19thC Orchestral and Chamber Music

There’s a certain amount of irony about trying to say something meaningful about 19thC orchestral in a single paragraph, given the monumentality of these pieces by the end of the 19thC. It’s no wonder these massive public works form the bulk of our North American concert and radio broadcast programming. The sound envelops you and can penetrate to your core, if you let it. If you want to understand the aesthetic of the sublime, play in the orchestra or sing in the choir for a performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony. The number of musicians required to perform pieces like that symphony could make the contractor of a typical North American symphony orchestra pale. I suppose the prohibitive cost of performing these pieces explains why they’re generally reserved for special occasions: beginnings and ends of seasons or anniversary concerts. This year, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is doing Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand at the end of their seasons. An orchestra in a delicate financial situation, such as our own Orchestra London can’t really afford to perform these works very often. University orchestras can and do. I still remember some of the performances of larger pieces like Mahler’s “Resurrection,” Verdi’s Requiem, Berlioz’s Requiem that my university orchestra played. For the requiems, we had to change our venue from the concert hall in the music building to a large Cathedral just to accommodate the players. There were two conductors, and one used a video monitor to see the other. At the climax of the pieces you could feel the building vibrate.

            I find it equally amazing that while there was this desire for grand concerts with ensembles requiring over 100 performers composers still wrote for chamber ensembles. When I hear that in the 19thC these pieces were performed in the home, I tend to think of high school when my quartet would get together at someone’s house to practice the music for a wedding. If you read the letters and diaries of someone like Fanny Hensel (Felix Mendelssohn’s sister), you discover that the “home” could often be a mansion and that there might be over a hundred “friends” in attendance.  This challenges our understanding of the private and public spheres. I suspect the real difference is that you have to be invited in order to be able to attend. And if you think that the concept of the 19thC salon—intellectuals getting together to play music with friends and discuss artistic and social concepts with artists and musicians on a regular basis—is a thing of the past, think again. In Milan, Italy, at least, the tradition is alive and well. I once had the opportunity to attend one of these and it was fascinating. One Saturday night, I tagged along with a friend of mine who had a piano trio to a Salon held in this 18thC apartment in a chi chi district of Milan. There was this fascinating mix of famous artists, poets, and musicians with regular amateurs. It was like a party, but instead of catching up on gossip or shooting the breeze about the latest political scandals, people presented their music or art. Through the course of the evening everybody just got up and played, or put their unframed paintings up on the keyboard of the baby grand and explained the concept, or read a passage from their latest novel or poem. Afterwards everybody drank wine and ate spaghetti standing up, on paper plates served from a giant salad bowl. I’m not sure what people discussed because my Italian wasn’t very good. While I’ve never heard or of this kind of thing happening in London or Montreal, you can join an organization designed to put people together who want to play chamber music. Maybe we could have a salon for this course!

Beethoven's 5th: Goblins and Shipwrecks

Here is a humourous and evocative take on Beethoven's Fifth, from E.M. Forster's wonderful novel Howard's End:


It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.  All sorts and conditions are satisfied by it.  Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come--of course, not so as to disturb the others--; or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and holds the full score open on his knee; or like their cousin, Fräulein Mosebach, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is "echt Deutsch"; or like Fräulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fräulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid, and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings.  It is cheap, even if you hear it in the Queen's Hall, dreariest music-room in London, though not as dreary as the Free Trade Hall, Manchester; and even if you sit on the extreme left of that hall, so that the brass bumps at you before the rest of the orchestra arrives, it is still cheap.
    "Who is Margaret talking to?" said Mrs. Munt, at the conclusion of the first movement.  She was again in London on a visit to Wickham Place.
    Helen looked down the long line of their party, and said that she did not know.
    "Would it be some young man or other whom she takes an interest in?"
    "I expect so," Helen replied.  Music enwrapped her, and she could not enter into the distinction that divides young men whom one takes an interest in from young men whom one knows.
    "You girls are so wonderful in always having--Oh dear!  one mustn't talk."
    For the Andante had begun--very beautiful, but bearing a family likeness to all the other beautiful Andantes that Beethoven had written, and, to Helen's mind, rather disconnecting the heroes and shipwrecks of the first movement from the heroes and goblins of the third.  She heard the tune through once, and then her attention wandered, and she gazed at the audience, or the organ, or the architecture.  Much did she censure the attenuated Cupids who encircle the ceiling of the Queen's Hall, inclining each to each with vapid gesture, and clad in sallow pantaloons, on which the October sunlight struck.  "How awful to marry a man like those Cupids!" thought Helen.  Here Beethoven started decorating his tune, so she heard him through once more, and then she smiled at her cousin Frieda.  But Frieda, listening to Classical Music, could not respond.  Herr Liesecke, too, looked as if wild horses could not make him inattentive; there were lines across his forehead, his lips were parted, his pince-nez at right angles to his nose, and he had laid a thick, white hand on either knee.  And next to her was Aunt Juley, so British, and wanting to tap.  How interesting that row of people was!  What diverse influences had gone to the making!  Here Beethoven, after humming and hawing with great sweetness, said "Heigho," and the Andante came to an end.  Applause, and a round of "wunderschöning" and "prachtvolleying" from the German contingent.  Margaret started talking to her new young man; Helen said to her aunt: "Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing;" and Tibby implored the company generally to look out for the transitional passage on the drum.
    "On the what, dear?"
    "On the drum, Aunt Juley."
    "No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back," breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.  Others followed him.  They were not aggressive creatures; it was that that made them so terrible to Helen.  They merely observed in passing that there was no such thing as splendour or heroism in the world.  After the interlude of elephants dancing, they returned and made the observation for the second time.  Helen could not contradict them, for, once at all events, she had felt the same, and had seen the reliable walls of youth collapse.  Panic and emptiness!  Panic and emptiness!  The goblins were right.
    Her brother raised his finger: it was the transitional passage on the drum.
    For, as if things were going too far, Beethoven took hold of the goblins and made them do what he wanted.  He appeared in person.  He gave them a little push, and they began to walk in major key instead of in a minor, and then--he blew with his mouth and they were scattered!  Gusts of splendour, gods and demigods contending with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast on the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death!  Oh, it all burst before the girl, and she even stretched out her gloved hands as if it was tangible.  Any fate was titanic; any contest desirable; conqueror and conquered would alike be applauded by the angels of the utmost stars.
    And the goblins--they had not really been there at all?  They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief?  One healthy human impulse would dispel them?  Men like the Wilcoxes, or President Roosevelt, would say yes.  Beethoven knew better.  The goblins really had been there.  They might return--and they did.  It was as if the splendour of life might boil over--and waste to steam and froth.  In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end.  Panic and emptiness!  Panic and emptiness!  Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.
    Beethoven chose to make all right in the end.  He built the ramparts up. He blew with his mouth for the second time, and again the goblins were scattered.  He brought back the gusts of splendour, the heroism, the youth, the magnificence of life and of death, and, amid vast roarings of a superhuman joy, he led his Fifth Symphony to its conclusion.  But the goblins were there.  They could return.  He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.
    Helen pushed her way out during the applause.  She desired to be alone.  The music summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her career.  She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded.  The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning.  She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.

BEETHOVEN'S FINAL LETTER TO HIS IMMORTAL BELOVED


   Good morning, on July 7
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all - Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits - Yes, unhappily it must be so - You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never - Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life - Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men - At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once - Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together - Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

THE HEILIGENSTADT TESTAMENT

For my brothers Carl and             Beethoven

O Ye men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do ye wrong me, you do not know the secret causes of my seeming, from childhood my heart and mind were disposed to the gentle feelings of good will, I was even ever eager to accomplish great deeds, but reflect now that for six years I have been a hopeless case, aggravated by senseless physicians, cheated year after year in the hope of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible), born with an ardent and lively temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was compelled early to isolate myself, to live in loneliness, when I at times tried to forget all this, O how harshly was I repulsed by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing, and yet it was impossible for me to say to men speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. Ah how could I possibly admit such an infirmity in the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in highest perfection, a perfection such as few surely in my profession enjoy or have enjoyed - O I cannot do it, therefore forgive me when you see me draw back when I would gladly mingle with you, my misfortune is doubly painful because it must lead to my being misunderstood, for me there can be no recreations in society of my fellows, refined intercourse, mutual exchange of thought, only just as little as the greatest needs command may I mix with society. I must live like an exile, if I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, a fear that I may be subjected to the danger of letting my condition be observed - thus it has been during the past year which I spent in the country, commanded by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as much as possible, in this almost meeting my natural disposition, although I sometimes ran counter to it yielding to my inclination for society, but what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence - truly wretched, an excitable body which a sudden change can throw from the best into the worst state - Patience - it is said that I must now choose for my guide, I have done so, I hope my determination will remain firm to endure until it please the inexorable parcae to bread the thread, perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not, I am prepared. Forced already in my 28th year to become a philosopher, O it is not easy, less easy for the artist than for anyone else - Divine One thou lookest into my inmost soul, thou knowest it, thou knowest that love of man and desire to do good live therein. O men, when some day you read these words, reflect that ye did me wrong and let the unfortunate one comfort himself and find one of his kind who despite all obstacles of nature yet did all that was in his power to be accepted among worthy artists and men. You my brothers Carl and [Johann] as soon as I am dead if Dr. Schmid is still alive ask him in my name to describe my malady and attach this document to the history of my illness so that so far as possible at least the world may become reconciled with me after my death. At the same time I declare you two to be the heirs to my small fortune (if so it can be called), divide it fairly, bear with and help each other, what injury you have done me you know was long ago forgiven. to you brother Carl I give special thanks for the attachment you have displayed towards me of late. It is my wish that your lives be better and freer from care than I have had, recommend virtue to your children, it alone can give happiness, not money, I speak from experience, it was virtue that upheld me in misery, to it next to my art I owe the fact that I did not end my life with suicide. - Farewell and love each other - I thank all my friends, particularly Prince Lichnowsky and Professor Schmid - I desire that the instruments from Prince L. be preserved by one of you but let no quarrel result from this, so soon as they can serve you better purpose sell them, how glad will I be if I can still be helpful to you in my grave - with joy I hasten towards death - if it comes before I shall have had an opportunity to show all my artistic capacities it will still come too early for me despite my hard fate and I shall probably wish it had come later - but even then I am satisfied, will it not free me from my state of endless suffering? Come when thou will I shall meet thee bravely. - Farewell and do not wholly forget me when I am dead, I deserve this of you in having often in life thought of you how to make you happy, be so –

Ludwig van Beethowen, Heiglnstadt, October 6,1802

A post from TA Kathryn Fenton:

My earliest musical memory includes Beethoven, and I suspect this is the same for a lot of musicians. In my case, it’s of my mother pointing out the notes as they passed along while we sang “God Created Earth and Heaven” in church. I’m sure the hymnal attributed it to Beethoven, but that didn’t really register to a little kid. I just liked the tune. It’s funny, but as I start to think about it, Beethoven’s been there for a lot of my musical milestones. The first piece I played in high school orchestra was Beethoven’s fifth symphony, and that was the first time I sat first desk of the second violins.  There was a lot of terror involved because I could barely read the music and I found it way above my head. Terror and joy again in the middle of university when my orchestra played Beethoven’s seventh under the direction of one of my heroes—Yehudi Menuhin. That was the first time I ever played second violin with the seconds placed where the cellos normally go.  Even in grad school, though I choose medieval music and Italian opera as my main areas of interest, my Ph.D theory comprehensive exams were on Beethoven’s sonata forms. Fear and terror again. In my own musical education then Beethoven’s music has been a significant theme.

           

 Even for those not immersed in a musical education Beethoven seems ever present. Cartoons, movies (especially those about Beethoven) and commercials use his music all the time for sound tracks. I was trying to find a good Bugs Bunny example the other day and found so much more than I bargained for. Comedians specializing in musical humour like P.D.Q Bach (Peter Schickele), Victor Borge, Jim Henson’s Muppets, and Dudley Moore have very funny sketches about the not just the composer and his music, but about the experience of his music. Even comedians not based in musical comedy have used Beethoven as the grounds for sketches, like Monty Python and Mr. Bean. The idea of Beethoven is known enough that it can appeal audiences beyond those consisting of classical music lovers. In my search for Bugs Bunny and Beethoven clips, I did come across a Merry Melodies short film about World War II and the use of Beethoven’s fifth the symbol for victory (short short short long is the morse code for V). In some ways Beethoven’s music seems to function as the symbol of classical music in the cultural mainstream.