Last Sunday my friend Rachel and I were lucky enough to see the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Manze at the George Mason University Center for the Arts. The performance centered on Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, Eroica, but the full symphony was not performed until after the intermission. Instead, M. Manze and the talented orchestra first introduced the audience to Beethoven and his muses.
>The evening began with Mozart's Overture to the Magic Flute. Beethoven arrived in Vienna, Austria (M. Manze seemed amused that this performance took place in Vienna, Virginia) in 1792. Mozart had died the previous year, but his opera, The Magic Flute, was still widely played. Beethoven had hoped to study with Mozart, but instead, studied with several other composers.
He also had to work for a living. Many rising composers did side work writing dance music for Vienna's many balls. They weren't recognized for their work, as it was considered background music, but it did help pay the bills. For Beethoven, it was also a source of inspiration.
The second piece performed was a modest Contredanse. As Manze wrote in the program notes:
What particularly appealed to Beethoven about this lowly dance form was that it knew no social barriers. Anybody could partake in a Contredanse. Prince danced alongside pauper, servant with master. It chimed with Beethoven's instinctive adherence to the Liberte-egalite-fraternite ideals of the French Revolutions - and his interested in Napoleon (1769-1821). Beethoven was a huger admierer of Napoleon, the outsider (from the island of Corsica) of relatively low social origin who had become primus inter pares of France's ruling class through his skill as a military general, a politician, and a constitutional reformer.
While Beethoven was still struggling, one of the masters he took up with was Haydn, who had been a friend of Mozart and was emerging as his successor. He had just returned from extensive in England, which seems to have led him to use folk music as the backbone for most of his later work. Haydn may have been the impetus for Beethoven's use of the Contredanse to end his ballet, Prometheus, which helped make him famous.
Haydn, now a wealthy man, nearing the end of his career, was able to stretch himself musically. As M. Manze put it: 'Haydn opened the door that no one knew existed.
To illustrate this, the third piece of the night was the Prelude to the Creation; Die Vorstellung des Chaos (The Representation of Chaos), an overture in C minor in slow tempo, written in sonata form. It is beautiful.
This is the moment before the Creation, and the music depicts the void trembling on the edge of genesis. I could almost see the inky blackness hunching and bunching, as if in the midst of labor pains. It bends and folds, grows thin, at times almost translucent, hinting at the existence to be had. But nothing appears. The air shivers with power, but the audience must wait until the next movement, No. 1. Im Anfange schuf Gott Himmel und Erde (In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth), for relief from the building anticipation.
Now, finally, Manze and the orchestra give us a taste of Eroica, but just a taste, since the second half of the performance will comprise solely of the symphony. For now, M. Manze wants to introduce the musical revolution, begun by Haydn when he opened the door, realized by Beethoven who steps through the door.
Manze has this to say about Eroica:
Beethoven's third symphony is indisputably one of the greatest and most important symphonies ever written. Its composition followed a year of crisis for the thirty-two year old composer. Faced with inevitable deafness and plagued by depression, he wrote the so-called 'Hiligenstadt Testament'. This letter, addressed to his brothers but never sent, was discovered after his
death. It shows Beethoven contemplating suicide and describes the moment he chose heroism over cowardice: "The only thing that held me back was my art." Soon he was talking of a new way" "I am not happy with my works so far. Henceforth I shall take a new path." One year later, Eroica shows him on that path... Beethoven presented his fully formed genius to the public's gaze for the first time.
By offering a sample of Eroica, Manze is able to segue into the final piece before the intermission. I wish I could say definitively what it was, but Manze spoke too quickly for me to catch the German name. I want to say that the name begins 'Ein', but he was little known, so Google gives me no leads. The symphony might have been titled 'Symphony for the End of Time,' or that might have simply Manze's description. It is not mentioned at all in the program, but it was also powerful, and vibrantly demonstrated the shift in musical composition following the premiere of Eroica. Music was no longer intended simply to 'edify, amuse and transport' the audience, but rather to challenge and discomfort them.
But finally, the time comes for Eroica. I'm sorely tempted to quote the rest of program, as it really is illuminating, and Manze knows the material far better than I.
Eroica contains four movements. The first sounds like a battle, the second is a funeral march, and the third is a celebration. The central theme of the finale is Beethoven's Contredanse, at it is played as a fugue. Fugues are a technique whereby the composer allows one section, or voice, to develop a theme, and then moves it throughout the orchestra, as each section develops it in turn. In Manze's phrasing, this is the 'democratization' of the orchestra, as most sections are allowed to to play the theme. While Beethoven didn't develop the fugue, or even make it popular (the Baroque composers did that), he use it to enhance the politics of his message.
The total effect of Eroica is an exploration of democracy and the equality of humanity. Beethoven believed in great men, certainly (Eroica means 'hero', and the symphony was originally named for Napoleon), but it was their actions and inner qualities that made them great, not their birth or social status. We are all equal in battle, death and joy, and it is only by acting heroically that we are able to distinquish ourselves. Perhaps I should say instead, we all enter these states equally, or we are made equal in our common experience of these states, but we do not leave them equally. Battle, Death, and Joy provide the moments that allow the meritous to rise.
Perhaps this seems like a non sequitor, but Eroica reminded me of Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden Party", in limited respects. Mansfield's work also deals with death, and joy, or at least amusement, but ends differently. Laura, the central character, begins her day drawn to the workmen setting up the marqee for her mother's party, admiring their humor, their cheer, their physique (p. 61). She asks herself 'Why couldn't she have workmen for her friends rather than the silly boys she danced with and who came to Sunday night supper? She would get on much better with men like these' (p. 62) She decides that she rejects class distinctions, and so takes a big bite of her bread-and-butter, feeling 'just like a work girl' (p. 63).
When she hears that a workman man living in the hovels down the road has been killed in an accident, she attempts to stop the party. However, her mother, matriarch of the family and keeper of the family fortunes (and status) intends to initiate Laura into the requirements of her class.
She is dressed appropriately and then helps act as host for the party, welcoming and then bidding the guests good night. At the end of the night, Laura attempts to reestablish some feeling of common humanity with the workman's family, so her mother indulges her by allowing her to bring leftover sandwiches from the party as a condolence gift. Laura dutifully decends the hill, still dressed in her party finery, only to discover that the world of the poor is a scary place (p. 79). It is dark, and unfamiliar. In How to Read Like a Professor, Foster describes this as a decent into hell, much like Orpheus. But instead of recognizing the commonality of death, Laura flees (p. 82). Her class, and the comforting presence of her old brother, allow her to so, this time. Eventually, however, all who enter, stay, in the underworld.
Beethoven has no such illusions - death is inevitable. However, he also seems to believe in the power of action, and of art. The lesson of the Contredanse is that 'art makes us free, equal, fraternal, immortal, heroic.'
Manze ends his program thus: 'As Mendelssohn reminds us: "The thoughts which are expresse... by music... are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite." Beethoven was a composer who was able to take powerful, subversive ideas, and not only express them, but revolutionize our understanding of, and interaction with, music. In another art form, he could have been a Shakespeare, or a Picasso. I've long enjoyed his music, and Eroica has only served to deepen my admiration and sense of wonder.
- M
Read more
