such verbal formulations are not in themselves precise enough to do
justice to the music. Beethoven’s anticipation of the fugue is not confined to a
single passage in it, and therein lies much of the special poetic power of his coda.
This foreshadowing relates specifically, though not literally, to the C minor pas-
sage in the fugue; at the same time, the dissonant breaking off of the thematic al-
lusion is connected to the final cadence of the entire work.
In one concentrated gesture, therefore, Beethoven recalls two earlier passages
of the first movement, while preparing the transition into the scherzo and also
prefiguring at least three passages to be heard much later in the finale. These rela-
tionships are not speculative, but specific; to a great extent they are empirically
verifiable and can be confirmed through analysis and conveyed in adequate per-
formance. The character of this passage evokes both closing and preparation, an-
ticipation and reminiscence, promise and failure. But any of these pairs of con-
cepts describes the music only partially; what is involved here is a single moment
whose content forces us to contemplate the entire design.
The interdependence of form and psychology, or of structure and expression,
in such passages draws attention to a narrative dimension in music, the existence
of which some scholars have sought to deny. Carolyn Abbate has discussed the
“collapse of the analogy between music and narrative,” arguing that music has no
past tense and is mimetic, “trap[ping] the listener in present experience and the
beat of passing time, from which he cannot escape.” In her view, temporally sepa-
rated recurrences of musical units, whether as motivic recall or large-scale reca-
pitulation, form part of what in literature would be described as the “artifice of
discourse,” not the “story”; such repetition, seen in terms of formalist aesthetics,
is “structure, architecture, hence stasis: time frozen.”2 In Beethoven’s later works,
however, the progression of musical events often creates tension between a linear,
temporal unfolding on the one hand and a cyclic juxtaposition of contrasting
modalities in successive movements on the other. The former is largely teleologi-
cal in character, the latter immanent, based more on complementarity than on
resolution or transformation. In the finale of the Ninth Symphony, for instance,
the recitative passages and recall of earlier movements take on such a twofold
temporal function: they operate teleologically, to underscore the role of the choral
2“What the Sorcerer Said,” pp. 230, 228, 229; material from this article has been in-
corporated into her Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in Nineteenth-Century
Music, pp. 30–60.
finale as a transcendence of the preceding movements, and they also serve imma-
nently, to affirm the continuing, valid presence of earlier modalities at the thresh-
old of the finale. The subsequent allusions to the first movement later in the choral
finale contribute vitally to its “dynamically open” quality and to its symbolic, ar-
chetypal import. We cannot consign such relationships to an abstract, atemporal
status or regard them as mere “artifice”; they are too fundamental to the artistic
meaning. On the other hand, use of the narrative concept in no way denies the im-
mediacy of music, although it does encourage attention to musical relationships
that transcend a linear, temporal succession, thereby liberating the listener from
mere confinement to “present experience and the beat of passing time.”
In the present study I have attempted to explore not only successive musical
events and their expressive connotations but also the precise nature of their inter-
connection. It is regarding the linkage or integration of a series of musical modali-
ties that certain recent writers, such as Jean-Jacques Nattiez, have underestimated
the possibilities of music. For Nattiez, an “instrumental work is not in itself a nar-
rative”; the narrative is regarded as inevitably a construction by the listener, who
imaginatively fills in gaps left between the musical events. With pieces such as Bee-
thoven’s op. 110 or op. 131, however, the situation is actually the opposite: it is
the work that seems more fully integrated than any single hearing or interpreta-
tion of it, and the work’s structure that embodies the narrative thread. Nattiez’s
view that “in the discourse of music, it is only a question of a play of forms and
the reactions which they provoke” betrays the severely reductionist attitude
underlying his position. What I have termed a “narrative design” embracing the
musical process as a whole does not arise from “the plot imagined and con-
structed by the listeners from functional objects,” as in Nattiez’s model, but in-
volves instead the recognition of a configuration of audible elements inherent in
the work of art, a configuration whose relationships are to a great extent empiri-
cally verifiable and which need to be assessed in context. Nattiez confesses that
“on the level of the strictly musical discourse, I recognize returns, expectations
and resolutions, but of what, I do not know.”3 But this is an evasion of the cen-
tral critical task: to confront the work of art on its own terms. By assuming a pri-
ori an excessively abstract concept of music, Nattiez erects an illegitimate onto-
logical barrier between the listener or interpreter and the work, prematurely
closing the investigation into artistic meaning.
Closely connected to these questions is the issue of musical analysis involving
an assumption of organic unity or artistic autonomy, an issue that has come under
attack for its alleged “tautology.”4 In principle, there is no reason why the analy-
sis of artistic unity should divorce works from their contexts or impose conven-
tional strictures on the music. The problem lies rather in a failure to distinguish
between a rich, synthetic unity, whereby perceived relationships are carefully
3
“Can One Speak of Narrativity in Music?” pp. 249, 244, 249, 245; this article also ap-
pears in French as “Peut-on parler de narrativité en musique?”
4 See the introduction to Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. Abbate and Parker,
esp. pp. 2–3; and Abbate and Parker, “Dismembering Mozart,” pp. 187–95.
348 beethoven
tested against the sound of a work, and a merely schematic, analytical unity,
whereby a piece is made to conform to a system external to it.5 There is no prob-
lem with the concept of musical unity, provided that what is involved is a synthetic
unity embracing contrast and diversity and not merely the reduction of a work to
conform to an analytical system. Such reduction is a mere caricature of analysis.
Some recent critiques directed at this simplified notion of analysis risk what Milan
Kundera, in his book Immortality, has dubbed “imagology”—the easy, up-to-date
fashioning of systems of ideals and anti-ideals. The severing of structure from ex-
pression points in this same unpromising direction. Recognition of the interde-
pendence of structure and expression is essential if we are to appreciate the nar-
rative continuity in Beethoven and to confront aesthetic dimensions that reach
into the symbolic, mythic, or paradoxical.
This brings us back at last to Beethoven’s C minor Quartet, one of the richest
of all narrative musical designs. For the opening Adagio of op. 131 not only
presages the key of the ensuing Allegro molto vivace and supplies its initial octave
motif; it also plots the tonal plan for the entire sequence of following movements
and offers harmonic and motivic substance that is reincarnated in the powerful,
raging Allegro finale, in sonata form. The opening fugue surveys keys directly re-
lated to C minor—E major, A major, and B major—while also touching on the
dominant minor and emphasizing the Neapolitan and subdominant, as we have
seen. The tonalities of the succeeding movements, passing from D major in no. 2
to B minor, A major, E major, and G minor in nos. 3–6 respectively, roughly cor-
respond to the tonal regions explored in the fugue. The diversity of keys is thus
integrated, and may even be heard to follow from the restless, searching melan-
choly of the opening fugue.
Only two of Beethoven’s earlier quartets had gone beyond the standard Clas-
sical practice of confining the tonic keys of movements to a pair of tonalities. The
E Quartet op. 74 of 1809 introduces a third key (C minor) in the scherzo. The B
Quartet op. 130 employs three main tonalities in addition to the tonic: D major
in the Andante, G major in the Alla danza tedesca, and E major in the Cavatina.
The use of six keys in op. 131 represents a significant innovation, yet this expan-
sion of tonal resource is grounded more than ever in the structure and character
of music heard at the outset of the work. The opening fugue sets into motion a
process that reaches its climax and resolution only after the cyclic return to the
original key of C minor in the final movement.
The end of the Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo in op. 131 thus as-
sumes a narrative significance no less impressive than the corresponding coda in
op. 110. This passage foreshadows the ensuing Allegro molto vivace, while simul-
taneously distilling essential relationships from the outset of the fugue that
5
The difference between such synthetic and analytical concepts of unity might be com-
pared to Kant’s famous distinction between synthetic and analytic judgments in sec. 4 of the
introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason: the former predicates something connected to,
yet not contained in, the subject; in the latter, the predicate is already contained in the sub-
ject, yielding a tautology.
reemerge with a vengeance in the finale. The projection here of harmonic tensions
into the tonal structure has no counterpart in op. 110, and represents one of the
most profound aspects of Beethoven’s conception.
Each of the following movements adapts itself in different ways to the larger
musical continuity. Beethoven’s modification of sonata procedure in the Allegro
molto vivace, and especially the disruptive gestures in the coda, act to undercut
the formal autonomy of this scherzo-like movement. A short recitative-like tran-
sition then introduces the central set of variations in A major, marked Andante ma
non troppo e molto cantabile. Like the variations in op. 109, these transforma-
tions of the theme take the form of a brilliant chain of revelations; some of the
variations even undergo a change in character as they proceed. Thus it is that Bee-
thoven links this slow movement with the sharply contrasting scherzo in presto
tempo that follows. At the heart of the Andante, and the entire quartet, is the
hymn-like sixth variation, the Adagio ma non troppo e semplice. In the midst of
this contemplative music, at the beginning of the second half of the variation, the
cello intrudes with a lively motif in sixteenth notes in the bass (Ex. 117). Initially
this cello figure threatens to disrupt the discourse of the other instruments; when
the passage is repeated in varied form, the intrusive motif is echoed by the first
violin and then continued without pause as an ostinato in the cello. What follows
Ex. 117 String Quartet op. 131/IV, Variation 6, bars 195–206

350 beethoven
is an elaborate cadenza-like passage for each of the four instruments in turn (remi-
niscent of the vocal cadenzas for four soloists in the Credo of the Missa solemnis
and the Ninth Symphony!), as well as a compressed but glorified recapitulation of
the original theme preceded by thematic excerpts in C major and F major (the
most distant tonal relations from C minor in the entire quartet).
The final bars of this movement are delicately poised, enveloped in a mood of
reminiscence; there is no strong sense of closure. Beethoven labored on this pas-
sage more than any other in the quartet, sketching it over and over.6 What he
achieved is yet another moment of pregnant narrative significance: the repeated
pizzicato As in the first violin allude to the hymn-like sixth variation, but the ris-
ing octaves in the middle instruments recall the end of the first movement, while
the E octave in the second violin very subtly foreshadows the register of the open-
ing treble phrase of the comic scherzo that follows. The scherzo theme is antici-
pated by a cello figure played forte, in the same register—and with almost the
same notes—as the earlier intrusion of the cello motif in the Adagio variation. As
Kerman has pointed out, these two gestures are related to one another.7 The situa-
tion is somewhat reminiscent of the apparent quotation of “Ich bin lüderlich” in
the double-diminution passage in the second fugue of op. 110. An attitude of rapt
contemplation in the hymn variation is infused with a raw but vital energy that
enriches the music as it is assimilated into it.
In the scherzo we can discern another thread of connection pointing to the
penultimate movement, the G minor lament. For this naively playful scherzo
sports one exceptionally curious feature: a propensity to backtrack from its domi-
nant, B major, and guide the music instead into G minor (Ex. 118). Hence the
thematic fourth F –B is repeated in all four instruments, and G–B is tried out as
well. Only at the Molto poco adagio does Beethoven reach the goal of this little
episode: at the restoration of the presto tempo each of the instruments gingerly
takes up the head of the theme in G minor, pianissimo, and a proper continua-
tion is ventured for four bars before the passage is discontinued and the theme re-
asserted forte in the tonic E major. In all, Beethoven takes us through this striking
passage five times, impressing it on the memory and sensibility. Toward the end
of the presto, both the scherzo and trio seem to fade into a rarefied ether. The trio
is curtailed on its third appearance to just a pair of phrases, whereas the scherzo
migrates into the highest register, sul ponticello and pianissimo. A sudden shift
back to earth, marked da capo per l’ordinario, initiates the abrupt concluding pas-
sage, with its shocking and yet subtly prepared pivot from the scherzo’s close on
E to the heavy bald octaves on G (Ex. 119). It is this turn to G that those hesi-
tating phrases in the scherzo had been hinting at.
Every movement of this quartet yields up a part of its own autonomy in the in-
terest of the work as a whole. The sombre Adagio quasi un poco andante is even
positioned parenthetically, for the fortissimo octaves on G actually serve to pre-
pare the Allegro finale more than the Adagio. For that reason the slow movement
6
Cf. Winter, The Compositional Origins of Opus 131, pp. 232–38.
7
Ex. 118 String Quartet op. 131/V, bars 20–39
requires a pedestal, a soft G minor chord which sounds like an intake of breath
before the lyrical, recitative-like phrases that follow. The music has a retrospec-
tive air that harks back to the opening fugue. Now, after the enormous detour of
the four intervening movements, Beethoven can finally reapproach head-on the
tonal foundations of the quartet, with the slow music of no. 6 placed in a normal
dominant cadential relationship to the tonic key. This last juncture between move-
ments brings the tonal and formal process full circle, and it signals that fact at the
powerful structural downbeat on a unison C that begins the Allegro.
The link between the fugue and closing Allegro is direct and tangible, involv-
ing a massive reinterpretation of musical substance in the new environment of the
finale. In this respect some earlier critics, such as Tovey, have been rather too cau-
tious in assessing the extent of the kinship. Beethoven’s own compositional model
for this kind of transformation was his C minor Sonata op. 27 no. 2, in which
the primary theme of the finale arises from a drastic reinterpretation of the placid
arpeggios of the Adagio—the substance of one movement is virtually transformed
into another. The first movement of the Tempest Sonata shows how Beethoven
Ex. 119 String Quartet op. 131/V, bars 489–end

352 beethoven
could absorb such a technique into a single movement, by juxtaposing a slow, sus-
pended, harmonically ambiguous version of the triadic figure with a decisive rein-
terpretation of it in a faster tempo, wherein formal expansion is achieved by
means of sequential repetition of the motif.
If no other work realizes this principle quite so impressively as the C minor
Quartet, the reason may lie in a unique combination of factors. One is Beetho-
ven’s postponement, as in op. 101, of the first forceful cadence in the tonic key
until the beginning of the finale. Another is his delaying of the most energetic
rhythmic activity until the last movement; for in spite of its swift, vivacious char-
acter, the presto scherzo is too light in tone and straightforward in its formal con-
struction to rival the finale in this respect. Beethoven holds in reserve an arresting
anapestic rhythm in alla breve time and allows it to dominate broad expanses of
the finale. Yet another resource that has been held back is the sonata form itself,
which is crowned by an overpowering recapitulation and a weighty coda.
At the outset of the final Allegro the silences are hardly less important than the
notes (Ex. 120). The music unfolds in two-bar units, and the strong downbeats
fall initially on the fortissimo unison C s and the corresponding unison octaves
that follow on B in bar 3 and on C in bar 5. These unisons stand like a forbid-
ding arch commanding the gateway to the finale, brutally contradicting the soft
unison octaves on C and D that had opened the dreamlike path from the fugue
to the inner movements. Pauses place these octaves into high relief, even as Bee-
thoven begins to reinterpret the seminal motivic material from the fugue in this
new context. Out of the C unison shoots the broken triad spanning G –C ; the
outward expansion of these notes to A–B generates the rhythmic motif in bars 2–3
which is restated to close on C two bars later. The same notes that formed the
head of the fugue subject are now reshaped into a fierce cadential gesture. In turn,
the impact of that gesture seems to set into motion the stamping anapaestic rhyth-
mic ostinato that begins in bar 5. Even the head of the ensuing theme in the first
violin is a strict, stepwise elaboration of the ascending fanfare spanning C to A.
Beethoven settles any doubts about a relationship with the fugue by soon mak-
ing direct allusion to the entire fugue subject, including its turn figure, in an ex-
pansive passage of 19 bars. The theme is repeated in double counterpoint and re-
solved firmly into C minor. This referential passage is introduced by a pair of
legato phrases in the first violin that act as transition from the driving rhythmic
Ex. 120 String Quartet op. 131/VII

Ex. 121 String Quartet op. 131/VII, bars 288–95
opening of the Allegro to the explicit reference to the fugue.

In this finale the allusions to the fugue are not merely retrospective; they bring
a drastic transformation in character based on structural reinterpretation. In the
coda, for instance, where Beethoven refers to the fugue subject for the last time,
he provides a powerful new fortissimo continuation that derives the anapaestic
rhythm from that thematic allusion (Ex. 121). A large number of such correspon-
dences exist in the finale. In the development Beethoven exploits musical relation-
ships identical to those of the fugue to produce an effect of fiery brilliance. The
first half of the development is based on contrapuntal sequences in which an enor-
mously extended rising bass is divided between the instruments. At the midpoint
of the development the powerful drift of this ascending bass is transferred to the
fanfare motif from the beginning of the movement. The fanfare is thereby desta-
bilized, and rises to reach D major, the Neapolitan degree so important in the
fugue. But most unforgettable is Beethoven’s treatment of the recapitulation, which
emerges out of a protracted measured trill in all four instruments (Ex. 122).
As in the corresponding passage in the first movement of the Appassionata
Sonata, the rhythmic drive from the development is concentrated into a kind of
stationary vibration. The stark effect of the beginning of the movement is left far
behind, as the tonal space is now filled out by the multiple trill. The effect is spec-
tacular, and involves more than rhythmic pulsation and textural embellishment,
since the double trill in the two violin parts prolongs G –A and B –C , those cru-
cial pitches from the fugue that dominate the finale as well. Nowhere else in the
work do these notes sound so brilliantly. As in the last sonatas, the trill has here
become a structural device and a radical means of heightening the musical tension.
In the recapitulation inherited traits from the fugue—the harmonic color of the
subdominant and Neapolitan—become increasingly prominent. The subject that
alludes to the fugue is recapitulated in F minor; the soaring, lyrical second sub-
ject returns in D major (an unprecedented yet eminently fitting procedure in this
special case). The coda, on the other hand, opens a window on a specific moment
in the fugue, namely the concluding passage we have discussed in connection with
the transition to the second movement. At this point Beethoven is no longer so
much concerned to emphasize D; it is the diminished-seventh harmony support-
ing A that becomes the focus of the reminiscence (Ex. 123). The diminished sonor-
ity appeared repeatedly in the last moments of the first movement, as the final har-
354 beethoven
monization of the pivotal note of the fugue subject; and while the A at the end of
the fugue was about to be reinterpreted in D major, this A must now be resolved
downward to G as part of the imminent cadence in C minor.
Beethoven grants the resolution from A to G very reluctantly. The music
lingers wistfully over the A, as the referential theme is extended through an entire
octave and brought to rest on this pitch for no less than five full bars. Moments
later the descending fourth outlined by C –B–A–G is reiterated in the anapaestic
rhythm in slightly decorated form as C –B–A–G –A–F –G . That motif, in turn,
is repeated seven times, passing from voice to voice as the tempo slows to Poco
Adagio; Beethoven writes semplice and espressivo over the final entries in the first
and second violins. Only at the “Tempo I” indication six bars before the close is
the resolution to G firmly accomplished, inasmuch as the stable fifth G –C is
sustained for four bars in the first violin and viola, balancing and resolving the
protracted diminished seventh supporting A that was heard earlier in the coda.
The final six-bar segment provides the completion of a vehement cadential pro-
gression that had been broken off 35 bars earlier to make room for the final rem-
iniscence of the fugue. For the cadence had already been fully prepared, fortified
by exciting rhythmic strettos on the Neapolitan—the ultimate assimilation of that
important harmonic inflection into the tonic key of C . The thirty-five-bar passage
beginning at “Ritmo di due battute” is parenthetical. This last important example

of parenthetical enclosure in Beethoven’s music undercuts the triumphant conclu-
sion and considerably deepens the expressive power of the coda.
In his excellent study of this quartet Kerman suggested that “the mood of the
C -minor Finale heightens and purifies the famous C minor mood of Beethoven’s
early years.”8 It is interesting in this regard that one basic motivic quarry for Bee-
thoven’s last quartets relates to the sketch for the abandoned four-hand sonata—
a sketch actually notated in C minor. Beethoven’s unique design in the C minor
Quartet is framed by a double cycle of paired movements. The impressive gravity
of the slow fugue yields to a seemingly unbounded flight of imagination in the Al-
legro molto vivace and the following inner movements, whereas the second Ada-
gio prefaces a defiant reconfrontation in the finale with the strife-ridden C minor
tonality. By holding fast to the memory of the fugue Beethoven’s closing Allegro
brings about a synthesis of contemplation and action; in Schiller’s terms, an un-
blinkered awareness of suffering is merged with a capacity to resist these feelings
and therefore not accept them as permanent and irremediable. The note of tri-
umph at the end of the C minor Quartet is momentary, however, and scarcely
conceals the profound duality of the coda, which reflects in turn the deep ten-
sional interdependence of the outer movements.
The fugue and finale thus act like stern outer columns framing a fantastic range
of diverse inner episodes; of these, the scherzo, with its apotheosis of play, repre-
sents the most extreme contrast, the humorous antipode to the serious and per-
haps even tragic character of the C minor music. It is revealing that Beethoven
contemplated but then rejected an additional closing passage to the finale that

356 beethoven
would have unambiguously resolved the basic motivic complex to D major,
thereby replacing the notes C –B –A–G by the enharmonic equivalents in the
major, D –C–B –A . As Robert Winter has pointed out, he used the sketched
theme as the basis for the Lento assai of his last quartet, op. 135.9 He even gave
the tune a title in his sketchbook: “sweet song of peace.” In the passionate finale
of the C minor Quartet this serene inspiration could find no place.
S S S
Beethoven’s artistic explorations of the 1820s have often captured the imagina-
tion of commentators, stimulating much discussion of the challenging aesthetic
and moral issues encapsulated in the title of J. W. N. Sullivan’s 1927 centennial
study, Beethoven’s Spiritual Development. With the passage of time, a consensus
has emerged that sees Beethoven’s later sonatas and quartets not as wayward pro-
ductions of a deaf eccentric, as some early critics had seen them, but as some of
the richest contributions ever made to musical art. The startling innovations of the
last quartets may be said to center on musical symbolism in the A minor quartet,
paradoxical contrast in the B major, and narrative design in the C minor. The in-
dividuality of these works is just as marked as that of Beethoven’s early opuses of
piano sonatas and the op. 18 and Razumovsky Quartets, regardless of the presence
of shared motivic figures. The uniqueness of the last quartets is outwardly mani-
fested in the growing number of movements, culminating in the seven-movement
design of op. 131. But no less striking is their expressive scope, which embraces
moods ranging from whimsy and mocking humor to the sublime interiority of the
slow movements—the Adagio of op. 127, the Cavatina of op. 130, and the
“Heiliger Dankgesang.” The last quartets are bold, visionary works that seem to
open a new creative period rather than close an old one.
The relationship of this superb artistic production to Beethoven’s biography,
on the other hand, is more contradictory than ever. A safe, neatly rounded por-
trait of Beethoven’s last year can be purchased only at the cost of truth, and we
shall be compelled to settle for an “open” conclusion, not unlike those composi-
tions whose endings point provocatively into the silence beyond. Disorder, con-
flict, and misery in his life were on the ascent just as his artistic development was
attaining new heights. The tragic climax in his biography coincided almost exactly
with the completion of his splendid Quartet in C minor: in the middle of the sum-
mer of 1826, in a desperate act of misguided self-assertion, his beloved nephew
Karl attempted suicide.
Problems had been brewing for years and were doubtless connected to Beetho-
ven’s caring yet stubborn, overbearing, and suspicious conduct toward his young
relative, whom he regarded as his “son.” His possessiveness toward his nephew
was coupled with hostility toward Karl’s mother, Johanna van Beethoven, whom
Beethoven dubbed “The Queen of the Night.” As Karl grew to maturity, conflict
with his uncle became more frequent. Part of this escalating tension may have
9 The Compositional Origins of Beethoven’s Opus 131, pp. 121–24, 167–74, 206–9; see
also Bumpass, Beethoven’s Last Quartet, vol. 1, pp. 222–24.

been connected to Beethoven’s reluctance to recognize Karl’s need for independ-

ence. Matters came to a head during the first half of 1826, when Karl was living
in separate lodgings and attending the Polytechnic Institute. Thayer writes that
“there were violent scenes, evidently in Karl’s rooms, which deeply embittered
him,” and he quotes Karl’s response to Beethoven’s reproaches: “You consider it
insolence if, after you have upbraided me for hours undeservedly, this time at
least, I cannot turn from my bitter feeling of pain to jocularity.”10 Karl’s behavior
toward his uncle may have been manipulative; according to Holz, he said he could
wrap his uncle around his finger. Karl seems also to have fallen into debt, though
apparently not to a very serious extent.
On 6 August 1826 Beethoven’s distraught nephew discharged two bullets toward
his head, wounding himself with the second shot, which grazed the bone. When
asked by the police why he shot himself, Karl said that Beethoven “tormented him
too much.” According to Schindler and Holz, the impact on Beethoven of Karl’s
suicide attempt was shattering; Schindler wrote that “he soon looked like a man
of seventy.” From this point, the concern with Karl assumed an even more domi-
nating role in Beethoven’s affairs. Since suicide was an offence against the Church,
there were penal aspects to be reckoned with after Karl’s release from the hospi-
tal, and these especially distressed Beethoven. At the same time Beethoven’s
friends had persuaded him to enroll Karl in the military, a solution that inevitably
meant separation from the boy, which Beethoven found very difficult to accept.
An interim solution was for Beethoven to accept the invitation of his brother
Johann to visit the latter’s Wasserhof estate at Gneixendorf, near Krems, one day’s
journey from Vienna. Johann had invited him previously, and Beethoven had al-
ways refused to come, partly because of his dislike of Johann’s wife, Therese. Bee-
thoven’s relationship with his brother showed strains resulting from their very dif-
ferent outlooks on life. When Johann had a calling card printed with the word
“Gutsbesitzer,” or “landowner,” Beethoven retorted by dubbing himself “Hirnbe-
sitzer,” or “brainowner” (Beethoven’s description of his brother as a “brain eater,”
on the other hand, touches on a common trait, since brain soup was one of Bee-
thoven’s favorite dishes). In any event, Beethoven had long hesitated to visit his
brother. Even very shortly before, he had replied to Johann:
I will not come.

Your brother??????!!!!
Ludwig
Now, however, with the pressing need to find a haven of refuge where Karl would
be put at a distance from both the authorities and his mother, Beethoven con-
sented to travel to Gneixendorf. The visit was supposed to be brief but was pro-
longed at Beethoven’s insistence throughout the autumn. His conflicts with Karl
continued there; even more bitter disputes ensued with his brother. Already seri-
ously ill at Gneixendorf and faced with the prospect of losing close contact with
10
358 beethoven
his nephew, Beethoven may have sensed that his options were closing, time grow-
ing short. Finally, on 28 November 1826, he set out with Karl for Vienna in an
open wagon. Inadequately clothed in the inclement weather, he arrived at his
apartment in the Schwarzspanierhaus with pneumonia.
During December Beethoven’s condition deteriorated rapidly, with worsening
symptoms of jaundice due to the progress of liver disease, swollen feet, and
dropsy. The accumulating fluid in his body was tapped and drained four times.
After the last operation on 27 February 1827, the end was near. When Beetho-
ven’s physician Dr Wawruch promised him relief with the coming of spring, Bee-
thoven replied, “My day’s work is finished. If there were a physician who could
help me ‘his name shall be called Wonderful!’” Wawruch confessed that “This pa-
thetic allusion to Handel’s Messiah touched me so deeply that I had to confess its
correctness to myself with profound emotion.”11 Beethoven survived in agony for
one more month; he died during a thunderstorm on 26 March 1827.
S S S
The Quartet in F major op. 135 is the last work Beethoven finished, apart from
the substitute finale of op. 130; both pieces were begun at Vienna and completed
at Gneixendorf. Some writers have perceived in these works a weakening in Bee-
thoven’s creative powers or at least in his ambition and have associated this per-
ceived decline with the depressing impact of Karl’s suicide attempt. Yet the musical
quality of both pieces, and especially the F major Quartet, remains very high. There
is admittedly a retrospective character to the last quartet: it is mainly an essay in
Haydnesque wit, not a bold, expansive composition like the other late quartets. As
we have seen, such humorous pieces were a lifelong interest with Beethoven, and F
major was quite often the chosen key, at least in other genres: one thinks of the
piano sonatas op. 10 no. 2 and op. 54, the middle movement of the Pastoral Sym-
phony, and the Eighth Symphony. In 1826, with his third quartet in this key, Bee-
thoven capped his musical legacy with another masterpiece in the same vein.
It is just possible that this was indeed his artistic response to the grim events of
1826: Beethoven’s way was to respond to adversity with humor. Even his nephew
Karl referred to this reflex in complaining that he could not turn from his “bitter
feeling of pain to jocularity,” as his uncle wished. In his last years Beethoven’s pas-
sion for verbal puns took on a new and poignant intensity which frequently found
musical expression in the form of canons. Beethoven and his colleagues were alert
to punning opportunities, ranging from the typical B–A–C–H topos to Karl Holz’s
jokes on Handel as “Hendl” (roast chickens) in “Zäh-Dur” (“tough-major,”
or “very tough,” but sounding like “C major”).12 While at work on the Missa
solemnis Beethoven used the rhythm of the “Credo” motif for a canon conclud-
ing “Weidmann, Weidmännchen, Eselchen!” (“Huntsman, little hunter, little
11 Ibid., p. 1038.
12 The references to “Hendel” in “Zäh-Dur” and to “Kühl, nicht lau” (see below) are
discussed in Platen, “Über Bach, Kuhlau und die thematisch-motivische Einheit der letzten
Quartette Beethovens,” pp. 152–53.
ass!”).13 The Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau was honored by a canon to the
words “kühl, nicht lau” (“cool, not lukewarm”), a piece that begins with the notes
B–A–C–H and is linked in turn to the genesis of motivic configurations important
in the last quartets.14 In 1825 Beethoven even published in the journal Cäcilia a
satirical “Lebensbeschreibung” (“biographical sketch”) of Tobias Haslinger that
describes Haslinger’s fictitious study with the theorist Albrechtsberger, culminat-
ing in the loftiest achievements in the art of making “musical skeletons.” Beetho-
ven appended to his story two humorous canons, the second of which, with its
text “Hoffmann! Hoffmann! Sei ja kein Hofmann, ja kein Hofmann!“ (“Hoff-
mann! Hoffmann! Don’t be a courtier, indeed not a courtier!,” i.e. an obsequious
person), is apparently his homage to E. T. A. Hoffmann.15
Quite possibly it was Holz’s sense of humor that helped endear him to Beetho-
ven, who by 1825 had tired of the company of the more dreary and sometimes
surly Schindler. Holz’s name, meaning “wood,” became the subject of numerous
jokes by the composer. Beethoven dubbed him “Best Mahogany,” “Best Splinter
from the Cross of Christ,” and “Best lignum crucis.” He once observed to Holz
that “wood is a neuter noun,” adding: “So what a contradiction is the masculine
form, and what other consequences may be drawn from personified wood?” Holz
occasionally ventured jokes on his own name and was known to others in Beetho-
ven’s circle, such as Kanne and Schuppanzigh, as “der Hölzerne” (“the wooden
one”).16
Characteristic of such humor is delight in the incongruous pairing of appar-
ently incompatible elements: the sacred and the profane, the serious and the ab-
surd, the obvious and the obscure. Pretensions are mocked; an unexpected depth
and significance is perceived in seemingly trivial circumstances. The readiness to
draw connections knows no bounds and no taboos; a free association of ideas is
the point. This Shandian streak in Beethoven surfaces as early as the 1790s, in his
descriptions of his friend Zmeskall as “dearest Baron Muck-cart Driver” or “gar-
bage man,” but it is most generously documented near the end of his life, which
is filled with little episodes worthy of Tristram Shandy.
The year 1826 was particularly rich in jokes and humorous canons. Early that
year Beethoven met the old-fashioned Abbé Maximilian Stadler—who had no use
for any music after Mozart—at Steiner’s music shop. Before departing Beethoven
knelt before the abbé and asked for his blessing, which Stadler granted, mumbling
“Nutzt’s nicht, so schadt’s nix” (“If it does no good, ’twill do no harm”). Beetho-
ven kissed the abbé’s hand to complete the solemn farce, to the great amusement
of the bystanders. He tossed off a canon presumably in connection with this event,
with the following text:
13 See Schmidt-Görg, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Ein Skizzenbuch aus den Jahren
1819/20, p. 45.
14 Platen, op. cit., pp. 152–53.
15 See Canisius, Beethoven, pp. 146–53.
16 Cf. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 8, pp. 122, 172, and the facsim-
ile after p. 176; and vol. 9, p. 300.

360 beethoven
Signor Abbate! I’m ailing I’m ailing I’m ailing I’m ailing!
Holy Father hasten, give to me thy benediction, give me thy blessing, thy blessing!
Go to the devil, unless you hasten, go to the devil, unless you hasten, go to the
devil!17
Shortly thereafter, on 6 February, Beethoven wrote to Stadler alluding to “your

blessing very soon.” In the same letter he praises the abbé for publishing a letter
defending the authenticity of Mozart’s Requiem, adding, “I have always counted
myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart and shall remain so until my last
breath——.” Beethoven’s unusual punctuation here recalls similar devices in Lau-
rence Sterne. For the protracted dash following the words “letzten Lebens Hauch”
(literally, “life’s last breath”) is no ordinary mark of punctuation but acts as a
symbol for Beethoven’s very last breath, a breath drawn for Mozart!18
A recently discovered letter from the same year contains further examples of
Beethoven’s fun with puns, as Küthen has observed. In it Beethoven addresses his
physician Dr Anton Braunhofer in grandiose terms as “honored master and prac-
titioner of the cure”; his expression “Ausüber der Aeskulapsie” plays on the ex-
pression “ausübender Arzt” (“practicing physician”), while adapting the term
“Aesculapian” (“healer”) as a noun, meaning “healing” or “cure.” In the same
paragraph Beethoven asks “what else you have decided about my corpse,” con-
tinuing “my back is still not entirely in its old condition, I hope meanwhile it will
still not be necessary to bend it, indeed never.”19 His allusion to “bending” does
not refer merely to a physical condition. It is an assertion of his proud refusal to
defer to royalty, recalling the famous incident at Teplitz in 1812 when Goethe sup-
posedly bowed to the royal carriage while Beethoven refused to make any such
gesture of servility. The German word “beugen” means not only to bend but to
humble oneself, to submit. Beethoven underscores his principled position by first
expressing the hope that he need not yield, before then rejecting the mere possi-
bility of submission through the underlined words “ja nie” (“indeed never”).
In the summer of 1826 an incident occurred that is bound up with the genesis
of the F major Quartet op. 135. After the première of the B Quartet by Schup-
panzigh’s quartet on 21 March 1826, interest arose in arranging a performance
by a different quartet at the house of a certain Ignaz Dembscher. Dembscher, how-
ever, had not subscribed for Schuppanzigh’s concert, and he was subsequently
forced by Beethoven to pay up in order to receive performance parts for the work.
17
18 See Küthen, “Mozart—Schiller—Beethoven: Mozarts Modell für die Freudenhymne
und die Fusion der Embleme im Finale der Neunten Symphonie,” pp. 110–12; a facsimile
of the letter of 6 February 1826 (Anderson, vol. 2, L. 1468) is reproduced on p. 111. Bee-
thoven omits the grammatically essential verb “bleiben” from the end of his sentence to
underscore his symbolic breath for Mozart.
19 This letter was published by Anna Maria Russo in Nuova rivista musicale italiana 25
(1991), pp. 74–82, and in The Beethoven Newsletter 6 (1991); Küthen’s important correc-
tions to the transcription of the letter, with their clarification of Beethoven’s puns, appear
in The Beethoven Newsletter 7 (1992), p. 30.
Dembscher queried “Muss es sein?” (“Must it be?”), and Beethoven, highly

amused, sketched a canon to the words “Es muss sein! ja ja ja ja! Heraus mit dem
Beutel!” (“It must be! yes yes yes yes! Out with your wallet!”);20 the canonic
motif, in turn, found its way into the finale of Beethoven’s last quartet.
This canon predates Beethoven’s main work on the quartet. In the mean-
time, around the second week of August, Beethoven submitted the C minor
Quartet to the publisher Schott, writing on the copy “Zusammengestohlen aus
Verschiedenem diesem und jenem” (“Put together from pilferings from one thing
and another”). This is yet another example of his ironic humor. He entered the
inscription in response to the publisher’s requirement that the quartet be an origi-
nal one. What may have amused Beethoven is the thought that this most inte-
grated of compositions would appear to the uninitiated as a confused potpourri,
particularly with the suggestion to that effect from himself. Such a misunderstand-
ing did indeed ensue. Beethoven was obliged to write reassuringly to the alarmed
publisher on 19 August that “as a joke I wrote on the copy that it was put together
from pilferings. Nevertheless, it is brand new.”21
A financial dispute arose around this time between Beethoven and Moritz
Schlesinger, the publisher of op. 135. When the fee seemed smaller than expected,
Beethoven remarked, in reference to the religion of the publisher and the modest
length of the piece, that he would send a “circumcised quartet.” This triple pun
unexpectedly associates publisher, fee, and quartet under the category of “circum-
cision,” meaning the removal of a piece: Schlesinger’s sending of “circumcised
ducats” meant that “he shall have a circumcised quartet. That’s the reason why it
is so short.”22 On 13 October Beethoven announced the completion of the work
in yet another humorous letter to Haslinger, whom he addressed in music as “First
of all Tobiases.”
Beethoven was doubtless guided in his composition of the F major Quartet by
the preexisting material that he took into its third and fourth movements: the theme
of the Lento assai sketched for op. 131; and “Der schwergefasste Entschluss” (“The
Difficult Decision”) motto, inspired by Ignaz Dembscher’s earlier discomfiture, with
the related canon on “Muss es sein?,” “Es muss sein!” The urbane wit of the first
20
This story stems from Karl Holz and is related in Thayer-Forbes, pp. 976–77, which
also reproduces the canon. It dates from the beginning of August 1826 (cf. Ludwig van
Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 10, pp. 63, 317, 353. Schindler’s account that the
phrases “Must it be?,” “It must be!” arose from the exchange between Beethoven and his
housekeeper (Beethoven As I Knew Him, pp. 337–38) is supported by a forged entry in a
conversation book (Beck and Herre, “Anton Schindlers fingierte Eintragungen,” p. 83) and
must be dismissed. The connection to the Dembscher canon does not exclude other inter-
pretations of Beethoven’s motto, however. Rainer Cadenbach, editor of the edition of the
quartet for the new Gesamtausgabe, proposes that “Must it be?” questions the need for a
finale to follow the Lento assai. For another interpretation, see the study by Christopher
Reynolds cited in n. 25, below.
21 Thayer-Forbes, p. 983, note 21.
22
Thayer-Forbes, p. 1009, note 44; cf. also Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte,
vol. 10, pp. 49, 354–55.
362 beethoven
movement neatly complements the unbuttoned humor of the finale. The animated
scherzo, on the other hand, represents an antipode to the serenely unified slow
movement, especially in its trio, which contains one of the most startling climaxes
in all Beethoven’s music.
The subtlety of the first movement is readily illustrated by comparison of the
opening theme and its subsequent appearances in the recapitulation and coda.
Beethoven begins with the Haydnesque device of an off-balance, harmonically
ambiguous gesture, followed by a lucid continuation; the end of the first theme is
so fashioned that it can act in slightly varied form as the final cadence at the end
of this Allegretto. He exploits the ambiguous opening motif, on the other hand,
to introduce a sly, “false” recapitulation in the development section. All ambigu-
ity seems to vanish as the stable phrases of the theme are played in the tonic F
major, but a harmonic detail is then reinterpreted to facilitate modulation to A
minor, opening up a new dramatic section of development.
The scherzo opens with a kind of triple rhythmic counterpoint between synco-
pated voices whose registral position is shuffled in subsequent phrases. Within this
unusual texture melodic considerations are of secondary importance, and the pri-
mary voice simply glides over the major third spanning F–G–A. An interruption
of uncouth, repeated E s is pitted against these rhythmic phrases, and the voices
gradually converge to move in step as they approach the cadence in F major. In
the trio a rising turn figure spanning a third launches shooting scales into the high
register in the first violin. The dance gains in intensity as these gestures are succes-
sively repeated in the keys of F major, G major, and A major, tonalities correspon-
ding to the melodic steps of the scherzo, as Roger Sessions has observed.23 Then
comes the shattering climax (Ex. 124). The turn becomes a revolving cam, re-
peated incessantly and fortissimo in the lower instruments and second violin;
above this the first violin plays a rustic dance parody with sharp accents and enor-
mous skips in register. There is an almost frightening character to the passage; an
apocalyptic vision emerges, supplanting the rustic humor of the earlier music.
Normality is restored only very gradually, as the revolving configuration softens
to an almost inaudible triple pianissimo after nearly fifty repetitions of the motif.
Beethoven then lowers the pitches F and G of the turn figure to F and G, point-
ing ominously to the derivation of the turn, and hence the entire disruptive epi-
sode, from the smooth, gliding pitches heard at the outset of the scherzo.
After this unusually dynamic scherzo with its explosive trio, the “sweet song
of peace” is all the more moving; the two inner movements form a contrasting
pair and share a thematic profile that features conjunct stepwise motion. In this
Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo, Beethoven retains the key of D major from his
sketch and develops the theme as a series of variations that are so closely inte-
grated that the form is often overlooked. The first two bars belong to the pedestal
that accomplishes the change in key and provides the tonal foundation for the
sublime theme that follows. The theme consists of eight bars, with two bars of ca-
dential echoes. Each of the four variations adheres strictly to this design, whereby
23 The Musical Experience, pp. 49–50.

Ex. 124 String Quartet op. 135/II, bars 133–91
364 beethoven
the last variation is extended into a coda of two bars to balance the pedestal at the
beginning. Beethoven merges this scheme with aspects of sonata form: the theme
and first variation are joined organically into a continuity, while the second varia-
tion, with its unison motion, turn to the minor, and brief modulation to E major,
brings a marked contrast. The third variation is a decorated recapitulation of the
theme, with canonic imitation between cello and first violin, and the last variation
brings an exquisite climax in the highest register, while subtly resolving aspects of
the variation in the minor. This is the most delicate and unified of all Beethoven’s
variation movements.
Then comes the finale, “The Difficult Decision,” whose double motto, “Must
it be?,” “It must be!,” is printed at the head of the score. Beethoven had employed
a pairing of interrogative and declarative motifs before, though without provid-
ing verbal cues such as are given here. A notable example is the rondo finale of his
D major Piano Sonata op. 10 no. 3, where the ascending motivic figure of a semi-
tone and third is eventually resolved into a descending form in the coda. Accord-
ing to an account by Schindler which may not be historically trustworthy but still
merits critical consideration in this context, Beethoven is supposed to have asso-
ciated the movement with the overcoming of melancholy; Richard Rosenberg im-
plausibly extended this notion by underlaying the main form of the motif, in its
interrogative, ascending version, with the words “Noch traurig?” (“Still sad?”).24
In view of its source, this account must be regarded with utmost skepticism; still,
the general association seems not atypical of Beethoven. In any event, the fact that
the verbal formula proposed by Rosenberg does not apply to the coda underlines
its very limited relevance to the specific musical context.
In op. 135 there is no such ambiguity; Beethoven seems to spell out the associ-
ation in specific terms. Nevertheless, the movement offers pitfalls for interpreta-
tion. The almost operatic, exaggerated, parodistic treatment of the interrogative
motif in the Grave, ma non troppo tratto is one such trap. To hear this music
merely literally, as an expression of tragic pathos, may be tantamount to mistak-
ing Beethoven’s entreaty of a blessing from Abbé Stadler for an earnest gesture.
The relation of the motifs to Dembscher’s discomfiture is not binding for an inter-
pretation, of course, but in this case the character of the Allegro seems very much
like gaiety and quite remote from philosophical quandary. This is not to deny the
possibility of multiple interpretations, which are sometimes at the heart of Bee-
thoven’s comic impulse, as we have seen. Christopher Reynolds, for instance, has
argued for a reading of “Muss es sein?,” “Es muss sein!” as a pun on the note
“Es,” or E , an important pitch in this finale and in the quartet as a whole. Such
an interpretation is plausible but partial; it does not come close to exhausting the
associations of the music.25 For Paul Bekker, writing in 1912, the movement con-
veys “less an intrinsic gaiety than a humor won through reflection.”26 But Bekker
takes the mock pathos of the Grave sections too seriously, missing the parodistic
24
Die Klaviersonaten Ludwig van Beethovens, vol. 1, p. 108.
25See Reynolds, “The Representational Impulse in Late Beethoven, II: String Quartet in
F major, Op. 135.” As we have seen, Beethoven sometimes indulged in compound musical
Ex. 125 String Quartet op. 135/IV
dimension that surfaces at once in the opening Grave and even more clearly when
Beethoven brings back the Grave at the end of the development. The blustering
character is reinforced there through unusually crude scoring and exaggerated dy-
namics, before Beethoven once again dissolves the question into the unbridled
high spirits of the Allegro.
As Kerman rightly observed, Beethoven captured “something like the essence
of gaiety” in this last movement of his last quartet.27 Confirmation of this view
can be sought through analysis of the one main theme for which Beethoven did
not supply a verbal tag. This is the second subject, the ethereal “fairy march,”
which appears in A major in the exposition and in F major in the recapitulation,
before it is played pianissimo and pizzicato in the coda (Ex. 125).
In the passage just preceding it, the affirmative “It must be!” motif reaches a
crisis, as the music slows to poco adagio and comes to rest on ambiguous chro-
puns such as the canon on “Kühl, nicht lau” WoO 191, employing the opening notes
B–A–C–H (see note 12 above); another example is the variant “lau es,” a veiled allusion to
the name “Laura Esther” employing the interval A–E (“A” and “Es” in German musical
terminology).
366 beethoven
Figure 9. Motives in the String Quartet op. 135
matic harmonies reminiscent of “Must it be?” The “fairy march” then carries the
day, allowing the revitalized motto “It must be!” to bring the quartet to its joyous
conclusion. Significant in this respect is the rhythmic and intervallic kinship be-
tween “Must it be?” and the head of the ethereal march. Beethoven’s musical
question consists of a falling third in dotted rhythm followed by a diminished
fourth—F–D–G , as it appears most emphatically in the opening Grave. What he
has done is to absorb this configuration into the contour and rhythm of his sec-
ond subject, whose controlling intervals correspond audibly to “Must it be?,”
though notated in a different tempo. A comparison of the two motifs is shown in
Figure 9. The rhythmic shape of the melodic progression from F through the re-
peated Cs to D in the second half of the second bar recalls the falling third F–D in
dotted rhythm from the Grave; the ensuing turn figure leading to G in the Allegro
replaces the dissonant diminished fourth D–G from the Grave with a stable ris-
ing fourth leading from D through F to G. Beethoven goes beyond his own verbal
tags in resolving the musical tensions in this enchanting closing passage.
Thus closes the F major Quartet, a fitting end to Beethoven’s career and one of
the finest examples of his humor in music. The study of Beethoven’s biography has
abundantly confirmed his propensity to regard the world around him in an ironic
or comic light. This capacity may have been reinforced by the increasing discrep-
ancy between his artistic sensibility and his ability to function in the everyday
world. Already in the Bonn period, Helene von Breuning commented on Beetho-
ven’s “raptus”; in 1801 Beethoven described himself as “absentminded”; his self-
absorption and disregard of the outer social world became appreciably greater in
his period of depression after 1812, and after the complete erosion of his hearing
around 1818. His “penchant for sarcastic wit” and “withdrawal from the world
around him” were also noted by Gerhard von Breuning, who was in frequent con-
tact with the composer during the last months of his life.28 By 1821, as we have
seen, it was possible for Beethoven to be arrested as a tramp. Some of the most
colorful stories illustrating the perception of him by ordinary citizens stem from
his stay at Gneixendorf. On one occasion an avid music lover who encountered
him at a business office mistook him for an “idiot” (“Trottel”) and was shocked
to learn of his error. Beethoven’s habit of shouting and wildly gesticulating while
28 Memories of Beethoven, ed. Solomon, p. 44.

composing on his outings was reason enough for him to be taken as a madman.
One farmer related how Beethoven’s behavior twice frightened a pair of young
oxen, causing them to stampede.
None of the absurdities in Beethoven’s jokes could quite mirror the precarious
dialectic of his own art and life, an experience that may account in part for his
love of the dictum “art is long, life is short.” Art offered something seemingly per-
manent, a bulwark of enduring meaning posited against the inevitable transience
of life. At the same time, even trivial events could be transformed into artistic
coinage, opening nourishing lines of connection between life and art. It is this
quality of universality and challenging breadth of experience that must explain in
part the continued vitality of Beethoven’s music today.
Beethoven’s artworks are above all vessels of tensional synthesis, whose ulti-
mate task remains ever unfulfilled. The challenge to criticism lies in the need to
apprehend this uneasy blend of the rational and sensuous while curbing schematic
methodology or arbitrary speculation. A network of internal relationships sus-
tains, modifies, or even defines the expressive character; form and psychology be-
come interdependent, if not indistinguishable. An engagement with the immanent
temporality of the work is the prerequisite not only of satisfactory performance
but also of adequate analysis, which properly resembles an imagined perform-
ance, not merely an exercise in structural dismemberment or the mechanical re-
hearsal of a priori percepts. Useful analysis may build on the results of such
systematic investigations, but it cannot end with them. For the real purpose of
talking about music is to hear more in the music. What is to be heard is often
underestimated; slick, technically fluent performances frequently fail to convey
adequately the character of the works. In some cases, as in Beethoven’s humorous
pieces, for instance, such dynamic qualities as surprise, imbalance, and even dis-
orientation need to be felt and communicated. An excessively literalistic ap-
proach, which pays homage to the notation but fails to probe its contextual mean-
ing, is hopelessly inadequate here. It is more appropriate to stress the humanity of
this music—those elements of dramatic character and narrative symbolism that
inspire so many of these pieces, from the Joseph Cantata to the last quartets. As
we have seen, Beethoven’s art does not stand aloof from concerns of life, it does
not lose itself in abstraction. On the contrary, the principle of self-determination
embodied in this music gives it the strength to confront provocatively the bound-
ary separating the potential from the actual, or art from life.
The same resilient, life-affirming attitude characterized Beethoven’s response to
the inevitability of death, as reflected, for instance, in his canon of 11 May 1825
on “Doctor bar[s] the door to death. A note helps too in time of need,” with its
pun on Note (“note”) and Noth (“need,” as in extreme emergency, before im-
pending death).29 A conversation book from about this time records a variant of
the idea: “My doctor helped me, for I could write no more notes [Noten], but now
I write notes [Noten] which help me out of my need [Nöthen].”30 Less than two
29
In addition to its publication in standard editions of Beethoven’s letters, this canon is
reproduced with a facsimile of the manuscript in Ludwig van Beethoven, ed. Joseph
368 beethoven
years later notes could no longer help him, but Beethoven retained his taste for
comic irony until the end. It is entirely typical, and deserving of respect, that the
composer on his deathbed recited the common closing line of classical comedy:
“Plaudite, amici, finita est comoedia” (“Applaud, friends, the comedy is over”).31
Schmidt-Görg and Hans Schmidt, p. 30; and in Hans Bankl and Hans Jesserer, Die
Krankheiten Ludwig van Beethovens, Pathographie seines Lebens und Pathologie seiner
Leiden, pp. 42–43.
30 Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 7, pp. 256, 405.
31 See Breuning, Memories of Beethoven, ed. Solomon, p. 102.
RSelected Bibliography
R
For Works Cited, see below, pp. 000–00; for a more detailed annotated survey of writings
on Beethoven up to 1977, see the bibliography in Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven (New
York: Schirmer, 1977, new ed., 1998). The following list is highly selective and emphasizes
studies that have appeared since the 1980s.
I. Basic Sources
A new complete edition was begun in 1961 (Beethoven-Werke [Munich: G. Henle Verlag]) but
has been slow to reach publication, with some volumes and critical reports still outstand-
ing. The standard collected edition thus remains Beethovens Werke: Vollständige, kritische
durchgesehene Gesamtausgabe, 25 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1862–65; 1888).
Noteworthy are the many recent Breitkopf & Härtel editions, such as the symphonies, ed-
ited by Clive Brown and Peter Hauschild, which had appeared by 2005. Works omitted
from the old Gesamtausgabe are listed in Willy Hess, Verzeichnis der nicht in der Gesam-
tausgabe veröffentlichten Werke Ludwig van Beethovens (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1957). Hess subsequently edited the Supplemente zur Gesamtausgabe, 14 vols. (Wies-
baden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1959–71).
The most comprehensive published collection of Beethoven’s letters in English remains
Emily Anderson, trans. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven, published in three volumes in
1961 (reprinted in 1985). Two editions of letters appeared in 1996: the long-awaited com-
plete edition of letters in German, issued through the Beethoven-Haus at Bonn, appeared
as Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols., ed. Sieghard Branden-
burg and others; and an edition of Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence, 3 vols.,
ed. and trans. Theodore Albrecht, that supplements the Anderson edition (Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1996).
The standard catalogue of Beethoven’s works is Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm, Das
Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis (Munich: Henle, 1955). Also
see Kurt Dorfmüller, ed., Beiträge zur Beethoven-Bibliographie (Munich: Henle, 1978). A
revised, updated version of the Kinsky-Halm catalogue is currently being prepared for
Henle Verlag under the editorial direction of Norbert Gertsch and Kurt Dorfmüller.
The comprehensive edition of the conversation books used by the deaf composer during
his last decade is Karl-Heinz Köhler, Grita Herre, and Dagmar Beck, eds., Ludwig van
Beethovens Konversationshefte, 11 vols. (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik,
1968–2001). An earlier collected publication edited by Georg Schünemann (Berlin: Max
371
372 selected bibliography
Hesses Verlag) was broken off after three volumes in 1943; its readings often differ from
those of the Leipzig edition.
Another important primary source is Beethoven’s Tagebuch, or diary, from the years
1812–18. Maynard Solomon published an edition of the Tagebuch in German and in En-
glish translation, with commentary, in Beethoven Studies, vol. 3, ed. Alan Tyson (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). This edition was reprinted in Solomon’s Bee-
thoven Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988); the German text was
reissued as Beethovens Tagebuch in a handsome volume with an introduction by Sieghard
Brandenburg (Mainz: v. Hase & Koehler Verlag, 1990).
The standard catalogue of Beethoven’s musical sketchbooks is Douglas Johnson, Alan
Tyson, and Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inven-
tory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985). Since this study does
not survey all of Beethoven’s sketches on loose papers, it is supplemented by Hans Schmidt,
“Verzeichnis der Skizzen Beethovens,” Beethoven-Jahrbuch 6 (1969), pp. 7–128. A new
edition of The Beethoven Sketchbooks is needed to take into account new sources and in-
terpretations that have emerged during the last decades.
The famous biography by Anton Schindler was most recently edited by Donald W. Mac-
Ardle and translated by Constance S. Jolly as Beethoven as I Knew Him (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1966). Research has shown Schindler to be an unreliable
witness and has exposed a substantial number of entries in the conversation books as
Schindler’s forgeries. The forged entries are listed in Dagmar Beck and Grita Herre, “Anton
Schindlers fingierte Eintragungen in den Konversationsheften,” in Zu Beethoven: Aufsätze
und Annotationen, vol. 1, ed. Harry Goldschmidt (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1979), pp.
11–89. Some well-known studies, such as Arnold Schmitz’s influential book Beethovens
“Zwei Prinzipe”: ihre Bedeutung für Themen- und Satzbau (Berlin and Bonn: Ferd. Dümm-
lers Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1923), are seriously undermined by their reliance on the dubi-
ous interpretations offered by Schindler.
It is a delicate matter to assess the reliability of various witnesses like Carl Czerny, Franz
Gerhard Wegeler, Ferdinand Ries, Jean Francois-Nicolas Bouilly, Bettina Brentano, and
others, whose reports of events were written down long after the fact, and, in the case of
Bouilly and Brentano, are preserved in stylized accounts. Czerny’s autobiographical notes,
entitled Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Memories from My Life), date from 1842; Ries’s
Biographische Notizen (Biographical Notes), published together with those of Franz Ger-
hard Wegeler, a friend of Beethoven’s youth, appeared in 1838. Czerny, Wegeler, and Ries
seem generally trustworthy, although the dates Ries supplies are sometimes faulty. On Ries,
see Alan Tyson, “Ferdinand Ries (1784–1838): The History of his Contribution to Beetho-
ven Biography,” 19th-Century Music 7 (1984), pp. 209–21. Jos Van der Zanden’s recent ar-
gument that Ries came to Vienna no earlier than the beginning of 1803 would reduce his
credibility, but as Katherine Syer observes, Van der Zanden’s argument is speculative and
hard to reconcile with evidence relating to the genesis of Beethoven’s Marches for Piano
Duet op. 45, including one of the composer’s letters (Van der Zanden, “Ferdinand Ries in
Vienna: New Perspectives on the Notizen,” Beethoven Journal 19 [2004], pp. 51–65, pub-
lished in German as “Ferdinand Ries in Wien: Neue Perspektiven zu den Notizen,” Bonner
Beethoven-Studien 4 [2005], pp. 191–212); see also Syer, “A Peculiar Hybrid: The Struc-
ture and Chronology of the ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook (Landsberg 6),” Bonner Beethoven-Studien
5 (2006), pp. 159–81.
A collection of source material about Beethoven from his contemporaries is Beethoven
aus der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen: Gespräche, Aufzeichnungen, Berichte und Erinnerungen,
2 vols., edited by Klaus Martin Kopitz and Rainer Cadenbach (Munich: Henle, 2008).
selected bibliography 373
The classic biography by the nineteenth-century American scholar Alexander Whee-

lock Thayer appeared in editions by Deiters and Riemann (1866–1917) and Krehbiel
(1921); a revised and updated edition appeared as Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, edited by
Elliot Forbes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964). For new material on Thayer,
see Grant W. Cook, “Alexander Wheelock Thayer: A New Biographical Sketch,” Beetho-
ven Journal 17 (2002), pp. 2–11; and especially Luigi Bellofatto, “Alexander Wheelock
Thayer: Neue Quellen zu Person und Werk,” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 5 (2006), pp.
7–69. Thayer’s work served as a foundation for the important interpretative biography
Beethoven by Maynard Solomon (New York: Schirmer, 1977; new rev. ed., 1998). A con-
cise survey of the life and works is The New Grove Beethoven by Joseph Kerman and Alan
Tyson (London: Macmillan, 1981). More recent general studies of Beethoven include
Konrad Küster, Beethoven (Stuttgart: DVA, 1994), Barry Cooper, Beethoven, Master Mu-
sicians Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), Klaus Kropfinger, Beethoven
(Weimar: Metzler, 2001), and Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New
York: Norton, 2003).
II. Yearbooks, Journals, Collections of Criticism
Three important scholarly series issued since the 1970s are the Beethoven-Jahrbuch, issued
by the Beethoven-Haus at Bonn; Beethoven Studies, edited by Alan Tyson; and Zu Beetho-
ven: Aufsätze und Annotationen, edited by Harry Goldschmidt. The last issue of the
Beethoven-Jahrbuch appeared in 1983. Collections of essays have been issued by the
Beethoven-Haus under other titles, such as Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammermusik (1987),
Beethoven und Böhmen (1988), and Beethoven: Zwischen Revolution und Restauration
(1989), Beethoven und die Rezeption der Alten Musik: Die hohe Schule der Überlieferung
(2002), and Der “männliche” und der “weibliche” Beethoven (2003). The three volumes
of Beethoven Studies appeared between 1973 and 1982; the three volumes of Zu Beetho-
ven were published between 1979 and 1988. The Beethoven Newsletter (now Beethoven
Journal), published since 1986 by the American Beethoven Society, now contains some
longer, detailed studies characteristic of primary research. A French counterpart is Beetho-
ven: La revue de l’ABF Association Beethoven France et Francophonie. Another periodical
in existence since 1999 is Arietta, published by the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe.
For an overview of such publications, see William Meredith, “Beethoven ‘Yearbooks,’
Beethoven Periodicals, and the Future of Beethoven Forum,” Beethoven Journal 16 (2001),
pp. 82–87.
The 1990s saw the emergence of several new scholarly publications devoted to Beetho-
ven. A major German publication project was Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke,
edited by Carl Dahlhaus, Albrecht Riethmüller, and Alexander Ringer (Laaber: Laaber Ver-
lag, 1994). A monograph series issued by the University of Nebraska Press, North American
Beethoven Studies, began in 1991 with the appearance of Beethoven’s Compositional Pro-
cess, edited by the present writer. A new yearbook, Beethoven Forum, first appeared in
1992; eight volumes were issued up to 2000. From 2002 until 2008, Beethoven Forum
continued as a journal published by the University of Illinois Press. Beginning in 1999, the
Beethoven-Haus has issued Bonner Beethoven-Studien, with five volumes in print up to
2006. Two other collections of Beethoven essays appeared in 2000: The Cambridge Com-
panion to Beethoven, ed. Glenn Stanley, and Beethoven and His World, ed. Scott Burnham
and Michael P. Steinberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
III. Beethoven’s Sketches, Creative Process
The valuable pioneering source studies by Gustav Nottebohm, and the interpretations of
Paul Mies (Beethoven’s Sketches, London: Oxford University Press, 1929, based entirely on
Nottebohm’s work) are now largely superseded by research done since the 1960s. Some of
these works are listed in the bibliographies of The Beethoven Sketchbooks by Douglas
Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter; in addition to these three scholars, the studies by
Sieghard Brandenburg, Barry Cooper, William Drabkin, Joseph Kerman, Richard Kramer,
and Lewis Lockwood among others are worthy of mention. Brandenburg’s uncollected
studies have examined the sources of a number of Beethoven’s major works. Lockwood’s
collected essays appeared as Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992); he is also general editor of the series Studies in Musical
Genesis and Structure, published by Oxford University Press, which has issued studies of
the Diabelli Variations, by the present writer (1987), and of the Appassionata Sonata, by
Martha Frohlich (1991). Also see the aforementioned collection of essays, Beethoven’s
Compositional Process, published by the University of Nebraska Press (1991), and Barry
Cooper’s book Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990). The
Beethoven-Haus is committed to a series of sketchbook editions, but no such publications
were issued between 1978 and 1993, when the Landsberg 5 Sketchbook, transcribed and
edited by Clemens Brenneis, appeared. On the sketches for Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony,
see Barry Cooper, “Newly Identified Sketches for Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony,” Music and
Letters 66 (1985), pp. 9–18; and Robert Winter, “Of Realizations, Completions, Restora-
tions and Reconstructions: From Bach’s The Art of Fugue to Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony,”
Journal of the Royal Musical Association 116 (1991), pp. 96–125.
Most recent Beethoven scholarship has been done in English- and German-speaking coun-
tries, but an influential contribution to Beethoven sketch research was the edition of the so-
called Wielhorsky Sketchbook by Natan L’vovich Fishman that was published in Moscow in
1962 (Kniga eskizov Betkhovena za 1802–1803 gody). For a discussion of the Beethoven
studies of Fishman and some other scholars in the former Soviet Union, see Larissa Kirillina,
“Recent Russian Beethoven Scholars,” Beethoven Newsletter 7 (1992), pp. 10–16.
An ongoing publication project devoted to Beethoven’s creative process is the Beethoven
Sketchbook Series published by the University of Illinois Press. The first edition in the se-
ries is Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in
E Major, Opus 109, issued in three volumes in 2003, with a color facsimile, transcription,
and commentary by the present author. Several other editions are in preparation. Another
current focus for related work is the collaborative research project in “genetic criticism”
(critique génétique) between the University of Illinois and the Centre nationale de la recherche
scientifique (CNRS) in Paris.
IV. Analysis and Criticism
For a collection of early reviews of Beethoven’s music up to 1830, see Stefan Kunze, ed.,
Ludwig van Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel seiner Zeit: Gesammelte Konzertberichte
und Rezensionen bis 1830 (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1987). Also see Robin Wallace, Beetho-
ven’s Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and the bibliographical
overview of writings compiled by Donald W. MacArdle (Beethoven Abstracts [Detroit: In-
formation Coordinators, 1973]). Recent discussions of Beethoven’s relations with aesthetic
currents of early Romanticism include Dahlhaus’s Ludwig van Beethoven and the review of
his book by John Daverio, “Dahlhaus’s Beethoven and the Esoteric Aesthetics of the Early
Nineteenth Century,” in Beethoven Forum 2 (1993), as well as Scott Burnham’s article on
A. B. Marx in 19th-Century Music 13 (1990), and Maynard Solomon, “Beethoven: Beyond
Classicism,” in The Beethoven Quartet Companion, ed. Robert Winter and Robert Martin
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 59–75. On Beethoven’s attitudes to-
ward nature, religion, and Freemasonry, see Arnold Schmitz, Das romantische Beethoven-
bild: Darstellung und Kritik (Berlin and Bonn: Dümmler, 1927), esp. pp. 86–93, among
other studies. Among many works devoted to aspects of Beethoven reception, a classic
study is Leo Schrade, Beethoven in France: The Growth of an Idea (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1942); also see Beate Angelika Kraus, Beethoven-Rezeption in Frankreich von
ihren Anfängen bis zum Untergang des Second Empire (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2001).
Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht’s Zur Geschichte der Beethoven Rezeption has been republished
in a volume containing two additional essays (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1994). See also Ruth A.
Solie, “Beethoven as Secular Humanist: Ideology and the Ninth Symphony in Nineteenth-
Century Criticism,” in Explorations in Music, the Arts and Ideas: Essays in Honor of
Leonard B. Meyer, ed. Eugene Narmour and Ruth A. Solie (Stuyvesant: Pendragon Press,
1988), pp. 1–42, and David Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). The Beethoven myth has attracted attention in vari-
ous recent studies, including Rainer Cadenbach, Mythos Beethoven: Ausstellungskatalog
(Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1986), Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A
Study in Mythmaking (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), and Elisabeth Eleonore Bauer, Wie Bee-
thoven auf den Sockel kam: Die Entstehung eines musikalischen Mythos (Stuttgart and
Weimar: Metzler, 1992).
An outstanding older critical survey of Beethoven’s music is Walter Riezler’s Beethoven,
trans. G. D. H. Pidcock (London: M. C. Forrester, 1938). The valuable critical commen-
taries by Donald Francis Tovey are scattered in part through the volumes of his Essays in
Musical Analysis; also see his unfinished posthumous Beethoven monograph (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1944) and his somewhat schematic Companion to Beethoven’s Piano
Sonatas (London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 1931), as well as Joseph
Kerman’s essay “Tovey’s Beethoven,” in Beethoven Studies, vol. 2, ed. Alan Tyson. A stimu-
lating discussion of Beethoven’s style focusing on the Hammerklavier Sonata is found in
Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (London: Faber, 1971).
Dieter Rexroth’s Beethoven: Monographie (Mainz: Schott, 1982) consists mainly of a bio-
graphical summary, reprinting familiar documents bearing on Beethoven’s life and work, al-
though some original commentary is offered in the last chapters, devoted to the piano
sonatas, variations, and Fidelio.
1. Beethoven’s Creative Periods

An excellent summary of critical thought about Beethoven’s evolving style periods from
Wilhelm von Lenz to recent scholarship is found in Solomon’s chapter “Beethoven’s Cre-
ative Periods” in his Beethoven Essays.
Early Years: Since Ludwig Schiedermair’s Der junge Beethoven of 1925, the most intensive
research has been done by Kerman and Johnson. Kerman’s edition of the so-called Kafka
Sketchbook (Ludwig van Beethoven: Autograph Miscellany from Circa 1786 to 1799 (The
“Kafka” Sketchbook), London, 1970) and Johnson’s edition of the “Fischhof” Miscellany in
“Beethoven’s Early Sketches” (Ph.D. diss., 1978; pub. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980) have made
most of Beethoven’s early working papers available in transcription, offering a new platform
for criticism. There is a shortage of good analytical writing on many of the early works.
Middle Years: A substantial analytical literature has accumulated on individual movements

that have been interpreted as reflecting a turning point in Beethoven’s compositional style.
See, for instance, Dahlhaus’s discussion of the first movement of the Tempest Sonata op. 31
no. 2 in his Ludwig van Beethoven monograph and other publications, or the various stud-
ies of the first movement of the Eroica Symphony cited below. The notion of Beethoven’s
“new way” risks being overworked in some commentaries. Numerous earlier scholars, in-
cluding Romain Rolland and Arnold Schmitz, have written about the relationship of Bee-
thoven’s “heroic” style to French revolutionary currents; certain of these ideas are absorbed
into Michael Broyles, The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s “Heroic” Style (New
York: Excelsior, 1987). Beethoven’s stylistic evolution at the threshold of the nineteenth
century still poses challenges to analytical criticism. The indispensable balance between
normative categories of musical form and character on the one hand, and the particular
qualities of individual works on the other, was grasped more surely in the nineteenth-
century writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann or A. B. Marx than in those later studies from Hugo
Riemann to the present in which either the allure of theory pursued for its own sake or an
indulgence in programmatic interpretation has predominated. For a discussion of Marx’s
analyses and their later reception see Wulf Arlt, “Zur Geschichte der Formenlehre und zur
Beethoven-analyse im 19. Jahrhundert: Adolph Bernhard Marx,” in Beethoven ’77:
Beiträge der Beethoven-Woche 1977 veranstaltet von der Musik-Akademie Basel, ed. Fried-
helm Döhl (Zürich: Amadeus, 1979), pp. 21–44. Another recent study focusing on several
of the middle-period works is Peter Gülke, “. . . immer das Ganze vor Augen,” in Studien
zu Beethoven (Stuttgart: Metzler/Bärenreiter, 2000).
Later Years: Insightful discussions of Beethoven’s “late style” are found in Riezler’s Beetho-
ven and Martin Cooper’s Beethoven: The Last Decade (London: Oxford University Press,
1970). Concise summaries of his late style are found in Brendel’s “Beethoven’s New Style,”
in Music Sounded Out (London: Robson, 1990), and in chapter 4 of my Beethoven’s
Diabelli Variations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). Also see Kevin Korsyn, “Integration in
Works of Beethoven’s Final Period” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983), and “J. W. N. Sul-
livan and the Heiliger Dankgesang: Questions of Meaning in Late Beethoven,” Beethoven
Forum 2 (1993), pp. 133–74. A reassessment of Beethoven’s political orientation in his
music after 1809 is attempted in Stephen Rumph, Beethoven after Napoleon: Political Ro-
manticism in the Late Works (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Another re-
cent study is Michael Spitzer, Music as Philosophy: Adorno and Beethoven’s Late Style
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). For discussions of Beethoven’s philosophi-
cal and poetic ideas in his later years, see Maynard Solomon, Late Beethoven: Music,
Thought, Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), and Birgit Lodes,
“‘So träumte mir, ich reiste . . . nach Indien’: Temporality and Mythology in Op. 127/I,” in
The String Quartets of Beethoven, ed. William Kinderman (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2006), pp. 168–213.
2. Selected Critical Studies by Genre

Symphonies: For a listing of older surveys by Grove and others, see Solomon’s Beethoven
(New York: Schirmer, 1977). The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven by Anthony Hopkins
(London: Heinemann, 1981) is a clear but very basic guide. The Eroica Symphony has
received very intense analytical attention, from Heinrich Schenker, “Beethovens Dritte Sin-
fonie zum erstenmal in ihrem wahren Inhalt dargestellt,” Das Meisterwerk in der Musik:
ein Jahrbuch von Heinrich Schenker, iii (Munich, 1930; repr. Hildesheim and New York:
Georg Olms Verlag, 1974); Walter Riezler, Beethoven, pp. 247–81; Ernest Newman, The
Unconscious Beethoven (London: Leonard Parsons, 1927), pp. 120–36; and David Epstein,
Beyond Orpheus (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979), pp. 111–38, among others. Espe-
cially important are the four essays by Lewis Lockwood brought together in his Beethoven:
Studies in the Creative Process. Also see Martin Geck and Peter Schleuning, “Geschrieben
auf Bonaparte”: Beethovens “Eroica”; Revolution, Reaktion, Rezeption (Reinbeck bei
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989); Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1995); and Thomas Sipe, Beethoven: Eroica Symphony (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
Discussions of the Fifth Symphony are offered by Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry:
The Nineteenth Century and After (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1984), pp. 234–41; and Kerman, “Taking the Fifth,” Das musikalische Kunstwerk:
Geschichte—Ästhetik—Theorie: Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Her-
mann Danuser, Helga de la Motte-Haber, S. Leopold, and N. Miller (Laaber: Laaber
Verlag, 1988), pp. 483–91, who offers a critique of Schenker’s analysis. On the Sixth Sym-
phony, see Rudolf Bockholdt, Ludwig van Beethoven: VI. Symphonie F-Dur, op. 68 Pas-
torale (Munich: Fink Verlag, 1981), and Richard Will, Characteristic Symphony in the Age
of Haydn and Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). On the Ninth
Symphony, see Solomon’s outstanding essay “The Ninth Symphony: A Search for Order,”
in Beethoven Essays. Leo Treitler offers a pair of articles on this work in his Music and the
Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989): “History,
Criticism, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” and “‘To Worship that Celestial Sound’: Mo-
tives for Analysis.” A challenging older study is Otto Baensch, Aufbau und Sinn des
Chorfinales in Beethovens neunter Symphonie (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter,
1930); also see Johannes Bauer, Rhetorik der Überschreitung: Annotationen zu Beethovens
Neunter Symphonie (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1992). The design of the choral finale is
given renewed scrutiny in “The Form of the Finale in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony” (in
Beethoven Forum 1, pp. 25–62) by James Webster, who finds that the analyses of Schenker
and Tovey, far from being opposed, “ideally complement each other” (p. 44). Other writ-
ings on the Ninth include David Levy, Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony (New York:
Schirmer, 1995), and Esteban Buch, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History, trans. Richard
Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
String Quartets: A fine critical study is Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets (New York: Nor-
ton, 1966); also see Philip Radcliffe’s useful volume, Beethoven’s String Quartets (London:
Hutchinson, 1965; 2nd ed., 1978). More recent analytical studies include Bruce Campbell,
Beethoven’s Quartets Opus 59: An Investigation into Compositional Process (PhD disserta-
tion, Yale University, 1982); Lini Hübsch, Ludwig van Beethoven: Rasumowsky-Quartette
(Munich: Fink Verlag, 1983); David L. Brodbeck and John Platoff, “Dissociation and Inte-
gration: The First Movement of Beethoven’s Opus 130,” 19th-Century Music, vii (1983),
pp. 149–62; Robert Winter, The Compositional Origins of Beethoven’s Opus 131 (Ann
Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982); and John Edward Crotty, “Design and Harmonic Or-
ganization in Beethoven’s String Quartet, Opus 131” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester,
1986). Also see The Beethoven Quartet Companion, ed. Robert Winter and Robert Mar-
tin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). The entire first version of Beethoven’s
Quartet op. 18 no. 1 is printed in Beethoven Werke: Abteilung VI, Band 3, Streichquartette
1, ed. Paul Mies (Munich: Henle, 1962), 124–50. Mozart’s influence on Beethoven’s op. 18
no. 5 and op. 132 is assessed in Jeremy Yudkin, “Beethoven’s ‘Mozart’ Quartet,” Journal
of the American Musicological Society 45 (1992), pp. 30–74. The most recent and compre-
hensive collection of essays is The String Quartets of Beethoven, ed. William Kinderman
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
Solo Piano Music: For an overview of earlier writings, see William S. Newman, The Sonata
in the Classic Era, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1972), who counted more than fifty books
devoted to the sonatas alone. More recent contributions to this vast and ever growing lit-
erature include Newman’s Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way
(New York: Norton, 1988) and my chapter “Beethoven” in Nineteenth-Century Piano
Music, ed. R. Larry Todd (New York: Schirmer, 1990), pp. 55–96. Collections of my essays
on the sonatas, with translations into several languages, have appeared as booklets accom-
panying Alfred Brendel’s recordings (10 CDs, Philips Classics Productions, 1996), and
Daniel Barenboim’s live performances and master classes (6 DVDs, EMI Classics, 2006).
Critical evaluation of recordings, together with analytical description, is offered in Joachim
Kaiser’s Beethovens 32 Klaviersonaten und ihre Interpreten (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1975). For
a discussion of rhetorical features of Beethoven’s piano music, see George Barth, The
Pianist as Orator: Beethoven and the Transformation of Keyboard Style (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1992). Schenker prepared critical editions with analysis of all the last
sonatas except the Hammerklavier in Die letzten Sonaten von Beethoven: Kritische Aus-
gabe mit Einführung und Erläuterung, 4 vols. (Vienna: Universal, 1913–21; new ed. 1971).
The best detailed survey of all the piano music is Jürgen Uhde, Beethovens Klaviermusik, 3
vols. (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968–74), a work unfortunately overlooked in some recent bibli-
ographies in English. Also see Uhde’s collaborative book with Renate Wieland, Denken und
Spielen (Kassel and New York: Bärenreiter, 1988), which is important as well for its discus-
sion of Adorno’s Beethoven criticism. This book is reviewed by the present author in
19th-Century Music, 15 (1991), pp. 64–68. Uhde and Wieland offer detailed discussion
of Adorno’s stimulating writings on Beethoven that reached publication only in 1993
(Theodor W. Adorno, Beethoven: Philosophie der Musik: Fragmente und Texte: Fragment
gebliebener Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp); trans. by Edmund
Jephcott as Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998).
Other studies of the sonatas include Kenneth Drake, The Beethoven Sonatas and the Cre-
ative Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), Charles Rosen, Beetho-
ven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), and
the collection of interviews of András Schiff with Martin Meyer, Beethovens Klaviersonaten
und ihre Deutung “Für jeden Ton die Sprache finden. . .”: András Schiff im Gespräch mit
Martin Meyer (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2007).
There is no adequate modern survey in English of Beethoven’s numerous sets of piano
variations. For a recent overview of classical variation procedures, see Elaine Sisman,
Haydn and the Classical Variation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993),
who devotes her final chapter to Beethoven’s transformation of the classical variation.
Intense scrutiny of the genesis of the op. 35 Variations is offered by Christopher Reynolds
in “Beethoven’s Sketches for the Variations in E Op. 35,” Beethoven Studies, vol. 3,
pp. 47–84. On the Diabelli Variations, see my aforementioned study and Brendel’s essay
“Must Classical Music Be Entirely Serious? 2: Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations,” in Music
Sounded Out.
Chamber Music with Piano: For an overview of the genre of the piano trio, see Basil Small-
man, The Piano Trio: Its History, Technique, and Repertoire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).
A study of Beethoven’s trios is the German conference report Beethovens Klaviertrios: Sym-
posion München 1990, ed. Rudolf Bockholdt and Petra Weber-Bockholdt (Munich: Henle,
1992), which includes valuable essays by Stefan Kunze on op. 70 no. 1, and by Peter Cahn
on op. 70 no. 2. Also see Seow-Chin Ong, “Source Studies for Beethoven’s Piano Trio in
B-flat Major, Op. 97 (‘Archduke’)” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995).
A discussion of the violin sonatas is contained in Max Rostal, Ludwig van Beethoven: Die
Sonaten für Klavier und Violine (Munich: Piper, 1981; Eng. trans. by Horace and Anna Rosen-
berg, New York and Gloucester, 1985). The most recent collection of studies devoted
to the violin sonatas is The Beethoven Violin Sonatas: History, Criticism, Performance,
ed. Lewis Lockwood and Mark Kroll (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
Concertos: A useful general study is Leon Plantinga, Beethoven’s Concertos: History, Style,
Performance (New York: Norton, 1999). On the Violin Concerto, also see Robin Stowell,
Beethoven: Violin Concerto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Also see
Hans-Werner Küthen’s critical reports in the new complete edition: Beethoven: Werke,
III/3, Klavierkonzerte, 2 vols. (Munich: Henle, 1984 and 1996).
Fidelio: Noteworthy are the studies of Willy Hess, most recently Das Fidelio-Buch:
Beethovens Oper Fidelio, ihre Geschichte und ihre drei Fassungen (Winterthur: Amadeus,
1986); Winton Dean, “Beethoven and Opera,” in The Beethoven Companion, ed. Denis
Arnold and Nigel Fortune (London: Faber, 1971; and New York: Norton, 1971, as The Bee-
thoven Reader), pp. 331–86; and Michael Tusa, “The Unknown Florestan: The 1805 Ver-
sion of ‘In des Lebens Frühlingstagen,’” Journal of the American Musicological Society 46
(1993), pp. 175–220. Also see Irving Singer, Mozart & Beethoven: The Concept of Love in
Their Operas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), Ludwig van Beethoven: Fi-
delio, ed. Paul Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Von der Leonore
zum Fidelio, ed. Helga Lühning and Wolfram Steinbeck (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2000), and
Berthold Hoeckner, Progamming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the
Hermeneutics of the Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 12–50.
Works for the Congress of Vienna: Especially useful is the collection of essays Beethoven:
Zwischen Revolution und Restauration (Bonn: Beethovenhaus, 1989), with contributions
by Küthen, Michael Ladenburger (“Der Wiener Kongress im Spiegel der Musik,” pp.
275–306), and Thomas Röder (“Beethovens Sieg über die Schlachtenmusik, Opus 91, und
die Tradition der Battaglia,” pp. 229–58). Recent studies include Nicholas Cook, “The
Other Beethoven: Heroism, the Canon, and the Works of 1813–14,” 19th-Century Music
27 (2003), pp. 3–24; and Nicholas Mathew, “Beethoven and His Others: Criticism, Differ-
ence, and the Composer’s Many Voices,” Beethoven Forum 13 (2006), pp. 148–87.
Missa solemnis: See the Cambridge Handbook Beethoven: Missa solemnis by William
Drabkin, published in 1991, and studies by Drabkin, Kirkendale, and others listed in the
Works Cited. Wilfrid Mellers’s Beethoven and the Voice of God (London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1983) contains an extensive but highly speculative discussion. Also see Theodor
W. Adorno, “Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa Solemnis,” Telos 28 (1976), pp. 113–24.
For a thorough study of the Gloria, see Birgit Lodes, Das Gloria in Beethovens Missa
solemnis (Tutzing: Schneider, 1997). The compositional genesis of the Missa solemnis is ex-
plored in detail in the commentary volume of my edition of Artaria 195: Beethoven’s
Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 (2003).
Lieder: A valuable overview is contained in Hans Boettcher, Beethoven als Liederkompon-

ist (Augsburg: Benno Filser, 1928). A classic essay is Kerman’s “An die ferne Geliebte,” in
Beethoven Studies, vol. 1, pp. 123–57; also see Lockwood’s “Beethoven’s Sketches for
Sehnsucht (WoO 146),” in the same volume, pp. 97–122.
3. Specialized Analytic Approaches

Many analyses of Beethoven’s music focus on motivic relationships, thematic structure,
rhythmic and metrical phenomena, or harmonic and tonal structure; the most convincing
studies do not lose sight of the relations of these and other musical elements to one another.
The method of analyzing motivic relationships and derivations in Beethoven’s music has a
venerable tradition; the studies of Walter Engelsmann, Rudolph Réti, and Deryck Cooke,
among others, illustrate this approach. Also see Kurt von Fischer, Die Beziehungen von
Form und Motiv in Beethovens Instrumentalwerken (Strasbourg and Zürich: Heity, 1948).
Authors who have seen in Beethoven a continuation of older rhetorical traditions include
Erich Schenk, “Barock bei Beethoven,” in Beethoven und die Gegenwart: Festschrift Lud-
wig Schiedermair zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Arnold Schmitz (Berlin and Bonn: Dümmler,
1937), pp. 177–219; and Warren Kirkendale, “New Roads to Old Ideas in Beethoven’s
Missa solemnis,” Musical Quarterly 56 (1970), pp. 665–701. See also Wolfgang Osthoff,
“Das ‘Sprechende’ in Beethovens Instrumentalmusik,” in Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammer-
musik: Symposion Bonn 1984, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg and Helmut Loos (Munich,
1987), pp. 11–40.
Erwin Ratz, in his Einführung in die musikalische Formenlehre (Vienna: Universal,
1968), emphasizes phrase structure and form, an approach adapted by William E. Caplin
in studies such as “Structural Expansion in Beethoven’s Symphonic Forms,” in Beethoven’s
Compositional Process, pp. 27–54, and in his book Classical Form: A Theory of Formal
Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1998). Also see in this regard Warren Darcy and James Hepokoski,
Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-
Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). For a stimulating and lucid
analysis of rhythmic and metrical tension in the Sonata op. 10 no. 3 and the Fifth Sym-
phony, see Andrew Imbrie, “‘Extra’ Measures and Metrical Ambiguity in Beethoven,” Bee-
thoven Studies, vol. 1, pp. 45–66. A discussion of the controversial problems of tempo and
interpretation in Beethoven is offered by Rudolf Kolisch, Tempo und Charakter in
Beethovens Musik, ed. Regina Busch, in Musik-Konzepte 76/77 (Munich, 1992); a version
published in English as “Tempo and Character in Beethoven’s Music” appears in Musical
Quarterly 77 (1993), pp. 90–131 (only part 1 was published at the time of writing; an ear-
lier version appeared in Musical Quarterly in 1943). For an alternative to Kolisch’s system
concerning the relationship of tempo and character see Uhde and Wieland, Denken und Spie-
len, pp. 231–45, esp. pp. 232 and 242, where Uhde asks “Why shouldn’t certain analogous
structural details take on a qualitatively different character in different works?” Also see on
this point Peter Gülke, “Zum Verhältnis von Intention und Realisierung bei Beethoven,”
Musik-Konzepte 8: Beethoven: Das Problem der Interpretation (Munich, 1979), pp. 34–53.
The most influential analyses that emphasize linear, harmonic, and tonal coherence in
Beethoven’s music are those of Heinrich Schenker. Some analysts, including Roger Kamien
and Carl Schachter, have offered revealing studies along these lines; a convincing applica-
tion of principles derived from Schenker is found in Kevin Korsyn’s “Integration in Works
of Beethoven’s Final Period” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983). Leo Treitler and Joseph
Kerman have drawn attention to the risk, in the work of Schenker and some of his follow-
ers, of a totalizing attitude that locates the artwork in a self-contained matrix of relation-
ships, while downgrading other important features of artistic character and meaning. Some
of the attendant ideological problems are discussed by Michael Russ, “On Schenkerism: A
Closed Circle of Elite Listeners?,” Music Analysis 12 (1993), pp. 266–85. As Russ observes
(p. 271), analysts such as Patrick McCreless have been able to absorb Treitler’s critique, ac-
knowledging the limited and potentially limiting scope of Schenker’s approach. The notion
of the work of art as a merely closed and unified system is decidedly un-Beethovenian and
needs to be balanced against the richly dramatic, rhetorical, and contrast-laden elements of
his musical style. Thrasybulos Georgiades was not wrong to perceive in the discontinuities
of the Viennese Classical style an embodiment of human freedom (Musik und Sprache
[Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1954, pp. 90 ff., 115 ff.]); clearly, an
adequate critical system needs to take proper account not merely of “structure” but of the
wit, spontaneity, and spirit of this music.
A promising approach that gives attention to gestural aspects of music and the relation
of analysis to performance is developed by Robert Hatten in Musical Meaning in Beetho-
ven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (1994), and Interpreting Musical Ges-
tures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (2004). Also see his recent essay
“Beethoven’s Italian Trope: Modes of Stylistic Appropriation,” Beethoven Forum 13
(2006), pp. 1–27.
4. Other Critical Approaches

Humor, Irony, and Paradox: A worthy older study of Beethoven’s musical humor is
Theodor Veidl, Der musikalische Humor bei Beethoven (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel,
1929); also see Arnold Schering, Humor, Heldentum, Tragik bei Beethoven: Über einige
Grundsymbole der Tonsprache Beethovens, ed. Helmuth Osthoff (Strasbourg/Kehl: Li-
brairie Heitz, 1955). The topic of paradox is explored by Sylvia Imeson, “The time gives it
proofe”: Paradox in the Late Music of Beethoven (New York and Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
1996); other relevant studies include Brendel’s “Must Classical Music be Entirely Seri-
ous?,” in Music Sounded Out, and the present author’s article (with its paradoxical title)
“‘Beethoven’s High Comic Style in Piano Sonatas of the 1790s’ or ‘Beethoven, Uncle Toby,
and the Muck-Cart Driver,’” Beethoven Forum 5 (1996), pp. 119–138 (published in German
as “Beethoven, Onkel Toby und der ‘Dreckfahrer,’” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 2 [2001],
pp. 95–114). Critical evaluation of Beethoven’s verbal humor is offered by, among others,
Martin Cooper, in Beethoven: The Last Decade. See also Rey M. Longyear, “Beethoven and
Romantic Irony,” Musical Quarterly 56 (1970), pp. 647–64; reprinted in The Creative
World of Beethoven, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York: Norton, 1971), pp. 145–62.
Symbolism, Myth, and Narrative: Critical studies touching on issues of myth, symbolism,
and narrative include the aforementioned essays by Solomon and Treitler on the Ninth
Symphony and Floros’s book Beethovens Eroica und Prometheus-Musik (Wilhelmshaven:
Heinrichshofen’s Verlag, 1978). Debate on the subject of narrative in music has been in-
tense. See my discussion of studies of music and narrative by Anthony Newcomb, Carolyn
Abbate, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez in “Integration and Narrative Design in Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata in A major, Opus 110,” Beethoven Forum 1, pp. 111–45; and Richard
Kramer’s essay “Between Cavatina and Ouverture: Opus 130 and the Voices of Narrative”
in the same volume, pp. 165–89. Also see the ongoing discussion concerning the Orpheus
“program” in the Andante con moto of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto: Owen Jander, “Bee-
thoven’s Orpheus in Hades,” 19th-Century Music 8 (1984), pp. 195–212; Edward T. Cone,
“Beethoven’s Orpheus—or Jander’s?,” 19th-Century Music 8 (1984), pp. 283–86; and
Joseph Kerman, “Representing a Relationship: Notes on a Beethoven Concerto,” Represen-
tations 39 (1992), pp. 80–101. A stimulating symposium on music and narrative with con-
tributions by Lawrence Kramer, Fred Everett Maus, Patrick McCreless, and others ap-
peared in the Indiana Theory Review 12 (1991); many examples discussed in that volume
are drawn from Beethoven.
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ter Henle. Munich: Henle, 1980. Pp. 53–81.
Baensch, Otto. Aufbau und Sinn des Chorfinales in Beethovens neunter Symphonie. Berlin
and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1930.
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seines Lebens und Pathologie seiner Leiden. Vienna: Verlag Wilhelm Maudrich, 1987.
Barry, Barbara R. “Recycling the End of the ‘Leibquartett’: Models, Meaning and Propri-
ety in Beethoven’s Quartet in B-Flat Major, Opus 130,” Journal of Musicology 13
(1995), pp. 364–65.
Beck, Dagmar, and Grita Herre. “Anton Schindlers fingierte Eintragungen in der Konver-
sationsheften.” In Zu Beethoven: Aufsätze und Annotationen, vol. 1, ed. Harry Gold-
schmidt. Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1979. Pp. 11–89.
Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte. 10 vols. Ed. Karl-Heinz Köhler, Grita Herre, and
Dagmar Beck. Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1968–93. [2 vols. forthcoming.]
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R
Index of Beethoven’s Compositions
R
This list includes all Beethoven’s works with opus numbers, and those without opus numbers
(WoO, Hess, or uncatalogued), that are mentioned in the book. Opus and WoO (“Werk ohne
Opuszahl”) numbers are taken from Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm, Das Werk Beethovens:
Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis (Munich: Henle, 1955). Hess numbers refer to
works not contained in the old complete edition; they are listed in Willy Hess, Verzeichnis der
nicht in der Gesamtausgabe veröffentlichten Werke Ludwig van Beethovens (Wiesbaden:
Breitkopf & Härtel, 1957). Also see The New Hess Catalog of Beethoven’s Works, edited,
updated, and translated with a new foreword by James F. Green (West Newbury, Vt.: Vance,
2003). There is no fully comprehensive catalogue of Beethoven’s numerous unfinished or
fragmentary works, although an attempt was made in a little-known thematic catalogue com-
piled by Giovanni Biamonti by 1968. See in this regard the Web site www.unheardbeethoven
.org.
Page numbers in bold type indicate detailed discussion. For a list of works by categories,
see “Beethoven, Ludwig van: Works” in the general index.
Opus:
1 Three Trios for Piano, Violin, and Cello in E major, G major, and C minor, 34, 221
2 Three Piano Sonatas in F minor, A major, and C major, 34–41, 76, 89, 98, 164,
204, 235
3 String Trio in E major, 33
4 String Quintet in E major (revision of the Octet op. 103), 47, 81
5 Two Sonatas for Piano and Cello in F major and G minor, 55–56, 156
6 Sonata for Piano in D major, four hands, 34
7 Piano Sonata in E major, 34–35, 56, 159, 204
8 Serenade for Violin, Viola, and Cello in D major
9 Three Trios for Violin, Viola, and Cello in G major, D major, and C minor, 32, 33,
41, 63, 66, 251
10 Three Piano Sonatas in C minor, F major, and D major, 41–46, 64, 101, 106, 147,
156, 236, 364
11 Trio for Piano, Clarinet (or Violin), and Cello in B major, 48
12 Three Sonatas for Piano and Violin in D major, A major, and E major, 35, 82
13 Piano Sonata in C minor (Sonate Pathétique), 31, 56–60, 66, 77, 161, 251
14 Two Piano Sonatas in E major and G major, 65, 67–68, 81, 82
397
398 index of beethoven’s compositions
15 Piano Concerto no. 1 in C major, 34, 47, 74, 76
16 Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in E major, 48–55
17 Sonata for Piano and Horn in F major, 81
18 Six String Quartets in F major, G major, D major, C minor, A major, and B major,
28, 34, 46, 56, 63–70, 72, 106, 141
19 Piano Concerto no. 2 in B major, 34, 47
20 Septet in E major, 47–48, 224
21 Symphony no. 1 in C major, 34, 47, 62–63, 92
22 Piano Sonata in B major, 67, 81, 158, 204
23 Sonata for Piano and Violin in A minor, 81
24 Sonata for Piano and Violin in F major (“Spring”), 81
25 Serenade for Flute, Violin, and Viola in D major, 47
26 Piano Sonata in A major, 81, 100
27 Two Piano Sonatas “quasi una fantasia” in E major and C minor, 81–82, 209,
216, 342, 351
28 Piano Sonata in D major, 61n, 82
29 String Quintet in C major, 81
30 Three Sonatas for Piano and Violin in A major, C minor, and G major, 35, 82–83, 334
31 Three Piano Sonatas in G major, D minor (“Tempest”), and E major, 61, 83–87,
88, 145, 204, 236, 298, 351
32 Song, An die Hoffnung (1805 version), 121, 155
33 Seven Bagatelles for Piano, 236
34 Six Piano Variations in F major on an Original Theme, 20, 27, 31, 51, 87–88, 95,
100
35 Fifteen Piano Variations and Fugue in E major (“Eroica” or “Prometheus”), 31,
61, 79–80, 95, 96, 102–3, 236
36 Symphony no. 2 in D major, 47, 61, 88–92, 179, 181
37 Piano Concerto no. 3 in C minor, 73–81, 188; Pl. 6
38 Trio for Piano, Clarinet or Violin, and Cello in E major (arrangement of op. 20)
39 Two Preludes through the Twelve Major Keys for Piano or Organ, 21
40 Romance for Violin and Orchestra in G major
41 Serenade for Piano and Flute in D major (arrangement of op. 25)
42 Nocturne for Piano and Viola in D major (arrangement of op. 8)
43 Music for Viganò’s ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (“The Creatures of
Prometheus”), 88, 94–96, 103, 131
44 Fourteen Variations for Piano, Violin, and Cello in E major
45 Three Marches for Piano Duet in C major, E major, and D major
46 Song, Adelaide, 24, 33–34
47 Sonata for Piano and Violin in A major (“Kreutzer”), 106–7
48 Six Songs to Poems by Gellert, 109, 163
49 Two Piano Sonatas in G minor and G major, 34, 67
50 Romance for Violin and Orchestra in F major
51 Two Rondos for Piano in C major and G major, 34
52 Eight Songs, 21–23
53 Piano Sonata in C major (“Waldstein”), 28–30, 81, 107, 108–10, 113, 117–18,
146, 160, 179, 204, 347
54 Piano Sonata in F major, 107–8, 147, 360
55 Symphony no. 3 in E major (“Eroica”), 4, 20, 69, 72, 73, 93–106, 123, 131, 133,
141, 153, 211, 218, 219, 232, 295
index of beethoven’s compositions 399
56 Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello in C major, 108
57 Piano Sonata in F minor (“Appassionata”), 28, 60, 68, 81, 107, 109–13, 132,
140, 219, 225, 298, 326–29, 355
58 Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major, 132, 135–40, 144, 153, 172, 219
59 Three String Quartets (“Razumovsky”), in F major, E minor, and C major, 52,
102, 106, 124, 132–35, 159, 236, 280
60 Symphony no. 4 in B major, 132, 143, 144, 158, 179, 203
61 Violin Concerto in D major, 28, 74, 132, 140–43
62 Overture to Collin’s Coriolanus in C minor, 101, 144–45, 171, 251
63 Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello in E major (arrangement of op. 4)
64 Sonata for Piano and Cello in E major (arrangement of op. 3)
65 Scene and Aria, “Ah perfido!” 153
66 Twelve Variations for Piano and Cello on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen” in
F major, 56
67 Symphony no. 5 in C minor, 9, 74–75, 81, 111, 135, 140, 146–47, 148–53, 176,
219, 298, 299
68 Symphony no. 6 in F major (“Pastoral”), 81, 146–49, 193, 299, 360
69 Sonata for Piano and Cello in A major, 156, 185, 204, 206
70 Two Trios for Piano, Violin, and Cello in D major (“Ghost”), and E major,
156–57, 206
71 Sextet for Wind Instruments in E major, 47
72 Fidelio (Leonore), 11, 24–28, 29, 31, 89, 109, 113–31, 132, 144, 189, 202, 290,
293, 332, 334; Pls. 8, 9, 11
73 Piano Concerto no. 5 in E major, 137, 140, 157–58, 225
74 String Quartet in E major (“Harp”), 157, 350
75 Six Songs to Poems by Goethe and Others, 168, 169
76 Six Variations for Piano in D major
77 Fantasia for Piano, 155
78 Piano Sonata in F major, 159
79 Piano Sonata in G major, 159
80 Fantasia for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra in C minor/C major (“Choral Fantasia”),
22, 155, 295, 298
81a Piano Sonata in E major (“Lebewohl”), 4, 28, 157, 159–61
81b Sextet for Horns and String Quartet in E major, 47
82 Four Ariettas and a Duet
83 Three Songs to Poems by Goethe, 162–68, 184; Pl. 12
84 Music to Goethe’s Egmont, 162, 170–71, 202
85 Oratorio, Christus am Oelberge (“Christ on the Mount of Olives”), 94, 176
86 Mass in C major, 145–46, 157, 176
87 Trio for Two Oboes and English Horn in C major, 47
88 Song, Das Glück der Freundschaft
89 Polonaise for Piano in C major
90 Piano Sonata in E minor, 202–4
91 Wellingtons Sieg (“Wellington’s Victory”), 4, 14, 105, 191, 192–98, 201, 219;
Pls. 15–16
92 Symphony no. 7 in A major, 75, 176–81, 198, 219
93 Symphony no. 8 in F major, 172, 176, 181–83, 295, 360
94 Song, An die Hoffnung (1815 version), 155, 204
95 String Quartet in F minor, 171–72, 225
96 Sonata for Piano and Violin in G major, 35, 184–88, 219
97 Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello in B major (“Archduke”), 68, 172–76, 218, 238,
243, 258, 299
98 Song Cycle, An die ferne Geliebte, 210–15, 218, 219, 280, 295
99 Song, Der Mann von Wort
100 Song, Merkenstein (duet version; solo song is WoO 144)
101 Piano Sonata in A major, 159, 204, 208, 216–18, 344, 354
102 Two Sonatas for Piano and Cello in C major and D major, 202, 204–9, 216, 218,
293, 295, 342
103 Octet for Wind Instruments in E major, 47, 81
104 String Quintet in C minor (arrangement of op. 1 no. 3), 221
105 Six National Airs Varied for Piano with Flute or Violin Accompaniment, 222
106 Piano Sonata in B major (“Hammerklavier”), 172, 179, 208, 217, 219, 223–32,
233, 238, 247, 274, 295, 298, 313, 316, 339, 342, 343, 345; Pls. 17–20
107 Ten National Airs Varied for Piano with Flute or Violin Accompaniment, 222
108 Twenty-five Scottish Songs, with Piano, Violin, and Cello Accompaniment,
221–22
109 Piano Sonata in E major, 6, 164, 239–45, 251, 253, 262, 263; Pls. 22–23
110 Piano Sonata in A major, 10, 60, 176, 208, 242, 246–51, 266, 286, 300, 316,
331–32, 342, 345–47, 348, 349, 350
111 Piano Sonata in C minor, 60, 76, 172, 242–43, 245, 246, 251–65, 285, 288, 297,
316, 332, 334, 339
112 Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (“Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage”), for
Chorus and Orchestra, 204
113 Incidental Music to Kotzebue’s Die Ruinen von Athen (“The Ruins of Athens”),
172, 193
114 March with Chorus from Die Ruinen von Athen
115 Overture in C major, Zur Namensfeier
116 Terzet with Orchestra, Tremate, empi, tremate
117 Incidental Music to Kotzebue’s König Stephan (“King Stephen”), 172
118 Elegischer Gesang for Four Voices and String Quartet, 221
119 Eleven Bagatelles for Piano, 239–40, 286–87
120 Thirty-three Variations for Piano on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli in C major, 10, 88,
187, 223, 233–39, 248, 280–86, 289, 318; Pl. 21
121a Variations for Piano, Violin, and Cello on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu’
121b Opferlied for Soprano, Chorus, and Orchestra, 163
122 Bundeslied for Voices, Chorus, and Wind Instruments
123 Missa solemnis in D major, 10, 11, 31, 134, 201, 211, 213, 219, 223, 232, 234,
237–39, 240, 248, 251, 252, 266, 266–79, 288, 304–7, 308, 312, 315, 350;
Pls. 24–25
124 Overture in C major, Die Weihe des Hauses (“The Consecration of the House”),
281–82, 309
125 Symphony no. 9 in D minor, 10, 11, 14–15, 20, 75, 85, 89, 153, 155, 219,
220–22, 230, 239, 247, 266, 270, 288, 289–307, 311–12, 320, 339, 341,
346–47, 350; Pl. 27
126 Six Bagatelles for Piano, 287–89
127 String Quartet in E major, 134, 308–18, 319, 333, 356; Pls, 28–29
128 Arietta, Der Kuss
129 Rondo à Capriccio for Piano, 34
index of beethoven’s compositions 401
130 String Quartet in B major, 68, 174, 203, 219, 224, 310, 319–20, 332–41, 342,
348, 356
131 String Quartet in C minor, 72, 82, 135, 153, 309, 338, 342–45, 347, 348–56, 361
132 String Quartet in A minor, 68, 203, 206, 315, 318–31, 332
133 Grosse Fuge for String Quartet in B major, 208, 219, 224, 336–41, 342
134 Grosse Fuge for Piano, Four Hands (arrangement of op. 133)
135 String Quartet in F major, 338, 342, 356, 358, 360–66
136 Cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick (“The Glorious Moment”), 4, 191, 198–202,
219, 292
137 Fugue for String Quintet in D major, 81
138 Leonore Overture no. 1 in C major, 113
WoO
1 Ritterballett (“Knight’s Ballet”), 159
6 Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in B major, 47
14 Twelve Contredances, 88, 96
17 Eleven Dances, 233
25 Rondino for Wind Instruments, 47
32 Duet for Viola and Cello “with Two Eyeglasses Obbligato,” 32
36 Three Quartets for Piano and Strings in E major, D major, and C major, 21, 39
37 Trio for Flute, Bassoon, and Piano in G major, 21
45 Twelve Variations for Piano and Cello on a Theme from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus,
56, 281
47 Three Piano Sonatas (Kurfürsten), in E major, F minor, and D major, 17
57 Andante favori (original slow movement of the “Waldstein” Sonata op. 53), 54,
108–9, 332
59 Piano Piece in A minor (Für Elise), 168, 288
62 String Quintet in C major (fragment; piano transcription of Hess, 41), 81
63 Nine Variations for Piano on a March by Dressler, 17, 20–21
65 Twenty-four Variations for Piano on Righini’s “Venni Amore,” 31
71 Twelve Variations for Piano on a Russian Dance from Wranitzky’s Das Waldmäd-
chen, 32
80 Thirty-two Variations in C minor for Piano on an Original Theme, 144–45, 283
87 Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II 18, 19, 24–31, 109, 128–29, 144, 218
94 “Germania” for Bass, Chorus, and Orchestra (closing song for Treitschke’s pastic-
cio Singspiel Die gute Nachricht), 191, 201
95 Die verbündeten Fürsten (“Ihr weisen Gründer . . . “), Chorus with Orchestra,
191, 201
100 Vocal Piece, Lob auf den Dicken, 236
118 Two Songs, Seufzer eines Ungeliebten and Gegenliebe, 22, 155
134 Song in Four Versions, Sehnsucht (“Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” from Goethe’s
Wilhelm Meister), 162, 204
140 Song, An die Geliebte (two settings), 168
146 Song, Sehnsucht (Reissig), 204
149 Song, Resignation, 221
150 Song, Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel, 163, 280
152–58 One Hundred Forty-Three Folk-Song Settings, 221–22
162 Canon, “Ta ta ta,” 181–82
163 Canon, “Kurz ist der Schmerz, ewig ist die Freude,” 123
166 Canon, “Kurz ist der Schmerz, ewig ist die Freude,” 123
168 Two Canons, “Das Schweigen” and “Das Reden,” 221
170 Canon, “Ars longa, vita brevis,” 61
178 Canon, “Signor Abate!” 361–62
180 Canon, “Hoffmann! Sei ja kein Hofmann!” 361
182 Canon, “O Tobias!” 246
183 Canon, “Bester Herr Graf,” 236
189 Canon, “Doktor sperrt das Thor dem Todt,” 369
191 Canon, “Kühl, nicht lau,” 361, 367n
196 Canon, “Es muss sein,” 362–63
Hess:
15 Piano Concerto in D major (fragment and sketches), 140
34 String Quartet in F major (arrangement of Piano Sonata in E major op. 14 no. 1),
67–68
41 String Quintet in C major (fragment. See also WoO 62), 81
97 Wellingtons Sieg for piano (arrangement of op. 91), Pl. 15
115 Opera, Vestas Feuer (sketches), 115
142 Song, Wonne der Wehmut (first version; based on Weimar MS), 169
Uncatalogued
Opera on Bacchus (sketches), 294
Opera on Macbeth (sketches), 157
Overture on B-A-C-H (sketches), 219, 281
Piano Concerto in F major (sketches for op. 93, first movement), 182
Requiem Mass in C minor (sketches), 219
Song, Jubelgesang (sketches), 158
Song, Östreich über Alles (sketches), 158
Tenth Symphony (sketches), 219, 341
Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano in F minor (fragment and sketches), 220
Two Piano Pieces, in G major and C major, 287
Two Piano Pieces in A major (preliminary versions of op. 119 no. 10), 287
R General Index
R
Abbate, Carolyn, 346 Beethoven, Karl van (nephew), 211, 219,
Abert, Hermann, 55 358–59
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, 12, 53, Beethoven, Ludwig Maria van (brother),
191, 251, 255, 258–60 19
Albrechtsberger, Johann, 34, 220, 339, Beethoven, Ludwig van
361 arrangements of his own works, 47,
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 206, 208 67–68, 100, 221, 340
Amenda, Karl Friedrich, 63, 69 authority, attitude toward, 4–5, 33, 66,
Árnason, Vilhjálmur, 8n, 305n 93, 94–95, 104, 198–202, 247,
Arnim, Bettina Brentano von, 168–70 359–60
Arnim, Ludwig Achim von, 168 Bonaparte, attitude toward, 93, 105,
Artaria, Matthias, 339 155, 158
Artaria & Co. 81 character, 19–20, 32–34, 47–48, 56–57,
Ashman, Mike, 130 61–62, 81, 94, 119–21, 145–46, 162,
Augsburg, 20 169, 176, 183–84, 189–90, 201,
210–11, 222–23, 235, 238–39,
Bach, C. P. E., 17, 18, 155 246–47, 288, 308, 317, 356–58,
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 3, 17–18, 21, 107, 358–61, 366–68
159, 219, 230, 232, 237, 244, 248, concerts, 34, 47, 48, 54, 74, 144, 146,
281, 286–87, 360, 367n 153–55, 162, 184, 189, 192–93, 198,
Clavierübung, 286 219, 307, 308, 317–18, 337, 360
Goldberg Variations, 287 conversation books, 6, 181, 200, 223,
Musical Offering, 21 224, 240, 266, 279, 306, 337–38, 367
Well-Tempered Clavier, 17, 159 creative periods, 71, 93, 213, 216,
Baden, 210, 246 218–19, 245–46, 356
Badura-Skoda, Paul, 227n creative process, 3, 19, 24–25, 31,
Baensch, Otto, 291, 302 49–50, 69–73, 93, 202, 238–39,
Baroque style, 13, 56, 144, 230, 243–44, 290–93, 318–20, 367–68
248, 281–82 crises, 61, 70–71, 93–94, 155–56,
Bartók, Béla, 219 158–59, 183–84, 189–90, 210–11,
Beethoven, Caspar Anton Carl van 239, 245–46, 320, 357–58, 367–68
(brother), 190, 211 deafness, 69–73, 209, 218, 223, 317
Beethoven, Johann van (father), 18–20 death, 358, 368
Beethoven, Johanna van (sister-in-law), diary (Tagebuch), 189, 209, 210
239, 358 education, musical, 17–18, 24, 33, 34
403
404 general index
Beethoven, Ludwig van (continued) pianist, 17, 33, 34, 48, 54, 74–76, 155
father, relationship with, 18, 19–20 popularity, 5, 47–48, 94, 176, 189, 191,
finances, 32–33, 155–56, 189–90, 192–93, 209, 289, 307
238–39, 338, 361 projected works, 15, 47, 81, 115, 140,
folk-songs, use of, 132, 133–34, 204, 182, 219, 220, 292, 318–19
221–22, 246–47, 303 publishers, relationships with, 33, 81,
foreshortening, technique of, 35–41, 60, 145–46, 198, 220, 233, 239, 246,
82, 98, 110, 137, 144 337, 338, 359, 361
friends, relationships with, 18, 19, sketches and manuscripts, 3, 36–37, 64,
23–24, 32–33, 61, 63, 69, 71, 156, 66, 71–72, 74, 95, 112, 132–33, 155,
159–61, 168–69, 183–84, 359, 368 157, 162, 168, 176, 182, 184–86,
Goethe, relationship with, 162–71, 204, 211, 212, 220–21, 227, 233–34,
360 239–40, 266–68, 278, 280, 282,
Haydn, relationship with, 17, 24, 33, 39, 286–87, 291–92, 309, 318–20,
41, 47, 59, 62–63, 64–65, 68, 82, 92, 332–34, 343, 355; Pls. 6, 9, 19–20,
94–95, 145–46, 157, 183, 317, 358 21, 24–25, 27, 28–29
Heiligenstadt Testament, 69, 93 suicidal impulses, 69, 94, 190
Hirsch, Carl Friedrich, 220 teachers, relationships with, 17–19, 24,
humor and jokes, 32–33, 41, 43, 46, 62, 33–34; Pl. 2
65, 82–83, 92, 94, 147, 174, 221–23, timpani, special use of, 74–76, 119,
227–28, 234–36, 246–47, 283–84, 140–43, 278–79, 296
288–89, 303, 356–57, 358–61, travels, 16, 32, 47, 48, 55–56, 132, 176,
364–68 183, 357
illnesses, 69, 71, 219–20, 245–46, 320, women, relationships with, 22–24, 81,
357–58, 368. See also deafness 159, 168–70, 183–84, 189–90, 210,
Immortal Beloved, relationship with, 222–23, 239, 356, 357
81–82, 183–84, 189–90, 210–13, 245
improvisation, 34, 48, 49, 54, 72, 155, Beethoven, Ludwig van: Works
288
lawsuits, 81, 156, 239
piano music
literary influences, 18–19, 22–23, 64, Sonatas
123–24, 144, 157, 162–63, 168–71, op. 2 no. 1 in F minor, 35–39
176 op. 2 no. 2 in A major, 34, 39–41, 98,
mother, relationship with, 20 204
musical influences, 17–18, 33, 39, op. 2 no. 3 in C major, 34, 76, 163,
47–55, 58–59, 63, 65, 67–68, 73–74, 235
113–17, 124–25, 132, 145–46, 147, op. 7 in E major, 34–35, 56, 159,
150, 159, 244, 248 204
myth, influence of, 8, 93–96, 101, op. 10 no. 1 in C minor, 41–43
102–06, 136–40, 289, 292 op. 10 no. 2 in F major, 43–44, 147,
nephew (Karl), relationship with, 211, 358
219, 356–57 op. 10 no. 3 in D major, 44–46, 64,
parody, of Catholic mass, 222–23, 101, 106, 156, 364
358–59 op. 13 in C minor (Sonate Pathé-
patronage, 4–5, 32–33, 145–46, 156, tique), 13, 56–60, 66, 77, 161, 251
218 op. 14 no. 1 in E major, 67–68, 81
philosophical influences, 6–11, 16, 19, op. 14 no. 2 in G major, 65, 81, 82
56–57, 162, 169–70, 190, 266–67, op. 22 in B major, 67, 81, 158, 204
289–91, 299–302, 304–07 op. 26 in A major, 81, 100
general index 405
op. 27 no. 1 in E major, 81, 209, op. 35 in E major (“Eroica” or
195, 342 “Prometheus”), 31, 61, 79–80, 95,
op. 27 no. 2 in C minor (“Moon- 96, 102–03, 236
light”), 81–82, 209, 351 op. 120 in C major (Diabelli), 10, 88,
op. 28 in D major (“Pastoral”), 61n, 187, 223, 231–37, 248, 282–88,
82 291, 318, 342; Pl. 21
op. 31 no. 1 in G major, 61, 83–84, WoO 63 in C minor (Dressler), 17,
119, 204 20–21
op. 31 no. 2 in D minor (“Tempest”), WoO 65 (Righini), 31
61, 84–86, 351–52 WoO 71 (Wranitsky), 32
op. 31 no. 3 in E major, 61, 86–87, WoO 80 (32 Variations in C minor),
296 144–45, 283
op. 49 no. 1 in G minor, 34, 67
Miscellaneous
op. 49 no. 2 in G major, 34, 67
Duet Sonata op. 6: 34
op. 53 in C major (“Waldstein”),
7 Bagatelles op. 33: 236, 286, 287
28–30, 81, 107, 108–10, 113,
2 Preludes through the Twelve Major
117–18, 146, 160, 179, 204, 347
Keys op. 39: 21
op. 54 in F major, 107–8, 147, 360
Rondo in C major op. 51 no. 1: 34
op. 57 in F minor (“Appassionata”),
Fantasia op. 77: 155
28, 60, 68, 81, 107, 109–13, 132,
11 Bagatelles op. 119: 239–40,
140, 219, 225, 298, 326–29, 355
288–89
op. 78 in F major, 159
6 Bagatelles op. 126: 289–91
op. 79 in G major, 159
Rondo à capriccio op. 129: 34
op. 81a in E major (“Lebewohl” or
Andante favori WoO 57: 54, 108–09,
“Les Adieux”), 4, 28, 157, 159–61
332
op. 90 in E minor, 202–04
Für Elise WoO 59: 168, 288
op. 101 in A major, 159, 204, 208,
216–18, 342, 352
op. 106 in B major (“Ham-
chamber music
merklavier”), 172, 179, 208, 217, For Strings
219, 223–32, 233, 238, 247, 274, Trio in E major op. 3: 33
295, 298, 313, 316, 340, 341, 345, Quintet in E major op. 4: 47, 81
347; Pls. 17–20 Trio in G major op. 9 no. 1: 32, 33,
op. 109 in E major, 6, 164, 239–45, 63
251, 253, 262, 263; Pls. 22–23 Trio in D major op. 9 no. 2: 32, 33,
op. 110 in A major, 10, 60, 176, 208, 63
242, 246–51, 266, 286, 300, 316, Trio in C minor op. 9 no. 3: 32, 33,
331–32, 342, 345–47, 348, 349, 41, 63, 66, 251
350 Quartet in F major op. 18 no. 1:
op. 111 in C minor, 60, 76, 172, 63–64
242–43, 245, 246, 251–65, 285, Quartet in G major op. 18 no. 2: 63,
288, 297, 316, 332, 334, 339 64–65
Three Sonatas in E major, F minor, Quartet in D major op. 18 no. 3: 65
and D minor (Kurfürsten [“Elec- Quartet in C minor op. 18 no. 4:
toral”] Sonatas) WoO 47: 17 66–67
Quartet in A major op. 18 no. 5:
Variations 67–68
op. 34 in F major, 20, 27, 31, 51, Quartet in B major op. 18 no. 6: 28,
87–88, 95, 100 68–70
406 general index
Beethoven, Ludwig van: Works: Chamber Violin Sonata in A major op. 12 no. 2:
Music: For Strings (continued) 35
Quintet in C major op. 29: 81 Violin Sonata in E major op. 12 no. 3:
Quartet in F major op. 59 no. 1 35
(“Razumovsky”), 102, 132–34, Quintet in E major op. 16: 48–55
236 Horn Sonata in F major op. 17: 81
Quartet in E minor op. 59 no. 2 Violin Sonata in A minor op. 23: 81
(“Razumovsky”), 124, 132, Violin Sonata in F major op. 24
134–35, 278 (“Spring”), 81
Quartet in C major op. 59 no. 3 Violin Sonata in A major op. 30 no. 1:
(“Razumovsky”), 132, 135, 159 107, 334
Quartet in E major op. 74 (“Harp”), Violin Sonata in C minor op. 30 no. 2:
157, 348 35, 82
Quartet in F minor op. 95: 171–72, Violin Sonata in G major op. 30 no. 3:
225 82–83
Quintet in C minor op. 104 (from Violin Sonata in A major op. 47
Piano Trio op. 1 no. 3), 221 (“Kreutzer”), 106–07
Quartet in E major op. 127: 134, 12 Variations for Cello and Piano
308–18, 319, 333, 356; Pls, 28–29 (Mozart) op. 66: 56
Quartet in B major op. 130: 68, 174, Cello Sonata in A major op. 69: 156,
203, 219, 224, 310, 319–20, 185, 204, 206
332–41, 342, 348, 356 Trio in D major op. 70 no. 1
Quartet in C minor op. 131: 72, 82, (“Ghost”), 156–57, 206
135, 153, 309, 338, 342–45, 347, Trio in E major op. 70 no. 2: 156–57
348–56, 361 Violin Sonata in G major op. 96: 35,
Quartet in A minor op. 132: 68, 203, 184–88, 219
206, 315, 318–31, 332 Trio in B major op. 97 (“Archduke”),
Grosse Fuge op. 133: 208, 219, 224, 68, 172–76, 218, 238, 243, 258, 299
336–41, 342 Cello Sonata in C major op. 102 no. 1:
Quartet in F major op. 135: 338, 342, 202, 204, 206, 216, 218, 293
356, 358, 360–66 Cello Sonata in D major op. 102 no. 2:
Fugue for Quintet in D major op. 137: 202, 204–09, 218, 342
81 Quartet in E major, WoO 36: 21
Duet for Viola and Cello WoO 32: 32 Quartet in D major, WoO 36: 21
Quartet in F major Hess, 34 (from Quartet in C major, WoO 36: 21, 39
Piano Sonata op. 14 no. 1), 67–68 Trio in G major, WoO 37: 21
12 Variations for Cello and Piano
With Piano
(Handel) WoO 45: 56, 281
Trio in E major op. 1 no. 1: 34
Trio in G major op. 1 no. 2: 34 For Winds or Winds and Strings
Trio in C minor op. 1 no. 3: 34, 221 Septet in E major op. 20: 47–48, 224
Cello Sonata in F major op. 5 no. 1: Serenade in D major op. 25: 47
55–56, 156 Sextet in E major op. 71: 47
Cello Sonata in G minor op. 5 no. 2: Sextet in E major op. 81b: 47
55–56, 156 Trio in C major op. 87: 47
Clarinet Trio in B major op. 11 Octet in E major op. 103: 47, 81
(“Gassenhauer”), 48 11 Dances (“Mödlinger Dances”)
Violin Sonata in D major op. 12 no. 1: WoO 17: 233
35, 82 Rondino in E major WoO 25: 47
general index 407
orchestral music Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in

B major WoO 6: 47
Symphonies
Symphony no. 1 in C major op. 21: Overtures
34, 47, 62–63, 92 Coriolan op. 62: 101, 144–45, 171,
Symphony no. 2 in D major op. 36: 251
47, 61, 88–92, 181 Egmont op. 84: 162, 170–71, 202
Symphony no. 3 in E major op. 55 Fidelio op. 72b: 118, 202
(“Eroica”), 4, 20, 69, 72, 73, Leonore no. 1 op. 138: 118
93–106, 123, 131, 133, 141, 153, Leonore no. 2 op. 72a: 118, 119
211, 218, 219, 232, 295 Leonore no. 3 op. 72a: 118, 119,
Symphony no. 4 in B major op. 60: 332
132, 143, 144, 158, 179, 203 Prometheus op. 43: 62
Symphony no. 5 in C minor op. 67: 9, Die Weihe des Hauses (“The Conse-
74–75, 81, 111, 135, 140, 146–47, cration of the House”) op. 124:
148–53, 176, 219, 298, 299 281–82, 309
Symphony no. 6 in F major op. 68 Miscellaneous
(“Pastoral”), 81, 146–49, 193, 299, 12 Contredances WoO 14: 88, 96
360 Wellingtons Sieg (“Wellington’s
Symphony no. 7 in A major op. 92: Victory”) op. 91: 4, 14, 105, 191,
75, 176–81, 198, 219 192–98, 201, 219; Pls. 15–16
Symphony no. 8 in F major op. 93:
172, 176, 181–83, 360 music for the stage
Symphony no. 9 in D minor op. 125
(“Choral”), 10, 11, 14–15, 20, 75, Opera
85, 89, 153, 155, 219, 220–22, Fidelio (Leonore) op. 72: 11, 24–28,
230, 239, 247, 266, 270, 290, 29, 31, 89, 109, 113–31, 132, 144,
291–309, 313–14, 322, 341, 343, 189, 202, 290, 293, 332, 334; Pls,
348–49, 352; Pl. 27 8, 9, 11
Ballet
For Solo Instrument(s) and Orchestra
Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (“The
Piano Concerto no. 1 in C major
Creatures of Prometheus”) op. 43:
op. 15: 34, 47, 74, 76
88, 94–96, 103, 131
Piano Concerto no. 2 in B major
Ritterballett WoO 1: 159
op. 19: 34, 47
Piano Concerto no. 3 in C minor Incidental Music
op. 37: 73–81, 188; Pl. 6 Egmont op. 84: 162, 170–71, 202
Triple Concerto in C major op. 56: Die Ruinen von Athen (“The Ruins
108 of Athens”) op. 113: 172, 193
Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major König Stephan (“King Stephen”) op.
op. 58: 132, 135–40, 144, 153, 117: 172
172, 219
Violin Concerto in D major op. 61: choral music
28, 74, 132, 140–43 Choral Fantasia op. 80: 22, 155, 295,
Piano Concerto no. 5 in E major 300
op. 73 (“Emperor”), 137, 140, Christus am Oelberge (“Christ on the
157–58, 225 Mount of Olives”) op. 85: 94, 176
Choral Fantasia op. 80: 22, 155, 295, Mass in C major op. 86: 145–46, 157,
300 176
408 general index
Beethoven, Ludwig van: Works: Mit einem gemalten Band op. 83 no. 3:
Choral Music (continued) 162–63
Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt An die Hoffnung (“To Hope”) op. 94:
(“Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage”) 155, 204
op. 112: 204 Song Cycle An die ferne Geliebte
Elegischer Gesang op. 118: 221 (“To the Distant Beloved”) op. 98:
Opferlied op. 121b: 163 210–15, 218, 219, 280, 295
Missa solemnis in D major op. 123: 2 Songs, Seufzer eines Ungeliebten
10, 11, 31, 134, 201, 211, 213, and Gegenliebe WoO 118: 22, 155
219, 223, 232, 234, 237–39, 240, Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt (Goethe)
248, 251, 252, 266, 268–81, 290, WoO 134: 162, 204
306–9, 310, 314, 317, 352; Pls. An die Geliebte WoO 140: 168
24–25 Sehnsucht (“Yearning”) (Reissig)
Der glorreiche Augenblick (“The WoO 146: 204
Glorious Moment”) op. 136: 4, Resignation WoO 149: 224
191, 198–202, 219, 292 Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel
Joseph Cantata WoO 87: 18, 19, WoO 150: 163, 280
24–31, 109, 144, 218
Miscellaneous
“Germania” WoO 94: 191, 201
Variations on National Songs op. 105
Chor auf die verbündeten Fürsten
and op. 107: 222
(“Ihr weisen Gründer . . .”) WoO
Folksong Settings op. 108 and WoO
95: 191, 201
152–58: 221–22
Sweet Were the Hours op. 108 no. 3:
vocal music 222
With Orchestra canons and musical jokes, 32, 181–82,
“Ah perfido!” op. 65: 153 234–37, 246–50, 358–61, 367–68
projected works, 15, 47, 81, 115, 140,
With Piano
182, 219, 220, 292, 318–19
An die Hoffnung (“To Hope”) op. 32:
121, 155
Adelaide op. 46: 24, 33–34 Beethoven, Ludwig van (grandfather), 19
6 Songs (Gellert) op. 48: 109, 163 Beethoven, Maria Josepha van (grand-
8 Songs op. 52: 22–24 mother), 19
Mollys Abschied op. 52 no. 5: 22, 23 Beethoven, Maria Magdalena van
Das Blümchen Wunderhold op. 52 (mother), 20
no. 8: 22, 23 Beethoven, Nikolaus Johann van (brother),
Kennst du das Land? op. 75 no. 1: 169 357
An den fernen Geliebten op. 75 no. 5: Beethoven, Therese van (sister-in-law), 357
168 Bekker, Paul, 95, 255, 318, 364
3 Songs (Goethe) op. 83: 162–68; Bergson, Henri, 13n
Pl. 12 Berlin, Isaiah, 303n
Wonne der Wehmut (“Bliss in Sor- Berlin, 18, 47, 48, 56
row”) op. 83 no. 1: 162–68, 184 Berlin Wall, 307
Wonne der Wehmut Hess, 142 (first Berlioz, Hector, 13, 147
version; based on Weimar MS), Bernstein, Leonard, 307
169 Birchall, Robert, 222
Sehnsucht (“Yearning”) op. 83 no. 2: Birkenstock, Antonie von. See Brentano,
162, 204 Antonie von
general index 409
Birkenstock, Johann Melchior Edler von, Cäcilia (music journal), 201, 359, Pl. 16
168 Cadenbach, Rainer, 361n
Bismarck, Otto von, 113 Canisius, Claus, 94n, 359n
Blom, Eric, 83n Caplin, William E., 294
Boettcher, Hans, 121, 165n Cherubini, Luigi, 113, 116, 150
Böhm, Joseph (violinist), 317 Chopin, Frederic, 285
Böhm, Joseph Daniel (medal maker, artist, Chua, Daniel, 328
and sculptor), x Chytry, Joseph, 4n, 7, 11, 15
Bonaparte, Jerôme, 155 Classical forms, 17, 34, 58, 187
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 93, 96, 104, 105, expansion of, 45, 54, 96, 172–73, 223,
155, 158, 176 233, 275, 281, 293–94, 304, 342
Bonn, 16–19, 22, 31, 32, 33, 47, 291 Collin, Heinrich Joseph von, 144, 157,
Pl. 1 158
Bouilly, Jean-Nicolas, 113, 115–17, 130 commonplace, artistic importance of the,
Brahms, Johannes, 5, 24 10, 133–34, 192, 213, 216, 246–47,
Brandenburg, Sieghard, 182, 184n, 240, 249–50, 281–82, 285–86, 288–89,
292, 309, 320n 331, 350, 359, 367
Braunhofer, Dr. Anton, 360 Congress of Vienna, 189, 198–202
Breitkopf & Härtel, 146, 156, 159 Cook, Nicholas, 201
Brendel, Alfred, 35, 83, 107, 213, 216, Cooke, Deryck, 318
233, 251, 264, 285 Cooper, Barry, 94, 222, 333, 338–39
Brentano, Antonie, 168, 183–84, 210, Cooper, Martin, 98, 236, 246, 311
245; Pl. 13 Cramer, Johann Baptist, 41, 284
Brentano, Clemens, 168 Cramer’s Magazin der Musik, 17
Brentano, Elisabeth (Bettina). See Arnim, critical method, 6, 12–14, 62, 218–19,
Bettina Brentano von 367–68
Brentano, Franz, 168, 183, 245 Czerny, Carl, 12, 61, 63, 109, 134, 155,
Brentano, Maximiliane, 245 157, 162, 222, 288, 341
Breuning, Eleonore von, 18
Breuning, Gerhard von, 366 Dahlhaus, Carl, 105, 250
Breuning, Lenz von, 18 Danuser, Hermann, 13n
Breuning, Maria Helene von, 18, 366 Dean, Winton, 125
Breuning, Stephan von, 18, 23 Dembscher, Ignaz, 360–61, 364
Brinkmann, Reinhold, 52 Deym, Countess Josephine Brunsvik, 121,
Broch, Hermann, 191–92, 202 159, 183n
Browne, Count and Countess, 32 Diabelli, Anton, 233, 280–81
Broyles, Michael, 144 Dische, Irene, 233
Bruckner, Anton, 13, 304 Dittersdorf, Karl, 48
Bruner, Carol, 279n Dobrowein, Isaiah, 113n
Brunsvik, Josephine. See Deym, Countess Drabkin, William, 279n, 339n
Josephine Dragonetti, Domenico, 193
Brunsvik, Therese, 159 Dresden, 119
Bülow, Hans von, 112, 223, 247, 264 Duport, Jean Louis, 56
Bumpass, Laura Kathryn, 356n
Bürger, Gottfried August, 22–23 Einstein, Alfred, 198
Burnham, Scott, 14n, 104, 122 Enlightenment, 3, 6, 15, 19, 115, 95–96,
Burton, Anthony, 157 128–30, 202, 302–03, 306–07
Butor, Michel, 233 Erdödy, Countess Marie, 156
410 general index
Ertmann, Baroness Dorothea von, 159 Haibel, Jakob, 48
Esterházy, Prince Nikolaus (the younger), Halm, August, 255
145–46 Handel, Georg Friedrich, 3, 18, 56, 201,
237, 279–80, 285
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 122–23 Judas Maccabaeus, 56
Fischenich, Bartholomäus Ludwig, 15, 16 Messiah, 358
Fischer, Edwin, 264 Saul, 279
Flimm, Jürgen, 130 Hanslick, Eduard, 5
Floros, Constantin, 95, 101 Harrington, Michael, 303
Forte, Allen, 6 Haslinger, Tobias, 246, 359, 361
Franz I, Emperor, 198–200 Hatten, Robert, 254, 323–24
freedom, in art, 3–5, 8, 10–12, 31, 104, Haydn, Franz Joseph, 5, 13, 17, 24,
113–14, 118–30, 170–71, 302–03, 33–36, 39, 41, 47, 62–65, 68, 73, 88,
307 92, 145–46, 157, 183, 317, 340
Freemasonry, 19 The Creation, 73, 94–95
French military occupations, of Bonn, 32; “Drumroll” Symphony (no. 103), 157
of Vienna, 114, 158 Schöpfungsmesse, 146
French Revolution, 115, 130 String Quartet in C major op. 33 no. 3:
Freud, Sigmund, 20 58n
Friedrich, Caspar David, 290 String Quartet in G major op. 33 no. 5: 63
Friedrich Wilhelm II, King, 56 “Surprise” Symphony (no. 94), 65
Frimmel, Theodor von, 247n Symphony in C major (no. 97), 47
Frohlich, Martha, 111 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7, 9, 123
Fuchs, Alois, 94 hermeneutics, 255–61
heroism, 93–96, 104–06, 115–16, 122–31,
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 10, 12 135, 170–71
Galitzin, Prince Nikolaus, 308, 332, 342 Herre, Grita, 23
Galliver, David, 115, 125 Hiller, Johann Adam, 17, 185–86
Gaveaux, Pierre, 115 Hippocrates, 61
Gebauer, Franz Xaver, 235 Hoeckner, Berthold, 124, 254–55
Gellert, Christian Fürchtegot, 109, 163 Höfel, Blasius, 190
gender roles in Fidelio, 122–24 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 4, 9, 12, 170, 359
Giannatasio del Río, Fanny, 210 Hölderlin, Johann Christian Friedrich, 7,
Gleichenstein, Baron Ignaz von, 156 105
Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 140, 150n Holz, Karl, 337, 338, 339, 357, 358–59
Gneixendorf, 342, 357, 366 d’Honrath, Jeanette, 23–24
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 6, 94n, Horne, William, 98
162–71, 202, 204, 236, 292, 360 Howell, Standley, 181n
Egmont, 162, 170–71 Hübsch, Lini, 132n
The Sorrows of Young Werther, 94n Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 14, 122–23
Wilhelm Meister, 162, 169 humorous and comic music, 5, 43–44, 46,
Wonne der Wehmut (“Bliss in Sorrow”), 65, 82–83, 86, 91–92, 102, 119, 147,
162–68 174–75, 181, 227–28, 234–37, 280–84,
Goldschmidt, Harry, 183n 289, 316–17, 355, 362, 364–66
Göllner, Theodor, 279n
Greth, Carl, 23–24 Illuminism, 19
Grétry, André Ernest Modeste, 48 Ingolstadt, 19
Guicciardi, Countess Giulietta, 81 integration, artistic, 13, 148–53, 323,
Gülke, Peter, 150n, 290 325–30, 346–48, 367
general index 411
irony, musical, 43, 83, 281–82, 285, 289, Kunze, Stefan, 254
364–65 Küthen, Hans-Werner, 61, 74, 222, 303n,
Isis, Temple of, 8 360
Jahn, Otto, 16 Langer, Susanne, 4, 71, 191

Jander, Owen, 137 Larsen, Jens Peter, 146
Jeitteles, Alois, 211 Lenin, Vladimir, 113
Jena, 7 Lenz, Wilhelm von, 108, 218, 229, 264
John, Kathryn, 181n Lesegesellschaft, 19
Johnson, Douglas, 39, 47, 48, 74n Levin, Rahel, 176
Joseph II, Emperor, 16 Levine, James, 130
Lichnowsky, Count Moritz von, 236
Kanka, Johann Nepomuk, 302 Lichnowsky, Prince Karl von, 32, 34
Kanne, Friedrich August, 299n, 359 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 236
Kant, Immanuel, 5, 6–8, 14, 266, 289–90, Lindenschmit, Wilhlem von, 24
306–07, 348n Liszt, Franz, 5, 82, 136, 223, 281, 304
Critique of Judgment, 7, 8 Littrow, Joseph, 266n
Critique of Practical Reason, 266n Lobkowitz, Prince Joseph, 32, 144, 154,
Critique of Pure Reason, 6, 348n 156, 218
Karlsbad, 169, 183 Locke, John, 303
Kaufman, Moisés, 233 Lockwood, Lewis, 49, 104n, 106, 140n,
Keglevics, Countess “Babette” 157
(Odescalchi), 159 London, 34, 198, 221, 291, 338
Kerman, Joseph, 63, 66, 125, 133, 137, Lucchesi, Andrea, 18
211, 310, 311, 314, 315, 321, 326, Lühning, Helga, 162n
328, 329, 331, 365
Kinsky, Georg, 229 Mahler, Gustav, 13n, 304
Kinsky, Prince Ferdinand Johann Nepomuk, Malfatti, Therese von, 168
32, 146, 156, 218 Mälzel, Johann Nepomuk, 181, 192–93
Kirkendale, Warren, 238n, 312, 337 Mann, Thomas, 130, 255, 258, 260
kitsch, 81–82, 191–202, 290 Mannheim, 17
Kleist, Heinrich von, 286 Marcuse, Herbert, 303
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 18 Marie Antoinette, Queen, 16
Knecht, Justin Heinrich, 147 Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, 17, 66
Köhler, Karl-Heinz, 307 Marston, Nicholas, 229–30
Kolodin, Irving, 85n Marx, Adolf Bernhard, 14, 208, 246n
Königsberg, 7 Marx, Karl, 302
Korsyn, Kevin, 328, 330 Mason, Daniel Gregory, 172
Kotzebue, August von, 172 Mathew, Nicholas, 201
Kramer, Lawrence, 150 Matthews, Denis, 474
Kramer, Richard, 5n, 66, 303, 339, 341 Matthisson, Friedrich von, 33
Kretzschmar, Hermann, 150, 255 Mattila, Karita, 130–31
Kreutzer, Rodolphe, 106–07 Maximilian Franz, Elector, 16, 20, 33
Kropfinger, Klaus, 333 Mayr, Simone, 116
Krumpholz, Wenzel, 61 McClary, Susan, 322
Kuffner, Christoph, 155 Méhul, Étienne, 116
Kuhlau, Friedrich, 359 Mellers, Wilfrid, 5–6, 249n, 251, 275
Kundera, Milan, 348 Mendelssohn, Felix, 169, 218
Kunstvereinigung, 3, 8, 248 Meredith, William, 240n
412 general index
metaphor in music, 29–31, 36, 96–98, narrative design in music, 10–11, 14,
102–3, 105, 118, 124, 255, 266–68, 93–106, 123, 128–31, 218–19, 232,
304–07, 312–13 242–43, 290–91, 298–307, 342,
Metternich, Prince Clemens von, 198 346–48
Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 193 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, 347
Mielitz, Christine, 119 nature, organicist concept of, 8–9
Mill, John Stuart, 302 Naue, Johann Friedrich, 123
Misch, Ludwig, 193 Neate, Charles, 73
Moore, Julia, 238–39 Neeb, Johannes, 16
Moscheles, Ignaz, 56, 192 Neefe, Christian Gottlob, 17–19; Pl. 2
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 5, 9, 13, Newman, Ernest, 73, 181
16–18, 21, 34, 39, 35, 37, 41, 47, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 162, 177
48–55, 56, 57, 62–63, 67–68, 69, 72, Nohl, Ludwig, 168, 306n
73–74, 81, 88, 114–16, 124–25, 135, Nottebohm, Gustav, 35n, 36n, 72, 101n,
136, 153, 157, 285, 303, 317, 318, 155n, 185–86, 309, 306n
329, 360
Piano Concerto in E major K271: 47, Oppersdorf, Count Franz von, 155
116 Orpheus myth, 136–40
Violin Sonata in C major K296: 21, 39
Piano Sonata in A major K331: 81 Paer, Fernando, 116
Violin Sonata in G major K379: 21 Paisiello, Giovanni, 48
Violin Sonata in E major K380: 21 parenthetical structures, 13, 240–41,
Fugue in C minor for Two Pianos K426: 242–43, 252, 256–57, 267–75,
318 335–36, 354–55
Quintet for Piano and Winds in E major Paris, 93, 113–14, 115–16
K452: 48–55 Paul, Jean. See Richter, Jean Paul
Piano Sonata in C minor K457: 41, 88 Pederson, Sanna, 122–23
String Quartet in A major K464: 63, performance difficulties of Beethoven’s
67–68 music, 24, 217, 223, 317–18, 338
String Quartet in C major K465: 135 Peters, Carl Friedrich, 286
Piano Concerto in D minor K466: 47 Petersburg, St, 308
Piano Concerto in C major K467: 74 Pfitzner, Hans, 255
Piano Concerto in E major K482: Plantinga, Leon, 74
51–54 Platen, Emil, 174, 358n
Piano Concerto in C minor K491: 41, Plato, 11, 299–302, 307
47, 73–74 The Republic, 299–302
Piano Concerto in C major K503: 47, 136 Prague, 47, 48, 183
String Quintet in E major K614: 47 programmatic interpretation, limitations
Così fan tutte, 114–15, 124 of, 5, 14, 93, 105
Don Giovanni, 114, 116, 125, 126, 213, Prometheus myth, 94–96, 101–2, 104,
257 106, 131, 232
Idomeneo, 126
“Jupiter” Symphony in C major, 153 Radcliffe, Philip, 133–34, 172n, 329n
Le Nozze di Figaro, 114 Ramm, Friedrich, 54, 55
“Prague” Symphony in D major, 88 Rank, Otto, 20
Requiem, 360 Raphael (Raffaelo Santi), 9
Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), 56, Ratz, Erwin, 18, 224n
114, 116, 126, 103, 278, 303, 329 Razumovksy, Count Andreas, 132
Mussorgsky, Modest, 135 Reicha, Anton, 61
general index 413
Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 154–55 Die Jungfrau von Orleans, 123–24
Reign of Terror, 113, 115, 130 Über das Pathetische, 56–57
Rellstab, Ludwig, 81 Über naive und sentimentale Dichtung,
Reti, Rudolph, 333 162
Reynolds, Christopher, 211, 361n, 364 Wilhelm Tell, 14
rhetoric, musical, 4, 24–25, 29–31, 66, Schindler, Anton, 176, 181–82, 190, 279,
137, 140, 268–70, 314–15, 364–65 336, 361n, 364
Richter, Jean Paul, 10, 44, 170 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 299
Riemann, Hugo, 66 Schlesinger, Adolf, 239
Ries, Ferdinand, 19, 34, 66, 98, 112, 156, Schlesinger, Moritz, 361
158, 210, 338 Schlösser, Louis, 73n
Ries, Franz, 18, 19 Schmitz, Arnold, 150
Riezler, Walter, 4, 10–11, 132, 174, 183 Schnabel, Artur, 14
Robinson, Paul, 131n Schneider, Eulogius, 16
Rochlitz, Friedrich, 169 Schoenberg, Arnold, 219, 304
Röckel, Joseph August, 190 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 190
Rode, Pierre, 184 Schröder-Devrient, Wilhelmine, 131
Rolland, Romain, 150n Schubert, Franz Peter, 72, 142, 143, 157,
Romantic style, 153, 157, 179, 204, 213, 163, 179, 203, 290
216–18, 289–90 Heine Songs, 163
Romberg, Bernhard, 193 Piano Sonata in B major D960: 143
Rosen, Charles, 55, 212n, 224, 240 Die schöne Müllerin, 290
Rosenberg, Richard, 107, 364 Symphony in C major (“The Great”),
Rossini, Gioacchino, 188 142
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 292 Winterreise, 290
Rudolph, Archduke, 3, 156, 159, 161, Schumann, Clara Wieck, 212, 223
184, 218, 237–38 Schumann, Robert, 9, 13, 158, 212, 218
Rumph, Stephen, 201–02 Fantasy in C major op. 17: 212
Russo, Ann Maria, 360n Piano Concerto in A minor op. 54: 158
Schuppanzigh, Ignaz, 32, 236, 317, 360
Said, Edward W., 124 Scott, Marion, 132
Salieri, Antonio, 16, 48 Sessions, Roger, 362
Schelling, Friedrich, 7–9, 299 Seyfried, Ignaz von, 116
System of Transcendental Idealism, 7 Shakespeare, William, 5, 64, 157, 162,
Schenk, Johann, 34 303
Schenker, Heinrich, 254–58, 263, 296 Hamlet, 157
Scherf, Horst, 246 Macbeth, 157
Schering, Arnold, 5–6 Romeo and Juliet, 64, 106
Schikaneder, Emanuel, 115 Simrock, Nikolaus, 19, 33
Schiller, Charlotte, 15 Socrates, 300, 302
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 3–4, Solomon, Maynard, 6, 14, 19–20, 71,
6–9, 11–12, 14–15, 56–57, 121, 123– 93–94, 168, 176, 184, 190, 197–98,
24, 155, 162, 169, 265–66, 264–66, 265, 306, 341
290–91, 299, 302–03, 307, 355 Sonnleithner, Joseph von, 116
Aesthetic Letters, 7, 11, 14–15, 265–66, Spohr, Ludwig, 123n, 193
276–77 Stadler, Abbé Maximilian, 181, 359, 364
An die Freude (“Ode to Joy”), 14–15, Staehelin, Martin, 184n
121, 155, 264–66, 290–91, 302–03, Starke, Friedrich, 239
307 Steibelt, Daniel, 48
414 general index
Steiner, Sigmund Anton, 246 Trémont, Baron de, 158
Sterne, Laurence, 43, 235, 359–60 Tyson, Alan, 94, 132, 109n, 158, 221
Strauss, Johann, 9–10
Streicher, Andreas, 190 Uhde, Jürgen, 13n, 86, 112, 159, 222, 232
Streicher, Nanette, 190, 222–23 Ulibischeff, Alexander, 105, 150
structuralist analysis, limitations of, 6, 14 Unger, Max, 168
Sturm, Christoph Christian, 8 unity, artistic, 13, 148–53, 325–30,
Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), 42, 56 346–48, 367
sublime, aesthetic of the, 8–10, 92, 109,
124, 134, 190, 243, 251, 257–65, Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August, 176
275–78, 285–86, 304–07, 312–14, Vienna, 5, 16, 198, 246; Pls, 5, 9
341 Viganò, Salvatore, 94, 95
Sullivan, J. W. N., 356 Vitercik, Greg, 326
Süssmayr, Franz X., 48 Vjaskova, Elena, 334
Swieten, Baron Gottfried van, 18, 32, 279
Syer, Katherine, 94 Wagner, Richard, 5, 7, 9, 144, 176, 218,
symbolism, musical, 4, 5–6, 10–11, 15, 31, 304
95–106, 117–18, 122–31, 147–48, Parsifal, 7
150–54, 163, 170–71, 194–96, 219, Tristan und Isolde, 120–21
236, 263–65, 266–79, 304–07, Wähner, Friedrich, 276
310–13, 364–66 Walden, Edward C., 169n
synthesis of the rational and sensuous, Waldstein, Count Ferdinand, 16, 18, 69
7–8, 14–15, 73, 169–70, 302–03, Wallace, Robin, 176n
367–68 Warrack, John, 48
Watteau, Antoine, 9
Tarnas, Richard, 289n Wawruch, Dr. Andreas, 358
Tellenbach, Marie-Elisabeth, 183n Weber, Carl Maria von, 176, 222
Temesvár (Timisoara), 23, 24 Webern, Anton, 287
Teplitz, 176, 360 Wegeler, Franz, 18, 23, 69, 71
Thayer, Alexander Wheelock, 193, 210 Weigl, Joseph, 48
Thompson, Randall, 172 Weimar, 14, 16, 169
Thomson, George, 221 Weissenbach, Alois, 198
Tiedge, Christoph August, 121, 155, 176 Welsch, Wolfgang, 10n, 191–92
Tolstoy, Leo, 107 Wieck, Clara, 212
Tomaschek, Wenzel Johann, 193 Wieland, Renate, 13n
Tovey, Donald Francis, 48, 83, 109, 111, Wiener Neustadt, 247
249, 275, 351 Wiener Zeitschrift, 266n
tragic character in music, 10, 44, 45–46, Wiener Zeitung, 198
56–57, 64, 81, 82, 100–01, 109–13, Winkelmann, Johann Joachim, 9
144–45, 229, 251, 289–90, 296, Winter, Peter von, 48
325–28, 330, 355 Winter, Robert, 292, 303, 350n, 356
transformation in music, 104, 233,
243–45, 254–64, 303, 330, 351 Zmeskall, Baron Nikolaus von Domanovecz,
Treitschke, Georg Friedrich, 73, 155n, 202 32–33, 104n, 171, 174, 190, 224

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Oxford New York

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States of America

Selected Bibliography 371

Between pages 189 and 190

Figure 1. The disposition of characters in Fidelio 117

Example 1. Joseph Cantata WoO 87 26

Example 61. Piano Sonata op. 90 203

Thayer-Forbes, pp. 741–42.

in Chytry, The Aesthetic State, pp. 81, 82.

4 Richard Kramer, “Ambiguities in La Malinconia,” p. 29.

5 Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, vol. 1, p. 235.

7 Cf. Chytry, The Aesthetic State, p. 82.

The dictum characterizes nature as inﬁnite, timeless and beyond comprehension,

12 Beethoven, pp. 108–9, 198.

Freude, Tochter aus Elysium!

Joy, daughter from Elysium!

Chytry, “Ultimately, Schiller’s praxis conﬁrms the implicitly pessimistic conclu-

R The Bonn Years

4 Einführung in die musikalische Formenlehre (Vienna, 1968).

Before we consider Beethoven’s intimate family constellation, it is essential to

[A full heart makes but little sound;

Ex. 2 Fidelio, Act II, no. 11

phrases, reﬂects the venerable practice of word-painting motivated in the text by

RThe Path to Mastery:

Ex. 4 Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1/I

incorporated a dance-like Allegro with Minore as the penultimate movement, a

5 Nottebohm transcribed the sketch in Zweite Beethoveniana, p. 565.

Ex. 5 Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1/I

Ex. 6 Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1/I, bars 42–60

Ex. 8 Piano Sonata op. 2 no. 1/I

6 “1794–95: Decisive Years in Beethoven’s Early Development,” p. 26.

Ex. 11 Piano Sonata op. 10 no. 1/III

Ex. 13 Piano Sonata op. 10 no. 3/I

19 “Wirkungen Beethovens in der Kammermusik,” in Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammer-

varied throughout the movement. Beethoven’s strategy is to bring this tension to

ter. In his C minor pieces, unlike Mozart’s, resignation is typically supplanted by a

Ex. 19 Pathétique Sonata op. 13/III, bars 73–107

R Crisis and Creativity:

“Pragmatic instead of Enigmatic: ‘The Fifty-First Sonata’ of Beethoven,” The Beethoven

ven’s String Quartet in C minor, Opus 18 No. 4,” p. 116.

Ex. 20 String Quartet op. 18 no. 4/I, bars 76–96

11 The Beethoven Quartets, p. 64.

And to Amenda he conﬁded:

We are now in a position to gain new perspective on Beethoven’s creative

We shall return to the subject of Beethoven’s compositional process in connec-

16 Cited in Solomon, “Beethoven’s Creative Process: A Two-Part Invention,” Beethoven

Ex. 22 Piano Concerto no. 3 op. 37/I, bars 469–82

20 A Companion to Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, p. 115.

Ex. 26 Piano Sonata op. 31 no. 2/I

c. recapitulation, bars 142–48

24 Beethovens Klaviermusik, iii, pp. 78–79.

Ex. 27 Piano Sonata op. 31 no. 3/II, bars 97–107

25 Anderson, vol. 1, L. 62.

ble; it once again illustrates Beethoven’s strong attraction to puns, a matter to

Ex. 30 Eroica Symphony op. 55/I

following triadic turning ﬁgure, the melody descends to a mysterious, low C ,

Ex. 31 Eroica Symphony op. 55/I, bars 272–92

19 These parallels are explored in my essay “Transformational Processes in Beethoven’s