Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 1 in C major, op. 21
Beethoven’s nine symphonies constitute his best-known and, on the whole, most
influential body of music. In light of this, it is somewhat surprising that the composer turned to symphonic music relatively late in his career. Although only 29 when he completed his First Symphony in the spring of 1800, Beethoven already had several dozen mature works to his credit, including some ten or twelve piano sonatas, half a dozen string quartets, two piano concertos and a growing list of songs, variations and miscellaneous pieces.
Beethoven’s hesitation in the area of orchestral composition was in no way
due to lack of interest or ambition. The composer had, in fact, begun a symphony in the mid-1790s but eventually abandoned it, using its themes in several other works. The orchestra was, at that time, a far less familiar medium to Beethoven than the keyboard, which figures so prominently in his early music, and he must have been
mindful of the imposing standards set by Franz Joseph Haydn in his late symphonies,
which were then enjoying considerable popularity and admiration throughout Europe. And so Beethoven approached the symphonic genre cautiously, using the composition of his Septet, op. 20, and his first two piano concertos to prepare a
successful debut in the field that would see his most conspicuous triumphs.
As many commentators have noted, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, op. 21, is closely related to Haydn’s mature symphonies in terms of form, style and proportions. But the obvious resemblances should not obscure the original traits of this work. The unusual but completely successful turns of harmony with which it begins, the expanded role of the woodwinds, and above all, the great energy of the outer movements offer a glimpse of Beethoven’s mature symphonic style in embryo, as it were.
In the First Symphony’s opening measures—a series of yearning dominant chords searching unsuccessfully for resolution in the tonic key of C major—we find Beethoven characteristically avoiding harmonic cliché in favor of something novel and unexpected. The slow introduction eventually leads to the main body of the movement, a spirited Allegro. With its statement, “development” and reprise of two contrasting themes, this portion of the symphony adheres closely to Classical-
period sonata form, but the extended coda passage at the close is another of the composer’s innovative touches.
It is interesting that Beethoven established the character of his symphonic slow movements, which are quite distinct from those of his concertos, in his very first work of this type. Whereas the concertos generally offer devout Largos, the symphonies,
except the “Eroica” and perhaps the Ninth, are given graceful music more in the
spirit of serenades. (The ongoing controversy about the proper tempo for the Ninth
Symphony’s third movement makes it difficult to say whether or not this fits Beethoven’s usual pattern.) The Andante cantabile here sets the tone for similar
movements in the succeeding symphonies.
Beethoven calls the present work’s third movement a minuet, but it is closer in character to the boisterous scherzos that henceforth would be standard features of his symphonies. The finale, like the first movement, begins with a prefatory passage in slow tempo. Here Beethoven teases us, offering tantalizing fragments of the movement’s principal theme. Each repetition adds another note until, having stretched the joke as far as he dare, the composer breaks at last into the principal Allegro portion of the movement.
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98
A year after completing his Third Symphony, Brahms began work on its successor. The composer crafted his Fourth Symphony during the summers of 1884 and 1885, which he spent at the small town of Mürzzuschlag in the Austrian countryside. This would be Brahms’ final essay as a symphonist and his penultimate work for orchestra. Although a dozen years still remained to him, only the Double Concerto, op. 102, followed this symphony in the line of his orchestral compositions.
The Fourth proved the most difficult of Brahms’ symphonies for his contemporaries to apprehend. The inner circle of the composer’s Viennese friends, who heard a preview performance on two pianos in September 1885, generally found the work troubling. Eduard Hanslick, the celebrated critic, thought it like “two very clever people arguing,” and Max Kalbeck, who would become Brahms’ biographer, went to the composer the following day to plead for revision of the work. Even Theodore Billroth, the highly intelligent and cultured physician whose musical perceptiveness Brahms cherished, found it at first “too massive, too tremendous, too full,” though he discovered that with closer acquaintance the music became “more and more magnificent.”
Although Brahms may have been disappointed at the failure of his closest friends to embrace the new symphony, he probably was not surprised. He was aware that the character of the score was rigorous, its effect bracing. Already he had written from alpine Mürzzuschlag to Hans von Bülow, the conductor entrusted with preparing
the first performance: “I wonder if it [the symphony] will ever have an audience! I rather fear it has been influenced by this climate, where the cherries never ripen.” Nevertheless, he refused to alter the work apart from minor details of instrumentation, which he revised following a reading with Bülow’s orchestra in October 1885.
The Fourth is the only one of Brahms’ symphonies to launch directly into the principal theme of the first movement without so much as a note of introduction.
This subject is a miracle of economy, its modest two-note figures merging and
expanding to form a long, expressive melody. The contrasting second theme was
once described by Leonard Bernstein as a kind of strange tango, and if this does not do justice to its character, it does serve to identify it. Brahms develops both of these ideas with his characteristic inventiveness. The recapitulation is approached through a hushed passage conveying a wonderful sense of pregnancy, and the initial theme returns, at first, quietly and in elongated rhythms in the woodwinds.
Much has been made of the modal contour of the melody that forms the basis of the second movement, and Brahms uses its tonal ambiguity to fashion uncommonly beautiful harmonies. The theme itself suggests an Austrian pilgrims’ hymn, and Brahms’ continual variations of it are both ingenious and, at times (particularly the soaring violin melody that follows the initial presentation of the theme by the winds), moving in their eloquence. By contrast, the Scherzo—which Brahms described as “fairly noisy, with three timpani, triangle, and piccolo”—is perhaps the most boisterous music the composer ever produced.
But Brahms has saved his trump card for the finale. This is constructed as a
passacaglia, a set of ongoing variations over a repeating eight-note motif presented at the outset by the winds. This form is an old one. It was favored by composers of the Baroque period; indeed, the “ground bass” Brahms uses is nearly identical to one Bach employed in his Cantata No. 150. It is also daunting in its strictness. And yet its rigor is to a large extent the source of its strength. Brahms responds to the constraints of the passacaglia structure with music of tremendous power and expressiveness, the
rigid framework of eight-measure phrases serving as a foil for his creativity. The music he offers as counterpoint to the recurring passacaglia theme is extraordinary in its variety but yields more than just a kaleidoscope of melodies, textures, and colors. Rather, the whole movement is carefully shaped, subsiding from an imperious opening sequence to a tranquil central group of variations before building inexorably to a final climax. In its inspired discourse and formal perfection, Brahms’ last utterance as a symphonist must be counted among his greatest achievements.
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