Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 9 (“Choral”)
Aside from the sublime greatness of his music, Beethoven’s enormous ego and sense of self-worth were also partly responsible for his special place in music history. Before Beethoven, composers were considered little more than servants, subject to the whims of their masters. They were obliged to crank out vast quantities of mostly disposable music, usually for social occasions, where it served as background for conversation or accompaniment to dancing. Because there was such a huge appetite for new music, old music — even in the more serious realms of chamber and sacred music and opera — was tossed aside and often lost. The idea of performing “old” music was considered somewhat quaint — quite a contrast with today’s musical habits! Beethoven was really the first composer to see himself not as a servant or craftsman, but as an “artist,” and, because he was confident that his music would be immortal, he was the first major composer to give his works opus numbers, use metronome markings in his compositions (the device was newly invented in his lifetime; more on this below) and to take unprecedented care in notating his precise wishes for future performances of his works. His consciousness of his own significance led to endless revision and sketching, and often many years of work on single compositions. After him, composers were seen in a much more exalted light.
This aspect of his personality has particular relevance when considering Beethoven’s third and final compositional period, his “late period.” Though the works of many composers throughout history can be divided into youthful, middle and late periods, Beethoven’s example is unique. First, let’s consider the typical composer. The ones who make a great leap of originality always do so in their youth, the best examples being Berlioz, Mahler and Stravinsky. The analog of this can be seen in the sciences and mathematics, where the great discoveries almost invariably come in the early years (Einstein being but the most famous example). Innovation and originality are apparently the products of the young brain. The typical composer then often continues to develop and enrich this youthful style, often creating his greatest works late in life — but the biggest leap in terms of originality, if it is to come about, is seen early on. Not so with Beethoven, however.
I know of no composer other than Beethoven who actually planned out his final period of composition. In 1817, at the age of 47, in the wake of personal disappointments and an awareness of his mortality, he wrote in his journal, “before my departure for the Elysian fields I must leave behind me what the Eternal Spirit has infused into my soul and bids me complete.” He knew that he was in a race against time and that he had to make a choice between pursuing earthly pleasures or continuing his dedication to great artistic challenges by raising the stakes even higher; he chose the latter. By this time, ten years before his death in 1827, he was already completely deaf and in the process of further withdrawing from human contact, having given up any hope of finding love and family. With an eye on his musical legacy, he set himself an ambitious agenda, a series of compositions that constituted a vast creative effort. Piano sonatas, a song cycle, a Mass, the sublime late quartets and a symphony were planned. More importantly, Beethoven turned his intellect towards the development of a new style that was so breathtakingly original that it would take many generations to come to grips with its implications. The already considerable greatness he had achieved in the past would be superseded by these late works. Could he have done this if he hadn’t been cut off from both sound and society, isolated in a world of his imagination?
The ten-year gestation of the Ninth seems to have begun with Beethoven’s desire to set Schiller’s poem to music, although the composer’s first choices were not a symphony. Eventually, though, he settled on a symphony, the subject of which would be “the search for a way to express joy,” as Beethoven wrote. Though Beethoven’s late style is often intensely personal and somewhat difficult to penetrate, here he reverted back to the “heroic” style of his third, fifth and seventh symphonies. Like the Fifth, the Ninth is a “finale” symphony, one in which the first three movements move towards the goal of a final movement, in this case, the first ever written that incorporated a chorus.* Like the Fifth, Beethoven’s symphonic journey moves from a tragic minor key to a glorious major, first glimpsed in the middle section of the second movement. Also like the earlier model, the Ninth is a cyclic work; that is, it has thematic connections between the movements. The most obvious example of this is the finale’s quotations of the main themes of the previous movements, each rejected in favor of the “Ode to Joy” theme. Less obvious is how “all of the typical themes of the symphony present the arpeggio of the chords of D or B flat,” the two tonal poles of the work (d’Indy). The opening theme of the second movement is clearly based on the first movement’s main theme, a type of movement-pairing that may have inspired Mahler to do the same in his fifth and sixth symphonies.
Throughout his life, Beethoven searched for new and unconventional ways to begin and end his works, and the Ninth is no exception. The opening is an ambiguous, desolate tonal landscape of open fifths. Without the third of the chord, it’s impossible to tell whether the key is major or minor. Moreover, by beginning in A and only later deflecting the tonality to the main key of D minor, the beginning of this work is made even more mysterious and full of portent. Over this featureless landscape, the violins intone motivic fragments of the mighty theme that will shortly burst out of the full orchestra. This opening, its evocative force more a part of the coming Romantic era than of the Classical period in which Beethoven worked, had a huge influence over the next century, and was often imitated, notably by Wagner in the opening to Das Rheingold, Bruckner in every one of his symphonies, and by Mahler in his first two. This sound was something entirely new then, and it still has incredible, potent power in it today.
The Finale was new in two respects. As noted above, this was the first instance of a chorus, or a text of any kind, being used in a symphony. This would be imitated in the 19th and 20th centuries by Berlioz, Liszt, Mahler, Shostakovich and others. The visionary message of Schiller’s poem, here trimmed substantially, is one of joy and brotherhood, and has inspired patriots and nationalists for nearly two centuries. Leonard Bernstein even led a performance of the Ninth Symphony at the site of the just-destroyed Berlin Wall!
Another far-reaching aspect of the Finale is its form. This is, in fact, a mini-symphony in and of itself, comprising four movements that include a scherzo/slow movement (development) and finale (recapitulation). In works like Liszt’s B minor sonata, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, this concept of a single movement sonata form that incorporates aspects of a multi-movement work were developed from Beethoven’s model.
Of the final movement, Maynard Solomon, in his recent book, “Late Beethoven: Music, Thought, Imagination,” has this to say:
Fidelio, the “Lebewohl” Sonata, Wellington’s Victory, and dozens of animated rondos show that Beethoven was quite capable of writing comic, mock-epic, optimistic endings of the kind Henry James once described as “a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks.”…But his late finales are located well beyond the perimeters of the normal — classical, if you will — experience, in regions of cataclysms, apocalypses, and resurrections. It is as though he were elaborating, in a dizzying display of his creative powers, the limitless variety of endings that his imagination could conjure up.
Traditional endings are not abandoned, but they are achieved only after painful postponements; order is discovered or restored, but without permanently assuaging the fear of disintegration. Late Beethoven has no penchant for couleur de rose. He wants to achieve order, but not by pretending that disorder does not exist…
Elysium [the paradise conjured in the Ninth] can be gained only by overcoming terrifying obstacles; the road to immortality leads through death; the baritone’s proposed search for something “more pleasant and filled with joy” must cross the barrier of the terror fanfare with which the finale opens… The terror fanfare and the rehearsal of the themes, proclaiming the need to dismantle the first three movements, are a return to the deepest reaches of disorder as a precondition for one last attempt to get things right…
By the unprecedented intensity of the finale’s rhetoric, by the multitheism of its symbolism — the Greek mythic signposts, the Christian-medieval gestures embedded in the Andante maestoso [the finale’s “slow movement”] and the orientalism of the alla marcia’s “Turkish Music” — and by the convergence of thematic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns contending for closure, Beethoven achieved a sense of fusion so complete that it stands as the model of rapturous surrender to collectivity. Its fusion of styles and procedures is matched by the multivalence of its forms, which constitute a palimpsest of superimposed hybrid structures–a set of variations; one or another sonata form; a four-movement cycle superimposed on a sonata-allegro concerto form with double exposition (Rosen); a cantata; a through-composed text-derived form; a suite; a divertimento; an operatic finale; and even a free fantasy.
Each movement has noteworthy or unusual features. The first movement is the only opening movement of Beethoven’s symphonies to lack an exposition repeat. The recapitulation is marked by a thunderous timpani roll that lasts a grueling (for the timpanist!) 38 measures. The scherzo and adagio are reversed from their normal order in a symphony, probably so that the slow movement can provide some needed respite before the long and emotionally taxing finale. The scherzo features perhaps Beethoven’s most single-minded pursuit of a single rhythm, which only pauses during the central trio section. This movement also includes timpani tuned in octaves, which had only been done once before, in the finale of Beethoven’s eighth symphony.
One final note on performance practice. Because of the use of a modern-size string section, the winds will be doubled in many of the louder sections today; this was established practice in Beethoven’s time, as was seating the second violins to the right of the conductor, done today as well. Audience members may notice some tempos that are non-traditional; these are in line with Beethoven’s metronome markings and the use of some educated logic when the composer’s intentions are not clear.