Beethoven the Mighty

Commentary

The band kids were the cool kids, while the orchestra brats were the nerds. That was my view early in high school. The orchestra kids, however, saw us as fools blowing on horns because we lacked the serious talent to master a real instrument. We were dorks to them, whereas they were genuine musicians in training.

Then, one day, the orchestra conductor had the dream of performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, the triumphant last movement in particular. That meant that she needed wind players from the band. I was a first trombone player and volunteered because I thought it was a great excuse to skip more classes.

I sat down in rehearsal to sight-read this beast. I noticed immediately that it was written in alto clef. For those who do not know, this is a weird musical language, somewhere between treble and bass clef. It meant that the part was unusually high. I had to do some quick conversions in my head just to tackle the rehearsal.

Then the conductor began the piece. A new world opened up to me. I had never been this close to string players. We had always been separate tribes, we on our band repertoire and they on their string repertoire. We united with the ambition of performing this mighty piece by Beethoven. I was astonished at the talent of these string players but even more so at the sound of which my instrument was part.

How I recall my heart racing, like experiencing something wholly new, a trip in an unfamiliar land of great adventure.

We took the piece to competition, and my confidence only grew and grew, to the point that I fell in love with the genre and its creator. Looking back, I can hardly believe that this happened to me, in ninth grade of all times. I was far more fortunate than I knew.

I can recall reporting back to my band friends that it was no big deal, that the orchestra is not all it is cracked up to be and how much better the wind band truly is. They were all relieved to hear it, but I didn’t really mean it. I never shook the sense that members of the string orchestra were the real musicians whereas we were just entertainers for football fields, county fairs, and jazz ensembles.

Truth is, however, that I was never a Beethoven fan at that age. Too grandiose, too bombastic, too serious, too fussy, too mission-driven. I just never really got the hang of it, and avoided Beethoven for many years, even as I dug further into my love of other classical music, by Gustav Mahler, George F. Handel, J.S. Bach, and Claudio Monteverdi, and eventually became obsessed with the 16th-century polyphony of Thomas Tallis, Giovanni Palestrina, and Francisco Guerrero.

But I’m an adult now, and it came to me in my sleep that I might have a craving for Beethoven. I need to give his symphonies another try. Fortunately, streaming music today makes this so easy. So I put on the entire cycle from the first to the last, from early morning to evening, one right after another, all performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.

This time it connected, very deeply. My go-to is and will always be that beloved Symphony No. 5 because of its last movement. The opening movement has tried to become a cliché for two centuries now, but it somehow never happens. It’s always a thrill no matter how fast or slow the conductor takes the legendary opening passage. It’s always just fantastic. But nothing compares with the total triumph of the final movement.

Not to single out one only. Beethoven’s symphonies are just a wild experience even after more than two centuries, full of exorbitant confidence in humanity, packed with muscle and energy, exploding in creativity, and exuding enormous power. It’s all mind-blowing, one after another.

My own cycle would variously break from the symphonies and play his thrilling overtures as interludes. The “Consecration of the House” is a festive overture written in September 1822 for the opening of Vienna’s new Theater in der Josefstadt in 1822. There are also his “The Creatures of Prometheus” (1801) and “Fidelio” (1805–1814).

What are my favorites? The first symphony thrills me with its odd opening notes that seem to start in the middle of something else and only gradually find their way. The second, third, and fourth add intensifying levels of power. The fifth is probably the best known, but there is the fame of the sixth, the pastoral symphony, which somehow sums up the whole of the natural world, including a famous fox hunt, leading to the glories of the seventh and eighth, each more spectacular than the last.

Even then, nothing can prepare for the ninth symphony. No words can capture its magisterial magnificence and creative power.

It helps to understand his music in light of his times. He was at the heart of the “birth of the modern,” in Paul Johnson’s conception. This was as the Napoleonic Wars were coming to a close, Europe had discovered religious liberty, the idea of human rights was in the air, and the new technological innovations and prosperity were dawning throughout the realm, forming what came to be called the Belle Époque, the beautiful epoch between 1820 and its end in 1913.

Beethoven became the soundtrack to the age. It mostly existed in his expansive and endlessly creative imagination. He certainly did not live the life of a rock star. He was disheveled, was unkempt, and kept an extremely messy apartment. He was not poor but cared nothing about being rich either. He tried to marry but always overshot his social class, plus it is doubtful that any wife could ever have tolerated him.

There was also the problem of his growing deafness, which hit him in his 20s. He was fully deaf by his mid-40s. It drove him crazy, of course, but one does wonder whether this somehow contributed to his relentless creation of seemingly impossible forms of music never before heard. He certainly did not hear much of it. Legendarily, he had to be turned around from the conductor’s platform in order to observe the wild applause for his ninth symphony. He could not hear it at all. The music lived in his head. So did the applause.

We’ve not spoken of his chamber music, which somehow manages to be gigantic despite its small instrumentation. All his string quartets are thrilling, but the late ones are challenging for any ear even today. I get lost in them quickly and marvel at the sheer modernity of it all.

It truly does beggar belief that he finished his last symphony more than 200 years ago. I don’t know how it is possible. All these mighty works survive as monuments to his age, and make me wonder how much actual progress we’ve really seen since his time.

Of course it was the genius Mahler (following Johannes Brahms) who dared assume the mantle once occupied by Beethoven. I would never attempt to compare them partially because of my own Mahlerian biases and also because there is just no way ever to take even a sliver away from this world-class artist.

That said, Mahler, while serving as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, wrote an incredible re-orchestration of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. It is richer, bigger, and even more dramatic. Talk about chutzpah! Mahler was obsessed with the ninth because he held a foreshadowing vision that, just as Beethoven died after the ninth, Mahler would too. In fact, Mahler did start a 10th symphony, and then he died.

Where genius like this comes from no one really knows. All we can really do is listen with amazement. Here again speaking for myself, I had insufficient appreciation of Beethoven’s works in my youth, even if I’m deeply grateful for the exposure I was given early. It has taken my mature years to realize fully what Beethoven left us. Put them on, all nine of these treasures, and see where they take you. For me, they inspire me to new possibilities.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.