#TheCompleteBeethoven #331
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (1806)
1/ With the first great Romantic symphony under his belt, and the next two on the drawing board, Beethoven takes a break to compose the first neo-classical symphony.
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (1806)
1/ With the first great Romantic symphony under his belt, and the next two on the drawing board, Beethoven takes a break to compose the first neo-classical symphony.
2/ Beethoven began sketches for a new symphony as he was finishing the Eroica. However, it wasn't the fourth that he was planning. The ideas written in his sketchbook in 1804 eventually blossomed into the first movement and scherzo of No. 5.
3/ Another entry marked "lustige Sinfonia" also isn't No. 4. An idea for "Murmurs of the Brooks" prefigures the slow movement of the Pastoral. Beethoven had planted two symphonic seeds two years before No. 4, but they wouldn't be fully grown until two years after it flowered. 
4/ By contrast, Beethoven appears to have composed No. 4 in a burst during the summer and autumn of 1806. He had just revised his Revolutionary opera Leonore and was still finishing his revolutionary 'Razumovsky' quartets.
5/ The story of its composition is an exciting one. There are armies, arguments, family strife, shotgun weddings and breaking furniture. It's also a tale of two patrons; one colourful, the other shadowy: Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky and Franz von Oppersdorff.
6/ 1806 had been troublesome for Beethoven. Napoleon's army occupied Vienna, upsetting his patrons and audiences; his opera was on hold again after he fell out with the theatre management; and his brother Karl had to marry in haste four months before his first child was born.
7/ Beethoven began a much-needed summer vacation at Prince Lichnovsky's estate. He had begun his 1796 grand tour with Lichnovsky, and "one of my most loyal friends and promoters of my art" had paid Beethoven an allowance of 600 florins a year since 1800.
8/ During his stay Beethoven and Lichnovsky visited Count Franz von Oppersdorff. He maintained a private orchestra by hiring servants who were also musicians. The Oppersdorff orchestra performed the Second Symphony to Beethoven's approval.
9/ Oppersdorf commissioned a new symphony from Beethoven. The apparent loss of an 1806 sketchbook shrouds its genesis in mystery. Some commentators, such as this interesting @interludeHK article, believe the symphony was essentially already complete. interlude.hk/ludwig-van-b-a…
10/ Others claim Beethoven wrote Symphony No. 4 from scratch in a few weeks. It may even be the "lustige Sinfonia" mentioned in his earlier sketchbook (but probably not).
Whatever the truth, Beethoven soon had a strong motivation to finish the new symphony for his new sponsor.
Whatever the truth, Beethoven soon had a strong motivation to finish the new symphony for his new sponsor.
11/ One evening a group of French soldiers visited Lichnovsky's castle for dinner. Whatever Beethoven had thought of Bonaparte while composing his previous symphony, he certainly wasn't a fan now. When the prince asked him to play for them, he refused.
12/ According to our old friend Ferdinand Ries, the two argued furiously. Beethoven was on the point of smashing a chair over his patron's head when Oppersdorff broke up the quarrel. He invited Beethoven to return to continue his stay at his estate instead.
13/ Beethoven reportedly smashed a bust of the Prince upon his return to Vienna before writing him an angry letter:
"Prince, what you are you are through an accident of birth; what I am I am through myself."
With their relationship broken, he could kiss his annuity goodbye.
"Prince, what you are you are through an accident of birth; what I am I am through myself."
With their relationship broken, he could kiss his annuity goodbye.
14/ Beethoven was going to need cash and fast, and Oppersdorf was the man to provide it. Upon the symphony's completion in October 1806, Oppersdorff paid 500 guilders to secure the score for his private use for six months. Another 500 florins followed in early 1807.
15/ Symphony No. 4 was first performed in March 1807, but not by Oppersdorf's orchestra. It was premiered privately together with his recent piano concerto at the home of yet another patron, Prince Lobkowitz, the final dedicatee of the Eroica.
16/ For 1807 at least Oppersdorf's generosity more than made up the money that Beethoven had lost after his bust-up with Lichnovsky, but what did the Count get for his cash?
Time to look at the music itself. I'll use this video as a reference.
Time to look at the music itself. I'll use this video as a reference.
17/ He got a work whose feel, form and forces strongly resemble the Second Symphony that his orchestra had performed for Beethoven at the Count's castle. With only one flute and with the Eroica's extra horn gone, the orchestra is the smallest of any Beethoven symphony.
18/ Like No. 2, there's a large slow introduction (0:38-3:13) and a slow movement (12:10-21:35) "suffused with sustained lyricism" (Lewis Lockwood). No. 4 is far closer in form to late Haydn than it is to Beethoven's own previous symphony, the Eroica.
19/ Schumann famously described this symphony as "a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants". Compared to its neighbours, he found No. 4 both classic in its proportions and in its ideals, embodying in music the noble simplicity of the art of classical antiquity.
20/ Since Schumann's time, the "Greek-like slender one in B-flat major" has often been seen as a delicate flower overshadowed by mighty Norse neighbours. Next to the overwhelming Eroica and No. 5, many listeners felt No. 4 a disappointment, as if Beethoven was going backwards.
21/ But that's not how his contemporaries received it. Beethoven's critics were just as freaked out as usual: "To me the great master seems here ... now and then excessively bizarre, and thus, even for knowledgeable friends of art, easily incomprehensible and forbidding."
22/ Janus, the Roman God of transitions, has no equivalent in the mythology of Ancient Greece (sorry Schumann). Like Janus, the symphony looks back and forward at once. Its distinctive fusion of tradition and innovation give it a character unique among Beethoven's symphonies.
23/ That special balance begins with the instruments themselves and how Beethoven uses them. The forces are modest, even self-consciously conventional but Beethoven's orchestration is everywhere original, making stars of instruments normally only given a supporting role.
24/ Pity the bassoonists in a classical symphony, doubling bass lines for page after page while everyone else gets the tunes. If a composer does bring them out of the shadows, it's probably for comic effect: "haha those silly bassoons sound like farts!"
25/ Beethoven transforms the humble sidekick into a dashing hero who broods moodily in the shadows (1:09, 1:54), leaps heroically into action (3:34, 31:30), gazes in wonder (4:09), saves the day (33:47), and romances the heroine (13:21). Step forward bassoon, you're now a star!
26/ The award for best supporting actor goes to ... THE TIMPANI! Normally making others look good by reinforcing the loud bits, the timpani take centre stage in the development's dramatic climax leading to the recapitulation (8:38-9:27), and the slow movement's mysterious close.
27/ The trios (23:52-25:01 and 25:55-27:04), featuring a succession of graceful wind solos in playful dialogue with lightly-scored strings, sum up Beethoven's approach to orchestration and the spirit of the whole symphony, just as the dominant horns did in the Eroica's trio.
28/ Wait a minute. TWO trios? The 4th may look back to the classical structures his audiences and patrons knew and loved, but everywhere in the symphony Beethoven innovates on the form he inherited from Haydn.
"Both in form and content he makes it new" - Lewis Lockwood
"Both in form and content he makes it new" - Lewis Lockwood
29/ No. 4 resembles Haydn's last symphony in the same key, but its introduction is modeled on another 'London' symphony that also opens in minor-key gloom, passing through strange harmonies before a skipping upbeat into the allegro lets in the sun.
30/ Beethoven's first note (0:38) is B-flat, the tonic of the whole work, but there's no harmony to give it context. The tone colour (bassoons and horns in octaves, that bottom horn note's *really* low) is mysterious, even menacing. If this is the home key, why's it so creepy?
31/ The next note we hear, G-flat (0:43), is stranger still. The strings descend slowly from it while those bassoons and horns, accompanied by creepy clarinet and spectral solo flute just sit there, staring at us from the shadows. Only 6 bars in (1:01), I'm already freaking.
32/ That ghostly G-flat haunts the introduction. It spooks the music to drift (1:46) towards the harmonic hinterland of B minor, one note above the home key but a world away. The two-faced fiend transforms into F-sharp as the drift stops anxiously on A (2:45), one note below.
33/ Finally the hero summons his resolve, hammering the A (2:59) into a chord of F (3:02), the home dominant. Two-faced G-flat/F-sharp is banished, but he'll be back.
An alien note upsetting the harmony of a symphony. Where have we met that idea before?
An alien note upsetting the harmony of a symphony. Where have we met that idea before?
34/ Beethoven merges the end of the introduction into the start of the allegro (2:59-3:17). In Haydn's symphonies the transition is instant. Beethoven makes it an unfolding event that is a crucial element in the dramatic process, both structurally and thematically.
35/ The stabbing tutti chords, with their slashing upbeat figures are slow at first (3:02), so we're still in the introduction, right? Then they speed up (3:13). Oh, are we in the allegro now? But the main theme arrives at 3:17. Now we're definitely in the allegro. But wait ...
36/ Its first two statements are joined by the same chords (3:23-3:25). They're there at the exposition repeat (5:15-5:23) and in the development where, as in the Eroica, a new theme appears from nowhere (7:48). This symphony is starting to look less classical and more heroic.
37/ At the height of the development, Beethoven blurs the boundaries between sections even further. The introduction's clouds return (8:33), those same chords now flashing ominously between distantly thundery rumbles from the timpani.
38/ The timpani plays B-flat, the tonic of the home key that should return at the recapitulation, but we're clearly not there yet. And what are the other instruments playing but a chord of F-sharp, which is also G-flat, the note that haunted the introduction. Oh no, he's back!
39/ In "one of the most telling moments in all his symphonic writing" (Lewis Lockwood), the bass slips onto an F-natural. The harmony is now all of the home key, but like the chord announcing the cadenza of a concerto it's unstable, requiring resolution.
40/ The timpani underpins a long crescendo on those same chords and their accompanying upbeats, intensifying the sense of impending arrival which the recapitulation finally releases in a joyous explosion (9:21).
41/ This extraordinary passage fuses elements of introduction, exposition, development and recapitulation into one, and mixes in an idea from concerto form. And some people still think this symphony is a regression.
42/ I could go on, but hopefully my rambling is sufficient to show that, like Doctor Who's TARDIS, Beethoven's symphony is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. It goes back to the past and forward to the future, and bends musical time and space into one.
THE END.
THE END.
