Thread by @deeplyclassical

#TheCompleteBeethoven #443

Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 (1812)

1/ The first surprise about a symphony full of surprises is that it wasn't supposed to be a symphony at all.

2/ Beethoven at first intended it to be a piano concerto. The first draft contains the opening theme and music that's clearly related to later themes too, but it ends in a cadenza for solo piano, and passages in the sketches that follow are marked "solo" and "tutti".

3/ He started the piece straight after No. 7. Following a new symphony with a new piano concerto would once have been no surprise at all. He played Concerto No. 4 between the premieres of Symphonies 6 & 5, and No. 3 was composed to go with a symphony too.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1259404297051279361?s=20

4/ But a new piano concerto with Beethoven himself as soloist would have been surprising indeed in 1812. His worsening deafness prevented him performing his last concerto. He sketched other concerto ideas as late as 1815, but eventually abandoned them all.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1305401105799671810?s=20

5/ Another surprise is how he could compose such relentlessly joyful music when his personal life was so distressing. He began it as he wrote a letter to his "Immortal Beloved", a letter he probably never sent. It seems that this affair ended in heartbreak like all the others.

6/ Beethoven did not name his 'Immortal Beloved', but many believe the letter's intended recipient was Antonie Brentano, his close friend since 1810. The Brentanos left Vienna in late 1812 as he finished the symphony. Antonie and Beethoven never saw each other again.

7/ Yet we shouldn't be surprised that Beethoven the artist could transcend the trials that Beethoven the man had to suffer. A decade before, in another unsent letter, he had considered suicide as he was finishing his joyous and sunny Second Symphony.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1256108752945758209?s=20

8/ Beethoven suffered more than a broken heart as he composed the 8th. At Teplitz he at last met his hero Goethe (a meeting set up by Antonie's sister-in-law Bettina, another 'Immortal Beloved' candidate) but "the titans of their time could find no common ground" (Jan Swafford).

9/ A second summer at the spa resort failed to restore him where the first had succeeded. He took to his sickbed on his way home to Vienna and upon his return, but soon had to rouse himself to rush to Linz. It wasn't only his own love life that caused Beethoven pain in 1812.

10/ He finished the Eighth and wrote music for the cathedral at the request of its Kapellmeister, but he wasn't in Linz to work. Ludwig was visiting his brother Johann to try and prevent him from marrying his 'Immoral Beloved', Therese von Obermeyer.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1315727348231274497?s=20

11/ Beethoven was desperate to prevent a repeat of his other brother's scandalous union. He thought Therese, who had an illegitimate child, "a tramp and a gold-digger" (Jan Swafford). When he demanded Johann send her away, the brothers came to blows.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1283280905130450944?s=20

12/ Ludwig obtained a legal order banishing Therese from town as "an immoral woman" (Swafford). Johann married her in retaliation, bringing about the nightmare he'd tried to prevent. The marriage was miserable and there were bitter recriminations between the brothers ever after.

13/ Those seeking links between an artist's life and work will find nothing in the Eighth: no suffering heroically borne, no trauma triumphantly overcome. Surprisingly, Beethoven's symphonies of 1812 start to subvert the very style that made him famous.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1310266751117074433?s=20

14/ The Seventh dispensed with the heroic style of previous middle-period symphonies. There's no heroic narrative or unifying musical motive. At only half the length of the Eroica, Beethoven's 'anti-heroic' Eighth discards the heroic scale as well.

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1292366833564233728?s=20

15/ Symphonies 3-7 created the blueprint that future composers would follow. No. 8 appropriates Beethoven's own heritage to create "the most ebulliently experimental symphony in the canon" (Tom Service). The Romantic hero becomes the classical re-animator.

16/ Not since his first had Beethoven written a symphony so similar on the surface to those of his teacher Haydn (anyone who calls No. 4 'Haydnesque' isn't really listening), who died three years before the Eighth.

But appearances can be deceptive ...

https://twitter.com/deeplyclassical/status/1241989812875337728?s=20

17/ The master would surely have loved the cheeky games his student plays with his style.

"Classical-period dimensions mask its subtleties and forward-looking features ... surprise and paradox stand out more sharply than in any other Beethoven symphony." - Lewis Lockwood

18/ There's only one way to reveal all the surprises Beethoven unleashes on his unsuspecting 19th-century listeners. It's analysis time! This video is my reference, and this time I'll try to keep my comments as short and sweet as the symphony itself.

19/ I once studied this at @OpenUniversity. How much do I remember? Let's find out!

The first Beethoven symphony with no introduction at all (even the Pastoral starts by pausing), No. 8 launches straight into the action (0:36).

"It opens with a closing gesture" - Barry Cooper

20/ The six-note motif, landing firmly on the tonic, also ends the movement (8:46) but unlike No. 7, where one motif governs every aspect of the music, No. 8's first movement delights in integrating diversity. Its exposition (0:36-2:22) has no fewer than six thematic segments.