DAILY DOSE OF BEETHOVEN (June 17, 2020)
How important is the musical form? Leave aside sonata form for the moment. Though precedents exist in the writings of Anton Reicha and A.B. Marx, it was largely the invention of a scoundrel, Carl Czerny, long after Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert were dead. They had never heard of it!
Other forms, such as the Rondo, and dances like the Minuet had been around for a while. In 17th century music, particularly in France where L'Academie Francaise applied very strict rules in music, dance, and theater (a play had to be limited to a vocabulary of 500 words, and take place within a time period of two days. These rules of drama stemmed from Aristotle, who only allowed one day. No wonder one can read a play by Moliere in first-year French.)
A 17th-century Minuet was meant to be danced to, and a strict form was usually obeyed. The Minuet contains an A section of 8 measures which repeats, followed by a B section which also repeats and sometimes returns to A, and can last 12 measures. The middle section is called "the trio, with a C and D section of the same proportions. It was called a "trio" because it was played by three instruments. We then return to the Minuet, we hear A and B again, but without the repeats.
This "Minuet" by Boccherini, who came a century later, still adheres to the dance form and is fairly predictable:
-The 8 measure A begins at 0:17.
-It repeats at 0:30.
-The 12 measure B, which returns to A, begins at 0:43.
-It repeats at 1:03.
-The Trio begins at 1:23 with an 8 measure C, which repeats at 1:37.
-A 16 measure D begins at 1:49 and repeats at 2:14.
-The Minuet's A section returns at 2:49 but does not repeat.
It is lovely, but it is meant for dancing and is very predictable.
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven increasingly made loving fun of these forms. They did not throw them away but introduce contrapuntal and metrical ironies. Is a "Minuet" by Haydn totally danceable, totally undanceable, or somewhere in between, where those ironies will cause the dance partners to trip over each other? Watch this hilarious video for the results (when it says Minuet digression and Trio digression, it is equivalent to what we labeled the B and D parts):
The music must no longer be a mere servant of " The Dance."
The "Scherzo" has also been around for a long time. The word derives from the Italian for "joke." It was Haydn who first substituted it for the "Minuet" (as in his Op. 33 Quartets). But it was Beethoven who made it a revolution. It is generally faster than the Minuet, and even more playful. It examines what is behind the form, what generates it, without abandoning it. Beethoven still labeled the middle section as "a Trio", and still pared the instruments down for the Trio.
Today, we will merely identify the sections, but soon we will integrate it into the entire symphony. Today, we use Pablo Casals rendition, because he captures the metrical ironies so well.
-The A section is 20 measures long. It begins at 0:01 and repeats at 0:12.
-The B section, which returns to A, is a full 70 measures log: 32 measures on a new idea, and 38 on a repeat of A. It begins at 0:24, and repeats at 1:05. That's 140 measures for the opening "Minuet" section.
-The Trio, which is slower, and more tender, begins at 1:45. It should be of equal proportion to the Minuet, but it is only 88 measures long. Here, you can hear Beethoven playing with the form and extending resolutions.
-We return to A at 3:04. It does not repeat and proceeds straight to B at 3:16. Back to A at 3:35.
But wait a minute! Casals version lasts for another 2 minutes. Shouldn't we be done?
At 3:57 we suddenly hear the Trio again. Why is it back? It lasts longer than it did the first time. Maybe it is getting its full due. At 5:15, our, by now, old friend A is back and closes the movement.
You may have heard things that remind you of especially the first movement. We will tie them all together in the next post!