Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)

After the Fifth, perhaps the most popular of Beethoven’s nine symphonies is No. 7. It often threatens to be overplayed: one remembers an agonised letter to the editor of a university newspaper (after the umpteenth visiting orchestra trotted out the A Major Symphony): “Dear Sir: Beethoven’s Seventh is a masterpiece---but it is not fifty percent of all the music ever composed!

Actually this big, brawling symphony seems quite inexhaustible, overflowing with incredible rhythmic vitality, always revealing new secrets, delights and quirks.

The first quirk to be noted is the introduction to the first movement. Fully four and one-half minutes long, it is quite as long as some entire first movements composed by Beethoven! After the portentous tone of this introduction the joke is on us when we discover that the main business of the first movement is apparently little more than a bright, twittering, somewhat trivial tune built on an obsessive “dactylic” rhythm (tum-ta-tum, tum-ta-tum…) So pervasive is this rhythm that we are apt to lose sight of the underlying sonataform, the listener hearing the movement as a nearly monothematic structure, spinning the springy, jig-like rhythmic pattern into ever-expanding waves of sound. And how remarkably untrivial it all becomes!

From the beginning the second movement was enormously popular, being encored at the first performance---most unusual for a slow movement. “Slow” it isn’t quite, the irrepressible rhythmic bounce of the entire symphony evident here in this very individual movement, with an obsessive rhythm once again informing the music, And again Beethoven chooses to work with curiously “unpromising” raw material”: a sort of “Johnny One-Note” tune which, following the opening “attention-getting” chord in the winds, is heard in a series of repetitions, increasing in volume, building to an impressive fullness of orchestral tone. A lyrical episode (A Major) follows, with flowing triplets, before returning to A Minor for a further twist to the main tune, culminating in a fugue and a blaring fortissimo statement of the tune. Then a shorter version of the lyrical episode becomes a coda, rounded out by a hushed final appearance of the main theme, slipping downwards from upper winds to low pizzicato strings, concluding with the same chord which opened the movement.

In his middle period works Beethoven favoured scherzo movements with two trios, and this symphony’s third movement follows that plan: scherzo – trio – scherzo –trio (repeated) – scherzo. Here the traditional contrasts between the main parts could not be plainer: a bustling, breathless F Major scherzo followed by a trance-like trio in D Major, with long sustained pedal-points, low murmuring horn patterns, and a faintly peasant, folk-like atmosphere.

The finale is unusually animated, even for Beethoven. Donald Francis Tovey refers to it as “a triumph of Bacchic fury.” As with the first three movements, a positively prancing rhythmic energy snorts through every bar of this overwhelming movement. A sonataform structure, with many short, repeated sections, the two major elements comprise a whirling first subject (over a thudding, pile-driving bass) and a nimble, skittish second subject, flitting hither and thither with endless teasing. This is all sent storming on its way with Beethoven’s usual thorough development of musical ideas. After the return of the main elements, the coda is of particularly galvanising energy. The whirling opening melodic motive is frisbee-ed about the upper strings while the cellos and basses relentlessly grind away on the dominant (low E) so obsessively that the final triumphant appearance of the main tune (complete with horns in full-throated whoop) cannot distract them from their “drilling operations.” Eventually the entire orchestra joins the romp and the movement rockets home with wild exultation.

Richard Wagner has been chided for runaway rhapsodic notions about this symphony, but any person of feeling cannot but sympathise with these comments:’

“All impetuosity, all longing and raging of the heart here become the blissful exuberance

of joy, which with Bacchantic omnipotence carries us with it through all the realms of

nature, all the streams and seas of life, exulting wherever we are led by the audacious

rhythms of this human dance of the spheres. This symphony is the very apotheosis of

the dance, it is the dance in its highest being.”

Haydn: Concerto in D Major for Cello and Orchestra, Hob. VII;2b

Concerto in D Major for Cello and Orchestra, Hob. VII;2b

Franz Josef Haydn
(1732-1809)

Before the mid-1780s Josef Haydn produced a sizeable number of operas and concerti for a variety of solo instruments. But with Mozart’s move to Vienna in 1781, and the appearance of his remarkable stage works and concerti, Haydn increasingly confined his creative activity to a chamber music, symphonies, and keyboard works, as if to avoid competing with his younger colleague. (A letter written by Haydn in response to a request for a new opera in the 1780s would seem to point to that possibility.) In the case of Haydn’s four best-known concerti, only the brilliant Trumpet Concerto is a late work---significantly, composed five years after Mozart’s death. Of a pair of cello concerti, the earlier C Major Cello Concerto (written around 1762) only came to light in the 1960’s, while the D major Concerto (written in 1783) has long been favoured by cellists. In 1784 there appeared the D Major Piano Concerto, which remains on the margin of the concert repertoire, although often more favoured by student performers than seasoned professionals.

Oddly, while many works attributed to Haydn have been found to be spurious, the D Major Concerto, now conclusively declared to be the work of Haydn, was for a long time thought to be the work of a cellist friend of Haydn, Anton Kraft. While there are a handful of cello concertos written before those of Haydn (notably by Carl Philipp Emannuel Bach and Boccherini), this ingratiating work stands as perhaps the earliest work of outstanding quality to earn a secure place in the rather limited repertoire of works for cello and orchestra.

Written about the time when Haydn was emerging from a period of heavy involvement in operatic composition, the D Major Concerto (unlike the fiery and dramatic earlier C Major work) is a relaxed, often reflective composition, one emphasizing the lyrical character of the solo cello---an instrument which, until Haydn, had been largely ignored as solo instrument..

This expansive lyrical mood is especially noteworthy in the opening allegro moderato, at fourteen minutes’ duration one of Haydn’s most extended first movements. This leisurely unfolding of thematic elements is shaped within the traditional sonataform pattern, but with little of the ceremonial flourishes common to concertos of the period. Indeed, the two principle themes are both marked by a gentle cantabile character, presenting the composer with the challenge of creating an extended musical structure with little of the drama and element of surprise so notable in his symphonies. But any risk of melodic blandness is avoided through Haydn’s usual harmonic originality, seen in the central development section, where the music becomes solidly anchored in B Minor, as if establishing a tonality to counter the genial warms of the home key of D Major. The development, as well as some of the transitional passages linking the main thematic elements, provides the soloist with unexpected opportunities for brilliant passage-work in the upper register of the instrument, although never at the expense of the over-all tone of gentle lyricism which colours the entire work.

The remaining movements of the concerto are as compressed as the first is spacious. The A Major adagio movement is a tender aria for cello, bringing out the special coloration of the instrument’s “mezzo-soprano” register. With the orchestra briefly shifting into A Minor, a darkening of tone leads the cello to a meditative moment in the unexpected stillness of C Major, soon returning to the warmth of A Major to conclude the movement.

The allegro finale is a vivacious rondo with a carefree tune rather reminiscent of the English folksong, “Here we go gathering nuts in May.” Virtuoso display of brilliant exuberance comes to the fore for the first time in the concerto, the central D Minor episode encouraging a hearty outburst of temperament on the part of the soloist . But the work’s mood of good humour and lyrical expressivity remains uppermost, as the work comes to a spirited conclusion.

Rossini: Overture to Tancredi

Overture to Tancredi

Gioacchino Rossini
(1792-1868)

In a single year (1813) Gioacchino Rossini catapulted to international fame with a pair of operas of sharply contrasting character: the uproarious opera buffa, L’Italiana in Algeri, and Tancredi, an impressive opera seria based upon a drama by Voltaire. Barely twenty-one years old, the composer had already composed nearly a dozen operas, and another dozen would appear within the next four years!

Although nowadays better known for his comic operas, such as the Barber of Seville and Cenerentola, Rossini won great success in the early years of the 19^th century with a number of powerful works which belong to the tradition of opera seria. Although already on the wane, this form of opera, with its rather rigid theatrical conventions (and continued use of castrato singers) survived into the 1830s, effectively killed off by the vivid dramatic works of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi.

Despite the lofty tone of Voltaire’s play (reflected in Rossini’s music), with its story of family rivalries and passionate conflict akin to Romeo and Juliet, Rossini’s buoyant musical personality prompts him to serve up an overture which mirrors the serious tenor of the opera only in its solemn slow introduction, with a majestic opening statement, and subsequent hushed pizzicato passage on “tiptoe,” soon giving way to a exuberant allegro, set out in a condensed sonataform. A skipping first theme soon swells into robust ruffles and flourishes, leading to a teasing second theme, decked out in tumbling triplets. Here we encounter a trademark Rossinian crescendo, led off with a ghostly whisper in “ponticello” strings---the violins playing very quietly with the bows close to the bridge of the instruments, producing an eerily “distant” sound. There is no “development,” and a mere crumb of a first theme: after twelve bars Rossini bounces onweard to the second theme, triplets, ponticello, and a coda which picks up speed and scrambles home.