One of the genres we see from the Classical period and the Romantic period
that almost always uses the Sonata cycle
is the genre that we call the symphony. Like so many other genres we've seen it's
another place where we have genre
and an ensemble that have the same sort of name, so we have to keep them
separate. Just because there's a symphony on the stage doesn't mean their playing a
symphony. Symphony is almost always going to have the word symphony
in the title. So a symphony is a Sonata cycle
for orchestra. No soloist is a general rule that would make it a concerto,
so just the the whole orchestra doing their thing. So,
Beethoven is the knowledge master of
the symphony. He only wrote nine compared that to, to
Mozart who wrote forty-something and Haydn a hundred and something.
Nine just seems like, ugh... was he slacking off or what.
It's just a Beethoven was such a perfectionist, he would work a piece, work a
piece, work a piece until he got exactly the way that he wanted.
Unlike Mozart who pretty much wrote it out the first time - that was the way it
was going to be. He heard it in his head, he put it down on the paper.
So even if you just look at their manuscripts, Mozart's is pretty clean
and Beethoven's, it's
scribble, change, scribble, change and you can see the process
of his work. But Beethoven's symphonies were so accepted as a
the standard, the gold standard for the genre that some other composers just
wouldn't even write more than nine symphonies; like you know
it's good enough for Beethoven I'm not gonna write any more than that. Brahms took forever
to write his first symphony because he was so in awe
of Beethoven's work. This, this is a man whose contributions to the symphonic
world are just
you....can't even be calculated.
Most people know some things about Beethoven. I will give you a link to a
page where you can read all you want to know about Beethoven.
Basically, the things that are important to know
historically; that he lost his hearing,
at a fairly young age.
So many of his compositions that he wrote at the end of his life
he never actually got to hear. He could not hear the music, he could hear it in his
head, but he couldn't actually hear physically.
The stories told that when his ninth symphony was performed
which he conducted, that
they had to turn him, turn him around so he would know the audience was applauding cause
he couldn't hear the audience applause either.
So think about that for a musician standpoint, what a horrible thing
have to happen to you is that you can't hear what you're doing anymore and it's
what you do.
Beethoven wasn't noted to be - not the most pleasant person to be around
he was kinda crotchety, I mean you know if you're losing your hearing and all
that, that could certainly contribute to that.
If you really interested in
that sort of the CSI cold case approach to things;
there's a really wonderful book called Beethoven's Hair.
In that period of time it was not uncommon when somebody
died, famous or just you know your family, that you would save a lock of their hair
and you would put it in a little medallion thing
and wear it around your neck or whatever. Well they actually had a lot of
Beethoven's hair that had been saved when he died
and have been preserved all this time. So
in like, in the last fifteen or twenty years they
got some of that hair from Beethoven's hair and they were able to analyze it
using all our modern
scientific techniques. And what they discovered
was that he probably had lead poisoning,
which would have accounted for his hearing loss, it would have accounted for his bad
moods.
Almost all the things that we know about Beethoven
and how his, his personality and how his life was going
could be accounted for by that lead poisoning and we were all able to figure
that out because we still had some his hair to work with. But I just think this is really
cool. The book is very readable, so if
you would like to do that, it's a great book to look at.
So we're gonna look at his fifth symphony as our model
for the symphony from the classic period.
Beethoven actually wrote in three different styles over the course of his life,
so his early music is a very traditional kind
of like Mozart and Haydn. Once we get to the middle period, which is where the
the fifth symphony comes, he's starting to, to change a little bit, he's trying to explore
things a little bit more and
and move away from that classical model and then this third period is where
he really does things that are different and really pushes the envelope for what
composers
would be doing that period of time. So this falls in the middle of his
second period, so its transitional it's not,
it's not Mozart like, but is not yet got to the really
dramatic kinds of things he does with his seventh, eighth, and ninth symphony.
His ninth
symphony, he adds a whole choir, whole choir and soloists.
That was just unheard of. Very um...
experimental kinda composer for the time.
So Beethoven symphony number five, full title, Symphony Number Five in C minor
Opus 67. So,
like most of the pieces it tells us a lot. It's a symphony,
It's in the key of C minor and it's his sixty-seventh piece.
Doesn't mean the entire piece is going to be in C minor. In fact it's kinda of one of the
interesting things about what he's done here is that
it's C minor which is sort of a sad sounding
key for most people, but beethoven was really all about
good overcoming evil in his music. You know that things turn out well
in the end.
So your going to turn out well from C minor, you really need to go to C major.
So that's one of the ways that he
does that thing that we tend to associate with Beethoven.
So you know this piece at least the first movement, everybody knows it, di, di, di da.
Di, di, di, da. It's been done by everybody including Chuck Berry & The Electric Light
Orchestra.
It's a theme that everybody knows, It's not really
much of a theme though is it? Di, di, di, da - di, di, di, da -
di, di, di, da - di, di, di, da. We have that same ol thing that just goes over and over again.
This is a motive, so this is a case where the composer's not taking a beautiful
theme for us.
He's given us this little fragment, little rhythmic fragment
and he's going to manipulate that through an entire piece of music.
You know that's amazing in itself. All we've got is this little
4 notes and off he goes.
So the piece begins with that. He takes the piece that
theme, he manipulates it around we get to the, the second theme
of our sonata allegro and we've got to have some contrast from that, right,
so you'll be able to hear that when you get to it. And then he's going to come
back and do it all again.
When we get to the development section of the first movement,
we'll see that it's much longer than what we saw in Eine kleine
Nachtmusik.
Beethoven was really exploring the possibilities of
these four notes, plus little bits of the other themes that he had going there.
So much longer development section than we're used to having.
Then when he comes back to the recapitulation,
it's not exactly like the first time around, but that's not unusual; we've seen
that before.
But he kinda goes off in some places you think,
well, what was that all about. There's a section here where
it's like the oboe decides their gonna do a cadenza or something that's just
completely unexpected what
what would happen in a normal recapitulation.
And then he's got a coda that lasts like two or three minutes.
So, this is more than just I'm gotta finish off his movement and get a
stopping point going here
this is really, wow, here's something new I think I just gotta go off in this direction
for a while with my coda.
So he's, he's sticking with a traditional form. We still got exposition, development,
recapitulation,
but the recapitulation is, is more different from the exposition that we're
use to seeing
and he's got this coda that really stretches out
and takes and our whole senses of the piece
even further. So listen after the first movement of Beethoven Symphony Number
Five.
Alright so that was a movement you probably heard a lot and very
familiar with.
The next movement you may not know quite so well. So the second movement,
as we know; it's going to be a slow tempo. Beethoven was not going to mess with that.
What he's done in this movement is to do sort of,
sort of a theme and variation, but instead of having one theme that gets
varied over and over and over as we might expect;
he's actually get two. He's got an A theme and a B theme and he varies
both of them, so he alternates varying the two different things which is a
very unusual kind of approach.
So listen now to the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth
and see if you can figure out how he works those variations.
Alright, we're ready for the third movement which we expect to be
a minuet and trio. The minuet and trio has been used from Mozart's time on,
but Beethoven has now decided that he wants to do something a little bit
different with that.
You could still recognize it is being the third movement because it's still
going to be in triple meter
and the basic structure is the same, where you have
the minuet part, and then you change keys, and you do the trio part, then you come back
into the minuet again.
But what Beethoven is done is to speed it up so instead of that sort of,
stately fairly elegant temple that we associate with the
minuet. He speeds it up and makes a much more lively
kind of movement and he calls it a scherzo
and trio instead of a minuet. Scherzo is the word for joke.
So he's, we don't think Beethoven's being
a man of humor, but perhaps he had one. So
here's his little musical joke. I'm gonna take my minuet,
speed it up; there's no way in the world you would be doing a minuet to this particular
movement and then going to the trio.
Now in the trio he does something interesting we've not really got to see
the string basses do very much
excitement, they just don't get all he good parts. Beethoven gave
them a good part here, so they actually get to play that opening C theme
in the trio, but so that's unusual, That would be kinda of a new thing for
this period of time. So go now and listen to the scherzo movement,
the symphony number five, but be careful because something interesting happens at
the end.
So were you gone a long time? If you were, you probably got caught in Beethoven's
little trick here.
We expect the third movement to end, have a nice big break,
let everybody turn their pages, off we go and then we have the Fourth Movement.
Part of Beethoven's joke in this third movement is that
he doesn't stop, it just keeps right on going so he finishes that minuet -
trio - scherzo, in this case, scherzo - trio, jumps right into that finale movement
and just plows on through to the end. So if you thought that
minuet - trio was kinda long you probably just got caught in
his little joke there. So,if you did you might want to go back now and listen to
the fourth movement by itself
so that you could really focus on the exposition, development, recapitulation, so
you can practice listening to that again.
You can also hear how Beethoven has taken through his entire piece of music
That four note motive di, di, di, da, and how it just keeps coming back and coming
back and coming back.
And that's one of the reasons that we don't applaud between the movements when
we go to a performance;
because then you forget what you heard before and you would not be able
to make those connections.
So hopefully you enjoyed listening to the entire Beethoven symphony.
If you would like to have a little humorous approach to it, I'm going to give you a YouTube video
of a performance with an orchestra with Peter Schickele, who is
a modern composer, who does a lot of parody kinds of things of classical
music. But
he's also done this really wonderful
thing with Beethoven's fifth symphony, just the first movement, where he treats
it like a sporting event
and he is the commentator, and he's got color commentator
and they talk you through the entire process. So he will talk,
talk to you about the exposition in the development and the things Beethoven
does
that you don't quite expect. So if you'd like to just listen to that movement
again
and get a, a refresher on what happens but in a very humorous kinda way might
take a look at that
particular video. So again we've been to a symphony now,
we've had our four movements, sort of standard format; accept that Beethoven fooled us
up and
didn't go, didn't take the break between three and four, he just went
straight through.
And you can, as you go to concerts
look for those kinds of patterns and once you get really comfortable with the
whole idea of Sonata cycle,
which you should be by the time we've gone through all the different versions
of it.
You should be able to go to a concert and hear, and go, oh yeah,
you know I heard that theme that I've already heard before so we must be back at the
exposition again
or maybe we're at the recapitulation now. You'll get a lot more enjoyment out of
those concerts if you can really find your place
in the piece of music and that's why it's so important that you study this
particular form
a lot. So, I hope you have enjoyed the symphony and now we'll a move on to some other
things that also include the Sonata cycle.