Homer

Homeric epic counts as a hugely influential force in German culture of the Goethezeit. Goethe himself credited the reading of Homer (as well as Ossian and Shakespeare) as crucial to his literary awakening. He also emulated Homeric epic in the creation of his bourgeois epic Hermann und Dorothea.⁸ Schiller counted Homer as chief among the ‘naïve’ poets celebrated in his 1795 essay ‘Über naïve und sentimentalische Dichtung’.

Beethoven was fond of citing Homer, as in this instance from his Tagebuch: ‘But now Fate catches me! Let me not sink into the dust unresisting and inglorious, but first accomplish great things, of which future generations too shall hear.’⁹ There follows one of the great scenes in the Iliad, the climax of Hector’s heroism: the very moment when he realises he will die at the hands of Achilles, but resolves not to go down without a fight. It is easy to imagine Beethoven thrilling to passages like this, finding courage to push through in the midst of his own travails.

Although Beethoven expressed regret at not being able to read Homer in the original, the 1793 translation of the Iliad by Voss that Beethoven quoted deploys an accentual version of Homer’s dactylic hexameter and thus transmits something close to the rhythm of the original.¹⁰ Voss’s translation reflects the values of his age, in that it strives to emulate Homer’s achievement as closely as possible, while acting on the perceived affinity between the German and Greek languages. In turn, Voss’s translation was deeply respected by Goethe and others.

What does Voss preserve of Homer’s hexameter? Each line of Voss’s accentual dactylic hexameter contains six stresses (marking the six feet), as well as the obligatory caesura in the third foot (often marked by a word ending that falls on the first syllable of the third foot). He also takes advantage of the occasional flexibility between dactyls and spondees characteristic of heroic hexameter (the two-syllable spondee sometimes substitutes for the three-syllable dactyl), while preserving the invariant dactyl–spondee combination of the last two feet (long–short–short/long–long, or in Voss, strong–weak–weak/strong–weak).¹¹ Compared with the rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter of English translators such as Pope and Chapman, Voss is thus much closer to the rhythmic life of Homer.¹² In addition, Voss’s translation is often quite literal. A comparison of the two and a half lines from Book 22 of the Iliad cited in Beethoven’s Tagebuch with the Homeric original will show both the rhythmic similarity and the closely literal tendency of Voss’s translation (the obligatory caesura in the third foot is marked by a space):

Not only is Voss almost completely literal (the only exception here is that he deploys the figurative ‘in den Staub sinken‘ for Homer’s ‘perish’), but his rhythms are almost exactly those of Homer (the first two lines are exact in the number of syllables and placement of accents, the last is very slightly altered). Beethoven himself paid attention to the scansion of Voss’s lines, for he entered scansion marks in his diary, perhaps with a mind towards setting these lines to music.¹³

These lines are not the only Homeric citations in Beethoven’s Tagebuch. Others echo the theme of Fate, as in entry No. 26: ‘For Fate gave Man the courage to endure’, which is from the Iliad Book 24, line 49.¹⁴ The words are those of Apollo, who is decrying Achilles’ desecration of Hector’s corpse by comparing Achilles unfavourably to other men who grieve the loss of even a closer relation than was Patroclus to Achilles, namely the loss of a brother or a son, and yet can ultimately endure such a loss with dignity (rather than engage in acts of vengeful desecration).¹⁵ ‘The courage to endure’ is thematised in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio by the unjust imprisonment of Florestan.¹⁶ In another diary entry (No. 169), Beethoven quotes from Penelope’s lamenting prayer to Artemis (Odyssey Book 20, lines 75–6): ‘Sacrifice once and for all the trivialities of social life to your art, O God above all! For eternal Providence in its omniscience and wisdom directs the happiness and unhappiness of mortal men.’ The injunction to sacrifice social trivialities to art is Beethoven speaking to himself, while the reference to ‘eternal Providence’ is from Penelope’s prayer (she is referring to Zeus’ ‘ewige Vorsicht’).¹⁷ Thus we see Beethoven reinforcing his own urge for self-sacrifice by invoking a God-given, God-driven destiny that mortals cannot control but can only resign themselves to. What Beethoven takes from Homer, then, is the injunction to endure, to sacrifice, and to attempt big things in spite of fated handicaps. The power of Fate is acknowledged and reckoned with, to be sure, but what remains is the countervailing power of the autonomous individual to achieve what it can in the face of fated adversity.

Dramas of the Sturm und Drang

Joining Homer as the other great ‘naïve’ poet in Schiller’s reckoning is Shakespeare. Both Schiller and Goethe sought to emulate Shakespeare in their early dramas. Part of shedding the influence of the French was the urge to partake in a new freedom of expression, manifest in a teeming variety of language and character as well as a sublime disregard for the classic unities of time and place observed in the dramas of Racine and Corneille. Moreover, the French requirement of bienséance (decorousness) was also regularly violated, both in luridly dramatic scenes and in downright vulgarity. German dramatists also embraced Shakespeare’s potent mix of tragic and comic elements, which would have been anathema in French drama and its cherished vraisemblance (verisimilitude). Shakespeare was a natural model for writers who sought to heed Lessing’s call for German authors to put less description and more drama into their writing.¹⁸ The rhapsodic odes of Pindar and the exclamatory poetic style of Klopstock also served as powerful models for the younger generation of German writers. These proclivities and directives made the ‘Sturm und Drang’ (‘Storm and Stress’) movement all but inevitable.

Although the designation Sturm und Drang arose from the title of a play by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, the two most famous dramas in this manner were Goethe’s 1773 Götz von Berlichingen and Schiller’s 1781 Die Räuber. The heroes of these dramas, Götz von Berlichingen and Karl Moor respectively, represented a new type of hero, the ‘erhabene Verbrecher’ or ‘sublime outlaw’. Götz was based on a real historical figure from the sixteenth century who was involved in the German Peasants’ War. The plot of Goethe’s play is complicated, and the fate of its real-life hero is altered, such that he now suffers an early death. As a heroic figure, Goethe’s von Berlichingen is a man of action and instinct who finds himself opposed by schemers of a more modern age. He dies in prison while exclaiming the word ‘Freedom’.

Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen was explicitly intended to emulate Shakespeare’s dramatic range. Moreover, Goethe composed the drama in prose, which in itself represents a decided turn away from more traditional dramas. Götz von Berlichingen was written less than ten years after the death of an earlier literary giant, Johann Christoph Gottsched, who championed French literary models and the ideals of the Enlightenment. Gottsched, like other writers of his era, composed his dramas in rhyming Alexandrine couplets, in direct imitation of the French classical dramatists. An Alexandrine line has twelve or thirteen syllables (depending on whether the last syllable of the line is accented or unaccented), with invariant accents on the sixth and twelfth syllables. Here is an excerpt from Gottsched’s drama Der sterbende Cato, which was premiered in 1731 (the extra space in the middle of the line indicates the caesura):

As a distinct contrast to the regularity of these Alexandrine lines, consider this charged speech from Act 3, Scene 17 of Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen, shouted out the window by Götz when he is asked to surrender: ‘Mich ergeben! Auf Gnad und Ungnad! Mit wem redet Ihr! Bin ich ein Räuber! Sag deinem Hauptmann: Vor Ihro Kaiserliche Majestät hab ich, wie immer, schuldigen Respekt. Er aber, sag’s ihm, er kann mich im Arsche lecken!’ (‘Surrender myself! To be at his mercy! Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m a robber! Tell your captain: I have, as always, due respect for His Imperial Majesty [the emperor]. But your captain – and tell him this – he can lick my ass!’)

That last utterance instantly became the most famous line of the play. Such a sentiment is clearly more malséance than bienséance, while the impassioned and colloquial prose of the entire speech is the furthest thing from the elevated elegance of classical French Alexandrines or their German equivalents. On another front, the staggering number of scenes in Goethe’s drama (act by act there are 5, 10, 22, 5 and 14 scenes, in total 56) is a fulsome repudiation of the unity of place required in French Enlightenment drama.

While Götz von Berlichingen was not natively disposed to rebellion (he was only reluctantly involved in the peasants’ revolt), the hero of Goethe’s popular poem from the same time, Prometheus, is emphatically unequivocal in sounding the anti-tyrannical note that would become crucial to German heroic drama of the age:

Goethe’s Prometheus also prides himself on his self-reliance, answering his rhetorical questions ‘Who helped me fight the wanton Titans?’ and ‘Who saved me from death and slavery?’ with these words: ‘Hast du’s nicht alles selbst vollendet, / Heilig glühend Herz?’(Didn’t you do all this yourself, my sacredly glowing heart?). A few lines later, Goethe asserts the role of Fate in the formation of the heroic self: ‘Hat mich nicht zum Manne geschmiedet / Die allmächtige Zeit / Und das ewige Schicksal, / Meine Herrn und deine?’ (‘Did not all-powerful Time and eternal Fate, my masters and your own, forge me into a man?’). Even the gods themselves must answer to Fate and to Time. The striking vehemence of Prometheus’ dramatic monologue may have contributed to Beethoven’s surprise and dismay at Goethe’s personal deference to the nobility, which Beethoven observed in Teplitz in 1812.

The heady language and attitude of Goethe’s literary productions of the 1770s were shared by Schiller, whose 1781 drama Die Räuber is also composed in prose and features a similar hero, Karl Moor, an ‘erhabene Verbrecher’, as the head of the robber band. Shakespearean features abound, including the variety of social classes portrayed in the drama, and the main character’s brooding soliloquy in Act 4, Scene 5, an obvious reference to Hamlet’s famous monologue, spoken as Karl Moor holds a pistol to his head: ‘Time and Eternity – linked together in a single moment! Horrid key that closes the prison door of life behind me and unlocks night’s eternal lodging in front of me. Tell me, oh tell me, where, where will you lead me? To a foreign land, never circumnavigated’. Toward the end of the soliloquy, Moor suddenly puts the pistol down: ‘So I’m going to die for fear of a life of anguish? Should I concede victory over myself to misery? No – I will endure this! Let torment be weakened by my pride! I will complete this.’ Unlike Hamlet, who casts his inability to kill himself (or to kill Claudius, his usurping uncle) as a lack of decisiveness, suggesting that the ‘native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought’, Karl Moor consciously decides to endure his fate, to live through to the end. This decisive act of self-overcoming resonated with Beethoven and is arguably echoed in his 1802 Heiligenstadt Testament.

The Robbers created quite a stir at its 1782 premiere in Mannheim. As a witness reported: ‘The theater was like a madhouse, with rolling eyes, clenched fists, and hoarse cries among the audience! Strangers fell sobbing into one another’s arms, women stumbled to the exit, close to fainting. There was general dissolution, like a chaos from whose mists a new creation broke forth.’²⁰ Why the uproar? The play features lurid portrayals of evil and of violence that must have been shocking. Based on the premise of a 1775 story by Daniel Christian Schubart, Schiller’s drama revolves around two brothers, Karl and Franz Moor. Karl, the ‘sublime criminal’, possesses a noble soul, and is consequently beloved as a son, leader and lover. Franz is the very epitome of evil, a hypocrite who poses as the good son in the family and attempts to poison his father’s view of Karl. Franz’s evil doings even extend to making his father believe that Karl has been killed, exiling the old man while pretending to the world that he has died, and then later trying to convince an older servant to kill Karl, who has returned home in disguise.²¹ When the otherwise loyal servant refuses to do a deed that goes against his God and his conscience, Franz exclaims ‘Aren’t you ashamed? An old man, and you still believe in that Christmastime fable? … I’m the master here. I’m the one who will be punished by God and by conscience, if there even is a God and a conscience.’ Thus the audience was treated to blasphemy, along with the violence of several onstage suicides, and the spectacle of seeing the older Moor drop dead when his son Karl confesses that he is indeed the leader of the robbers. Towards the very end of the play there is a shocking killing: when Karl must finally leave Amalia, in order to honour his vow to remain the leader of the robber band, she demands that he kill her, to put her out of her misery. He staunchly refuses, but when one of the other robbers takes aim at her, he cries out: ‘Stop! Don’t you dare – Moor’s beloved should only die at the hands of Moor.’ And then he kills her on stage, to the shock of his fellow robbers, not to mention the audience.²²

Many found the outré action of Schiller’s play unacceptable (including the Habsburg censors, who succeeded in banning Schiller’s works from 1793 to 1808), but the younger generation thrilled to its provocations – great numbers of students attended performances of this and other Sturm und Drang dramas.²³ This may be due in part to the way that The Robbers captures a brewing spirit of rebellion in the years running up to the French Revolution. Germanist Walter Hinderer observes in his study of Schiller: ‘Both Schiller’s theoretical utterances as well as his youthful dramas up to Don Carlos demonstrate that the problematic of rebellion and insurrection and the character analysis of political leaders belonged to his loftiest concerns even before the French Revolution.’²⁴

Among the ‘theoretical utterances’ Hinderer refers to is Schiller’s essay ‘The Theatre Considered as a Moral Institution’, which he first delivered as a talk in 1784, while he was working on his drama Don Carlos. Schiller felt the theatre was an institution that could model moral behaviour; as he puts it, ‘the theatre makes us aware of [various] fates and teaches us the great art of enduring them’.²⁵ With such an agenda in mind, one begins to understand the theatrical necessity for Schiller not only of the native goodness of some of his characters, such as the loyal servant Daniel, or the loving devotion unto death of Amalia, but also of the self-consciously nihilistic machinations of Franz and the overriding greatness of personality exuded by Karl Moor himself, who is ultimately destroyed by the ways of the world but takes full responsibility for his own role in that world. Such strongly drawn characters, each of whom expresses his or her innermost motivations, profile Schiller’s intent to model moral character in his dramas.

In addition to Schiller’s ‘An die Freude’, the closing sentences of his essay on the theatre would have inspired the Beethoven of the Ninth Symphony. For Schiller imagines the theatre creating an ideal state of moral enlightenment:

Dramas of the Deutsche Klassik

Schiller’s drama of the Spanish Inquisition, Don Carlos, brought heroic nobility to its most dignified level, in the figure of the Marquis von Posa. Posa is admired by the Spanish King for his candour and revered by the King’s vacillating son Carlos. By the end of the play, Posa will have sacrificed his very life for Carlos and for the dream of a better future for the King’s subjects. In Don Carlos, Schiller abandons the prose of The Robbers and adopts an elevated pentameter line, known as Blankvers (blank verse) and brought to prominence in the German Klassik. Far from precluding the use of highly charged dramatic language, Schiller’s verse form in fact profiles such language by staging it in bursts of dramatic intensity. The culminating moment of the drama may well be Posa’s personal injunction to the King to grant freedom of thought to his subjects (Act 3, Scene 10):²⁷

‘Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit.’ With these words, Posa throws himself at the King’s feet. The directness of his plea, in the very face of the King, makes memorable drama out of speaking truth to power. The King greatly admires Posa’s candour, though he will not act on it.

In the final act, Posa consummates his heroism, by contriving to sacrifice himself in order to rescue Carlos from imprisonment. The moment when Posa reveals this to Carlos is again marked by a concentrated power of dramatic expression, now in the form of halting interjections followed by triumphant effusion, marked throughout by telling word repetitions:

The repetitions first enact a kind of apprehensive shadow play between Posa and Carlos (Und ich – und du? – und ich – ich drücke dich) and then serve to accentuate Posa’s emotionally elevated sense of the moment (mit allem, allem; wie süss, wie gross). Thus Posa brings about both the culminating political moment (‘Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit’) and the culminating personal moment (‘wie gross ist dieser Augenblick!’), and he does so with a directness of expression that stands out all the more because it dramatically animates the underlying rhythm of blank verse.

Goethe’s own drama of the Spanish Inquisition, Egmont, was completed around the same time that Schiller’s Don Carlos was premiered (1787). Though Schiller shifted from prose to pentameter verse between The Robbers and Don Carlos, Goethe retained the prose of Götz von Berlichingen for his Egmont.²⁸ Both Don Carlos and Egmont feature complex plots with intrigues and love interests at various levels. Most important for our present concerns is the similarity in heroic action: like the Marquis von Posa, Egmont sacrifices himself for a better future.

While he is waiting in a prison cell for his execution to take place, Egmont’s heroic resolve is strengthened by a vision as he slumbers, in which his beloved Klara appears as the figure of Freedom. She indicates to him that his death will rouse the provinces to free themselves, hails him as a victor, and holds a crown of laurels over his head.²⁹ Egmont wakes to the sounds of the troops approaching to take him to his execution. As the drums roll, he is seized with the exaltation of the moment:

Egmont’s final words (and the final words of the entire drama) seem to speak directly to Schiller’s view of the theatre as a place of moral exemplification: ‘And to save what is dearest to you, die joyfully, as I do in setting you an example.’

In addition to the theme of self-sacrifice, Goethe explores the individual’s relation to Fate in Egmont’s oft-quoted speech of Act 2:

And again, in the last scene of the last act, while saying farewell to Ferdinand, Egmont draws the moral even more succinctly: ‘Man believes that he directs his own life, is his own leader; and yet his innermost being is drawn along irresistibly toward his fate.’

Beethoven’s esteem for Goethe’s Egmont extended to the composition of incidental music for the drama in 1809/10, including an overture whose soaring conclusion is heard again at the end of the drama as the Victory Symphony required by Goethe himself to portray Egmont’s posthumous triumph. At least one contemporaneous witness, Goethe’s friend and fellow poet Marianne von Willemer, felt that Beethoven’s music fully captured the spirit of the drama. Writing to Goethe in 1821, she observed that ‘[Beethoven] has understood you completely; one could almost say that the same spirit that animates your words enlivens his tones’.³²

Beethoven’s long-standing admiration for Schiller’s Don Carlos would seem to be indicated by the fact that he quoted from Don Carlos on several occasions.³³ In 1793, he inscribed the following lines from Act 2, Scene 2 in the Stammbuch of a female friend, Theodora Johanna Vocke, perhaps to explain some of his own untoward behaviour:

And after this seemingly personal protestation, borrowed from Carlos’s plea to his father to entrust him with important affairs of state, Beethoven adds three precepts: ‘To do good wherever one can; to love freedom above all else; never to deny the truth, even before the throne.’³⁴ This declaration outlines a way of life and a code of conduct, and it stands as a distillation of the ideals embodied by Götz von Berlichingen, Karl Moor, the Marquis von Posa and Egmont. These figures and their heroic actions clearly resonated with Beethoven’s own urges and ideals.³⁵

Heroines

Matthew Head has usefully encouraged us to consider the role of the heroine in Beethoven’s dramatic music.³⁶ His injunction is well considered, especially when one acknowledges that Beethoven’s most definitive portrayal of heroism involves not a hero but a heroine. Unlike the generalised heroic trajectory often heard in some of Beethoven’s symphonies, there is a concrete heroic act that we actually see and hear in his opera Fidelio: the moment in the dungeon when Leonora (disguised up to now as the young man Fidelio) thrusts herself between the murderer Pizarro and her unjustly imprisoned husband Florestan, exclaiming ‘you must first kill his wife’ with a piercing interval of a fifth from E♭ to high B♭. The moment is shocking in several ways, because not only does Leonore dramatically stand up to Pizarro and begin the process that will result in the freeing of Florestan, she also reveals herself as a woman and as the wife of Florestan.

To speak in the terminology of Aristotle’s aesthetics, the extraordinary moment of Leonore’s high B♭ is both a peripeteia and an anagnorisis, both a reversal of fortune and a recognition. For Aristotle, these two categories of dramatic event were crucial to the cathartic effect of many Greek tragedies. To combine them in one moment is overwhelmingly powerful.

The context of Leonora’s heroism is the prison, and specifically the dungeon, that lowest and darkest depth, a powerful modern-day symbol of the underworld. The great Western epics (Homer’s Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid) each involve a journey to the underworld. This visit to Hades functions like a symbolic death, or a ‘night of the soul’, and an important feature of the epic hero is that he or she can go to the underworld and return. It’s not so easy to return – remember the famous words of the sibyl when Aeneas consults her about going to Hades:

Leonora travels to the symbolic underworld of the dungeon and comes out alive – in this respect she is like an epic hero. In fact, both Florestan and Leonora share this epic heroic feature. He is confined to the dark place for the sake of the Truth, and he gets out alive; she goes there for the sake of his Liberty, and her heroism gets them both out. In this sense, she is a different kind of epic hero, since her heroism consists in what she must do in the underworld: whereas the epic heroes Odysseus and Aeneas travel to the underworld to find out about their destiny, Leonore travels there to fulfil her destiny. This adds another dimension to an already powerful dramatic conjunction: her destiny is fulfilled in the same moment that serves as both the anagnorisis and the peripeteia of the dramatic plot.

Female heroines were rare in Western culture during the centuries leading up to Beethoven’s era. Among the ancients, one thinks of the defiant bravery of Antigone, who put common humanity above the decrees of a tyrant, and suffered mightily for it. Various Greek goddesses have been revered as heroines, such as Athena, who defied the other gods by assisting mortal heroes such as Odysseus; or Artemis, the virginal goddess of the hunt, who rescued Atalanta and Iphigeneia in some accounts of these myths. Other Western traditions boast their own heroines, such as the Norse warrior goddess Freia. A more contemporaneous model for Leonora may well have been Joan of Arc in Schiller’s 1801 drama The Maid of Orleans, from which Beethoven was fond of quoting.³⁷ Like Leonora, Schiller’s Johanna functions as a liberating angel who dresses in male garb, and while Leonora literally unchains Florestan in the most moving scene of the opera, Johanna, hearing a blow-by-blow account of the decisive battle raging outside her English prison cell, breaks her own chains in a burst of preternatural strength and hurries out to the battlefield to turn the tide. She too must be counted as a potent model of heroism for Beethoven, one who may have had more influence than any other single heroic figure in terms of actual influence upon his music.

Beethoven and the Eroica

Beethoven clearly found much to inspire him as a creative artist in the new dramatic art of Goethe and Schiller. He may well have felt the urge to create music of similar power and urgency, music that would not only strive to represent the transcendent impact of heroic action but also convey the forceful, even shocking, intensity of the Sturm und Drang. Eleanor Selfridge-Field, in her 1972 article ‘Beethoven and Greek Classicism’, argued in a similar way for the influence of Greek tragedy on Beethoven’s style. The Dionysian thrust of those tragedies, their shattering and cathartic events – for Selfridge-Field, these dynamic features are reflected in Beethoven’s use of ‘fate’ motives, stormy openings and other moments of extreme drama.³⁸ While we can never hope to measure exactly the influence of the various eras of Western literature on Beethoven’s art, I would point out that there are many literary works closer to home that may have worked on him with more immediate impact: not only the dramas of Goethe and Schiller, but also the exclamatory poetic rhapsodies of Klopstock. And yet, it will not do to separate the Greeks from the Germans, for Klopstock, Goethe, Schiller and many other German writers and thinkers were deeply affected by their new appreciation for Homer, for the Attic tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the rhapsodic poetry of Pindar and the biographical accounts of exemplary Greeks (and Romans) in Plutarch.

All these influences surely played a part in forming Beethoven’s musical ambitions. The single most potent product of this urge to match the dramatic impact of the literature he loved may well be the Eroica Symphony. The recognition of the unprecedented intensity and power of this symphony has often been entangled in attempts to identify specific literary sources, or actual heroes whose doings are somehow represented by the music.³⁹ Lewis Lockwood’s response to this tendency is to characterise the Eroica as portraying a composite kind of heroism: ‘The “hero” of the Eroica is not a single figure but a composite of heroes of different types and different situations.’ And he goes on to delimit this group of heroes, by calling the Eroica ‘a work devoted to the “heroic” as a partly classical idea, in which the protagonists are the Greek or Roman heroes. These are exactly the figures who had been described by Plutarch in his Parallel Lives.’⁴⁰ Richard Wagner, in a short story he wrote in Paris in 1840, recognised the extraordinary dramatic power of the Eroica, but declined to name any specific hero or heroes it might be portraying. Instead he characterised the symphony as itself constituting a heroic act:

The unheard of deeds begin with the symphony’s very first sounds and continue from the hyper-dramatised sonata-form first movement through the stunning tableaux of the Funeral March, the energised rebirth of the Scherzo, and the heady interplay of dance and counterpoint in the finale. With the Eroica Symphony, Beethoven created a symphonic work comparable in its impact to the dramas of Schiller and Goethe. For just as they remade the genre of the drama, so Beethoven remade the genre of the symphony, infusing it with the often shocking energy of the Sturm und Drang, as well as the greatness of soul mustered by the idealised heroic figures of the time, both men and women. Heard as a musical representation of ideal heroism and also as a world-historical heroic act in itself, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony stands as both a creation of its age and an achievement for the ages.

The Eroica as a Musical Watershed

In his entry on the nineteenth-century symphony for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Mark Evan Bonds summarises many of the features that critics have found most remarkable about the Eroica. They include the unprecedented size and ‘emotional scope’ of the first movement, the presence of the ‘functional’ genre of the Funeral March in lieu of a typical slow movement, the ‘novel length and speed’ of the ‘through-composed’ Scherzo, the ‘proportionately substantial finale’ with its complex integration of forms and styles (and the related sense of end-orientation), and ‘an overarching emotional trajectory’ that approximates ‘a process of growth or development’ and has often been ‘associated with the idea of struggle followed by death and culminating in rebirth or rejuvenation’.⁵ Bonds assesses the Eroica in terms of genre history: against the backdrop of earlier symphonies, the Eroica stands out for its expanded dimensions, its novel use of forms and the impression it creates of a dramatic trajectory or narrative arc.

While this list helps to articulate what makes the Eroica unusual, it does not account for the symphony’s extraordinary impact on listeners and critics. Other commentators have attempted to explain this impact as a function of Beethoven’s stylistic development. Carl Dahlhaus, for instance, argued that the Eroica represents the culmination of a new compositional direction that Beethoven pursued beginning in 1802, the so-called ‘new path’ or ‘wholly new style’ of which the composer spoke (in largely unrelated contexts) around this time:

For Dahlhaus, the idea of musical form as process – first expressed in such works as Beethoven’s Op. 31 piano sonatas and the Opp. 34 and 35 piano variations – is the ‘outstanding characteristic’ of the Eroica’s first movement. Basing this movement not on a theme but on an inherently dialectical ‘thematic configuration’ (the E♭ major arpeggio followed by the chromatic descent to C♯), Dahlhaus suggests, allows Beethoven to create this movement’s characteristic impression of ‘urgent, unstoppable forward motion’. This technique, he argues, is among the main reasons that Beethoven’s Third Symphony ‘represents a “qualitative leap” beside the two earlier ones’.⁷

Joseph Kerman similarly maintained that the Eroica displays the first fruits of Beethoven’s ‘symphonic ideal’, an unprecedented fusion of technical and expressive mastery.⁸ While the notion of ‘musical form as process’ certainly plays a role in this formulation, Kerman placed more emphasis on the integration of the multi-movement cycle. However, his attempt to claim the ‘symphonic ideal’ as unique to Beethoven has raised questions, and James Webster argues that its core elements were already apparent in Haydn’s symphonies of the 1770s. Webster’s summary of Kerman’s thesis bears repeating:

As Webster argues, ‘[Haydn’s] Farewell Symphony incorporates every one of these features, and it integrates them in a through-composed, end-oriented work, as radical as any from Beethoven’s middle period.’¹⁰ After a substantial discussion, he concludes that ‘It was not “Beethoven’s achievement” to “conceive the symphonic ideal,” let alone to “perfect it at a stroke” or “develop the technical means to achieve it.” It was Haydn’s, and it was from Haydn (and to a lesser extent Mozart) that he learned it.’¹¹ Webster’s point is well taken – in writings on Haydn (and Mozart), these features have been viewed merely as aspects of ‘Classical style’; in writings on Beethoven, however, they have been made the basis of the ‘symphonic ideal’. One could make an equally compelling case that it was Haydn, not Beethoven, who pioneered the techniques of ‘thematic configuration’ and ‘musical form as process’. Consider, as one of many possible examples, the first movement of Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 33, No. 1 in B minor, in which the tonally ambiguous ‘theme’ (first presented in D major/B minor) undergoes multiple transformations as it is placed in new harmonic and syntactical contexts.

It is not difficult to think of other pieces by Mozart, Haydn or their contemporaries with many of the characteristics often claimed to be exclusive to Beethoven at this moment in his career (or to the Eroica in particular). Both Paul Wranitzky’s Grande sinfonie caractéristique pour la paix avec la Republique française (1797) and Anton Eberl’s Symphony in E♭ major, Op. 33 (1804), for instance, contain funeral marches in C minor. Eberl’s funeral march, though not so titled, is clearly an example of the type – rife with militaristic rhythms and pathetic outbursts, it shares several distinctive gestures with the funeral march of the Eroica. (Eberl’s symphony, it should be noted, was premiered several months before the Eroica on 6 January 1804, was later performed alongside it in the Palais Lobkowitz and was also dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz.) Other works, such as Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony No. 41 in C major, offer more evidence that the idea of ‘a proportionately substantial finale’ (and related end-orientation) was by no means exclusive to Beethoven: both the topicalisation of fugal writing in this movement and the function of the coda as a kind of sublime peroration anticipate Beethoven’s practice. Even some of the most quintessentially ‘Beethovenian’ moments in the Eroica’s first movement – the dissonant sonority on which the movement seems to grind to a halt, the ‘new theme’ in the development section, the early entry of the solo horn before the recapitulation – have precedents in the oeuvre.¹² The question remains: what, if anything, truly separates the Eroica from the other symphonies of this period? What makes it a ‘watershed work’?

For Scott Burnham, the Eroica conjures an unmistakable sense of ‘presence’ which separates it from the music of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven, and which lies at the heart of Beethoven’s ‘heroic style’. This sense of presence foreshadows Wagner’s conception of an ‘ever-present fundamental line’ and manifests itself in a new set of ‘musical values’:

Burnham suggests that this sense of ‘presence’ and the new musical values it is said to embody distinguish the Eroica from other symphonies and help to explain the many metaphorical and programmatic interpretations of it that have been proffered throughout its reception history. In response to Webster’s claims about Haydn, moreover, Burnham maintains:

In Burnham’s view, the Beethovenian ‘presence’ is not merely (or even primarily) a technical phenomenon; it is also an ‘ethical’ one. Precisely because of this ethical aspect, he suggests, Beethoven’s music is not to be confused with that of other composers.

Burnham is by no means the only commentator who has heard the Eroica as the harbinger of a new ‘ethical’ orientation in Beethoven’s output. For Kerman, the ethical is a central aspect of the ‘symphonic ideal’:

Although Kerman mentions both a new ‘musical dynamic’ and ‘extra-musical suggestions’ as factors in this sense of an ‘unmistakable ethical aura’, precisely what this term signifies remains ambiguous.

What does it mean for instrumental music to be ‘ethical’? The answer to this question is complex and may have less to do with the intrinsic quality of the music itself than it does with the external factors that have been seen as relevant to Beethoven at this moment in his life. Maynard Solomon, for instance, has suggested that Beethoven’s participation in the musical and philosophical ideals of the French Revolution imbued his music with a newfound sense of the ethical:

Solomon’s hypothesis is, of course, supported by Beethoven’s identification with Revolutionary politics and thought in the years leading up to the first French occupation of late 1805 (and intermittently thereafter). Nonetheless, one must concede that the Revolutionary music of Gossec, Méhul and Cherubini did not earn them the title ‘hero’, nor did it generate the same kind of response to their music as an ‘ethical’ art that Beethoven’s has attracted. What are we to make of this situation?

Solomon’s notion is also problematic because ‘ethical’ qualities can be (and have often been) recognised in the music of other composers. If the Revolution is truly what imbued Beethoven’s music with an ‘ethical aura’, then what explains the existence of moral or ethical qualities in the earlier music of Haydn or Mozart (or Bach or Monteverdi)? Webster, for example, argues:

The ‘rhetorical impulses and deep ethical concerns’ that Webster hears in the music of Haydn and Beethoven derive not from Revolutionary impulses but rather from the sense of ‘coherence’ that he understands as a component of the ‘Classical style’. Such coherence entails the integration of the multi-movement cycle; the teleological processes of thematic development, formal departure and return; and the overall sense of an end-oriented process. The coherence of cyclic works has, in this sense, itself been imbued with an ethical or moral significance. Indeed, music of the ‘Classical style’ encourages the notion of an ‘ethical aura’, especially where ‘transcendent’ finales, large-scale minor–major trajectories and, of course, titles or texts are concerned. There are many examples of works before Beethoven that express the optimism of the Enlightenment age through the dramatic opposition of moral or emotional states: while Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (1791) dramatises the shift from ignorance to knowledge, Haydn’s The Creation (1798) musicalises the shift from chaos to divine light, to take two well-known examples. Forgiveness, reconciliation and mutual understanding were also common themes in opera. (Is the climax of the Eroica’s finale, the Poco Andante during which the strings finally yield to the winds – and play the ‘tune’ for the first time – not a relative of that most sublime reconciliation in comic opera, ‘Contessa, perdono’ from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro?) In this sense, Beethoven was building upon a whole tradition of artworks grounded in an ethical or moral perspective. Although the notion of the ‘ethical’ has been subsumed by the paradigms of the ‘symphonic ideal’ and the ‘heroic style’ and has been transformed into a Beethovenian musical convention, it arguably serves to situate his music within this cultural context, rather than to help him transcend it.

The valorisation of these interrelated concepts – ‘musical form as process’, the ‘symphonic ideal’, ‘presence’, the ‘ethical’ and the ‘heroic’ – and the attempts to reserve them for Beethoven are, of course, products of later reception history. They are critical strategies by which the music of Beethoven has been made to emerge as somehow ‘greater’ than that of his contemporaries and predecessors. After all, how else could one justify the notion of Beethoven as the ‘man who freed music’?¹⁸ This is not to say that these concepts lacked relevance to Beethoven, but rather that their importance for his art (and for his art alone) has often been inflated. This has had the effect not only of creating an artificial divide between Beethoven and other composers but also of marginalising works within Beethoven’s oeuvre that do not fit the privileged aesthetic paradigms. The ‘heroic style’ has posed a particular problem in this regard, leading many critics to adopt a one-sided view of Beethoven and to ignore or attempt to suppress the works that do not seem to reflect the heroic ideal.

That the Eroica has often been hailed as marking the emergence of the ‘heroic’ in Beethoven’s oeuvre (both as a period and as a style) is unsurprising, given its musical character, its title, its suppressed Napoleonic paratexts and its references to Prometheus in the finale. But it is important to remember that, as with the ‘ethical’, in no sense did Beethoven create the ‘heroic’, or, for that matter, many of the musical features that later scholars have associated with his so-called heroic style. By titling his symphony ‘heroic’, Beethoven was relating it not only to an abstract philosophical ideal but also to a fashionable aesthetic trend and an extant cluster of works that relied on the imagery and metaphorical connotations of the heroic. The heroic had long been a genre designation in dramatic music, and the term ‘heroische Oper’ (and its cognates) appeared on the title pages of numerous operas. It is in part by virtue of this convention that the original playbill for Beethoven’s ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (1801) referred to the work as a ‘heroic, allegorical ballet’. As Nicholas Mathew has observed, in the wake of the French Revolution, Haydn composed numerous ‘heroic’ vocal and instrumental works in which he combined ‘a martial and monumental tone with a broadly political function’ and commanded a new sense of listener engagement.¹⁹ The association of the heroic with the key of E♭ major, often credited to Beethoven, was also firmly rooted in contemporary practice. As John David Wilson has shown, this key was frequently chosen in dramatic works to represent the nobility of the hunt and the classically heroic sense of Tugend (virtue) it conjured up.²⁰

Moreover, and crucially, there is evidence that Beethoven’s contemporaries were already beginning to understand the symphony as an intrinsically ‘heroic’ genre, independently of the Eroica. Writing in 1805, the philosopher Christian Friedrich Michaelis noted that ‘in many great symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, among others, one finds an order, a spirit similar to the grand plan and character of a heroic epic [eines Heldengedichts]’. That he was not referring in particular – or at all – to the Eroica is suggested not only by the date of the article (prior to the Eroica’s publication) but also by the first feature he describes as a characteristic of these heroic-epic symphonies: a ‘simple introduction’ which ‘prepares and builds up expectation, which only gradually is to be fulfilled or exceeded’. Beethoven’s Eroica includes no such introduction. Nevertheless, other aspects of Michaelis’s description resonate with elements that later commentators have thought unique or special to the Eroica:

Michaelis’s description of the ‘heroic-epic’ symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and early (!) Beethoven, ‘among other [composers]’, suggests that many of the allegedly new musical values that later critics have specifically associated with the Eroica were, in the early 1800s, already viewed as aspects of a pan-Viennese or perhaps pan-European style of symphonic composition. From this perspective, what has come to be known as Beethoven’s ‘symphonic ideal’ is congruent with at least one version of the ‘ideal symphony’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Eroica and the Beethoven Myth

Now for a caveat. In laying out some of the ways in which Beethoven’s Eroica reaffirms and reimagines – rather than rejects – late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century notions about what a symphony should be, I do not mean to deny its originality or to question, to borrow Kerman’s term, its ‘radical intent’. The Eroica is almost certainly the longest, most complex and most demanding (both for audiences and for performers) symphony that had yet been written. But by drawing attention to the critical strategies by which the Eroica has been elevated above other works from the period (not least the ascription of value to such attributes as ‘length’, ‘complexity’ and ‘difficulty’), it becomes possible to historicise Beethoven’s achievement and to bring it into sharper relief. It also forces us to think more deeply about how and why the Eroica has attained such extraordinary significance over the course of the last two centuries.

A large part of the Eroica’s appeal has been its perceived role as not merely a musical watershed but also a biographical one. The Eroica has become symbolic of the ‘revolutionary’ breaking of artistic, personal and spiritual bonds that is central to what Dahlhaus called the ‘Beethoven myth’. Bruno Nettl provides a keen summary of this myth and what it has meant:

Undoubtedly, a series of events as unusual and difficult as those in Beethoven’s life has the makings of a tragic story, but as Beethoven’s shadow has loomed larger and larger, these events have been made into a kind of tragic history, one with all the conventions of a Romantic plot.²³ As K. M. Knittel has pointed out, the desire to read Beethoven’s life in this way has been ‘overpowering’ – on the one hand, Beethoven’s personal ‘crises’ and subsequent bursts of productivity have lent themselves to the Romantic narrative of ‘struggle’ and ‘transcendence’ towards which biographers have long gravitated; on the other hand, the music (or, more precisely, a carefully curated subset of Beethoven’s works) has been seen as both reflecting and substantiating this narrative.²⁴ As a result, it is increasingly difficult to extract Beethoven from the complex of ideas associated with him, one effect of which is the tendency to misinterpret or overinterpret elements of both life and works to correspond with certain preconceived notions. The literary critic Michel Foucault famously described this problem as the ‘author function’, noting that the ‘aspects of an individual which we designate as making him an author are only a projection, in more or less psychologising terms, of the operations that we force texts to undergo, the connections that we make, the traits we establish as pertinent, the continuities that we recognise, or the exclusions that we practice’; these are, in short, the means through which an author is ‘constructed’.²⁵

The particular ways in which Beethoven has been ‘constructed’ result from a complex and overdetermined merging of life and works. The Eroica has played a major role in this process, largely because it has been made to correspond with what has been interpreted as an especially profound experience in Beethoven’s life: his ‘overcoming’ of the depression and suicidal impulses articulated in the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802. Here, for example, is J. W. N. Sullivan:

The idea that Beethoven ‘was expressing what he knew’, ‘speaking of what he knew’ or ‘speaking of what was perhaps the cardinal experience of his life’, and the conjecture that the Eroica is a ‘miraculously realized expression of a supremely important experience’, demonstrate the tendency to assume a dialectic between Beethoven’s private experiences and their alleged musical expressions. Sullivan’s complex allegory involving Beethoven, Prometheus and the four-movement form of the Eroica shows how tempting it can be to use the life to understand the music, and vice versa.

Maynard Solomon’s biography, arguably the most insightful psychological portrait of Beethoven yet written, is also problematic in this regard. His discussion of the relationship between the Heiligenstadt Testament and the Eroica, though less extravagant than Sullivan’s, is in some ways more radical:

In Solomon’s conjecture, the Heiligenstadt Testament is ‘the literary prototype’ of the Eroica: the elements of ‘heroism, death, and rebirth’ that he identifies as covert expressions in the document reappear as overt expressions in the music. The symphony thus represents a kind of catharsis for Beethoven in which he purges the fears and destructive impulses that he mentions in the letter. Solomon is, of course, right to point out similarities between the document and the Eroica; but however plausible the connection may seem, there is no evidence to support his thesis – a widely adopted one – that the symphony relates to Beethoven’s experiences in October 1802. The title Sinfonia eroica does not imply that the symphony represents ‘the artist as hero’ (as Wagner once suggested) nor do the events in the symphony (including the implied tragedy of the Funeral March) suggest that it is in any way connected to Beethoven’s being ‘stricken by deafness’, as Solomon implies. Additionally, neither titles nor any other markings relate to Beethoven’s ‘conquering his impulses to suicide’ or ‘struggling against fate’ or ‘hoping to find “but one day of pure joy”’. In his letters, Beethoven makes no connection between the Heiligenstadt Testament (or the experience it describes) and this piece. On the contrary, what we know about the extramusical content of the Eroica – besides what we glean from the titles and other programmatic references – is that Beethoven insisted that the piece was ‘about’ Napoleon, even well after he had suppressed its original title and planned dedication.²⁸ The dominance of the heroic paradigm has hence led critics into drawing parallels between Beethoven’s life and music, parallels that cannot be substantiated by fact and are often (as in this case) impossible to prove.

Underlying this trope in Beethoven reception is what Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht called Leidensnotwendigkeit, ‘the requirement of suffering for the production of art’, or more precisely, ‘the requirement of suffering of Beethoven the man (or rather that of humanity, which is exposed in Beethoven), so that Beethoven’s art can emerge as music of “experience,” “suffering and joy,” or “overcoming”’.²⁹ From this ‘requirement’ arises a powerful conflation of biographical subject and musical utterance – the notion that Beethoven the man is the subject of his own music, rather than merely its author – that has governed Beethoven reception since the nineteenth century. In Beethoven’s music, wrote the influential nineteenth-century music historian August Wilhelm Ambros, ‘The painting of the powerful spiritual life of a titanic nature is unravelled before us – we are no longer interested in the tone painting alone – we are also interested in the tone painter. As a result, we stand in almost the same position with Beethoven as we do with Goethe – we regard his works as the commentary on his life’, and vice-versa.³⁰

One can see how the notion of Beethoven as hero has been so fundamental a part of the construction of the ‘heroic style’ and the reception of the Eroica in particular. One also sees how inextricable the musical features thought of as ‘heroic’ have become from notions of the ‘heroic’ that drive Beethoven’s biography. The extent of the influence of the Romantic plot on approaches to the music is considerable: both sonata form and the multi-movement cycle, for example (especially, but not exclusively, when accompanied by extra-musical suggestions), have often been made to correspond with the pattern of struggle and transcendence central to the Beethoven myth. In this respect, even many purportedly structuralist approaches to Beethoven’s music have been influenced by the Romantic plot archetype.

The Eroica and Beethoven’s ‘Creative Periods’

In part because of these biographical considerations, the Eroica has long been viewed as a turning point – perhaps as the turning point – in Beethoven’s creative development. Despite the contrary views of scholars such as Carl Dahlhaus (who viewed the Eroica as the culmination of the ‘new path’ begun in 1802) and Alan Tyson (who considered it the ‘most characteristic product’ of Beethoven’s ‘heroic phase’, also said to have begun in 1802), the scholarly consensus has tended to converge around the idea that the Eroica is the first unequivocal work of Beethoven’s so-called middle or heroic period (c.1803–12).³¹ Of course, periods, like authors, are constructions, and while convenient, they are also reductive. Periods or styles function in large part through synecdoche: select works are made to stand in for the period or style, while other works composed contemporaneously are marginalised or suppressed because they do not fit the aesthetic paradigm. Beethoven’s Fourth (1806) and Eighth Symphonies (1812), for instance, have typically been thought not to be musically representative of the ‘heroic style’, causing critics either to ignore them or to attempt to explain them away as works of ‘consolidation’ or ‘repose’ during which Beethoven gathered steam for his next monumental (and truly Beethovenian) effort. Likewise, the String Quartet in F major, Op. 135, as Knittel has shown, has long been viewed as a retrogressive work because it is less outwardly radical than the other ‘late’ quartets.³² Stylistic periods are often linked to events in an artist’s biography; in the case of Beethoven, this link has been very powerful. For Solomon,

Solomon’s notion of Beethoven’s creative periods is hence teleological on multiple levels, with the struggle–transcendence paradigm being acted out both within each creative period and across the entire oeuvre.

The idea of Beethoven’s three creative periods or styles has a long history, but the periodisation of his oeuvre has varied and did not assume a stable form until well after his death. In the first decade of the 1800s, critics were already hinting at the possibility of distinct creative periods in Beethoven’s oeuvre, especially when they were confronted with his newest and most challenging works. One review of the Eroica’s first public performance outlined three different perspectives on Beethoven’s art and noted that one group of listeners, situated between the staunch conservatives and the outright devotees, supported Beethoven but registered a dangerous break in his style with the Eroica (see also Chapters 9 and 12):

For these critics, the Eroica signalled a shift in style, but an undesirable one. A similar response may be seen in an 1816 review of the Fourth Symphony, a work which, ironically, later critics would view as a regression in the wake of the Eroica:

Here, one clearly perceives a divide between an ‘early’ Beethoven, the works of whom had been accepted and normalised, and a ‘recent’ Beethoven (albeit a decade-old one, in the case of this critic) whose works were thought ‘bizarre’, ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘forbidding’.

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann and later Adolf Bernhard Marx were primarily responsible for turning the critical tides and preparing the way for the valorisation of the ‘middle’ Beethoven. While Hoffmann saw in the Fifth Symphony and other works the essence of Romanticism and absolute music, Marx believed that these same works, and the Eroica perhaps above all, were programmatic in the highest degree, reflecting concrete ideas or images (what he called a bestimmte Idee). The late works, by contrast, were not fully embraced until well after Beethoven’s death. Initially written off as the products of deafness or madness, these works came to higher recognition in the era of Wagner (who particularly championed the String Quartet in C♯ minor, Op. 131, and the Ninth Symphony) and Liszt (who brought the late piano sonatas into the limelight). Hence, while the earliest critics valorised what we would call Beethoven’s early period, associating it with the ‘high Viennese modernism’ of Haydn and Mozart, later critics championed the middle period, viewing it as the epitome of the new aesthetic ideals of Romanticism; still later critics argued that both of these periods were in some sense preparatory and that Beethoven’s most supreme, transcendent works were those of his late period. As Webster has shown in a revealing study, these different emphases within the prevailing ternary scheme have roots in various biological, historical and artistic models.³⁶

The most familiar ternary periodisation of Beethoven’s oeuvre – early–middle–late corresponding to imitation–individuality–transcendence (and/or illness) – is often credited to Wilhelm von Lenz, who maintained in an 1852 study that ‘like Raphael and Rubens, Beethoven has a first, a second, and a third manner, all three perfectly characterized’.³⁷ Lenz, who viewed these styles as continuous and interpenetrating, was among the first to systematically base his model on stylistic rather than biographical concerns. However, his was by no means the first attempt at a ternary periodisation of Beethoven’s oeuvre, and the earliest efforts – undertaken in an era of incomplete work catalogues and limited source material on Beethoven’s life – were often highly indebted to conventional models. Johann Aloys Schlosser’s ternary periodisation (published as part of his – the first – Beethoven biography of 1827), for instance, has much in common with later approaches to Beethoven’s oeuvre – but only in a superficial sense. For Schlosser, the first and second periods are reminiscent of Haydn and Mozart, with the second being ‘transitional’ but also ‘looking back to earlier times’.³⁸ The second period, epitomised by the Eroica, is characterised by a ‘serious’ tone, which is ‘interrupted at times by boisterous merriment’.³⁹ And in the third period, the works are ‘shaped by inner necessity. Everything follows organically from what preceded, so that everything accidental, uncertain, or extraneous is excluded’.⁴⁰ But Schlosser’s second period encompasses only Opp. 40 to 60 (c.1800–6), and, surprisingly, the ‘watershed work’ marking the emergence of the third and final period is the Fifth Symphony of 1807–8. In fact, Schlosser completely glosses over the tail end of Beethoven’s career, not because he views the works of 1808 to 1827 as representative of a protracted ‘late’ style, but rather because his discussion reproduces, word for word, an anonymous article originally published in 1818 (in the short-lived Viennese journal Janus).⁴¹ Nevertheless, one can easily map his description of the third period onto the works of Beethoven’s final decade, showing how arbitrary these categories can be.

A decade after both Beethoven’s death and the publication of Schlosser’s biography, François-Joseph Fétis revisited and revised the ternary periodisation of Beethoven’s oeuvre in his Biographie universelle des musiciens. According to Fétis, Beethoven’s first period was characterised by a reverence for and progressive mastery of the style of Mozart. The second period, lasting ‘about ten years’, was characterised by stylistic independence, and the third period had elements of ‘mysticism’ and formal innovation but also a loss of ‘spontaneity’ and occasional bouts of ‘incoherence’. Fétis viewed the second period as most representative of Beethoven’s mastery, and his account is striking for the new emphasis it places on the Eroica:

Fétis thus explicitly linked the Eroica with the advent of Beethoven’s second creative period, a notion that would be echoed by many later critics. Richard Wagner similarly considered the Eroica to be the first work in which Beethoven struck out in a ‘personal’ direction because it contained the ‘poetic content’ that he believed to be central to Beethoven’s most groundbreaking works. Despite the fact that no ‘clear-cut division of Beethoven’s output into separate periods is to be found in Wagner’s writings’, in his view, the Eroica, along with a handful of other works, paved the way for the summa of Beethoven’s art, the Ninth Symphony.⁴³

To give a more recent example of the part the Eroica has played in narratives about Beethoven’s creative development, consider Michael Broyles’s account of the emergence of the ‘heroic style’. For Broyles, the Eroica is a ‘pivotal’ work which ‘marks the end of a phase in Beethoven’s artistic life’ and ‘inaugurates a new one’.⁴⁴ Beethoven’s tendency to maintain ‘a rigid stylistic dualism’ between sonata and symphony styles, he argues:

This is, on one level, an elegant attempt to weave together several aesthetic and philosophical trends and to explain the uniqueness of Beethoven’s art. At the same time, it is a narrative of struggle and transcendence in which conflicting tendencies (the eighteenth-century sonata and symphony styles), spurred on by the intrusion of French Revolutionary elements, are not so much resolved as sublimated in the ‘synthesis’ of Beethoven’s ‘heroic style’. Familiar literary structures of this kind continue to shape much writing about Beethoven.

The three-period model and its associated constructions have come under scrutiny in recent years. The reasons for this are manifold and include 1) the tendency to collapse Beethoven’s Bonn years and early Vienna years into a single period; 2) the tendency to undervalue or dismiss Beethoven’s early music by virtue of its being ‘early’; 3) the tendency to elevate the music of the canonically ‘heroic’ and ‘late’ Beethoven at the expense of ‘other’ works understood as not being in the mainstream of Beethoven’s development; and 4) the desire to broach alternative and/or more integrative models of Beethoven’s life, career and compositional development. One consequence of all this is that the Eroica’s status as a watershed work for Beethoven has become more ambiguous. Giorgio Pestelli and Stephen Rumph, for instance, have advocated taking the year 1809 as the start of Beethoven’s second creative period, thereby placing less emphasis on the Eroica as a benchmark of style. This scheme has several advantages in that it registers major changes in Beethoven’s life and music c.1809, which the traditional ternary model papers over, such as the signing of the ‘annuity contract’ (guaranteeing Beethoven income as long as he remained in Vienna), the political upheaval of the second French occupation, the death of Haydn and the turns towards antiquarianism and lyricism in Beethoven’s music. Nancy November has also advanced an alternate model, advocating for a ‘theatrical epoch’ spanning roughly 1800–1 (Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, Op. 41) to 1815 (Leonore Prohaska, WoO 96) and marked by ‘intensifications’ in 1804–6 (Leonore/Fidelio, Op. 72) and 1809–10 (Egmont, Op. 84). This model accounts for the Eroica’s significance in quite a different way by encouraging us to view the piece through the lens of Beethoven’s theatrical experiences and professional tenure as a composer at the Theater an der Wien (instead of through the lens of his symphonic or compositional development). Ultimately, no single model will satisfy all needs, and there will always be varied opinions depending on which realm or realms one chooses to privilege (personal, professional, stylistic, aesthetic, philosophical, cultural, political, economic etc.). Rather than attempting to streamline our understanding of Beethoven’s life and oeuvre, embracing multiple models offers us perhaps the best possibility of registering the Eroica’s continuities with earlier styles, trends and philosophies while still appreciating the discontinuities for which it has long been admired.

Changing Contexts for Symphonic Performance in the Late Eighteenth Century

By the time Beethoven began composing symphonies, the genre occupied a different position in contemporary musical life from that of a generation previously. The symphonies of Beethoven’s predecessors performed various functions, some of which had become obsolete by the time his First Symphony was premiered in April 1800. Eighteenth-century symphonies could function not only as items on concert programmes, but also as overtures or entr’actes in plays and operas, as church music performed between sections of High Mass, as Tafelmusik (literally ‘table music’ performed during formal meals), or as outdoor serenades. A sub-genre of the symphony, sometimes known as the ‘Sinfonia pastorella’, was specifically associated with church performance. In Austria, symphonies had also played a prominent role in monasteries, which typically supported their own orchestras to perform symphonies in church services and as Tafelmusik. In any context, symphonies usually accompanied another entertainment or ceremonial event. Even on concert programmes, symphonies were not usually the main event; rather, they tended to act as ‘curtain-raisers’ to programmes that featured a range of vocal and instrumental genres.

Professional musical life in and around Vienna changed in several important ways towards the end of the eighteenth century, affecting the role of the symphony in everyday life. From 1782, Joseph II’s religious reforms reduced the role of instrumental music in church services, which led to the disbanding of many church Kapellen and the gradual disappearance of the ‘Sinfonia pastorella’. Even more significant was the general disbanding of Kapellen at aristocratic courts towards the end of the century, since many symphonic performances regularly took place in aristocratic households that maintained Kapellen. In his 1796 Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag, Johann Ferdinand von Schönfeld lamented the current of state affairs:

Schönfeld was probably correct in citing ‘economy’ as a factor in the decline of courtly Kapellen. Economising became an increasing priority in the early decades of the nineteenth century, when Vienna experienced several periods of severe inflation caused by Austria’s involvement in the Napoleonic Wars. Money concerns did not drive the disbanding of Kapellen in every case, however. What Schönfeld disparagingly referred to as a ‘lack of taste’ might be more fairly construed as a change in taste. The cultivation of lavish courtly entertainments characterised the ancien régime (as epitomised by the court of Louis XIV), and the French Revolution probably contributed to a shift in attitude among the aristocracy, who began to scale down their entertaining.

Furthermore, the Harmonie, a chamber ensemble of wind instruments, came into fashion around the time that orchestras were disappearing from aristocratic households. Harmoniemusik was an increasingly popular musical entertainment in late eighteenth-century Vienna, particularly after Emperor Joseph II established the imperial Harmoniemusik in 1782. The Harmonie came to replace the full orchestra in some private households; Prince Grassalkowitz, for instance, reduced his Kapelle to a Harmonie.² A Harmonie was cheaper to maintain than a full orchestra, but could still perform many of the same functions, such as providing Tafelmusik and performing at private concerts. Harmonie ensembles were also better suited than orchestras to outdoor performance. The Harmonie ensemble employed by Prince Alois Liechtenstein (1759–1805) performed outdoor public concerts in Vienna during the summer months, and Harmonie ensembles also performed in various outdoor spaces such as the Augarten, the Prater, the glacis (a green belt between the city walls and the suburbs) and even on the city walls themselves. The rise of the Harmonie hastened the decline of orchestral music in aristocratic households, and resulted in a shift in the musical repertoire cultivated among court musicians. Court composers were no longer required to produce a steady stream of new symphonies, since the orchestra was no longer the pre-eminent ensemble among private musical establishments. Towards the end of the century there was, by contrast, a marked increase in the composition of new repertoire for Harmonie, especially divertimentos, cassations and arrangements from popular operas.

The symphony did not, however, disappear from private musical entertainments, even in households that had disbanded their Kapelle. Although many aristocrats ceased to maintain a full complement of string and wind players among their regular staff, musicians could still be hired on an ad hoc basis. In the 1780s the Viennese music dealers Johann Traeg and Lorenz Lausch placed newspaper advertisements indicating that they could secure musicians for private concerts or balls, as well as offering orchestral music for hire in manuscript form.³ This service may have catered partly to aristocrats who no longer maintained Kapellen but still wished to organise concerts in their homes from time to time. Traeg’s advertisement also states that ‘There are, to wit, in this town ever more families who entertain weekly by means of large or small musical concerts’, suggesting that private concerts by professional performers were on the rise even among non-aristocratic households.⁴ Thus, while the number of private concerts may have been decreasing in the houses of the nobility, the practice of presenting such concerts was simultaneously extending to wealthier members of the bourgeoisie.

The practice of hiring music and musicians for one-off private concerts seems to have slowed down after the 1780s, to judge from contemporary newspaper advertisements. In January 1785 Lausch announced that he would no longer lend out performing parts to anyone except to regular subscribers, apparently as a result of ‘previous disorderliness’,⁵ and Traeg eventually stopped offering manuscript music for hire. By 1796, newspaper adverts placed by the Lausch firm (which continued trading after Lorenz’s death in 1794) stated that they could supply musicians for house balls, without mentioning private concerts, suggesting that there was a decline in demand for the latter.⁶ Private concerts nevertheless continued to play an important role in Vienna’s musical life, and numerous patrons are documented as presenting concerts in private households throughout the 1790s and 1800s.⁷ The banker Joseph Würth sponsored two substantial concert series in his new palace on the Hoher Markt in 1803–4 and 1804–5, which focused on large-scale instrumental works and included performances of Beethoven’s First and Third Symphonies. A third concert series at Würth’s palace did not materialise, probably because of the disruption to Viennese life caused by the Napoleonic Wars and the French occupation of Vienna in 1805. Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven’s most important patrons, was also a leading figure in the culture of private concerts. Lobkowitz bucked the trend of declining courtly Kapellen by founding a house ensemble in the 1790s. With a core string section of seven players, Lobkowitz could organise regular chamber music concerts, and extra instrumentalists were hired for orchestral performances.⁸

In the larger European cities, public performance emerged as the most frequent context for symphonic performance by the end of the eighteenth century. Vienna’s public concert culture, whose origins can be traced back as far as the 1750s, developed sporadically, and will be discussed separately below. Paris and London were Europe’s leading centres for concert life in the late eighteenth century, and concerts in these cities were a frequent platform for the performance of Austro-Germanic symphonies. Haydn’s symphonies for the Esterházy court became popular in both of these cities, and led to important commissions in the 1780s and 1790s. His ‘Paris’ Symphonies (Nos. 82–7) and Nos. 90–2 were commissioned for Le Concert de la Loge Olympique, a Parisian concert society founded in 1780 as a rival to the long-running Concert Spirituel. Haydn’s greatest symphonic success, however, came from his twelve ‘London’ Symphonies, composed for his two visits to England in the early 1790s. These visits were made possible by the reorganisation of musical life at the Esterházy court after the death of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy in 1790. Like many aristocrats of the time, Nikolaus’s successor Prince Anton dismissed most of the court musicians, and Haydn thereafter had few duties at court (though he continued to receive a nominal salary and a pension). The London visits came at the invitation of the violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon, and Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 93–104 were composed for Salomon’s concert series at the Hanover Square Rooms.

The changing context of symphonic performance at the end of the eighteenth century inevitably led to a decline in the production of new symphonies. There were fewer salaried Kapellmeister who were expected to compose new works for the court orchestra to perform at regular functions and concerts. However, the new emphasis on the symphony as a public concert genre resulted in a rise in its status. The extraordinary success of Haydn’s ‘London’ Symphonies, which were composed on a grander scale than his previous symphonies and quickly became popular elsewhere in Europe, has also been seen as contributing to the shift in attitude towards the symphony at the end of the eighteenth century.⁹ Whereas symphonies had traditionally functioned in concert programmes as a framework for vocal and virtuoso items, the ‘London’ Symphonies were the main attraction at the Salomon concerts.

Developments in Viennese Concert Life

Vienna lagged behind other European centres in the development of a regular and institutionalised public concert culture. There was no organisation regularly leading the city’s musical life until the establishment of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, whose official statutes were published in 1814. A major hurdle was that the city did not have a concert hall until 1831, when the Gesellschaft opened its purpose-built premises in the Tuchlauben. Before this, concert organisers could make use of large venues such as theatres, the ballrooms in the imperial palace and the university hall, but only when they were not otherwise in use. Since theatrical entertainments usually took place daily, the theatres were only available on church holidays (so-called Spielfreie Tage) when theatrical performances were forbidden by imperial decree. Initially Spielfreie Tage encompassed the whole of Lent, most of Advent, and the eve and anniversary of the death of the most recently deceased Habsburg ruler, though the rules were later relaxed so that the theatres could open on certain days during these periods.¹⁰ Other venues used for public concerts included the Mehlgrube (a building in the Neuer Markt that housed a restaurant and a large room used for concerts and balls), Ignaz Jahn’s restaurant in the Himmelpfortgasse, and the hall at the Augarten. A regular public concert culture of sorts was established for the duration of Lent and Advent, though this mostly centred on one-off events and the occasional concert series.

The only concerts that were permanent fixtures in the annual calendar were those of the Tonkünstler Societät, an organisation founded in 1771 to provide for musicians’ widows and orphans. From 1772, the society usually held four annual benefit concerts in one of the imperial theatres (the Kärtnerthortheater or the Burgtheater), two taking place at Easter and two at Christmas. The programmes at these concerts followed contemporary practice in featuring a miscellany of instrumental and vocal music, though the centrepiece was usually a grand oratorio. All members of the society were expected to perform or else to pay a small fee, which resulted in very large performing forces. Mozart reported enthusiastically to his father that one of his symphonies had been performed at the society’s concert of 3 April 1781 by an orchestra that included forty violins, ten violas, eight cellos, ten contrabasses and doubled wind instruments (including six bassoons).¹¹ It was by no means typical for Viennese concerts to feature such large orchestras, and performances on this scale were only possible at charitable events (including the Tonkünstler Societät benefit concerts) where the musicians supplied their services free of charge.

On Spielfreie Tage the theatres were also frequently hired out to musicians who wished to present their own concerts (known as academy concerts or Akademien). The musician, who was usually a virtuoso singer or instrumentalist, would cover the costs associated with presenting the concert, and receive all the profits. Smaller venues were also used for benefit concerts, but the theatres, particularly the prestigious court theatres, could attract and accommodate the largest audiences. Obtaining permission to use the court theatres was not easy, particularly between 1794 and 1806 when they were managed by Baron Peter von Braun (1764–1819), who was notoriously unsupportive of musicians wishing to present concerts. In a letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, Georg August Griesinger reported that Braun ‘doesn’t easily lend his orchestra for accompanying, or on the day when the concert is supposed to take place, he announces [for performance in the other theatre] a new or very popular piece and ballet, and thereby deprives the poor musician of his numerous public’.¹² The Theater an der Wien, the most prestigious theatre outside the city walls, was also managed by Baron von Braun between 1804 and 1806 (Braun having bought the theatre in 1804). Securing the best venue could be difficult for musicians wishing to present a concert for their own benefit, and those well connected with Baron von Braun and other members of the court organisation tended to fare better than outsiders.

A new addition to Viennese concert life in the 1780s was the subscription series. The pioneer in this realm was Philipp Jakob Martin, who first organised a series of concerts in the Mehlgrube in the winter of 1781–2, followed by several more over the next decade. From 1782, Martin also began organising Sunday morning concerts in the Augarten during the summer, for which a subscription to all twelve concerts could be purchased for two ducats.¹³ Mozart participated as a soloist in Martin’s subscription concerts in the Mehlgrube and the Augarten, and some of his symphonies were also performed on these occasions. In 1785 Mozart organised his own subscription series in the Mehlgrube during the Lenten season, for which several of his piano concertos were newly composed.

The subscription model of concert organisation was ideal for independent artists such as Mozart, providing regular performance opportunities and insurance against financial losses incurred through hiring the venue and other related expenses. By securing subscriptions in advance, Mozart was even able to hire the professional orchestra of the Burgtheater for his 1785 Mehlgrube concerts, which was unusual for the time; Martin generally engaged unpaid dilettantes rather than professional musicians for his subscription concerts. Nevertheless, public subscription concerts apparently declined after these promising ventures of the 1780s. The summer Augarten concerts continued to be a regular fixture in the Viennese calendar, but concert series organised by independent musicians remained relatively rare. The violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1776–1830) organised the city’s first chamber music concerts as a subscription series in the winter of 1804–5, though he was an experienced impresario, having organised the Augarten concerts since 1799. A likely reason for this decline was the difficulty of persuading subscribers to commit to attending multiple concerts, particularly when the city offered so many other forms of entertainment that did not require similar commitment (including opera, theatre and balls).

The subscription series fared better when organised by aristocratic music societies. Beginning in the 1780s, the Gesellschaft der associierten Cavaliers, founded by the imperial librarian Gottfried van Swieten, organised regular performances of large-scale choral works, particularly those by Handel and Haydn. Performances typically took place first for an invited audience, either in the hall of the imperial library or in the palace of one of the society’s members, and then for a public audience in one of the theatres. The society’s members jointly covered the costs of organising these performances, in what was essentially a form of collective patronage. A similar aristocratic organisation, whose members included Prince Lobkowitz and other leading musical patrons, was established in 1807 with a view to organising orchestral concerts. The result was a highly successful concert series in 1807–8, known as the Liebhaber Concerte, whose programmes centred mostly on symphonies, overtures and concertos. Each of Beethoven’s four completed symphonies was performed at least once over the course of the series, and works by Haydn and Mozart were also well represented.¹⁴ The concerts were funded by subscriptions, which were sold among the aristocratic community, rather than sponsored exclusively by the organising committee. Tickets were not made available to the general public, however, and the concert series was also distinguished from regular concerts by its explicit aim to present great musical works, and ‘to affirm the dignity of such art and to attain still higher perfection’.¹⁵ Although the series was apparently a success, the disruptions to Viennese life caused by the return to war with France prevented a further season of concerts in 1808–9.

The subscription model of the Liebhaber Concerte differed from that of commercially driven concerts, since patrons bought tickets partly to support an elite and idealistic musical endeavour. Organisers of one-off benefit concerts generally could not afford this kind of musical idealism, since the success of such concerts depended on attracting a broad audience. Fully public concerts therefore continued to present mixed programmes that appealed to popular taste, particularly with favourite arias from the latest operas and virtuoso showpieces. The programmes of the semi-public Liebhaber Concerte, on the other hand, explicitly focused on grand and serious musical works, and accordingly placed more emphasis on symphonies.

Although the public (or semi-public) concert emerged as the most important context for the symphony after the decline of courtly Kapellen, Vienna offered fewer opportunities for symphonic performance than cities with a more established commercial concert culture. Symphonies were of secondary importance on the programmes of the Tonkünstler-Societät concerts (whose emphasis was mostly on large-scale choral works) and in virtuoso benefit concerts (in which the main attraction was the solo performer). The decline of the subscription series after the 1780s also meant that independent musicians and composers wishing to organise concerts could hope, at best, for a one-off benefit in one of the theatres. Whereas Haydn composed six new symphonies for each of his London visits in the 1790s, it would be virtually impossible for a composer in Vienna to present six new symphonies in a single season under the commercial model of concert organising. Concerts supported by the aristocracy were more promising for regular symphony performances, especially with the emergence of an idealistic approach to concert programming exemplified by the Liebhaber Concerte. Nevertheless, aristocratic concert societies provided only intermittent additions to the city’s concert life, and a regular public concert life that emphasised symphonies failed to materialise before the establishment of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.

Symphonies as Sheet Music

Around 1800, music that circulated on the Viennese sheet music market did not consist exclusively of printed music, but also included manuscript copies. Music printing arrived relatively late on the Viennese publishing scene, compared with other European centres. The Artaria publishing firm was the first to run a successful music engraving workshop from the 1770s, printing music from engraved pewter or copper plates. Numerous rival companies were established soon afterwards and music printing quickly became a flourishing industry in the city. Printed music was also imported from other cities such as Amsterdam, Paris and London and sold by Viennese music dealers. Even after the arrival of printed music on the market, however, music copying continued to represent a significant portion of the Viennese music publishing industry. Copyists did a healthy trade in manuscript copies of published music, as well as copying on demand when multiple parts were needed for a performance.

Music engraving functioned most efficiently for works that required a small number of plates, and for which there was a high demand. Unsurprisingly, the catalogues of music publishers such as Artaria were dominated by chamber music and works for solo keyboard. Symphonies and other large-scale works were largely avoided by music engravers, since the effort and expense involved in engraving (and then storing) such a large number of plates for a single work did not make the process worthwhile. The limited opportunities for concert performance also meant there was a relatively small market for orchestral music, and publishers would be unlikely to recover the costs of the engraving process. In 1791 the Viennese publisher Hoffmeister began an ambitious three-year project of publishing a subscription series of all his forty-four completed symphonies, alongside twenty-eight new ones, printed on the finest quality paper.¹⁶ Hoffmeister evidently aimed to lead the market for symphonies in a new direction, away from the practice of manuscript copying. Eventually, however, the project was abandoned after only seven symphonies had been printed, due to an apparent lack of demand. Symphonies continued to circulate on the Viennese market primarily as sets of parts in manuscript form throughout the 1790s. It was not yet customary for symphonies to be published in score, particularly as there was no real need for them in performance since orchestral concerts were usually directed by the concertmaster from the violin.

Most music copyists traded primarily as artisans, working whenever their services were required. However, the copyists Lorenz Lausch and Johann Traeg were also two of the city’s most important music dealers in the 1780s and 1790s. Lausch dealt exclusively in manuscript music, whereas Traeg also imported printed music. The Lausch firm eventually came to specialise in transcriptions from popular opera, though Lausch initially also traded in symphonies, as indicated in a Wiener Zeitung advert of 1782:

As a music dealer, Johann Traeg specialised in instrumental music, and by the 1790s he was undoubtedly Vienna’s leading supplier of symphonies. In 1799 he published a catalogue of all the works in his stock, which included more than 500 symphonies by eighty-one different composers, including manuscript as well as imported prints.¹⁸ But by then the market for symphonies had already shrunk significantly since the 1780s, when Traeg began trading. The symphonies in the 1799 catalogue are priced much lower than in earlier advertisements in the Wiener Zeitung, suggesting that Traeg was selling off stock that was no longer as profitable. Traeg’s supplementary catalogue of 1804 confirms that the symphony was of declining importance to his trading: whereas symphonies represented the largest category of instrumental music in the 1799 catalogue, in the 1804 supplement they represented one of the smallest. In the intervening five-year period Traeg had obtained only thirty-three new symphonies, compared with fifty-seven pieces for Harmonie. Works for string quartet and solo keyboard are also better represented in the 1804 supplement than the 1799 catalogue, indicating a growing market for works for the salon.

Viennese music dealers and publishers attempted to adapt to the changing market for symphonies in various ways at the end of the eighteenth century. In the early 1780s, Lausch and Traeg launched business ventures in which manuscript parts were offered for hire. Beginning in 1783, Lausch charged a yearly subscription of twelve gulden, payable semi-annually, for which he offered ‘a work’ every two weeks: this could either be six chamber pieces (i.e., quintets, quartets, trios, duets or sonatas) or three symphonies.¹⁹ Should any customer wish to keep the music they had hired, Lausch could then provide a copy for an additional price. Traeg quickly followed suit with an almost identical subscription system, first advertised in the Wiener Zeitung in February 1784.²⁰ Like Lausch, Traeg offered three symphonies or six chamber works every two weeks for an annual price of twelve gulden, payable in three-monthly instalments. For a quarterly payment of five gulden, customers could also receive twice the number of works (six symphonies or twelve chamber works). The provision of hire materials had clear merits: customers could try out music before committing to buying their own copy, and music-lovers could have access to large quantities of music without having to build up an impractically large personal library. The system was particularly useful for anyone organising performances of symphonies and other large-scale works. Nevertheless, both dealers ceased to offer materials for hire by the end of the decade, indicating an apparent decline in demand for performance parts (evidently corresponding with a decline in private performances of symphonies).

Another way in which publishers adapted to the changing market was to offer symphonies in transcription for small chamber ensembles. In a newspaper advertisement of December 1792, Artaria announced the publication of symphonies by Pleyel arranged as string quartets:

Artaria had previously avoided publishing symphonies, specialising instead in chamber music and works for solo keyboard. String quartet arrangements, which primarily targeted Vienna’s many amateur musicians seeking to make music in the home, were much more likely to be commercially successful than symphonies in full scoring. Traeg’s 1799 catalogue also includes symphonies in arrangements for chamber ensemble, suggesting that such arrangements came into fashion as orchestral performances were in decline. Traeg’s stock included fifteen symphonies arranged as quintets (six each by Haydn and Mozart and three by Pleyel). In the string quartet category, Traeg’s catalogue includes an entry under J. Haydn of ‘8 Quartett Sinfonien arrang.’²² There are also thirty-one works labelled ‘Quartet Sinfon.’, all by older composers (C. P. E. Bach, Kobrich, Monn and Ignaz Jakob Holzbauer), which may be early symphonies originally composed for four-part string orchestra.²³ Traeg’s categorisation suggests that these works were primarily marketable as string quartet music, even if they were technically classed as symphonies.

Around 1800, string quartets and quintets were the preferred medium for symphony arrangements. By 1803, for instance, Beethoven’s First Symphony had been issued in string quintet arrangements by publishers in Vienna, Bonn and Paris.²⁴ Other combinations of instruments were also added to the repertoire of symphony arrangements in the early nineteenth century: Beethoven himself corrected and approved his Second Symphony as a piano trio, and the Offenbach publisher Johann André published a series titled ‘Collection de Sinfonies de divers auteurs’ that included Beethoven’s First and Second Symphonies arranged as nonets.²⁵ Such arrangements allowed symphonies to have a second life beyond the concert environment (see also Chapter 11). By the middle of the century, piano duet arrangements of Classical symphonies were a core addition to the salon repertoire enjoyed by amateur pianists. Such duet arrangements became an important avenue by which music enthusiasts could become thoroughly acquainted with the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, which by then were recognised as central to the canon of symphonic masterworks. In this way piano arrangements of symphonies approached the purpose of a study score, another later nineteenth-century development in music publishing, since they offered a means of learning the important works in the canon.

Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were an important landmark of music publishing when they first appeared in editions by the Viennese publisher S. A. Steiner & Comp. in 1816–17. Both symphonies were published in several formats, including arrangements for nine-part Harmonie, string quartet, piano trio, piano solo, piano duet and two pianos. The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were also published in full score, marking the first time that a symphony was published in score and parts simultaneously. The arrangements ensured that the publication of the score and parts would not be loss-making overall, as the sales of the more marketable chamber music could compensate for the expense of engraving the parts. Since it was not yet standard practice to conduct a symphony from the score, the publication was evidently underpinned by the emerging notion of the symphony as an object worthy of study, or a text that exists independently from the act of performance.²⁶

Overall, nineteenth-century developments in the publishing of symphonies correspond with contemporary developments in concert life, particularly in aristocratic concert societies (especially the Liebhaber Concerte), which consciously sought to promote great and worthy works of art. Ultimately, these trends reflected the increase in the status of the symphony in nineteenth-century musical culture, though the genre’s elevated status was by no means solidified by the time Beethoven began his career as a symphonist.

Contextualising Beethoven’s Early Symphonies

When Beethoven moved to Vienna at the end of 1792, he found an environment which offered fewer opportunities for symphony performances than his native Bonn. One of his duties as a member of the Kapelle at the Bonn court had been to perform as a violist in the court orchestra. As is well known, Beethoven participated as a member of the orchestra in regular opera performances after 1789, when the theatre was re-opened following a five-year interruption. Recent research has also indicated that there was a thriving concert life at the Bonn court by the time of Beethoven’s final departure, having been initiated by the music-loving Elector Maximilian Franz in the 1780s.²⁷ The court had its own dedicated concert venue, the Grosser Akademiensaal, located directly above the theatre. Concert life at the Bonn court appears to have been private, as there is little evidence of tickets being advertised or made available to the general public. From the surviving documentation, it is not possible to determine how frequently court concerts occurred. However, when the court ensemble (including the 20-year-old Beethoven) accompanied the Elector to Mergentheim for a six-week stay between September and October 1791, their performances reportedly included six concerts of orchestral music, suggesting that such concerts were a regular part of the ensemble’s activities. Symphonies were undoubtedly core to the orchestra’s repertoire: an extensive inventory of Elector Maximilian Franz’s music library lists over 650 items of orchestral music, including symphonies, divertimenti, serenades and overtures. The centrality of the symphony is confirmed by the only documented concert programme from the 1791 Mergentheim visit, which included three symphonies (by Mozart, Pleyel and Wineberger respectively) alongside two concertos and two arias. Regular concert performances that emphasised symphonies were evidently a routine aspect of Beethoven’s early professional life.

On his first arrival in Vienna, Beethoven was still a salaried member of Maximilian Franz’s Kapelle, and it was assumed that he would return to Bonn after a period of studying composition (initially with Haydn, later also with Albrechtsberger and Salieri). Had he continued his career as a court musician, his compositions would eventually have included symphonies for the court orchestra to perform. He had in fact already sketched ideas for at least two different symphonies while in Bonn: he sketched a first movement of a C minor ‘Sinfonia’ as early as 1788–9, and a C major ‘Sinfonia’ appears among his sketches from 1790.²⁸ When the Bonn court was disbanded in 1794, following the occupation of Bonn by French forces during the Revolutionary Wars, Beethoven suddenly found himself an independent musician without professional ties to any regular performing ensemble. There was now little reason to expect symphonies to become a core part of his compositional output, as they had been for a previous generation of Kapellmeister such as Haydn.

While there were undoubtedly fewer orchestral performance opportunities for an independent composer in Vienna than for a courtly Kapellmeister, the city nevertheless offered more opportunities for a composer to win widespread recognition and acclaim. Public concerts were held only infrequently, but one such concert in Vienna could reach a larger and broader audience than the regular private concerts at the Bonn court. Vienna was also home to a large concentration of wealthy music lovers who were willing to support serious music and musicians. Concert societies and series organised by Viennese aristocrats were increasingly underpinned by ideals concerning the promotion of great musical works (evidenced from the 1780s in the concerts of the Gesellschaft der associierten Cavaliers and its emphasis on grand choral works). In these circumstances, a composer working in Vienna might produce only a handful of symphonies, but these works could make a greater impact on the musical scene than they might in a private musical establishment, where symphonies formed part of regular in-house entertainment.

Beethoven began his first attempt at composing a symphony for Vienna in 1795. This was an important breakthrough year for the 24-year-old composer, which saw his public debut as a concerto soloist at one of the Tonkünstler Societät concerts in March, and the publication of his Piano Trios Op. 1. Beethoven sketched ideas for a symphony in C major intermittently until finally abandoning it in 1797, though some of the material was later recycled in his First Symphony. His first opportunity to present a benefit concert in one of the theatres came relatively late: by the time of his first concert in the Burgtheater in April 1800 he had already established himself as one of Vienna’s leading musicians. He evidently hoped, though, that public concerts would become a regular feature of his working life. In a letter to his childhood friend Franz Wegeler of 29 June 1801, Beethoven wrote, ‘if I stay here for good I shall arrange to reserve one day a year for my Akademie’.²⁹ This was overly optimistic: in the end, Beethoven only presented further public concerts for his own benefit in the years 1803, 1808, 1814 and 1824. Of these, 1814 was his most successful year of concert-giving, in which he arranged four benefit concerts and a further charity concert whose programmes included the recently completed Seventh and Eighth Symphonies and Wellingtons Sieg.

Symphonies composed for grand public concerts were evidently part of Beethoven’s long-term compositional plans from an early stage. However, his ambition to compose a symphony as early as 1795 should be viewed in the context of his attempts to make his mark on the Viennese music scene, rather than as reflecting a particular desire to specialise in this genre. In July 1801 Beethoven wrote a long letter to his friend Amenda in which he revealed his despair about his deafness, and also reflected on his achievements so far: ‘What is there that I might not accomplish? Since you left I have composed everything except opera and church music.’³⁰ He tackled these last two genres not long after his letter to Amenda, with his oratorio Christus am Ölberge in 1803 (technically a concert work, but nevertheless his first major essay in religious music) and the first version of Leonore in 1804. Beethoven evidently aimed to excel in all the major musical genres, as Mozart had done.

Composing symphonies and other large-scale concert works could nevertheless pose serious financial risks for a self-employed musician such as Beethoven. There was little guarantee that a concert venue would be available for its performance, so that composing a symphony might end up being a fruitless venture. Furthermore, whereas an opera might run for several months, a symphony might be performed only once at a public benefit concert, with no promise of future performances. Symphonies were also less attractive to Viennese music publishers than smaller genres that were cheaper to produce and easier to sell. While Beethoven clearly desired to show himself to be a capable symphonist from early in his career, circumstances in Vienna meant that he could not afford to devote too much time and energy to the genre.

As an independent musician, however, Beethoven was in a more favourable position than most for gaining recognition as a symphonist. He received generous support from music-loving aristocrats from his early years in Vienna, particularly from Prince Lichnowsky, who provided him with accommodation and meals during the 1790s, and paid him an annual stipend of 600 gulden from 1800. This support allowed Beethoven to devote time to ambitious large-scale projects that did not necessarily offer immediate financial reward (symphonies being a prime example). Lichnowsky also actively promoted Beethoven’s career, taking him on an extended concert tour in 1796 and introducing him to many of Vienna’s leading aristocratic patrons of music. The prince may also have helped Beethoven to secure the Burgtheater and its orchestra for his first benefit concert, perhaps providing additional financial assistance with its organisation. (Beethoven’s dedication of his two Piano Sonatas Op. 14 to Josephine von Braun, wife of the court theatre director Baron Peter von Braun, has also traditionally been viewed as an attempt to gain favour with the latter, and therefore to increase his chances of being granted permission to use one of the theatres.) Without the financial support and connections of Lichnowsky, it would have been more difficult for Beethoven to organise his first public concert, or to focus his energies on composing orchestral music.

Beethoven was also well placed for securing his second benefit concert, which included the premieres of his Second Symphony, Third Piano Concerto and Christus am Ölberge. In 1803 he was given a temporary appointment as composer at the Theater an der Wien, where he was engaged to compose an opera. One of the perks of this appointment was that he was allowed to use the theatre for a benefit concert, without having to apply through the gatekeeping Baron von Braun (who had in fact turned down Beethoven’s request to use one of the court theatres for a concert in 1802). In April 1803 Beethoven was therefore able to present a second benefit concert in the Theater an der Wien, for which he engaged the theatre orchestra. He was furthermore able to raise ticket prices far above those for regular theatre performances (something he was not allowed to do for the premiere of the Ninth Symphony in the Kärtnerthor Theater in 1824), which made the 1803 concert especially profitable. He received further organisational support from Prince Lichnowsky, who attended the rehearsal from its 8 a.m. start on the day of the concert: when the musicians were flagging and tempers were beginning to fray, Lichnowsky ordered baskets of food and wine for the players, and the rehearsal could resume with much improved general morale.

On the commercial sheet music market, Beethoven also received more support than could usually be expected for the publication of symphonies, particularly from the Second Symphony onwards. He had offered his First Symphony to the Leipzig-based Bureau de Musique for an unspectacular fee of 20 ducats (which was the same price he set for the Septet and the Piano Sonata Op. 22 respectively). That a work on the magnitude of a symphony was priced the same as a piano sonata reflects the relatively low market value of the symphony in music publishing, and highlights the fact that an independent composer wishing to make money would be better off focusing on smaller genres. For the Second Symphony, however, Beethoven was able to secure a much higher fee, receiving 700 gulden for the symphony together with the Third Piano Concerto from a newly established Viennese publishing firm, the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir (valuing the works around 77 ducats each).³¹ This was a very generous fee for a symphony, given that there was little demand for such works on the market. Like other publishers at the time, the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir specialised in smaller genres such as piano and chamber music, and was likely to make a financial loss from the publication of a symphony. David Wyn Jones identifies the firm’s publication of Beethoven’s symphonies as ‘a novel form of patronage’, providing the composer with another avenue for earning money from his symphonies that was not available to most other musicians.³² In 1806 Beethoven also published his own piano trio arrangement of the Second Symphony with the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, enabling him to receive a second publication fee for this work.

By the time Beethoven began concentrated work on the Eroica in 1803, he had reasons to be optimistic about securing the performance and publication of a new symphony. He would presumably have assumed that he would be able to secure the Theater an der Wien for another benefit concert the following year, while he was still the in-house composer. (In the event, no such concert happened, as discussed in Chapter 4). Furthermore, he was now recognised as one of the foremost musicians of the day, and news that he was composing a new symphony on a grand scale would be likely to generate serious interest among the music lovers of the high aristocracy. He could therefore reasonably expect at least some kind of organisational or financial support from aristocratic patrons for future performances. These circumstances were fundamentally different from Beethoven’s early career as a court musician, when he had first made tentative sketches for a symphony while still in his late teens. Had Bonn not been overrun by French forces in 1794, Beethoven might have returned to his old post and gone on to compose many more symphonies than the nine he eventually completed. Yet various aspects of Viennese musical life around 1800, particularly the city’s high concentration of wealthy patrons who cultivated a serious attitude towards music, both enabled and incentivised Beethoven to compose symphonies that were more monumental and individualistic than those of his eighteenth-century predecessors.

Sketches and Folded Leaves

The genesis of the Eroica is marked by a well-known peculiarity. Beethoven used a theme in the finale that he had already employed on three other occasions: in the ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, Op. 43; in the Contredanses WoO 14, No. 7; and in the Piano Variations, Op. 35 (see also Chapter 8). Assuming that the composer had this theme in mind for the future Symphony Op. 55, the preparatory materials for its first occurrence are contained in the sketchbook Landsberg 7, now preserved in Berlin.¹⁵

The sketches directly linked to the genesis of the symphony have been discovered in two other sketchbooks, and in a miscellany. The Wielhorsky sketchbook, used between autumn 1802 and spring 1803, is traditionally cited first since it contains sketches that seem to have been written earliest: a movement plan (a condensation of the main features of the new projected work) and some other annotations in E♭ major (pp. 44–45).¹⁶ Not only the tonality and the metre chosen for the first movement, but also the structure of the main theme (‘a triadic turning-theme’, to use Lockwood’s words),¹⁷ allow us to recognise a familial relationship with the Eroica.¹⁸ The connection with the Eroica is very strong because the annotations in question, dating back to autumn 1802, are found immediately after the sketches for the Variations Op. 35; they are limited to the first three movements of the symphony, as if the thematic connection envisaged for the finale constituted a predetermined starting point. However, this correspondence is not obvious: the tonality and metre chosen for the second movement of this project (‘Adagio in C dur’ in 6/8), for example, are not those of the future Marcia funebre, just as the ‘menuetto serioso’ is very different from the Scherzo of the future Eroica. For this reason, the annotations in the Wielhorsky sketchbook have been the subject of a debate. On one side are scholars who recognise the beginnings of ideas for the Eroica and speak, not without reason, of an ‘Ur-Eroica’. Their opponents certainly recognise a plan for a symphony in E♭ major with characteristics similar to those of the Eroica, but insist that this symphony, at that particular moment, did not exist; they refer to these annotations more cautiously in connection with a ‘Wielhorsky Symphony’.¹⁹ Other sketches for the Eroica have been identified in the sketchbook-miscellany Artaria 153,²⁰ containing counterpoint and instrumentation exercises collected by Beethoven beginning in 1801. These annotations (related to the coda of the third movement) are found on page 12, together with some sketches for the Leonore Overture No. 1 (Op. 138) to Fidelio, and can be dated alternatively between 1803–4 and 1806–7.

Nearly half of the Landsberg 6 sketchbook pages contain annotations that can be firmly connected to the Eroica; these were penned between October 1802 and October 1803.²¹ The advanced state of these musical ideas is very different to those in Wielhorsky, and for this reason it is assumed that there were other sketches for the Eroica, now lost.²² Some scattered sketches, a ‘cluster of ideas for the symphony’ for the first three movements, are found on pages 4–9. By contrast, pages 11–91 show systematic work on all four movements. Thomas Sipe has noted: ‘in general, the four movements appear consecutively, but the placement of blank or almost blank pages might imply that Beethoven may have set out space for the movements … in advance’.²³ The order of the sketches, indeed distributed fairly uniformly in four groupings (beginning on pp. 10, 49, 60 and 70 respectively) and separated by the blank pages mentioned by Sipe, appears to be the result of Beethoven’s preliminary organisation of the sketchbook before using it.

The most recent studies on Landsberg 6 bring to light another physical characteristic of the sketchbook that will require more systematic and deeper study in the future. A number of vertical creases are still visible on many pages of the sketchbook, which demonstrate how these leaves were folded by the composer.²⁴ But this feature is not exclusive to this sketchbook, and new research is gradually showing how Beethoven strategically employed this practice throughout his life.²⁵ Beethoven’s reasons for folding these leaves are clear only in a few cases. Syer and Gosman hypothesise two categories: on the one hand, Beethoven would have used them as a signal (like a ‘dog-ear’) to help find annotations that were unfinished or important for some other reason; on the other, he made folds to take in the annotations he wanted to see at a single glance, without necessitating a page turn. These two categories, however, are insufficient to elucidate all the cases found in Landsberg 6. Moreover, both reduce the phenomenon to a single micro-chronological hypothesis that fails to account for all the existing possibilities in the reconstruction of the sequence of events that constitute every writing process.²⁶ These two hypotheses only apply to a sequence in which Beethoven first wrote his annotations and then folded the pages. In other words, the folds have only been seen as a response to the need to re-read something written previously.

The annotations on pages 82, 84 and 88, in which Beethoven set down three continuity drafts (starting from bar 396 of the fourth movement), seem to suggest a different solution.²⁷ When one considers excerpts from these pages, it is obvious that the first two bars, besides being almost identical in content, have strong similarities in the writing tool and the ink used.²⁸ In the second bar of page 84 the first quaver rest needed to complete the bar is missing.²⁹ Beethoven, in writing his sketches, typically observed very strict economy, often omitting rests this way. However, given the context in which this sketch is located – with all rests complete – this omission must be attributed to momentary distraction, a classic ‘copyist’s error’. The leaves 83/84, 85/86, and 87/88 have been folded so as to leave the annotation on page 82 easily visible and only the left portion of pages 86 and 88 usable, as though the composer, while essaying multiple attempts to arrive at a satisfactory version of the passage, had recopied the incipit starting from his initial model each time.

The annotations on pages 42 and 48, through which the future bars 114–15 of the second movement were worked out, offer a similar example of Beethoven’s use of the folded pages. Although the writing tool seems different from one annotation to the other (the second one seems much thinner or even defective), the pages between them were folded as in the first example, leaving the annotation on page 42 easily visible and only the left portion of page 48 usable.³⁰ The goal, in practical terms, could be the same: once again the leaves could be folded to remove a physical impediment, in order to copy a fragment of text from one point to another of the sketchbook.³¹ The function of the folds discussed in the cases above thus does not seem merely limited to rereading something already written: if anything, it seems to be another way of materially organising the arrangement of the writing space in the pages of the sketchbook; and, on a purely micro-chronological level, it should be considered to be a constitutive part of the actual ‘writing process’.

The Autograph Score: An Ideal-Typical Reconstruction

The link between the sketches and the copies used for the preparation of the first edition consists of a source which, ironically, remains unavailable: the autograph score in the composer’s own hand. Despite this fact, in tracing the process that led to the publication of the symphony one should imagine that Beethoven must have dedicated the greater part of his time on this work to this document. To get an idea – however vague – of what unfortunately is no longer at our disposal, it is useful to outline some hypotheses and summarise the strategies by which the composer came to produce similar autographs. Obviously, a schematic description of such processes requires simplifying some aspects, so one can only propose a logical sequence of necessary steps. However, using the insights that Beethoven research has accumulated in the past, one can outline the typical progress of the composition of a symphony.

Beethoven collected his musical ideas in his sketchbooks and was usually able to construct a musical framework that allowed him to work out the full score. How he got from the sketches to the score remains largely a mystery and constitutes one of the great questions still open for Beethoven research: not only is it unclear how and when the composer usually moved from his preliminary work to the preparation of the score, but also whether he had a regular practice in this regard. On an ideal-typical level one could imagine that once the preparatory phases of the sketches were completed – in which the various sections were conceived, fixed, elaborated and disposed in a more or less definitive order – the composer would have proceeded according to criteria specific to the genre of the work in question. Drawing a boundary line between the various phases is certainly risky: one cannot exclude the possibility that the sketches were made in parallel with the work on the score or even that the composer used sketches in his autographs.³² Further, one can presume that Beethoven would have begun on the new manuscript when the time seemed right. His predictions were not always exact, though, and the preliminary sketches elaborated in his notebooks – however numerous and detailed – were not always sufficient to clarify all the textual particulars of his works. As obvious as this observation may seem, Beethoven’s miscalculations are evident in the state of the many extant autograph scores, which are full of corrections and even sometimes abandoned in a fragmentary and incomplete state.

In cases where he felt particularly sure of his preparatory work with the sketches, he probably moved immediately to score preparation, according to a practice discernible in the cases of certain works.³³ His composition strategy was strongly hierarchical: the continuity draft of the leading voice developed in the sketchbooks – which in the case of symphonic music usually corresponded to one of the string section parts or to one of the winds to which the melodic priority could be assigned – was copied from the sketchbooks into the score and filled out step by step. Working as his own copyist, Beethoven divided such a continuity draft among the various instruments; sometimes he acted as a ‘creative copyist’, allowing himself to make small changes, mainly regarding the pitches or the rhythmical structure of the melody. One does not know how he went on to develop the orchestration, whether bar-by-bar from top to bottom, or by instrument groups (in a gradual additive process). Lewis Lockwood has focused attention on a specific annotation typical of orchestral scores, the ‘cue-staff’ annotation (a guide notation sketched by the composer through the score-manuscript at the bottom of the page, below the full orchestral score), suggesting that such a strategy was reserved exclusively for the instrumentation stages.³⁴

In other cases, Beethoven did not feel entirely satisfied when progressing from the sketches to the actual orchestral score. For this reason, he sometimes used a different method, beginning instead with the Concept, a highly detailed draft – almost a rough copy, similar to a short score – thus adding an intermediate compositional stage between the sketches and the complete score. Beethoven certainly used this expedient during his last years of activity,³⁵ but it has not been demonstrated that he had developed such a practice by the time the Eroica was conceived. Whether or not there existed a Concept for the Eroica Symphony, there certainly was an autograph score, although the composer parted with it before his death: the auction catalogue of his scores contains no mention of this invaluable document.³⁶ One can assume that the manuscript was discarded by the composer himself immediately after the preparation of the principal copy (still preserved in Vienna and described below); according to Jonathan Del Mar, once the copying was completed, the composer would have considered it of little importance and may well have given it to Carl Czerny.³⁷ The geneses of Beethoven’s subsequent symphonies suggest another solution: in these cases the composer retained the autograph scores and even used them to register the corrections and variants made over time on different documents.³⁸ But it has not been possible to establish whether something analogous happened in the case of the Eroica. Alternatively, it could be posited that the autograph was no longer useable due to an excessive number of corrections (and was discarded for this reason) or that it was really lost. A third possibility is that, having been sent in haste to one of the publishers in contention for the first edition (perhaps to Breitkopf & Härtel), it was returned to Vienna after the negotiations had failed, by which time a more up-to-date manuscript had already been prepared (e.g., the above-mentioned copy still preserved in Vienna, which will be discussed in the next section), with which Beethoven would continue working until completion.

In any case, at a certain point the completed score was in the hands of Beethoven, and given to the copyists. They prepared the full score and individual parts for performing purposes; a number of these same copies were also used as models for the engraving of the plates for the first edition.

Copying the Full Score

Fundamental to the reconstruction of the late stages of the genesis of the symphony are two groups of non-autograph documents, whose preparation was carefully supervised by the composer himself: the Vienna score copy, and copies of the instrumental parts, also preserved in Vienna.³⁹ These documents, although penned by copyists, arouse particular interest, not only because of the absence of an autograph score, but also because they reveal something noteworthy: that the genesis of the Eroica reflects Beethoven’s need to resolve some compositional problems at an advanced stage of composition, at a time when the copies had already been completed. In other words, these documents point the way to a deeper understanding of Beethoven’s final phases of composition.⁴⁰

The copied score, primarily the work of the copyist Benjamin Gebauer, was likely prepared from the lost autograph and was corrected by the composer in several stages.⁴¹ Unlike the autograph, this copy remained in Beethoven’s possession until the end, when it was acquired by Joseph Dessauer soon after the composer’s death.⁴² Its title page bears evidence of his reconsideration of the dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte.⁴³ By reconstructing the stages through which the page came to take on its current appearance, we can identify a total of four different hands. Gebauer wrote most of what is now legible: ‘Sinfonia grande / intitolata <illegible> Bonaparte / del Sigr. / Louis van Beethoven’ (Grand Symphony / entitled <illegible> Bonaparte / by Sigr. / Louis van Beethoven’). The second line of the title, immediately after the word ‘intitolata’,⁴⁴ was erased with such vehemence that the paper was torn. Then, in pencil, Beethoven himself inserted the words ‘geschrieben / auf Bonaparte’ (written / on Bonaparte), which are particularly difficult to read today, but deciphered in the past by many other scholars.⁴⁵ A third, unidentified hand then inserted the date ‘804 im August’. Finally, a fourth hand, also unidentified, added two annotations at the bottom: ‘Sinfonie 3’ and ‘Op. 55’. On the same page Beethoven made further annotations: there are instructions for the preparation of orchestral parts (in all three mariginalia), along with other signs, letters and figures, whose meanings remain uncertain.⁴⁶ The date inserted by the third hand (‘804 im August’) apparently refers to a performance arranged for Prince Lobkowitz at Eisenberg or Raudnitz. However, we can reject the hypothesis that this date represents the completion of the entire score, since the documents concerning the payment of the copyists (hired by Prince Lobkowitz) demonstrate that these parts, extracted from the copy in question, had already been prepared before this date.⁴⁷

Another much-debated proposition is that the title page of this document may be the one described in the famous anecdote by Ferdinand Ries about Napoleon’s self-coronation, according to which the composer tore out the title page of the score bearing the dedication. Ries – describing Beethoven’s adverse reaction – clearly speaks of a copy (the symphony, according to his account, was ‘schon in Partitur abge-schriben’ – ‘already copied in score’). But the actual title page of the surviving document does not correspond to his description, which reads: ‘at the very top of the title page one reads the word “Buonaparte” and at the bottom “Luigi van Beethoven” … but not a word more’ (‘ganz oben auf dem Titelblatte das Wort “Buonaparte” und ganz unten “Luigi van Beethoven” … aber kein Wort mehr’). Moreover, the title page of the score copy in Vienna was certainly not torn from the manuscript.⁴⁸ We could conjecture that, over the years, Ries forgot the details, and amplified and dramatised an event that he himself had witnessed, without meaning to falsify his biographical account.⁴⁹ An alternative hypothesis has been proposed, in which Ries’s anecdote refers to another copy, different from the one prepared by Gebauer, which, just like the autograph, has disappeared.⁵⁰

Markings in Beethoven’s hand are found on nearly every page of this copy of the score. Taking into account the writing tools and colours of ink employed, at least three different layers of writing are recognisable. In addition to the light brown ink associated with the hand of Gebauer, there are markings in pencil, red chalk and various different types of inks: for the second and fourth movements in particular there is a much darker ink associated with a different writing tool (a quill with a much broader nib than the others). Most of the composer’s interventions are editorial: indications for articulations and dynamics. He probably made the corrections in red chalk, while revising the first edition (to be discussed below), making them so conspicuous as to allow the document’s use as a model for corrections by the publisher.⁵¹ In addition to the editorial interventions, the most obvious changes relate to the repeat signs in the Allegro con brio (fol. 19v–20r) and the Scherzo (fol. 149r–v).⁵² Even if the revisions demonstrated here cannot be comprehensively reconstructed – in the first case up to five different textual stages have been identified⁵³ – and also leave several questions unanswered, one incontrovertible fact emerges: Beethoven needed to revisit the decisions already made about both sets of repeat signs after the score copy had been completed. These changes constitute proof of the continuation of the creative impulse throughout the final stages of the work, focusing on issues of macroformal balance. The problem in the first movement was mentioned by Kaspar Karl during the negotiation with Breitkopf & Härtel in connection with Beethoven’s initial concerns about the length of the piece.⁵⁴ According to Kaspar Karl’s account, these concerns were resolved during the first performances, leading the composer to reintroduce that previously deleted repeat sign for the exposition. Kaspar Karl indicated in the letter the exact point where the first repeat sign was to be reintroduced (Illustration 4.1) and inserted an additional leaf (a ‘beyliegendes Blatt’) with substitute bars to be inserted next to the second repeat sign in the score that was already in the publisher’s hands. The additional leaf is unfortunately lost.

Illustration 4.1 Kaspar Karl van Beethoven: letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, 12 February 1805. D-BNba, Sammlung H. C. Bodmer, HCB Br 312

(reproduced with permission, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)

The Orchestral Parts (the Copyists’s Workshop)

The other primary resource for clarifying various details of the genesis of the Eroica Symphony consists of copies of the orchestral parts, also preserved in Vienna and bearing evidence of Beethoven’s revisions, like Gebauer’s copy of the score.⁵⁵ Some of these parts were probably used for the premiere performance in Vienna at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz on 9 June 1804.⁵⁶ Alongside Beethoven’s corrections are recognisable various interventions made by Ries in his capacity as the master’s assistant in the editorial phase. The complete set contains parts corrected by both Beethoven and Ries (Fl I/II, Ob II, Clar I/II), parts corrected only by Ries (Ob I, Fg I/II, Cor I, Vl I, Va) and parts without any corrections, based directly on the first printed edition. The entire set of Vienna parts is the product of collective work: in total, twelve different copyists’ hands have been identified.⁵⁷ This should not be surprising. Alan Tyson’s focus on the relationship between Beethoven and his copyists has already elucidated their central role in collaborating with the composer.⁵⁸ Through examination of anecdotal reports and epistolary evidence, there emerges a picture resembling typical Renaissance workshops, in which the composer works closely with whole groups of copyists, dividing up the tasks and duties and assigning them specific parts of the work. One anecdote in particular from the biography by Wegeler and Ries offers illuminating details of Beethoven’s procedure in this matter and explains how the composer could assign each copyist very small portions of the musical text to be copied.⁵⁹

Returning now to the Eroica parts: Otto Biba maintains that the first sub-group of parts identified earlier (Fl I/II, Ob II, Clar I/II) coincides with the first to be copied.⁶⁰ In all these parts we can see corrections made by Beethoven and Ries. Within the set, the parts were not copied uniformly: in the first three movements, for example, one can identify the hands of different copyists (alternately, the so-called copyists ‘8’ and ‘11’), while the fourth movement was entirely entrusted to ‘copyist 9’.⁶¹ In addition to showing different handwriting, the fourth movement of each of the parts is always preceded by a title page. On the basis of this fact one could even assume that the last movement of the symphony was copied and performed before the others.⁶² The handwriting of ‘copyist 9’, responsible for this movement, is not found on any other occasion, almost as if this collaborator had been engaged only for this special task.⁶³ The second sub-group of parts (Ob I, Fg I/II, Cor I, Vl I, Va) contains those that were copied before the first edition was published. In this instance, the individual parts were entrusted to a single copyist. This set does not contain corrections in Beethoven’s hand, but the bassoon parts have corrections by Ries, who worked directly with the composer during the entire redaction phase. The second bassoon part also shows the plate number of the original edition (512) on its first page. This information led Bathia Churgin to assert that this part, together with the first horn part, was used as the Stichvorlage (the model for engraving the plates).⁶⁴

A further observation can be made about the bassoon parts. The handwriting found here seems to belong to one of Beethoven’s most important copyists, Wenzel Schlemmer, who was to collaborate with the composer until his death in 1823. Several factors contribute to this conclusion: the correspondence of the bass clef, the 3/4 metre and key signature of three flats over the two dots next to the clef, and the word ‘Fagotto’.⁶⁵ The same bass clef, disposition of the dots and penmanship of the word ‘Fagotto’ are found in another manuscript confirmed as written by Schlemmer (Illustration 4.2) and all these features are comparable with characteristics Tyson reported as typical of this copyist’s writing.⁶⁶ The presence of other bass clefs of different shapes (starting from the third staff), and certain directions for expression that are sometimes written differently (such as the ‘p’ of piano) do not constitute evidence against this assumption. These elements could have been integrated later, either by an apprentice copyist (who was therefore in charge of simpler tasks), or by one of the musicians who over the following years used the parts in question for the performance of the Symphony. In this regard, it is useful to point out that the pages of the two bassoon parts, not reproduced here, are written in different colours of ink, which tends to confirm this idea. The hypothesis that Schlemmer had already collaborated on the occasion of the preparation of the Eroica parts had been advanced by Tyson on the basis of some epistolary evidence from 1805, but the copyist’s assignment still remained to be clarified. So the identification of Schlemmer’s hand in this document could confirm and specify the intuition of the British scholar.⁶⁷

Illustration 4.2 Wenzel Schlemmer: copyist’s score of Beethoven’s Incidental Music to Goethe’s Egmont, Op. 84, supervised by the author, p. 125. D-BNba, NE 64

(reproduced with permission, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)

Returning to the genesis of the entirety of the Eroica, we could envision how the different sub-groups of parts just specified might actually correspond to different stages in the creative process. In fact, in the third movement (at the end of the second part of the second repetition of the Scherzo) the first sub-group displays the rubric for a ‘prima volta’ that is cancelled by an erasure. This is the same variant present in fol. 149r–v of Gebauer’s score copy. Prevailing opinion has it that the original set was produced before the printed edition was complete, and that certain parts have been replaced over the years. In particular, Tusa claims that the lack of coherence found in this set today is due to problems of wear and tear on the paper and can be further explained by the growth in orchestral forces over the years.⁶⁸ But one can also consider the hypothesis that the first copies of the parts were prepared for rehearsals with reduced forces, and that the first set produced was therefore incomplete. As for the possibility of the organisation of rehearsals of the symphonies with reduced forces, Beethoven himself wrote about this in a letter regarding the Ninth Symphony, Op. 125.⁶⁹ Other documents link the Eighth Symphony, Op. 93, to a similar practice.⁷⁰

Marketing, Packaging and Editing: The First Printed Edition

From the correspondence with Breitkopf & Härtel emerges quite a clear idea of what Beethoven – acting now as his own agent – had in mind for this first edition. Such publications were aimed primarily at professional performers. But the composer, in contravention of the custom of the time, envisioned instead an orchestral score in pocket format. In his farsighted plan, every connoisseur would be able to procure a copy of the score in this format, leading to better sales and distribution of the work.⁷¹ He also had clear ideas about the publication of the instrumental parts: in one of the last letters of Kaspar Karl to Breitkopf & Härtel before the collapse of the negotiations, we learn that the first violin parts were to contain many cues for other instruments during the bars of rest (Stichnoten).⁷² These cues would certainly have simplified the work of the Konzertmeister charged with conducting the orchestra, clarifying his vision of the work as a whole. The Vienna copy, mentioned above, also bears a similar direction: ‘N.B. in die erste Violinstimme werden gleich die anderen Instrumente zum Theil eingetragen’ (‘N.B. likewise in the first violin part cues from the other instruments should be entered’). So the composer’s vision of his desired ‘editorial product’ was precise and well defined. The expedience of the Stichnoten, according to Beethoven, had already been tested with the first edition of the First Symphony, Op. 21.⁷³ But evidently this usage had not yet been consolidated in the typographical practice of the period.

Although Beethoven had wanted to publish his work in score format, the first edition of the Eroica was released only in parts at first; it was issued in October 1806 by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir firm of Vienna.⁷⁴ None of the details of the negotiations through which the composer granted his work to the small Viennese publishing house have come down to us through correspondence. The first announcement of the publication of the symphony appeared in the Wiener Zeitung of 29 October.⁷⁵ The parts, eighteen in all, contained many errors; within a few months of publication in 1807, two lists of Errata were made available – both were located after the end of the general comments on the symphony and published independently of the composer’s wishes.⁷⁶ These lists are primarily concerned with corrections of wrong notes and missing accidentals. One detail in particular has caught the attention of scholars: bars 150–51 of the first movement (the bars that precede the repeat sign corrected by Beethoven in Gebauer’s copy and mentioned by Kaspar Karl during the negotiation with Breitkopf & Härtel) are repeated twice. It is very difficult to understand what might have caused this repetition: either it was a mistake caused by an engraver, confused by the signs of correction and restoration present in fol. 19v–20r of Gebauer’s copy (as maintained by Del Mar),⁷⁷ or the composer had actually selected this option, introducing what he considered an improvement in one of the last phases of his work (as suggested by Biba and Churgin).⁷⁸

In any case, Beethoven was not satisfied with the first edition, and continued to make corrections in his personal printed copy, later preserved in the archives of Prince Lobkowitz. His corrections were carried out with various writing implements (red chalk, ink and pencil) and seem to indicate again several distinct phases of corrections, dating back to the beginning of 1807.⁷⁹ While the cancellation of the repetition of bars 150–1 of the first movement, clearly visible and in Beethoven’s hand, defines the composer’s final textual choice, it fails to clarify whether, at that moment, the composer was emending an error or actually changing his mind about the passage. When the symphony was published again by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir (1807–8), the repetition of the two bars had definitively disappeared. Two new editions were finally published in score – according to the composer’s wish – by Cianchettini & Sperati of London (1809) and Simrock of Bonn (1822); however, there is no evidence that Beethoven had anything to do with them.