Minnesota Orchestra Tours Japan: Beethoven

Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 Listen in RealAudio Performed by Wiener Philharmoniker 1975; CD 447 400-2 Minnesota Orchestra Tours Japan Home
Program Notes by Mary Ann Feldman Ludwig van Beethoven Born December 16, 1770, Bonn; died March 26, 1827, Vienna Symphony No. 7 in A major, Opus 92 There is no better way to avoid taking great music for granted than to examine the reactions of those who lived before the age of recordings--John Sullivan Dwight, for instance, who founded Dwight's Journal of Music in 1852 and a year later, upon experiencing a "Beethoven Night" in Boston, announced: "Never have we had such a chance to learn what a great orchestra can be and is." Or Chicago Tribune critic George P. Upton, who in 1868, after encountering one of the early performances of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in America, wrote in the columns of his paper: "The man who could go away from that concert without feeling that he was a better man, without having recognized that human nature may soar to the infinite on the wings of song, has sunk his soul so far into the uncleanness of life, that Gabriel will have some difficulty in finding it." Beethoven reached for new heights in this A major Symphony. It was written in a surge of inspiration underlaid by his customary hard work. The result stunned his contemporaries, who fortunately opened themselves to where he was leading. Nevertheless, the awesome display of sonic power in its finale came as a shock. The audience that assembled in the great hall of the University of Vienna on December 8, 1813, was not only large for its times but included some of the imperial city's finest musicians. Billed as a grand charity concert for wounded soldiers by its organizer, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (the entrepreneurial inventor of the metronome), the program was packed with novelties, including a demonstration of Maelzel's new "Mechanical Trumpet," exhibited in marches with full orchestral accompaniment. But the main attraction was "An entirely new Symphony" by Beethoven, conducted by the composer himself. The ravages of deafness were all too apparent that night, for he could no longer hear the softest passages at all. The event was such a success, however, that it was repeated four days later. Consider what these first audiences encountered: Before Beethoven nobody had ever demanded so much from an orchestra, especially in the vast range of dynamics that unleashes so many surprises in this wonderful work. Its rhythmic vigor is what sets the Seventh apart from all his other symphonies. Wagner recognized this distinction when he grandly pronounced the work "the Apotheosis of the Dance; the Dance in its highest condition; the happiest realization of the movement of the body in an ideal form." Working from a handful of basic patterns, Beethoven extracted an astonishing variety of movement and pulses, exploiting them with the exhilaration that he liked to call aufgeknöpt--unbuttoned, or as we would say, unzipped. No wonder that choreographers like Isadora Duncan have borrowed freely from this exuberant masterpiece. Beethoven spurs the elation we feel upon escaping a hermetically sealed office to revel in the outdoors, as he himself did the moment spring blossomed in Vienna. There is too much to be said about this symphony even to start. Still, a few clues for the curious: the long strands of rising staccato scales at the beginning might have been transformed into a movement unto itself. Instead, the master of suspense bandies the idea about, taking his own good time before unleashing the propulsive dactylic rhythm (a long and two shorts) that will prevail. When at last the Vivace tempo is set into gear, surprise! A single flute pipes the main theme. At the movement's close, the jubilance is dismissed by two crashing chords, wild enough but far short of what happens at the symphony's close, where a prolonged repetition wrings every ounce of energy from the resplendent score. A chord in the winds switches to the minor mode for the not-very-slow Allegretto whose design, for those to whom it matters, is an extraordinary amalgam of march, variation and rondo. The Scherzo, very fast, sallies forth upon a subject concocted from three elements: a rhythmically jolted chord, a skipping tune, and a swiftly inflated phrase culminating in a glistening trill. The effect is light-hearted and impulsive. By contrast, the trio section proceeds with dignity, as winds puff their rustic tune over a long pedal point. Five brawny chords punctuate the horseplay implied in this movement, whereupon a mighty flourish, separated by dramatic pauses, makes way for a double-faceted finale theme: one segment sports sturdy boots to stomp hard on the weak beat, while the other displays a military air, emphasizing its steely strength in a cannonade of irregular accents.