Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #6

What a lovely, graceful, gracious, serene, generous, and noble work. Not profound in itself, perhaps, as compared to some of the other symphonies, it seems to imply a consciousness of profundity, a sense that, yes, there are great questions and probably troubles to be dealt with, but at the moment life is showing us its benevolent face and we are content with that. Although there is plenty of movement in it there is an underlying peace—not at all a naïve peace, a peace that has not known or has forgotten war, but an almost transcendent peace, a peace proper to the aftermath of the Third and Fifth. The brief thunderstorm opens no abyss, but serves only as a contrast to the prevailing fresh sunlight and temperate breezes. This is life as we would like it to be, and as Beethoven too rarely experienced it: joyful activity and joyful contemplation, with the occasional storm, invigorating but not dangerous, serving only as a contrast and to keep the meadows green and the brook flowing.

I was never really grabbed by this one in the past, but I’ll put it among my favorites now. At this point the favorites—3, 4, 5, and 6—outnumber the non-favorites, which rather distorts the meaning of the term.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #5

The 5^th is to classical music as the Mona Lisa is to painting: a work so often seen, popularized, parodied, used in advertising, and in general made to serve as a representative or stereotype of its entire art form that it’s difficult to see it for itself anymore. It helps, then, in such a case not to look at it for a while, perhaps for a few decades. I didn’t set out to do that with the 5^th, but I really can’t remember when I had last heard it before this weekend. I’m pretty certain that it must have been at least twenty years, at least, and possibly thirty or more.

What I find, coming back to it with fresh ears and an open mind, is pure musical gold. This may well prove, in the end, my favorite of the symphonies, despite my earlier statements that the 4^th and 7^th were the ones I remember liking best. It seemed to me, as I listened to this one a little while ago, that there is no human emotion which is not expressed here. I don’t feel able at the moment to sort that out any further, to describe what seems to be the shape and meaning of those emotions. But to give one example: there is a beautiful moment in the second movement where a loud and dissonant chord which lands in the mind as a sudden outburst of dismay or fear produces a sort of mental pivot by becoming the opening of a joyful song. This, I think is the sort of thing that makes people feel a love for the man behind the music; anyone who can put this much of life into music seems like someone we want to know, or at least someone for whom we have a respect that goes beyond admiration for his art.

I’m sometimes a bit impatient with Beethoven’s repeated climaxes and near-endings, but here they seem to work perfectly. I don’t know if it’s technically a coda or what, but near the end of the last movement there’s a point where it seems that the symphony is about to end, and you think no, not yet, that’s not good enough. Then it comes back with another minute or two of intensity, ending with a sequence of—I’m sorry, I don’t have the technical vocabulary for this—what I can only call power chords that really do end it with the assurance and emphasis that everything previous seems to have led us to expect. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but to illustrate how carried away I was: I applauded at the end, though I was sitting in a room alone.

The recording I listened to was this one, Christoph von Dohnányi with the Cleveland Orchestra. I’ve been getting this set from eMusic over a period of several months with the idea that it should be a good choice for both convenience and quality, but for some reason I have not, so far, been very excited about it. It seems vaguely mechanical somehow. That’s probably just me; everyone who’s reviewed it at Amazon.com says it’s great.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #4

Here, finally, in the first two movements, is the Beethoven I love. I accept, on the testimony of people who understand the technical aspects of music, that the Third Symphony is a great achievement from that point of view, and that it does things that no one had done before. And as I said when I wrote about it a few weeks ago, I admire it and feel its greatness.

But if the Third constitutes a breakthrough, I would emphasize the breaking. There’s a violence in it, as in much of Beethoven. If we think of it as music breaking out of prison, we imagine not a cunningly planned and stealthy escape—a tunnel, perhaps—but giants smashing stone walls. I don’t know whether the Fourth is a consolidation and consideration of new freedom, or whether it is in some degree a return to older rules. But there is an ease and serenity about the first two movements which is not found any of the preceding three symphonies. It seems to flow freely, bearing little of the sense of straining after something that marks the others. It’s as if he is no longer struggling to become free, but being free.

The first two movements are simply beautiful, graceful and relaxed. The scherzo is brilliant and sunny, but I find the last movement a bit of a letdown. Taken as the end of a progress from reflection to joyful exuberance, it doesn’t, for me, quite live up to the promise of the earlier movements.

In a famous remark Schumann said that the Fourth in relation to the Third and Fifth is a slender Greek maiden between two Norse gods. Well, given that vision, I have no doubt that my eyes would be drawn to the maiden, so it’s not surprising that I like the Fourth so much. I don’t see why she has to be Greek, though—she can just as well be a maiden of the North, or for that matter a goddess herself.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #3

(Continuing my tour of the Beethoven symphonies)

Now, suddenly, we’re in the realm of the master. There’s something unformed and hesitant about the first two symphonies, but it’s gone in this one. Now he speaks with authority, clearly established in the first few seconds. Perhaps a trained musician would have seen something like this coming, or at least its potential, in the first two symphonies; I don’t think I would have. But even a listener like me who doesn’t have the knowledge or vocabulary to understand how or why it works can tell that there is a wonderful combination of wild creativity and discipline here. It’s long—the longest ever when it was written, I think—but nothing seems superfluous, out of place, or out of control.

I still don’t feel the deep affection for this work that I do for some other music which is probably not its equal, if considered dispassionately. I think it’s fundamentally a question of personality and temperament; I don’t feel that Beethoven is speaking for me or to me. The romantic-heroic spirit which we are told is celebrated here is not one to which I’m much drawn. The second movement, for instance, the funeral march, leaves me a little disappointed, in spite of the marvelous main theme, because it seems too intent on making grand gestures to mourn.

Nevertheless, I like to think that I can recognize a masterpiece when I hear it, and this is surely one.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #2

Overall, I like this one better than the First. I like the second movement, the larghetto, quite well, actually; it has a pleasing combination of lilt and melancholy. And the scherzo is a lot of fun. The outer movements seem, still, like your basic Beethoven and I find my mind wandering away from them.

Next up is, of course, the Eroica, which I probably haven’t heard for twenty years, and the one which is generally considered to be Beethoven’s first great symphony. It includes a funeral march. That sounds promising.

Music of the Week: Beethoven - Symphony #1

It’s been quite a few years since I heard most of Beethoven’s symphonies, and I’ve decided to go through the whole set in order, attentively, over the next few months. I’ve always had, you might say, a difficult relationship with much of Beethoven’s music, especially the big orchestral works: I just don’t like them as much as I’m supposed to. And I want to see if that’s changed. It used to be the 7^th that I liked best, and I also had a fondness for the less renowned 4^th. Part of this is my natural favoring of things smaller, quieter, more modest and often more eccentric, than those favored by general critical opinion. But that doesn’t completely explain it, because I like many of the huge late Romantic symphonies.

As for this 1^st, of which I don’t remember having any very strong opinion, and which I’ve heard four or five times over the past couple of weeks, I do not love it. I admire it, but I do not love it. There is obviously a great gift at work here, and the symphony is interesting, but little of it moves me. It’s of course very much more of the 18^th century than Beethoven’s later work, but it seems a heavier Mozart, and a less orderly Haydn. I have the sense that he’s gotten hold of a powerful force but isn’t yet quite in control of it. And I hear some of the things that have always bothered me: the spasmodic leaping rhythms, the repeated quasi-climaxes, and a quality I can only describe, not very informatively, as “dryness.”

I have a couple of old LP recordings of this and the other symphonies, but for convenience and sound quality I’m currently listening to this set conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi on Telarc.