While there, he wrote his famous letter to the "Immortal Beloved," terminating his relationship with a woman some historians suspect was the wife a good friend.īut it's the central section and the reprise of the first theme that should knock your symphonic socks off: over a strangely foreboding ticking mechanism in the violas – an alternating octave you've just heard at the end of the first section – Beethoven inexorably screws up the harmonic tension through a halting, uncertain sequence of variations on the first bar of the symphony, separated by gigantic walls of orchestral sound.īeethoven must have felt it would be unwise to follow the already humorous Allegretto with another scherzo (literally, joke) and therefore reverted to the more Classical minuet and trio (Tempo di menuetto). Of all of Beethoven’s symphonies, the Eighth is in any case the wittiest with amusing and novel ideas in each movement. It makes you think you're listening to a light-hearted witticism, but Beethoven is in reality reforming the symphony right in front of your ears. The Eighth was premiered in Vienna on February 27, 1814, on a concert that also included the Seventh Symphony and Beethoven's popular "Wellington's Victory." (If Brentano, she was married to a friend.) Instead of resolution, the Eighth's fundamental musical questioning goes on long after the piece has finished. 1 : Allegro vivace e con brio : 10:00: 2 : Allegretto scherzando : 4:00: 3 : Tempo di menuetto : 5:00: 4 : Allegro vivace : 7:30: Buy sheetmusic for this work at SheetMusicPlus: Mp3s for Beethoven: Symphony No. For example, an absurdly humorous effect is created by Beethoven placing an elegant and graceful melody over the woodwinds’ ‘metronomic’ ticking according to Iván Fischer, this melody could easily come straight from a Rossini opera. He completed the symphony in Linz that fall while visiting his brother, but Beethoven was in poor health. Just try dancing to this minuet and you may find yourself tripping over the false downbeats. Due to primitive sanitary conditions then in Vienna, summers were a dangerous time to be in the city and Beethoven always tried to relocate, which had the added benefit of getting him closer to nature that he loved so much. One of Beethoven's witty touches is that the first and last measures of the movement are the same-it is the sort of thing his teacher Haydn might have done, and indeed the older master's spirit is often evident in this work. He luxuriates in a different soundworld from the rest of the symphony – sensuous and lyrical rather than crystalline – and plays with your sense of pulse and metre. Complete your Beethoven*, Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan collection. In the Eighth Symphony, there are holes that are left open after the final chord, questions that remain unanswered, loose ends that are deliberately not tied up. His health was poor and one can only speculate at the repercussions of the disappointing termination of his relationship with the mystery woman. Beethoven was 29 in 1800, when his First Symphony premiered in Vienna. They were also considered as a pair because of their musical content: the pointed and bright Eighth Symphony stands in strong contrast to the stirringly romantic Seventh.īeethoven: Symphony No. Program note may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association. To escape poor sanitary conditions in Vienna, Beethoven escaped to the Bohemian spas. Musicologist Maynard Solomon's identification of Antonie Brentano as the likely lover is now the most widely accepted solution in the English-speaking world, although reasonable (as well as unreasonable) arguments supporting other candidates continue to be put forth. Composers writing symphonies in the wake of Beethoven often found themselves intimidated by his example while they worked and then were subjected to unfavorable critical comparisons once they finished. It's a moment when Beethoven gets rightly carried away with what he's done: that triple forte in the rest of the orchestra is so loud that it tends to obscure the tune in the bass line. Frankly, I'm surprised that the public's reaction wasn't total bewilderment - a more than comprehensible response to one of the shortest, weirdest, but most compelling symphonies of the 19th century. Critics admired the Eighth for the composers workmanship, but it paled in comparison to the widely popular Seventh.
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