Beethoven’s Opus 31 piano sonatas began a new path for him.
Beethoven composed his trio of Opus 31 piano sonatas in 1801-1802, after he had remarked to his student Carl Czerny that he was dissatisfied with his compositions so far and was setting out on a new path. Each of the sonatas is strikingly different, and none is reminiscent of the courtly style of Haydn or Mozart. The Opus 31 no. 1, Beethoven’s 16th sonata, is described by one commentator as “a running joke on the excesses of Italian opera”.
That spirit is captured perfectly in this performance by Szymon Nehring:
BEETHOVEN: CREATING THE FUTURE Notes by Margaret Scialdone
Beethoven: Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel
Legend has it that during a rehearsal of one of his quartets, a violinist complained that the music was incomprehensible – to which Beethoven replied, “Oh, it is not for you, but for a later age”.
The beautiful “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (Evening Song under a Starry Sky), speaks of a soul yearning to break free of the limits of space and time. It’s beautifully sung by Peter Schreier, accompanied by András Schiff.
Wenn die Sonne niedersinket, Und der Tag zur Ruh sich neigt, Luna freundlich leise winket, Und die Nacht herniedersteigt;
Wenn die Sterne prächtig schimmern, Tausend Sonnenstrahlen flimmern: Fühlt die Seele sich so groß, Windet sich vom Staube los.
Schaut so gern nach jenen Sternen, Wie zurück ins Vaterland, Hin nach jenen lichten Fernen, Und vergißt der Erde Tand;
Will nur ringen, will nur streben, Ihre Hülle zu entschweben: Erde ist ihr eng und klein, Auf den Sternen möcht sie sein.
Ob der Erde Stürme toben, Falsches Glück den Bösen lohnt: Hoffend blicket sie nach oben, Wo der Sternenrichter thront.
Keine Furcht kann sie mehr quälen, Keine Macht kann ihr befehlen; Mit verklärtem Angesicht, Schwingt sie sich zum Himmelslicht.
Eine leise Ahnung schauert Mich aus jenen Welten an; Lange nicht mehr dauert Meine Erdenpilgerbahn,
Bald hab ich das Ziel errungen, Bald zu euch mich aufgeschwungen, Ernte bald an Gottes Thron Meiner Leiden schönen Lohn.
English Translation
When the Sun sinks downward And the day inclines toward rest, Luna, friendly, gently beckons, And Night climbs downward.
When the stars shimmer magnificently, A thousand sunbeams flicker: Then the soul feels itself so great, Pulls itself upward, out of the dust.
It loves so much to look toward those stars, As if looking toward its homeland, Out toward those distant bright things, And forgets the world’s foibles;
It wants only to struggle, to strive, To rise up above its mortal shell: For it, the Earth is too confined, too small; On the stars is where it wants to be.
Though storms rage on Earth, False fortune rewarding evil, It reaches up, filled with hope, Where the starry judge has His throne.
No fear will then torment it, No power can then command it; Its visage transfigured, It swings itself up to the heavenly light.
A quiet premonition sends me shivers From those distant worlds; It won’t be long before My earthly pilgrimage comes to an end.
Soon I will have reached the goal, Soon swung myself up to you, And, on God’s throne, I’ll reap My sufferings’ beautiful reward.
Beethoven and the Heroic Part 3: Leonore’s Aria: A study in finding one’s courage. Notes by Fred Haight
Leonore’s Aria
An aria in opera, is like a soliloquy in a play. The actor shares his or her struggle with their innermost self, directly with you, the audience.
Leonore gains great courage in this aria. To comprehend that though, we must return to an earlier installment, where we quoted Schiller’s, “On the Pathetic”:
“It is not art, to become master of feelings, which only lightly and fleetingly sweep the surface of the soul; but to retain one’s mental freedom in a storm, which arouses all of sensuous nature, thereto belongs a capacity of resisting that is, above all natural power, infinitely sublime.”
If Leonore were not upset, something would be wrong. The warden of the prison, Pizarro, not knowing who she is, has just told her of his intention to murder her husband Florestan. She lacks any means to oppose him. In the first section of her Aria, she displays great anger and rage. There is no melody, and little rhythm. At 1:09 in this recording, the image of a rainbow begins to introduce a calming influence, and a degree of self control.
“You monster! Where will you go? What have you planned in cruel fury? The call of pity, the voice of mankind, Will nothing move your tiger’s wrath? Though ire and anger surge like ocean’s waves in your heart, A rainbow still shines on my path, Which brightly rests on somber clouds: It looks so calmly, peacefully at me, Of happier days reminding me And soothes thus my troubled heart.”
Upon contemplating the idea of a rainbow, she begins to regain her composure.
The second section of her aria, is a beautiful, slow song of hope, and inner peace, starting at 2:15
“Come hope, let not the last bright star Be obscured in my anguish! Light up my goal, however far, Through love I shall still reach it.”
In the third, fast section, starting at 5:11, she finds her resolve, and becomes determined to act, on behalf of not just her husband, but on behalf of justice!
“I follow my inner calling, I shall not waver I derive strength From faithfulness and love. Oh you, for whom I bore so much, If I could penetrate Where malice has imprisoned you And bring to you sweet comfort! I follow my inner calling, I shall not waver, I derive strength, From faithfulness and love.”
This is an amazing transformation, and gives us a comprehensible notion of finding one’s courage, rather than a static image of a fixed courage.
Beethoven, Franz Schubert: musical dialogue and the C-minor series.
No investigation of the C-minor dialogue among composers can be complete without the astonishing C-minor sonata by Franz Schubert, whose birthday we recognized on January 31. Schubert, a native of Vienna, was 15 years Beethoven’s junior, although he died just one year after Beethoven at the age of 31. In fact, he was one of the pallbearers at Beethoven’s funeral. His C-minor sonata, D958, is often performed together with Beethoven’s 32 Variations on an Original Theme, WoO 80 also in C minor, with which it has obvious affinities. Notes by Margaret Scialdone.
Beethoven’s variations are performed by Sookkyung Cho:
We return to Beethoven with two of his best-known sonatas in C-minor: the Pathétique and the Opus 111. Listen for the development of the theme that Bach put forward in his Musical Offering!
Sonata Pathétique (1st movement) played by Dubravka Tomsic:
We continue the investigation of the C-minor dialogue with Bach’s Ricercar à 6 and Mozart’s sonata K.457. When the elderly J.S. Bach visited his son who was court musician for Frederick II, the king presented the elder Bach with a difficult theme, and challenged him to improvise a three-part and then a six-part fugue. Bach created the 3-part fugue on the spot, but declined the 6-part pending further study. Two months later, Bach sent the king the two-volume “Musical Offering” in which the theme is subjected to every possible permutation in the form of ten different canons, two ricercars, and a trio sonata! After studying the Musical Offering, Mozart composed his C-minor sonata and later the Fantasy (which we heard yesterday) in which he demonstrated the principles used in composing the sonata. In the next days, we’ll see how this theme was developed by Beethoven and Schubert. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
We hear the Ricercar a 6 played by Daniel Martyn Lewis.
The Mozart sonata is performed here by Micah McLaurin.
Any discussion of musical masters in dialogue must acknowledge the towering figure of Johann Sebastian Bach. The C-minor series we are about to explore had as its genesis Bach’s Musical Offering – a set of pieces based on a theme proposed to him in 1747 by Frederick II, King of Prussia. Today we will hear the three-voice “Ricercar” from Bach’s Musical Offering, followed by Mozart’s Fantasy K.475, composed as a prelude to his Sonata K.457 (we will visit the Sonata tomorrow). [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]
Here, Bach’s “Ricercar à 3” is beautifully performed by Ji-Hyang Gwak:
And now listen to Mozart’s treatment of the theme in the Fantasy K.475, performed here by Mitsuko Uchida:
Beethoven and the Heroic ; Part 2: Leonore Notes by Fred Haight
Part 2: Leonore
No-one ever portrayed a woman more heroically then Beethoven. His only opera, Fidelio, is about a woman named Leonore, who courageously disguises herself as a boy, goes into prison, risking her life, in order to rescue her husband, Florestan, who is a political prisoner. The opera was inspired by the real-life story of Adrienne LaFayette, who went into an Austrian prison, to free her husband, The Marquis de LaFayette, a hero of the American Revolution.
An Overture condenses the highlights of the entire opera into a few minutes. Beethoven was so concerned to capture her quality correctly, that he composed three different versions of a Leonore Overture to get it right. We offer here, Leonore 3, in our opinion, the best of the three.
Beethoven’s enthusiasm led to a very long overture, and he ended up composing a fourth, shorter one called the Fidelio Overture. Leonore 3 is so great though, that in the early 20th century, composer/opera conductor Gustav Mahler started using it to introduce the third act of the opera. That practice became standard.
Beethoven lived in a time of great hope and optimism. The world was changing, and the future looked bright.
The poet Friedrich Schiller, expressed this in “The Artists”:
“How beautifully, O man, with your branch of palm, You stand on the century’s slope In proud and noble manliness, With open mind, with spirits high, Stern yet gentle, in active stillness, The ripest son of time.”
Schiller further said to his fellow artists that they must be leaders:
“The dignity of Man into your hands is given, Its proctector be! It sinks with you! With you it will be risen!”
It seems that Beethoven heeded Schiller’s words. In his admiration for the success of the American Revolution and the ideals of the French Revolution, Beethoven dedicated his 3rd symphony, “The Eroica” (Heroic), to Napoleon Bonaparte, at a time when it seemed he might actually liberate mankind. When Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in 1804, Beethoven ripped out the title and said ” Now, he too will trample on the rights of mankind.” He rededicated it to “The memory of a Great Man.”
You can hear that heroic and inspiring quality in the first movement: The crisis-ridden middle (development section) of the movement, was the longest ever written up to that point. In this recording, it lasts a full 6 minutes from 3:12 to 9:12. The Coda, or ending, is also magnificent. If the main theme, reminds us of a hero on horseback, the last minute and a half sounds more like Pegasus, the horse with wings!
Notes by Margaret Scialdone. Beethoven ‘s use of thematic material from Mozart was not limited to opera. Note the development of the opening theme of Mozart’s C-minor Piano Concerto, K491, in Beethoven’s C-minor Piano Concerto, Opus 37. (We’ll be looking more at the C-minor key in the coming days.)
First, Mozart’s piano concerto #24, played by Rudolf Buchbinder with the Vienna Philharmonic:
Compare to Beethoven’s third piano concerto, played here by Seong-Jin Cho with the WDR Symphony Orchestra:
