Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (162 page)

43. The connection of sexuality and the
Kreutzer
reached a climax in Tolstoy's 1889 novella
The Kreutzer Sonata
, in which playing the piece incites a woman pianist and a male violinist to a fatal adulterous liaison. In turn, the novella inspired the kitschy but famous 1901 painting
Kreutzer Sonata
, by René François Xavier Prinet, which shows a male violinist impulsively seizing a young female from the piano in an embrace.

44. F. G. E., “George P. Bridgetower,” 306.

45. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 99.

46. Schwartz, “French Violin School,” 440.

47. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 73.

48. Wegeler/Ries, 81–82.

49. Skowroneck, “Keyboard Instruments,” 177, and “Beethoven's Erard Piano,” 523–27. Beethoven's Érard (which still exists) has four pedals: una corda, dampers, and the extra stops known as a lute and a moderator. Its action was similar to the British Broadwood. Newman, in “Beethoven's Pianos,” 488, notes that Beethoven was eventually dissatisfied with the heavier British-style action of the Érard. In 1805, piano maker Johann Andreas Streicher reported in a letter, “Beethoven certainly is a strong pianist, yet up to now he still is not able properly to manage his fortepiano received from Érard in Paris [based on English models], and has already had [the action] changed twice without making it the least bit better, since the construction of the same does not allow a different mechanism” (quoted in Newman, 498). Skowroneck, in
Beethoven the Pianist
, 86 (more recent than his articles), says there is evidence that the Érard was not a gift but Beethoven simply never paid for it. However, later Beethoven described the Érard in a letter as “a souvenir such as no one here has so far honored me with,” which does imply it was a gift. Skowroneck says that the British and French pianos of the time were so close in sound that he considers them one tradition. I have referred to the “evolution” of the piano in this era, but Michael Frederick of the Frederick Collection noted in an interview that the reality in Beethoven's day was no unified evolution but a welter of makers and regions, each with its own style and innovations. The dominance in the modern era of one maker and style, Steinway, is a recent development in the history of the piano, and one some people are not happy with.

50. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 67.

51. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 81.

52. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 70. Carl's term is
Mist
, which is essentially “dung.”

53. Ibid., no. 65.

54. Dalhaus,
Ludwig van Beethoven
, 22.

55. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Studies
, 135.

 

17. Heaven and Earth Will Tremble

 

1. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Studies
, 135–43. The sketchbook with work on opp. 34 and 35 and sketches toward the
Eroica
is called the “Wielhorsky.” The sketchbook with most of the work on the symphony is called “Landesberg 6” or
Eroica
.

2. Thayer/Forbes, 1:335.

3. The eighteenth-century view of music as a kind of rational discourse is the main subject of Mark Evan Bonds's
Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration
.

4. Hegel, quoted in Lockwood, “Beethoven's
Leonore
and
Fidelio
,” 479.

5. Sipe,
Beethoven
, 44.

6. Ibid., 46.

7. Napoleon Bonaparte, quoted in Marek,
Beethoven
, 190.

8. The idea that Napoleon was a product of the Enlightenment was not a myth. He had studied Rousseau, Voltaire, and the other philosophes. But his ambition and his cynicism far outrode his commitment to progressive philosophy.

9. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 67.

10. See B. Cooper,
Creative Process
, 99. To summarize Beethoven's terminology, as seen in sketches, for the parts of what was later named “sonata form”:
first part
, exposition;
second part
, development and recapitulation;
Durchführung
, development;
Thema
, first theme;
mitte Gedanke
(“middle ideas”), second/subsidiary theme(s);
da capo
, recapitulation;
Schluss
or
coda
, coda. (I translate some terms and not others because the terms
Thema
[“
the
theme”] and
Durchführung
[“working-out”] have broader implications.) In recent times there has been a long debate as to whether sonata form is “really” binary or ternary. Clearly Beethoven saw it as binary: first part and second part. I am in the camp that sees the form as a joining of binary and ternary: exposition repeated, development, recapitulation (and in earlier sonata forms and a few of Beethoven's, the development and recapitulation are repeated as well).

11. My ongoing point is that while Beethoven and his time composed in terms of what we call sonata form and the other received formal outlines, the fundamental conception of a work was something other than that, beyond the intention of writing one more piece in sonata form. The conception was a dramatic or characteristic or metaphorical idea, or a broader musical one, to which the received form had to be shaped. The
conception
, the
idea
, comes first, then is mapped into a form as one composes the exposition, then the development, and so on. In the process the idea inflects the form, sometimes bending it almost beyond recognition. Now and then, as in three movements of the
Eroica
and in the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven was driven by the nature of his ideas to create virtually new, ad hoc forms.

12. In relation to Beethoven's creative process, I'm echoing some ideas of David Galenson, who proposes that geniuses (I would suggest most creative artists, genius or not) are what I call either planners or flounderers. Galenson's models are Picasso, a planner who started with a strong conception of what he was after in a painting, and Matisse, who floundered until he found a path. Both types can produce splendid work, but the planners tend to work faster and more confidently, and to mature earlier. (See Gladwell, “Late Bloomers.”) I consider Beethoven the model of a planner, more of a conscious craftsman than most artists, and it is in those terms that I analyze his creative process. This is not to say, however, that there was not a good measure of floundering in his process, in some works more floundering and in some less. Some things simply take longer to ferment than others.

13. Some variations, including Bach's
Goldbergs
, are founded on the bass line of the theme, but it is not put forth nakedly, as Beethoven does in the
Prometheus
Variations and
Eroica
. As is reflected in the labels on the piano variations, Beethoven probably considered the
englische
tune the
Thema
proper of the finale. But in practice the bass line serves as the theme of the finale and underlies the whole symphony, so here I call it the main theme.

14. The pages are cited in Lockwood, “Earliest Sketches,” 138–39, a classic sketch study.

15. To summarize the leading motifs of the
Eroica
, all exposed on its first page and more or less in order of importance: a triad, a chromatic slide, a C-sharp/D-flat “sore note,” the G–A-flat pair. An important element is the contrast of the metrically regular “Hero” theme in mm. 3–6 and the pulse- and meter-erasing violin syncopations of mm. 7–8. The meter does not regain its footing until mm. 11–12. Clear meter and challenged meter will be a theme throughout the movement.

16. The harmony above the “sore” C-sharp on the first page is designed to be as ambiguous as a chord can get. It is spelled C-sharp–G–B-flat, constituting either an incomplete C-sharp 07 chord or a German sixth of iii without a root. In fact it functions as the latter, resolving to a iii 6/4 chord, G minor. In the recapitulation, the same ambiguous chord will resolve differently, more as if the C-sharp were D-flat, but still not conventionally: to a C7 moving to F major. It's worth noting that there is a similar effect, with the same pitch, in the beginning of Haydn's late Sonata No. 62 in E-flat: a D-flat in the first bar that, as in the
Eroica
, throws the harmony into a tizzy and resonates throughout the piece. The “sore note” is one more device that Beethoven may have learned from Haydn, in person or through his music. Remarkably often, the sore note is D-flat/C-sharp—see the Eighth Symphony.

17. Nottebohm,
Two Beethoven Sketchbooks
, 52.

18. Dahlhaus,
Ludwig van
Beethoven:
“The thematic configuration of the first movement of the
Eroica
is not ‘given' anywhere, in the sense of a text set out for commentary; instead, it is entirely absorbed into the process for which it provides the substance” (175). He also notes that even at the end of the first movement, “the theme never appears in a ‘real' or ‘definitive' Gestalt.” As I put it, the Hero is protean, always evolving. The new theme in the development is integrative but still not final.

19. I call the exposition development-like in its restlessness and in the fragmentary quality of its themes; at the same time it is like an exposition in being relatively stable harmonically: once it modulates to B-flat at the (veiled) second theme in m. 57, it essentially stays there.

20. Some might say that Beethoven's technique in regard to the varied handling of formal models might be true of him but not of Haydn and Mozart, who were more or less filling up assumed forms with material. I believe Haydn and Mozart
were
working in each piece (at least in their mature and more ambitious ones) with ideas particular to the piece, just as Beethoven was. Haydn's handling of sonata form in particular can be remarkably free (see the Sonata No. 62 in E-flat and the
Quinten
Quartet first movements). But in this too Beethoven pursued that idea
more
than his predecessors. He wanted to make works that were more strongly marked and individual than those of Haydn and Mozart, ones that generated and justified their forms from within—even when his form was closer to convention than some of Haydn's.

21. Marek,
Beethoven
, 188, notes that in 1795 Franz Wegeler turned Beethoven's line “Who is a free man?” with his friend's permission, into “What is the goal of a Mason?” with Wegeler's own text. The tone of the music and the sentiments of the original text were suitable for that.

22. In “The Compositional Act” (38–39) Barry Cooper notes that in Beethoven's mature sketches a given series of continuity drafts tend to get closer and closer to the final version, though there is some backtracking. Meanwhile it is usually not possible to trace the full development of a piece or movement because there are sketches missing. The sketches and drafts for the
Eroica
are unusually complete, but some are still missing—for example, most of the ones, if there were any, where Beethoven derived the opening Hero theme from the
englische
bass of the finale. There was also a great deal of work done at the keyboard and in his head, and never written down.

23. Nottebohm,
Two Beethoven
Sketchbooks
, 62. As Nottebohm details (63–67), Beethoven struggled to base the closing section of the exposition mainly on the Hero theme but finally decided that would weaken its presence in the development (which by that point he was already working on). Finally he settled on a new chromatic motif (echoing the chromatic part of the Hero theme) and a brief touch of the triadic motif just before the development. Most of the ideas in this chapter regarding structure and logic are mine, but they form an ongoing dialogue with the
Eroica
chapter in Nottebohm's classic essay “A Sketchbook of 1803.” Nottebohm's study is pioneering and irreplaceable, but it has a well-known bias: from the welter of sketches for a work Nottebohm picks examples to fit his conception that the completion of a work had a steady evolution from rough to middling to finished. Lockwood and others have shown that Beethoven's process was not nearly so methodical and straight line. Some final manuscripts were still involved in floundering and sketching, and some of the most striking ideas in works came at the last minute. Behind the whole of this chapter is the reality that creating a work from the inside is a murkier and more fraught process than contemplating the finished work from the outside. Even for a supreme craftsman like Beethoven, much of the process of composing a work is a congeries of vague, unpolished, unfocused elements constantly threatening to fall apart.

24. As I say in the text, I think in the exposition Beethoven deliberately obscures the arrival of the second theme proper. The “real” second theme of the
Eroica
first movement has been a matter of long debate, not surprising given that Beethoven preceded it with twelve bars of transition (from m. 45) over a dominant (of B-flat) pedal, a moment that sounds less like a transition than like a theme, and a notably dancelike one. I call it theme 1B. It transitions into what I call the second theme proper at m. 57. In the exposition I call m. 57 the “proper” second theme partly because it is in the right key (B-flat, dominant) and in the right place in the exposition. As further evidence, the first continuity draft of the exposition (cited in the text, from Nottebohm) shows more clearly than the final version that this B-flat theme is intended as the beginning of the second-theme section (as Nottebohm calls it). What some scholars call the second theme, at m. 83, does not appear in that first long draft at all. But as I say, the clear arrival of the second-theme section is not the point; its
obscure
arrival is the point. Beethoven is looking for something different from the usual relatively lucid Classical exposition. He wants a constant dynamic flux with no clear signposts or points of arrival—that is, an effect more like a development. In general I'd say that the proliferation of themes and the ambiguity of the second theme's arrival are the main elements that make this exposition harder to follow than most. Still, despite how variegated the exposition is, when the key of B-flat arrives, it largely stays. In other words, the key layout of the exposition is conventional, but the way it is articulated and filled out with a plethora of themes and blurred boundaries is unusual and development-like. This is particularly true of the treatment of
das Thema
, which is handled developmentally from the beginning. The antiphonal theme 1B at m. 45, incidentally, is based on, and prophetic of, the
englische
theme of the finale—it has its lilting dotted rhythm and general outline, a series of descending three-note figures. (In the first movement, that theme displaces the sense of downbeat to the second beat of the measure.) Also incidentally, the end of the
Prometheus
bass, the cadential hook figures F–D–E-flat and E-flat–A–B-flat, is echoed a number of times in the first movement, starting with what I call theme 2B at m. 65. For another example, as said in the text, the trochaic figure of the Hero theme is like a 3/4 version of the
englische
rhythm. As often in Beethoven, these connections are more a matter of shape and/or rhythm than of intervals—but in all cases it is a figure he emphasizes. To summarize, the first movement is rich in motivic derivations from both the
Prometheus
bass and the
englische
tune, both melodically and rhythmically.