Piano trio op.70.1 (Beethoven)

Page from the manuscript of the Ghost Trio .

The piano trio in D major op. 70.1 , the so-called " ghost trio " , is a chamber music composition for piano , violin and cello by Ludwig van Beethoven and was published in 1809 together with the piano trio op .

Emergence

Beethoven wrote the two piano trios in the summer of 1808 during a stay on the Floridsdorf estate by Countess Marie von Erdődy , his patroness and dedicatee of the works. At this time he also completed his 5th symphony and the 6th symphony , the "Pastorale".

After completing the two piano trios, he began in the autumn of 1808 with sketches for the Choral Fantasy op. 80, the forerunner of the famous final movement of his 9th Symphony .

To the music

First movement: Allegro vivace e con brio

A stormy ascending, descending sequence that begins five times a fourth higher in unison with all three instruments at the beginning of the movement is replaced by a cantable theme that is performed alternately by the instruments. Both the exposure and the central portion of implementation and recapitulation be repeated; a side topic is missing.

Second movement: Largo assai ed espressivo

The middle movement in D minor begins with cello and violin, then the piano joins with pulsating chords. The eerie atmosphere of the movement, which musicologist Paul Bekker described as “one of the most wonderful revelations of Beethoven's melancholy” , is created, among other things, by its piano remoli and chromatic scales.

The name of the trio as a “ghost trio” goes back to Beethoven's student Carl Czerny , who, as he wrote in 1842, was reminded by this sentence of the first appearance of the ghost in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet : »The character of this very slowly performed Largo is ghostly, gruesome, like an apparition from the underworld « .

According to musicologist Martin Gustav Nottebohm , Beethoven designed a witch's choir for a planned opera composition with Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth as a template, parallel to the composition of the trio .

Third movement: Presto

With the final movement in D major, the trio returns to a relaxed mood. According to Hermann Swietly , this sentence is the »echo of the stirring gestures of the middle movement in fields full of light; a splendid and brilliant conclusion, not clouded by anything, for a work that has no equal in music history « .

effect

Not least because of the occupation of Vienna by the French troops, Breitkopf & Härtel did not publish it until 1809. The first performance took place in Countess Erdödy's salon.

Music critic ETA Hoffmann was not only enthusiastic about Beethoven's works like the symphonies No. 5 and No. 6 , but also about these "wonderful trios" and about "how B. carries the romantic spirit of music deep in his mind and with what high The genius with which prudence he revives his works « . In this context, Hoffmann lamented the "fashion [...] of using music only as a side effect to drive away boredom in society" and warned that occasional musicians who could only cope with easy and pleasing music would prefer Beethoven's Trios op 70 could be overwhelmed.

The first, in D major, the so-called “Ghost Trio” , is one of the composer's best-known piano trios , along with the “Archduke Trio” , which is even better known. Although the two piano trios are usually counted as Nos. 5 and 6 (with the “Archduke Trio” as No. 7), the numbering of the twelve piano trios is not standardized and may differ depending on the source.

literature

supporting documents

• Harenberg cultural guide chamber music. Brockhaus, Mannheim, 2008, ISBN 978-3-411-07093-0 .
• Ares Wolf: Chamber music for piano and string instruments. In: Sven Hiemke (Ed.): Beethoven-Handbuch. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-02153-3
• Lewis Lockwood : Beethoven: His Music - His Life. Metzler, 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-02231-8 . Pp. 238-241

further reading

• Stefan Kunze : Beethoven's »prudence« and the poetic. About the Largo assai ed espressivo of the D major piano trio op. 70 No. 1 ("Ghost Trio") , in: KgrB Munich 1990, pp. 145–167
• Lothar Schmidt: 2 piano trios in D major "Ghost Trio" and E flat major op. 70 , in: Carl Dahlhaus , Albrecht Riethmüller and Alexander L. Ringer (eds.): Beethoven - interpretations of his works. , 1994, Vol. 1, pp. 523-531

Web links

• Piano Trio, Op. 70, No. 1 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
• Various sketches, letters, first prints etc. in the digital archive of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn
• Audio presentation of the piano trio Op. 70 no. 1 by the "Claremont Trio" in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ( MP3 format; 23.40 MB)
• Youtube: Martha Argerich (piano), Mischa Maisky (cello) and Julian Rachlin (violin) play the 2nd movement of Beethoven's "Ghost Trio"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carl Czerny : About the correct performance of all Beethoven's piano works , Vienna 1842, reprint ed. by Paul Badura-Skoda, 1963, p. 99
2. ^ Martin Gustav Nottebohm : Second Beethoveniana. Post-traced essays , Leipzig 1887, pp. 225–227
3. ↑ See e.g. B. Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung , (1813), Sp. 141–154