LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Adagio -- allegro con brio
It is possible Beethoven knew as early as 1796 that he was going deaf. But by 1802,
the year of the Second Symphony, he was all too well aware of what was happening
to him, and that his affliction was incurable. An eager frequenter of parties and
salons, 'susceptible to the diversions of society', and much in demand for his brilliant
improvisations at the keyboard, he now had to reconcile himself to a quite different
style of life. To his friend from Bonn, Franz Gerhard Wegeler, he wrote of his 'miserably
unhappy' existence: for two years he had been avoiding social functions because he
found it impossible to say to anyone, 'I am deaf.' 'If I had any other livelihood
it would be easier,' he told Wegeler, 'but in my profession it is a terrible handicap.'
Yet to an0ther friend, Karl Amenda, he wrote that although he was deeply unhappy,
his deafness troubled him least when he was playing or composing. It was at its worst
when he was in company. And at the same time, to both of these friends, paradoxically,
he wrote in buoyant terms how well he was doing. His friend and patron Prince Karl
von Lichnowsky had agreed to pay him an annuity of 600 florins and the music was
coming fluently, with publishers competing to buy his latest works. And shortly afterwards
there was a letter to Wegeler registering another change of mood, largely brought
about by 'a dear charming girl who loves me and whom I love' -- apparently the Countess
Giulietta Guicciardi, the 17-year old to whom he had dedicated the 'Moonlight' Sonata
of a few months before. (The affair did not prosper, and Giulietta married someone
else the following year.) Even so, Beethoven had to tell Wegeler the doctors had
been unable to do anything about his hearing, and in October 1802, in Heiligenstadt,
where he had been spending the summer, he wrote the will (the Heiligenstadt Testament)
found among his papers after he had died, railing at the vindictiveness of fate and
dwelling on the prospect of an early death. 'As the leaves of autumn fall and are
withered, so likewise has my hope been blighted...'
Private despair, public success -- but Beethoven had vowed to 'seize Fate by the
throat,' and the tempestuous Fifth Symphony, with its hammer blows against destiny,
was already beginning to take shape in his mind. Meanwhile the Second Symphony, begun
in 1801 and completed in 1802 -- at Heiligenstadt and in the same month as he wrote
his will -- is a sunny and expansive work, seemingly brimming with self-confidence
and wit. Like the First Symphony of two years earlier, the Second begins with an
Adagio but this opening is much grander and more spacious in scale as this most heroic
of composers exerts his confidence and power. There follows a taut, springing Allegro,
exhilarating and triumphant in mood. Then the slow movement, with its graceful, tenderly
expressive theme likewise gives no hint of Beethoven's inner turmoil. The third movement
is a Scherzo -- a development of the classical Minuet Beethoven made all his own
(the First Symphony had a Minuet and Trio) -- and in the finale, Allegro molto, Beethoven
unleashes the kind of vehemence and abandon that are his trademark. This last movement,
crisp as a whiplash, startled his first audiences: one critic compared it with 'a
hideously writhing wounded dragon' and another with a 'spitting serpent.'
Beethoven dedicated the Second Symphony to Prince Lichnowsky and he conducted the
first performance in Vienna on the 5th April 1803. On the day of the concert Beethoven
was awake at five am copying orchestral parts, and the rehearsals began at eight,
continuing without a break until three in the afternoon, at which point Prince Lichnowsky
sent out for food and wine, then asked for one more run-through of the oratorio Christ
on the Mount of Olives, which was also on the programme. After all this, the concert
itself was one of those prodigious events 19th century musicians seemed able to take
in their stride: besides the new symphony, the programme, played to a packed house,
included the Third Piano Concerto, the oratorio, and the First Symphony. Beethoven
rounded things off with a piano improvisation. His young assistant Ignaz von Seyfried,
reported that afterwards, everyone adjourned for Œa jovial supper.'
Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©
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