Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (172 page)

The
Hammerklavier
and other late Beethoven works remind me of a survey exhibition of Cézanne I once saw. It struck me that the painter's mature work, a precursor of cubism, was pictures of things built up from rectangles made with up-and-down squiggles of the brush. In the late paintings those squiggles grew broader and rougher, to the point that the painting became less
a picture of something made with particular strokes of the brush
than
strokes of the brush suggesting a picture of something
. In other words, what had once been a characteristic gesture making up a figurative painting had become, to some degree, the substance of the painting itself. In the
Hammerklavier
the kinds of small gestures—themes, motifs, chains of thirds—that Beethoven had always used to build pieces have become so pervasive at every level that they are no longer
a means of helping achieve
logic and unity
but rather
the substance of the logic and unity
. (For example, the openings of the first movement and finale of the
Kreutzer
Sonata are based on a motif of chains of thirds, and they appear in the second movement; but they are not constantly present, not the overall substance of the music.)

40. As Rosen says in
Beethoven's Piano Sonatas
, the
Hammerklavier
was conceived as “an act of violence that sought paradoxically to reconquer a tradition in a time of revolution by making it radically new” (220). To add my own term, here again we find Beethoven not as a revolutionary but as a radical evolutionary.

41. Rosen in
Classical Style
shows that the main theme of the slow movement is also based on a scaffolding of descending thirds. The main secondary key is D major, a third down from F-sharp, though there are also the magical moments of G major.

42. As Rosen points out in
Beethoven's Piano Sonatas
, 225, modern pianos do not have an
una corda
but only a two-string soft pedal, which does not achieve the intimacy of Beethoven's one-string pedal—though that effect might not project in a large modern concert hall.

43. Ibid., 227.

44. I find that Kinderman makes the same point about the introduction of the finale “rejecting” Bach-style counterpoint: the past is “transcended by the creation of a new contrapuntal idiom embodied in the revolutionary fugal finale of the sonata” (
Beethoven
, 207). Here is music that queries music. That in turn leads to Karl Dahlhaus's idea that late Beethoven has become “music about music,” an idea that will come up in the text in due course.

45. Solomon,
Late Beethoven
, 99.

46. Ibid., 101.

47. Rosen,
Beethoven's Piano
Sonatas
, 227.

48. After writing my own thoughts about the piece, I discover I've echoed or half-remembered Drake's summation in
Beethoven Sonatas
, 278.

49. Czerny,
Proper Performance
, 9. Czerny's lines about Beethoven being limited in his composing when he was completely deaf should be tempered by Czerny's ambivalence toward the late music, of which he wrote, “Considering his deafness, his last works are perhaps his most admirable, but they are by no means the most worthy of emulation.”

50. Nohl,
Unrequited Love
, 189. I've substituted Thayer's translation “he's ashamed of me” for the incorrect translation from Nohl, “he makes me ashamed.”

51. Thayer/Forbes, 2:706.

52. Sterba and Sterba,
Beethoven and His
Nephew
, 142–43.

53. Thayer/Forbes, 2:710–11.

54. Ibid., 2:712.

55. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 268.

56. Beethoven,
Konversationshefte
, 1:179.

57. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 374. This is part of Solomon's elaborate thesis of a “nobility pretence” that Beethoven sustained until it was shot down by the Landrecht in the 1818 hearing.

58. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 933.

59. Kagan,
Archduke
Rudolph
, 76–77.

60. Ibid., 106–8.

61. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 937.

62. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 198.

63. Beethoven's February 1819 statement to the Magistrat is in Anderson, vol. 3, nos. 1374–80.

64. Hotschevar's statement is in Sterba and Sterba,
Beethoven and His Nephew
, 313–19.

65. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 170–71. Remarkably, after Beethoven died, Hotschevar served for a while as Karl's guardian.

66. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 256.

67. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 403.

68. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 273–74.

69. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 950.

70. Nohl,
Unrequited Love
, 195–96.

71. Thayer/Forbes, 2:732.

72. Ibid., 2:726–28.

73. Knight,
Beethoven
, 128.

74. Ibid., 130.

75. Sterba and Sterba,
Beethoven and His Nephew
, 78.

76. Joseph Blöchlinger, quoted in ibid., 189.

77. Ibid., 197–98.

78. Ibid., 199.

79. Solomon, “Beethoven and His Nephew,” in
Beethoven
Essays
, 145.

80. Wyn Jones,
Life of Beethoven
, 139.

81. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 391.

82. Drabkin,
Beethoven
, 12.

83. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 956.

84. Ibid., no. 955.

85. Thayer/Forbes, 2:739.

86. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 959.

87. Ibid., no. 960.

88. Ibid., no. 975.

89. Thayer/Forbes, 2:742.

90. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 276.

91. Thayer/Forbes, 2:750.

92. Ibid., 2:752.

93. Nohl,
Unrequited Love
, 200–201.

 

29. The Sky Above, the Law Within

 

1. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 275.

2. Kirkendale, “New Roads,” 700–701.

3. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 181–82.

4. Ibid., 37.

5. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 334–39.

6. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 110.

7. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 270.

8. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 334.

9. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 939.

10. Ibid., no. 1019.

11. Ibid., no. 1062.

12. Comini,
Changing Image
, 46–47.

13. Thayer/Forbes, 2:759.

14. Knight,
Beethoven
, 136.

15. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 278.

16. Ibid., no. 271.

17. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1051.

18. Ibid., no. 1041.

19. Thayer/Forbes, 2:775.

20. Ibid., 2:777–78.

21. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 355.

22. Landon,
Beethoven
, 177–79.

23. Friedrich Rochlitz, quoted in M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 47–48. Solomon (
Beethoven
) has cast doubt on whether Rochlitz met Beethoven as frequently as he claimed, or even at all, making Rochlitz another in the string of people who made fraudulent reports of their connection to Beethoven. Clive (
Beethoven and His World
), in his entry on Rochlitz, challenges Solomon's speculation. I find Rochlitz's observations astute and convincing in themselves—they are not a romanticized assemblage of common observations.

24. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 346.

25. Thayer/Forbes, 2:803.

26. Stendhal,
New York Times
, June 3, 2011, p. 16.

27. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 48.

28. Thayer/Forbes, 2:805.

29. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 292–93. One could argue that Beethoven's advice to Rossini to stick to comic opera was in fact a put-down, since Beethoven did not take comic opera seriously. At the same time, however, Beethoven was certainly right that comedy was Rossini's forte, the main thing in his work that would endure.

30. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 286.

31. Kinderman,
Beethoven
, 218; ibid., 279–80.

32. A look at the openings of all the movements of op. 109 shows how the themes rise from the third motif, rising and falling. For all its artless simplicity of effect, the opening theme outlines an intricate structure of voice leading in four parts.

33. The sarabande was a Baroque dance form that in Germany by the nineteenth century had become a slow, usually solemn dance in 3/4, with a characteristic emphasis, as in the op. 109 finale, on a dotted second beat.

34. Kinderman,
Beethoven
, 233.

35. The poet is T. S. Eliot, in
The Four Quartets
. The finale of the E Major Sonata ends with a descent from B to G-sharp, reversing the order of the first two notes in the piece in a cadential way—except that this cadence has the third in the soprano and moreover ends with the cadence to the tonic on the third beat. It is the gentlest, most unobtrusive ending imaginable. Of the last three sonatas, only op. 110 ends with the usual perfect authentic cadence, loud and on a downbeat.

36. The essence of the opening theme of op. 110 is two descending thirds joined by a step, C–A-flat–D-flat–B-flat—the same shape as the Fifth Symphony motif except the middle step moves hopefully upward rather than fatalistically downward. In the finale of op. 110 that down-up-down idea becomes the fugue theme. Meanwhile at the beginning the bass inverts the four-note motif, foreshadowing the inversion of the theme in the middle of the finale. Here is one of many examples in the late music in which all the lines, including the bass, tend more than ever to be contrapuntal and saturated with the leading motifs. Another steady connection of the themes in the sonata is that they involve the compass of a sixth—evolving slowly in the opening theme, more directly in the “I'm a slob” tune of the second movement. Beethoven did not throw ideas into a piece casually, even when, as here, they were quoted tunes done partly as a joke.

37. The middle of the introduction has a series of high A's joined with ties, with an indication to change fingers. This is the
Bebung
effect, which is associated with the clavichord: since a key on a clavichord is directly connected to the hammer, one can press on the key to make a vibrato-like pulsation while the hammer rests on the string. A piano cannot do that. See the “Piano Forum” of Piano Street, at
http://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=26006.0
, for pianists' ideas on how a player can approximate the
Bebung
, which was also used by Chopin. Rosen (
Beethoven's Piano Sonatas
, 238) calls the
Bebung
in op. 110 “the representation of a cry of pain.”

38. Rosen,
Beethoven's Piano
Sonatas
, 240.

39. The fugue theme of op. 110 gets the usual Beethoven treatment of stretto, augmentation, and diminution. One commentator has said that older fugues might use one or two of these devices, but Beethoven rarely seems to consider a fugue complete until he has used all of them. Kinderman (
Beethoven
, 230) notes that the double diminution of the fugue subject from m. 165 distinctly recalls the “I'm a slob” tune from movement 2.

40. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 389.

41. Nottebohm points out that the op. 111 fugue theme, remarkably enough, appears in a sketch of 1801, perhaps intended for a violin sonata.

42. The final piano sonatas complete Beethoven's long development of the idea of a trill, from its Baroque function as a simple ornament, to a motif, to a pervasive presence that is at once a color, a texture, and an evocation of divine radiance.

43. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1078.

44. Thayer/Forbes, 2:809.

45. Knight,
Beethoven
, 148.

46. Thayer/Forbes, 2:796–97.

47. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 298.

48. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 294.

49. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1074.

50. Albrecht, vol. 2, nos. 286, 290.

51. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1083.

52. Thayer/Forbes, 2:813–14.

53. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 303.

54. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1095.

55. Thayer/Forbes, 2:786; B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 304.

56. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1093.

57. Ibid., no. 1106.

58. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 313.

59. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 303.

60. M. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 7.

61. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1097. Clive (
Beethoven and His World
) casts some doubt on whether Sontag was one of the singers who visited Beethoven then.

62. Sachs,
Ninth
, 20.

63. Thayer/Forbes, 2:807.

64. Daschner,
Musik für die Bühne
, 224.

65. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 312.

66. Marek,
Beethoven
, 484.

67. Hill,
Ferdinand Ries
, 45.

68. Thayer/Forbes, 2:858n78.

69. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 404.

70. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 1084.

71. Ibid., no. 1086.

72. Ibid., no. 1087.

73. Albrecht, vol. 2, no. 299.

74. Kerman,
Beethoven Quartets
, 223–24.

75. Thayer/Forbes, 2:834.

76. Ibid., 2:811–12. Toward the end of Schröder-Devrient's long and illustrious career she created roles in Wagner operas including Venus in
Tannhäuser
.

77. Senner,
Critical Reception
, vol. 1, nos. 54–55.

78. Thayer/Forbes, 2:838–39.

79. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1136.

80. Thayer/Forbes, 2:827.

81. Anderson, vol. 3, nos. 1135, 1161.

82. Thayer/Forbes, 2:829.

83. Anderson, vol. 3, no. 1145.

84. Ibid., no. 1162.

85. Ibid., no. 1169.