Calm sea and happy journey (Beethoven)

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Calm Sea and Happy Voyage op.112 is a cantata by Ludwig van Beethoven .

description

Beethoven set the poems Meeresstille and Happy Journey by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to music . Beethoven began composing at the end of 1814. In the summer of 1815 the piece was completed. The premiere of the work was done on December 25, 1815 in Vienna in a benefit concert for the Civic Hospital Fund. At this concert, Beethoven's oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives was heard .

Beethoven had already set odes to cantatas in Bonn in 1790 (WoO 87 and WoO 88), when Klopstock's odes made settings of this genre more popular. Beethoven's interest in Goethe's poems and his first plans to set Schiller's poem An die Freude , which would later become Beethoven's 9th Symphony , also fall during this period .

Beethoven's calm sea and happy journey was not printed until 1822. Beethoven's letters to Goethe about the setting of the two poems remained unanswered by Goethe. The two Goethe poems also served Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy as the basis for his concert overture, the calm of the sea and happy journey .

text

Sea silence:
Deep silence reigns in the water,
The sea rests without movement,
And the skipper sees
smooth surface all around with distress.
No air from either side!
Terrible silence of death!
In the immense vastness
there is no wave.

Happy journey:
the mists tear,
the sky is bright,
and Aeolus loosens
the fearful bond.
The winds whisper
, the boatman moves.
Speed! Speed!
The wave divides
, The distance approaches;
I already see the country!

To the music

  1. Movement: Calm of the sea : Sostenuto
  2. Movement: Happy journey : Allegro vivace

The calm, thoughtful first sentence describes that there is "deep silence" and the sea "rests without movement". This mood changes in the second movement and becomes stormier, because “the fog is tearing up” and “the sky is bright”, and finally “the distance is approaching”.

literature

  • Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The calm and happy journey of the sea , Tobias Haslinger, Vienna, 1823 ( digitized in the Google book search)
  • Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Carl Reinecke: Sea calm and happy journey: for four voices with orchestral accompaniment: op. 112 , Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel.
  • G. Nottebohm: Thematic index of the works by Ludwig van Beethoven that have appeared in print , 2nd edition, Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, 1868.

Web links

Wikisource: Calm of the Sea - Happy Voyage  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ G. Nottebohm: Thematic directory. P. 107 ( digitized version in the Google book search)
  2. ↑ a b c d Gerhard Pätzig: Sea calm and happy journey op. 112. In: Hans Gebhard (Hrsg.): Harenberg Chormusikführer. Harenberg, Dortmund 1999, ISBN 3-611-00817-6 , p. 94 f .; CD booklet for the "archive production" CD with op.65, op.86 and op. 112 under John Eliot Gardiner, DG 435 391-2 (1992) (information on the attachment)