Download LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
Born: December 16, 1770, in Bonn
Died: March 26, 1827, in Vienna
Work composed: 1811–12
World premiere: December 8, 1813, in Vienna; Beethoven conducting
Beethoven embarked on his career as a symphonist at the start of the 19th century (his
Symphony No. 1 appeared in 1800) and rapidly completed six diverse and original works in the
genre over a span of scarcely eight years. Beginning in 1808, however, the composer brought no
symphony before the public for some four years, a period during which he concentrated his
creative efforts chiefly on keyboard and chamber music. Despite this hiatus, his Seventh
Symphony, completed in 1812, picked up much where the “Pastoral” had left off. There are, of
course, significant differences between the two works. To begin, the Seventh Symphony is not a
programmatic piece of nature music. Having said his last word on that subject in the “Pastoral”
Symphony, Beethoven had no reason to repeat himself, and he vehemently rejected attempts by
his contemporaries to assign a program, a hidden story line, to the new work. But the Seventh
Symphony does offer a feeling of relaxed spaciousness and the kind of warm, almost luxuriant
orchestral sound otherwise encountered in his output only with the “Pastoral.” These symphonies
are, if one may use the term in connection with so thoughtful an artist, the most sensual of
Beethoven’s compositions.
The two works have one other important point in common: neither expresses the drama of
struggle and triumph so vividly implicit in Beethoven’s Third and Fifth symphonies. As a piece
of “pure” music — that is, one without an explicit literary narrative — the Seventh Symphony
expresses as much as anything the wonders of music itself. Forgotten for the moment are the
composer’s well-known battles with fate, deafness and loneliness. One senses here — more,
perhaps, than in any of Beethoven’s other orchestral works — the joy the composer could find in
his own creative powers, in simply combining melody, rhythm, harmony and instrumental colors
for the purpose of lucid and beautiful musical invention.
The broad chords that punctuate the oboe’s melody in the symphony’s opening moments define
one of the work’s important attributes: sheer sonority, a reveling in the physical reality of
orchestral sound. Another element that emerges near the end of the broad introductory passage is
rhythm, as repeated-note figures decelerate incrementally, then metamorphose into a tripping
rhythmic motif. In terms of melody and harmony, this passage is entirely static; its only activity
occurs as pure rhythm. Having established the importance of this musical parameter, Beethoven
carries it into the Vivace that forms the main body of the first movement.
Here the tripping rhythm introduced by the woodwinds at the end of the introduction underlies
all of the principal thematic ideas. This same figure runs persistently through the instrumental
dialogues that form the central development episode, and it recurs in especially conspicuous
form — that is, apart from any melodic event, as in the end of the introduction — at key
structural points (for example, the preparation for the return of the main theme). Beethoven’s
resort to this rhythm is only slightly less obsessive than his use of the famous four-note figure in
the first movement of his Fifth Symphony, and the motif serves the same end of giving cohesion
to a large composition that ranges over wide harmonic terrain.
The ensuing Allegretto is one of Beethoven’s most popular creations, so much so that orchestras
in the 19th century indulged in the dubious practice of performing it apart from the rest of the
symphony. From its humble beginning as a narrow melody anchored unpromisingly to a single
tone, the theme upon which the movement is built soars through successive variations to
unexpected heights. Reaching a sonorous climax, the movement gradually subsides toward
silence, reaching at last the same luminous chord on which it began.
The scherzo that follows is full of delightful commotion, and its contrasting central section, or
“Trio,” whose melody is based on an old Austrian pilgrims’ hymn, attains a degree of grandeur
never before encountered at this point in a symphony. In closing the movement, Beethoven toys
with our expectations: a restatement of the opening bars of the Trio promises another repetition
of this section until five swift chords bring matters to a decisive conclusion.
The finale was described by the English conductor and commentator Donald Francis Tovey as “a
triumph of Bacchic fury.” His compatriot Sir George Grove found in it “a vein of rough, hard,
personal boisterousness.” However one might characterize this movement, there is no denying its
very considerable energy or the fact that this quality springs in large part from rhythm. The
opening measures present a sharply etched rhythmic motif, and as in the first and second
movements, this provides the seed from which practically all subsequent developments spring.
What to Listen For
The slow introduction that prefaces the first movement proper concludes with a rhythmic motif
that runs obsessively throughout the rest of the movement. The second movement describes a
long arch of sound that rises in pitch and volume, then retreats to where it began. The finale
brings a wild, boisterous dance.
Program Notes © 2015 Paul Schiavo