Program Notes for October 12, 2013
© 2013 Mary Eichbauer
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Coriolan Overture, op. 62. Composed 1807. First
performed in March 1807 at a private concert at the home of Prince Franz Joseph von
Lobkowitz. Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two
trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Some figures, fictional or historical, catch the imagination of different ages in differing ways. The
tragic (and probably fictional) figure of the soldier Gaius Marcius (given the honorific
“Coriolanus” because of his valor) has been depicted in strikingly different ways by sources
ancient and modern. The Roman Plutarch (who relied on ancient Greek sources) wrote a
“biography” of Coriolanus, depicting how he conquered the Volscians for Rome, and was hailed
as a hero by his people. Later, he was charged with misspending public funds and was exiled
from Rome. Faced with this ingratitude, Coriolanus allied himself with his former enemies and
attacked his homeland. When his mother pleaded with him to cut off his attack, he agreed. About
to be put on trial as a traitor, he was finally assassinated.
Shakespeare took a slightly different view, focusing on the general’s character flaws to
drive the plot of the tragedy. In this work, Coriolanus’s pride and his contempt for the common
people cause his downfall. Much later, in the hands of twentieth-century writer Bertolt Brecht,
Coriolanus evolved into the prototype of the fascist dictator—the power-hungry leader who holds
the masses in utter contempt.
German dramatist Heinrich Joseph von Collins, who wrote a play called Coriolan in
1804, was more interested in Coriolanus’ emotional reactions to what happens to him than to the
political side of the story. For von Collins, Coriolanus acted out of deep anger, betraying his own
people in an act that could not be taken back. Once he is confronted by his mother and wife with
the fact of his own betrayal, he is unable to accept his crime, and kills himself.
This last is the version that Beethoven responded to. Little is known about his reasons for
composing the work, and it is not known if the overture ever accompanied a performance of the
play. (It is known, at least, that music by Mozart was played at the play’s premiere, as Beethoven
did not write the overture until a few years later.)
It is clear, however, that Beethoven responded to the stormy emotional qualities of the
work and its tragic central figure, who brings on his own doom with one thoughtless act.
The overture begins with dramatic, emotional chords, immediately stating one of two
major themes that run throughout the piece. There is more than anger here, however; there is
compassion and, above all, a tragic awareness. Rather than tracing the lines of the play’s plot in
music, Beethoven focuses on the rise and fall of the emotional changes that Coriolan endures.
Near the end, the opening chords are repeated, but instead of going off into another storm, the
music quiets, turning to a soft theme played by the cellos. This theme trails off into silence—
perhaps acceptance?—and we end with a few soft beats of the timpani.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major. Composed in
October 1775. Scored for two oboes, two horns, and strings.
From the age of six, when he first picked up the violin, Mozart displayed an enormous facility for
the instrument. He made his public debut, playing a concerto, three months after touching the
violin for the first time. By 19, Mozart was the lead violinist of the Salzburg court orchestra. His
father, Leopold Mozart, who had made his name as a violinist, had become his son’s teacher,
which might have something to do with the younger Mozart’s fraught relationship with the
instrument. If he applied himself, his father told him over and over, he might be the finest
violinist in Europe.
Unfortunately, this was not to be. Perhaps the violin had come to symbolize for Mozart
the “old order,” where musicians were little more than servants to royal patrons, at whose whims
and pleasure they served. At 24, when Mozart finally left his unhappy tenure at the court of the
Archbishop of Salzburg—who didn’t completely “get” his music or his sassy attitude—he quit
the violin as well. The five violin concertos we have from him date from his late adolescence—
around 1775, when he was 19—and after that there are no more.
The Allegro movement of the spirited fourth concerto begins with an orchestra interlude
that lays out the main themes of the piece. It begins with a kind of light-hearted fanfare that is
repeated at the entrance of the soloist and then is not exactly repeated again, although it is evoked
in some of the soloist’s high and low virtuoso turns. The whole concerto is Italianate in style,
with the violin speaking in a cheerful and lightly mocking voice. From the opening falsetto
fanfare to the call and response of the solo violin with itself (a theme in the high register being
answered or echoed in a comically low register), the movement is graceful, sophisticated and
somewhat operatic in character. Despite a few jumps into a minor key, the movement remains
sprightly throughout.
As in his other violin concertos, this one calls for a cadenza just before the end of the first
movement. In Mozart’s time, and sometimes still today, the soloist would improvise a cadenza on
the spot, playing off the themes of the movement. Later composers often wrote out cadenzas, but
we have no record of what Mozart or any other soloist played until the nineteenth century.
The Andante cantabile movement begins with the orchestra setting the stage for the
soloist’s entrance by playing a lovely descending theme that finally rises in a kind of question.
The soloist enters by echoing the same theme and then moving on to others, with the orchestra
echoing bits of melody back to the soloist, who responds in kind. The movement’s main
characteristic is a poignant simplicity with an operatic feeling that makes the violin’s voice sound
almost human. After a cadenza, the soloist continues directly into the final movement, marked
Rondeau (Andante grazioso - Allegro ma non troppo).
A rondo (“rondeau” in the French spelling) is characterized by a theme that is played out
and then repeated in variations. Mozart puts an extra twist on this idea by working with two
themes of completely different characters: a slow dance and a quick one. At about the halfway
point, he surprises us with an appealing rustic tune, played against a drone (an open string played
against the melody at the same time), before jumping back to the two main themes. Again, we
hear a cadenza; then the two themes are repeated in their original forms, and the movement ends
calmly.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 36. Composed in 18012. First performed 5 April 1803 in Vienna with Beethoven conducting. Scored for two flutes,
two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.
In the early years of the nineteenth century, Beethoven felt at the height of his powers. As he
wrote to one correspondent,
“For a while now I have been gaining more than ever in physical strength and in
mental strength, too. Every day I come closer to my goal, which I can sense but
don’t know how to describe.”
With two symphonies written, and the most innovative of his works still in the future, Beethoven
was still striving towards his unique musical language, and he was already beginning to leave
most of his contemporaries behind in musical mastery and understanding.
And yet, he was also facing a personal crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions.
Gradually, he had become aware that he was slowly losing his hearing. Worse yet, ringing and
whistling that only he could hear tormented him, overpowering the sounds of the real world,
including music. In October 1802, he had a crisis, during which he wrote a document that has
come to be known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, after the place where he wrote it. Although it
was addressed to his brothers, it is not clear that they ever saw it. Somehow, writing this
document helped Beethoven to come to terms with a disability that would plague him for the rest
of his life.
And yet, as he was fighting an internal battle, he was simultaneously working on the
Symphony No. 2, the most cheerful and spirited work one could ask for. Beethoven’s sense of the
play of classical form against his creative vision, his obvious joy in the act of music-making,
prevails in this work over any sense of tragedy. Beethoven’s gift was his salvation. It was only in
music that he was able to overcome the major disappointments of his somewhat sad life—his
abusive childhood, his deafness, his disappointments in love, his social awkwardness. If we knew
nothing of his life, but only had his music, we would know his heroic struggle, but we would
never know how little happiness he knew.
The first movement begins with an innovative Adagio molto introduction section that is
serious and portentous in character, but with lovely flourishes on the winds and mincing passages
in the strings. Beethoven fools us for the first but not the last time in this symphony when the
development section suddenly busts into playful Allegro con brio fire. Now it is obvious that the
opening section was more anticipatory than tragic. And although Beethoven is still channeling
Haydn and Mozart here, there is no mistaking the voice in this symphony for anyone else’s. The
proportion is all Beethoven, with the long introduction and extended coda that ends the
movement.
The Larghetto section is gracious and elegant, anticipating some of the themes we hear
much later in his Pastoral Symphony (No. 6). The long lyrical lines of the melody are backed by a
steady and moving rhythm. Occasionally a dramatic intervention punctuates the lyrical sections,
creating a mild emotional climax that keeps the pastoral feeling from cloying. No matter how
smooth the lyrical line, Beethoven maintains a feeling of emotional movement and play until the
Larghetto’s somewhat abrupt conclusion.
One of Beethoven’s innovations in this symphony was using the word “Scherzo” (joke)
to describe his third movement, doing away with the usual minuet and trio that had become the
tradition since Haydn and starting a new tradition of his own. His rising scale theme plays with
our expectations, sometimes mincing, sometimes growling, but always lively.
The Allegro molto finale is where the Beethoven of the later symphonies breaks out,
possibly bewildering his early audiences. One critic called it the symphony “a crass monster, a
hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to expire and though bleeding in the finale,
furiously beats about with its tail erect.” Perhaps this metaphor was suggested by the surprising
fillip that begins the finale and continues to be heard throughout the movement, or perhaps by the
fact that the coda—the movement’s “tail”—takes up about one-third of its length, an unheard of
innovation.