DAILY DOSE OF BEETHOVEN (September 24, 2020)
Yesterday, we provided a recording of the complete symphony with score. Today, we provide the symphony conducted by Furtwangler. We will give times for both recordings and mark them as H for yesterday's (Haitink scored version), and F for today's (Furtwangler). That way you can listen to which ever you please, or even both.
In the third movement, we did not find mankind acting in a way that threatens nature. But in the fourth movement, we do find nature threatening mankind. At the end of the third movement the dancing suddenly stops (28:15 H, 31:20 F), and a very quiet tremolo in Db by the cellos and basses takes us out of F major into f minor, followed by sounds scurrying around, as though the festival were suddenly shutting down. Beethoven simply marks it "Storm." Far greater musical resources have been mobilized in subsequent attempts to picture a storm, but none was ever as effective as this.
If you examine the score (see photo below titled Pastoral 6), the main storm theme— in f minor—which we term A (28:58 H 32:11 F), resembles the first theme of the third movement in F major which we reprint here as B ( 28:15 H 25:29 F) . At one point we hear a surprise reference to “Leonore Overture No. 3”, which is C on the chart (29:13 H 32:55 F). Chromatic scales represent the chaos of the storm in D (30:16 H 33:38 F). The storm subsides, then begins to clear in E (31:30 H 35:03 F), and the sun comes out at F (31:42 H 35:22 F). If that sounds rather descriptive, when all Beethoven marked on the score is "Storm”, his sketchbooks, Beethoven wrote:
"The hearers should be allowed to discover the situation. All painting in instrumental music, if pushed too far, is a failure. People will not require titles to recognize the general intention to be more a matter of feelings than of painting in sounds."
FINALE: Man and Nature in Harmony (opening)
The 4th movement is entitled “Sheperd's Song of Thanksgiving”. Some find it to be the most beautiful movement of the symphony. The main theme is sung many times, but is always changing. The second score (see photo below titled: Pastoral 5), identifies it as A (32:00 H 35:46 F). The sketches show that Beethoven originally planned to open the fifth movement with this theme in F major, but then he prefaced it with an amazing transitional passage. The clarinets play three notes in the rhythm of what will become the main theme, several times, on the dominant: C G E C G E CGE CGE CGE etc. See B (31:46 H 35:28 F ). What is this - another bird song, a cuckoo? Actually, it's a yodel, which Beethoven would have heard plenty of near Brühl. We are not prepared to say just how Beethoven meant it to relate to the songs of our feathered friends. The horn then picks up the yodel on the notes G C C G C C. See C on the chart (31:54 H 35:36 F). The transitional nature of the horn yodel is captured in the strings, which underscore it with the long held notes of C and G in the violas, and F and C in the cellos. See D (also 31:54 H 35:36 F)
What? C and G belong to the dominant C, and F and C to the tonic F. The resolution from one to the other is the most natural thing in the world, but to play them both at the same time, as two fifths? It sounds like a bagpipe! Although our score is only on one staff, we placed it right under the horn yodel so you can try to play them both at the same time.
The yodel resolves into the song in F major but the suspension in both tonic and dominant before is unique.
Tomorrow we will finish discussion of this movement and present a surprise.