The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination Part 7

13. Del Mar, Conducting Beethoven, p. 74.

14. Emily Anderson, ed. The Letters of Beethoven, Collected, Translated and Edited with an Introduction, Appendixes, Notes and Indexes (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 217.

15. Ibid., p. 60.

16. Ibid., p. 217.

17. Quoted in Thayer-Forbes, p. 373.

18. Ibid., p. 358.

19. Maynard Solomon, Beethoven Essays (Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 93.

20. A. McCombe et al., "Guidelines for the Grading of Tinnitus Severity, the Results of a Working Group Commissioned by the British a.s.sociation of Otolaryngologists, Head and Neck Surgeons, 1999," Clinical Otolaryngology & Applied Sciences 26, no. 5 (Oct. 2001): 38893.

21. [Alexander Wheelock Thayer], "From My Diary. No. XVI," Dwight's Journal of Music, 2, no. 19 (Feb. 12, 1853): 149.

22. Annette Maria DiMedeo, Frances McCollin: Her Life and Music (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990), p. 5.

23. Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven, A Study in Mythmaking (Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2008), p. 160.

24. William McGuffey, McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader (American Book Co., 1879), p. 303. The Crofton Boys was first published in 1842, only fifteen years after Beethoven's death, making Hugh's mother pretty culturally hip for a London druggist's wife. Martineau was a pioneering journalist and sociologist who advocated for feminism, abolitionism, and the positivist theories of August Comte, whose popular historical "law of three stages" (theocratic, metaphysical, scientific) was another manifestation of the nineteenth-century fetish for three-part intellectual structures that also gave us the early-middle-late division of Beethoven's career.

25. For example, on page 27 of Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett's Just Curious About History, Jeeves (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), a collection of historical trivia: "[B]y the time [Beethoven] reached his early thirties his hearing was gone, and he could no longer play the piano properly." In a teaching guide called Breaking Away from the Textbook: The Enlightenment through the 20th Century (by Ron H. Pahl [Lanham, MD: R&L Education, 2002], p. 90), one reads that "[Beethoven] called himself a 'tone poet' and he was deaf by the time he was thirty, but that did not stop him from reinventing music." Another educational workbook, Editing Skills: Practical Activities Using Text Types, Ages 11+ (Balcatta, Australia: R.I.C. Publications, 2005, p. 83), designed to train students to spot errors of spelling and grammar, reiterates the trope in a convincingly imitated semiliterate style: "By the age of 30, Beethoven was profowndly deaf yet he still managed to compose brilliant music examples of these works are the symphones, 'Eroica' and 'Pastoral.' "

26. Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, Band 9, Grita Herre, ed. (VEB Deutscher Verlag fur Musik Leipzig, 1988), pp. 29091.

27. Owen Jander, " 'Let Your Deafness No Longer Be a Secret-Even In Art': Self-Portraiture and the Third Movement of the C-Minor Symphony," The Beethoven Journal 8 (2000): 25.

28. Quoted in Rita Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (University of Rochester Press, 2002), p. 111.

29. Ibid., p. 231.

30. Ibid.

31. Thayer-Forbes, p. 209.

32. E. T. A. Hoffmann, "Review," in Wayne M. Senner, translator, and Robin Wallace and William Meredith, editors. The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries, 2 vols. (University of Nebraska Press, 1999 [vol. 1], 2001 [vol. 2]), vol. 2, p. 98.

33. See Michael C. Tusa, "Beethoven's 'C-minor Mood,' Some Thoughts on the Structural Implications of Key Choice," Beethoven Forum 2 (1993): 610.

34. Leonard Bernstein, The Joy of Music (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), p. 89.

35. Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics, pp. 23233.

36. See Konrad Ulrich, "Mozart's Sketches," Early Music 20, no. 1 (Feb., 1992), for a useful overview.

37. The best survey of Landsberg 6 is Rachel W. Wade, "Beethoven's Eroica Sketchbook," Fontes artis musicae XXIV, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1977): 25490. Dating the sketches can be a tricky business, but the presence of early sketches for Fidelio-which Beethoven first turned his attention to at the end of 1803-makes early 1804 a plausible date for the sketches of the Fifth. See also the detailed discussion of the sketchbook in Douglas Johnson, et al., The Beethoven Sketchbooks (University of California Press, 1985), pp. 13745.

38. The catalog of Landsberg's Beethoven collection is reproduced in Johnson et al., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, p. 32.

39. See Gustav Nottebohm, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1880), pp. 7071.

40. Robert Haven Schauffler, The Unknown Brahms (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1933), pp. 13940. Schauffler's musical biographies can sometimes rival Schindler for engendering skepticism, but here he is quoting Brahms's friend and biographer Max Kalbeck.

41. Homer, The Iliad of Homer, Samuel Butler, trans. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1898), p. 76.

42. Aristotle, The "Art" of Rhetoric, J. H. Freese, trans. (Harvard University Press, 1926), pp. 38586. (The translator uses the spelling paean.) 43. Quintilian, Quintilian's Inst.i.tutes of Oratory, John Selby Watson, trans. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1876), vol. 2, p. 237.

44. Edwin E. Gordon, Tonal and Rhythm Patterns: An Objective a.n.a.lysis (State University of New York Press, 1976), pp. 66, 71.

45. Ibid., p. 123.

46. Friedrich Kerst, Der Erinnerungen an Beethoven (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1913), Band 1, p. 54. ("Viele Motive Beethovens entstanden durch zufallige auere Eindrucke und Ereignisse. Der Gesang eines Waldvogels (der Ammerling) gab ihm das Thema zur C-Moll-Sinfonie, und wer ihn fantasieren gehort hat, wei, was er aus den unbedeutendsten paar Tonen zu entwickeln wute.") Czerny had contributed his reminiscences of Beethoven to Otto Jahn, an archaeologist and historian whose 1856 biography of Mozart still remains one of the great monuments of musical scholars.h.i.+p. Jahn never got around to writing his Beethoven biography, but Czerny's notes survived to be published.

47. Christoph Christian Sturm, Reflections on the Works of G.o.d in Providence and Nature, for Every Day in the Year, Adam Clarke, trans. (New York: McElrath, Bangs & Herbert, 1833), p. 183.

48. The conversation books mention an intellectual dispute between Oken and Ignaz Troxler that was enough to pa.s.s for news of the day; see Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, Vierter Band (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1907), p. 154. Troxler, a doctor and philosopher, was an acquaintance of Beethoven's in Vienna.

49. See Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985), pp. 199211.

50. Wilhelm Christian Muller, "Something on Ludwig van Beethoven," in Senner et al., The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries, vol. 1, p. 106. Muller knew Beethoven largely through his daughter Elise, a pianist and composer who corresponded with Beethoven, and, scholarly temptation aside, most likely was not the dedicatee of "Fur Elise."

51. Olivier Messiaen, the most famous of ornithologically inspired composers, always placed the yellowhammer's final note a whole step higher than the repeated notes, but dialects vary; see, for instance, Gundula Wonke and Dieter Wallschlager, "Song dialects in the yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella: bioacoustic variation between and within dialects," Journal of Ornithology 150, no. 1 (Jan. 2009): 11726.

52. See Owen Jander, "The Prophetic Conversation in Beethoven's 'Scene by the Brook,' " The Musical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 520.

53. Harvey Grace, "Interludes," The Musical Times, Sept. 1, 1920: p. 595.

54. As in Haydn's 104th Symphony, for instance: Adagio 55. As quoted in Sandra P. Rosenbaum, Performance Practices in Cla.s.sic Piano Music (Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 368.

56. Richard Wagner, On Conducting, William Ashton Ellis, trans., in Richard Wagner's Prose Works, vol. 4 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1912), p. 311.

57. For a fascinating look at such technology, see George Thomas Ealy, "Of Ear Trumpets and a Resonance Plate: Early Hearing Aids and Beethoven's Hearing Perception," 19th Century Music 17, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 26273.

58. Gustav Nottebohm, Beethoveniana. Aufsatze und Mittheilungen (Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1872), p. 135.

59. Felix Weingartner, On Conducting, pp. 3536.

60. Weingartner, On the Performance of Beethoven's Symphonies, Ernest Newman, trans. (London: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1906), p. 61.

61. Gunther Schuller, The Compleat Conductor, pp. 14849. (This table seems to be more precise than the one on page 123.) 62. Quoted in Joseph Horowitz, Understanding Toscanini (University of California Press, 1994), p. 339.

63. Jean Vermeil, Conversations with Boulez, Camille Naish, trans. (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), p. 71.

64. See Schumann's letter to Friedrich Hiller, April 25, 1853, in Gustav F. Jansen, ed., Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue Folge (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1904), pp. 37071.

65. See William Malloch, "Carl Czerny's Metronome Marks for Haydn and Mozart Symphonies," Early Music 16, no. 1 (Feb. 1988): 7282, which also includes a reproduction of Beethoven's own metronome-marking table from the December 1817 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung.

66. Peter Stadlen makes this point in "Beethoven and the Metronome," Soundings 9 (1982): 3873.

67. Kielan Yarrow et al., "Illusory Perceptions of s.p.a.ce and Time Preserve Cross-Saccadic Perceptual Continuity," Nature 414 (Nov. 15, 2001): 3025.

68. For effects of musical training, see, for example, Bruno H. Repp, "Sensorimotor Synchronization and Perception of Timing," Human Movement Science 29 (2010): 200213. For a study of the deafness aspect, see Joanna Kowalska and Elzbieta Szelag, "The Effect of Congenital Deafness on Duration Judgment," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47, no. 9 (Sept. 2006): 94653.

69. See Helga Lejeune and J. H. Wearden, "Vierordt's The Experimental Study of the Time Sense (1868) and Its Legacy," European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 21 (2009): 94160. Vierordt's book has never been translated into English.

70. Simon Grondin, "Timing and Time Perception: A Review of Recent Behavioral and Neuroscience Findings and Theoretical Directions," Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 72 (2010): 581, n. 4.

71. Ibid., p. 564.

72. One can compare three notable recordings from the 1980s that took up the historically informed Beethovenian challenge. The Hanover Band, led by Roy Goodman, takes the first movement of the Fifth at around 104 on their 1984 recording (Nimbus NIM 5007); Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music hover just under the 108 threshold on their 1987 version (Decca L'Oiseau-Lyre 417615 2); Roger Norrington and the London Cla.s.sical Players (EMI 7496562) deliver their 1989 reading at a solid 108.

73. Richard Taruskin, "On Letting the Music Speak for Itself: Some Reflections on Musicology and Performance," The Journal of Musicology 1, no. 3 (July 1982): 33849.

74. Jean-Paul Sartre, War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War 193940, Quentin h.o.a.re, trans. (London: Verso, 1999), p. 221.

75. Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations, vol. 4, Benita Eisler, trans. (New York: G. Braziller, 1965), p. 222.

76. Jules Michelet, Historical View of the French Revolution, Charles c.o.c.ks, trans. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888), p. 439.

77. Maynard Solomon, "Beethoven's 'Magazin der Kunst,' " 19th-Century Music 7, no. 3 (April 1984): 207.

78. The news was duly transmitted by a professor in Beethoven's hometown of Bonn, B. L. Fischenich, to Schiller's wife: I am enclosing a musical setting of the Feuerfarbe [a poem by Sophie Mereau, a friend of Schiller's] and I would like to know your opinion of it. It is by a young man from here, whose musical talents are praised everywhere and whom the Elector has sent to Haydn in Vienna. He is also going to set Schiller's Joy with all the verses to music.

Quoted in Tia DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803 (University of California Press, 1995), p. 85. Settings of the "Ode" were hardly rare, but Beethoven knew that Fischenich was on letter-writing terms with the Schillers, and that his own setting might stand a better-than-average chance of standing out from the crowd. Beethoven's "Feuerfarbe" was published as op. 52, no. 2.

79. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, trans. (Oxford University Press, 1983).

80. Ibid., p. 191.

81. Schiller to Goethe, March 2, 1798 ("die Reiche der Vernunft"). In Friedrich Schiller, Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Neunundzwanzigster Band: Schillers Briefe 17961798, Norbert Oellers and Frithjof Stock, eds. (Weimar: Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1977).

82. Solomon, "Beethoven and Schiller," in Beethoven Essays, p. 208.

83. Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven Remembered: The Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand Ries, Frederick Noonan, trans. (Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publishers, 1987), p. 68.

84. Solomon, Beethoven, p. 182.

85. See Nicholas Mathew, "History Under Erasure: Wellingtons Sieg, the Congress of Vienna, and the Ruination of Beethoven's Heroic Style," The Musical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 1761.

86. Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), p. 409.

87. Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia, Frank Jellinek, trans. (University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 139.

88. As suggested by Solomon in Beethoven, pp. 21926.

89. Thayer-Forbes, p. 536.

90. Beethoven's Letters (17901826) from the Collection of Dr. Ludwig Nohl, Lady Wallace, trans. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1866), vol. 1, pp. 11415.

91. Quoted in Thayer-Forbes, Thayer's Life of Beethoven, p. 538.

92. Quoted in ibid., p. 403, n. 10.

93. Rodeina Kenaan. "Staff Try to Save Battered Hotel That Was Journalist's Haven," a.s.sociated Press, Feb. 25, 1987.

94. All examples from Paul-edouard Levayer, ed., Chansonnier revolutionnaire (Paris: editions Gallimard, 1989).

95. Michael Broyles, Beethoven: The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven's Heroic Style (New York: Excelsior Music Publis.h.i.+ng Co., 1987), p. 125.

96. Arnold Schmitz, Das romantische Beethovenbild (Berlin und Bonn: Ferd. Dummlers Verlag, 1927), pp. 16667. Also see Broyles, Ibid., pp. 12023.

97. Jean-Francois Le Sueur, "Chant du 1er Vendemiaire An IX," in Constant Pierre, Musique des fetes et ceremonies de la revolution francaise, p. 167: For comparison, Cherubini's "L'Hymne du Pantheon" can be found on p. 367 of the same volume.

98. Julien Tiersot, Les Fetes et Les Chants de la Revolution Francaise (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie., 1908), pp. 31315.

99. See David Charlton's preface to his edition: etienne Nicolas Mehul, Symphony no. 1 in G minor (Madison: A-R Editions, Inc., 1985), p. ix.

100. Robert Schumann, Music and Musicians: Essays and Criticisms, f.a.n.n.y Raymond Ritter, trans. (London: William Reeves, 1891), p. 385.

101. Jean Mongredien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism 17891830, Sylvain Fremaux, trans. (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), pp. 31920.

102. etienne Nicolas Mehul, Euphrosine, ou Le Tyran Corrige, libretto by Francois Hoffmann (New York and London: Garland Publis.h.i.+ng, Inc., 1980) (facsimile of the first printed edition), p. 2 (mm. 2327); see also p. 5 (mm. 8789), a particularly Beethovenian instance.

103. etienne Nicolas Mehul, Ariodant, libretto by Francois Hoffmann (New York and London: Garland Publis.h.i.+ng, Inc., 1980) (facsimile of the first printed edition), pp. 7073.

104. etienne Nicolas Mehul, Uthal, libretto by Jacques Benjamin Saint-Victor (New York and London: Garland Publis.h.i.+ng, Inc., 1980) (facsimile of the first printed edition), p. 48.

105. Although the printed score of Mehul's G-minor symphony is for a small, Mozart-size orchestra, some ma.n.u.script fragments indicate that Mehul either arranged or made an arrangement from a version including trumpet and trombone; see appendices to Charlton's edition.

106. Quoted by David Charlton in the preface to his edition of Mehul's Symphony no. 1, p. ix.

107. Quoted by David Charlton in the preface to his edition of etienne Nicolas Mehul, Three Symphonies (New York and London: Garland Publis.h.i.+ng, 1982), p. xiii.

108. Henri Radiguier, "La Musique Francaise de 1789 a 1815," in Albert Lavignac and Lionel de la Laurencie, eds., Encyclopedie de la musique et dictionnaire du conservatoire, p. 1638. Lavignac famously a.s.signed characteristics to all the keys; his C minor was "gloomy, dramatic, violent."

109. Alexander L. Ringer, "A French Symphonist at the Time of Beethoven: Etienne Nicolas Mehul," The Musical Quarterly 37, no. 4 (Oct. 1951): 551.

110. Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics, Mark Polizzotti, trans. (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2006), p. 43.

111. Ibid., p. 44.

112. "The Great Lower Rhine Music Festival at Dusseldorf, Whitsuntide 1830," in Senner et al., The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries, vol. 2, p. 132.

113. Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), pp. 11617.

114. Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 26.