6th symphony (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 6 in F major op. 68 by Ludwig van Beethoven with the nickname “Pastorale” was written in 1807/1808 and is the only Beethoven symphony to consist of 5 movements. The playing time is about 43 minutes.
Emergence
The symphony was written in 1807 and 1808 (preliminary work from 1803) at the same time as the 5th symphony supposedly in Nussdorf and Grinzing , then suburbs of Vienna, now part of the 19th district of Vienna. The Schreiberbach flows between the two villages : "Here I wrote the scene by the brook, and the golden hammer up there, the quails, nightingales and cuckoos all around contributed to the composition." This quote from Anton Schindler is doubtful, however. The symphony was probably not started in any of the suburbs of Vienna at the time, but in Vienna itself.
These apparently different symphonies are viewed as works that complement each other. For example, in 1995 the American musicologist William Kinderman wrote : "Like the 'Waldstein' and 'Appassionata' Sonata, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies are disparate musical works that [...] complement each other”.
Beethoven was a great lover of nature and loved taking walks in the open air; One of his favorite books was Contemplations of the Works of God in the Realm of Nature by Christoph Christian Sturm For example, he wrote in 1815:
“My decree: just stay in the country. How easily this is fulfilled in every spot! My unhappy hearing doesn't bother me here. It is as if every tree speaks to me in the country: holy, holy! Delight in the forest! Who can express everything? If everything fails, the land remains even in winter like Gaden, lower Brühl, etc. Easily rented an apartment from a farmer, certainly cheap at the time. Sweet silence of the forest! The wind, which comes in on the second beautiful day, cannot keep me in Vienna because it is my enemy. "
As a forerunner of later program music , Beethoven based this symphony on the impressions of a (city) person in nature and pastoral (= rural) surroundings. Each of the five movements deals with a situation that comes together to form a complete work. "Sinfonia caracteristica" and "Sinfonia pastorella" were the names of the 6th symphony in the first sketches; Beethoven only called it "pastoral symphony or memories of rural life" when it went to press. Since Beethoven was critical of the musical representation of a non-musical content in the sense of program music - the oratorios The Seasons and The Creation of his teacher Joseph Haydn were not excluded from this criticism - Beethoven added the addition "More expression of feeling than painting" to this designation. and insisted on a verbatim reproduction of this carefully worded designation on the title page of the printed score. “You leave it to the listener to figure out the situations,” says the composer. "Anyone who has ever received just one idea of country life can think for themselves what the author wants without many headings."
Nevertheless, he uses instrumental means to imitate bird calls, the footsteps of the wanderer, the babbling of a brook and a thunderstorm.
The fifth and sixth symphonies were premiered together with the 4th piano concerto in a four-hour concert on December 22, 1808 under the direction of Beethoven in the Theater an der Wien . This was the only world premiere of Beethoven's works in which two of his symphonies were heard. Beethoven dedicated the work to Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz and the Russian Count Rasumowski . The Breitkopf & Härtel Leipzig publishing house published the parts in 1809 and the score in 1826. The autograph is in the Beethoven House in Bonn .
occupation
1 piccolo , 2 flutes , 2 oboes , 2 clarinets (in Bb), 2 bassoons , 2 horns (in F and B), 2 trumpets (in C and E-flat), 2 trombones , timpani and strings : violin (2), viola , Violoncello (divided), double bass .
The trumpets are tacet in the 1st and 2nd movements, the trumpets in the 1st to 3rd movements . The piccolo and timpani are only used in the 4th movement.
Sentence names
- 1st movement: Allegro ma non troppo ("Awakening cheerful sensations on arrival in the country")
- 2nd movement: Andante molto moto ("Scene by the stream")
- 3rd movement: Allegro ("Funny gathering of the country people")
- 4th movement: Allegro ("thunderstorm, storm")
- 5th movement: Allegretto ("Shepherd's song. Happy and grateful feelings after the storm")
To the music
Already the first four bars of the first movement (awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country) contain the drone quinte recurring throughout the work in the bass . Is unusual in the implementation of the 72-fold repeat of the motif fall violin of the second clock of the introduction.
In the second movement (scene by the brook) the murmuring water of the brook is represented by sixteenth notes in violins, violas and cellos. In the final part ( coda ) of the movement the call of the nightingale , quail and cuckoo is explicitly reproduced: the nightingale is represented by the flute, the quail by the oboe and the cuckoo by two clarinets; these assignments were explicitly entered in the score by Beethoven himself.
The third movement (Funny Gathering of Country People) has about five minutes playing time; in music u. a. caricatured a village chapel. (This caricature is made, among other things, through irregular use of the instruments and the monotonous "Schrumm-Schrumm" of the bassoon, whereby the oboe, for example, starts its entry a quarter too early.)
The fourth movement ( thunderstorm, storm ) is the shortest of the symphony at just under four minutes, but at the same time, with the description of the thunderstorm, the most brilliant. (In this movement the thunderous rumble of the storm is musically implemented by sixteenths rubbed on quintoles in the double basses and cellos, while the piccolo flute represents the whistling of the wind. The rain is found as a staccato eighth note in the first two violins, the lightning as Four-tone figure.) The chorale-like ending of this movement is considered a key point within the symphony.
The third, fourth and fifth movements of the symphony merge, which took some effort from Beethoven to compose. For the representation of the country people's dance in the third movement, Beethoven uses the “ German Dance ”.
The sixth fourth chord in the introduction of the fifth movement (Hirtengesang. Happy and grateful feelings after the storm.) Uses the motif of the first four bars of the first movement. From the ninth measure, the shepherd's call is heard as the song-like main theme in the first violin.
reception
criticism
On the occasion of a performance of the symphony, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung wrote in 1812:
“In the second concert, on December 31st, the pastoral symphony by Beethoven, which is still new to us, stood out from others. It is not wrong to count the invention, like the only gradual development of those instrumental pieces to which the name of the symphony has been assigned, to the remarkable creations of the human spirit that honor our age, and especially Germany, and the borders of music. Have expanded art. If it is difficult for mere instrumental music, however artfully the master may have arranged it according to aesthetic rules, to arouse a certain sensation in the mind of the listener, the attempts to shed more light on this still dark region are our thanks worth. [...] But it was difficult for the uninitiated listener to enter into all these secrets that were closed to him. "
Edits
- Franz Liszt arranged the work for piano.
- Michael Gotthard Fischer , a contemporary of Beethoven, published an arrangement for string sextet in 1810 .
- In 1940, a heavily shortened version was used for the animated film Fantasia .
literature
- Renate Ulm (Ed.): The 9 symphonies of Beethoven. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1994, ISBN 3-7618-1241-8 .
- Roland Schmenner: The Pastorale - Beethoven, the thunderstorm and the lightning rod. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1998, ISBN 3-7618-1412-7 .
- Wolfram Steinbeck : 6th Symphony op. 68. In: Beethoven - interpretations of his works. Laaber 1996.
Web links
- 6th symphony, audio samples with sheet music
- Symphony No. 6 Arrangement for piano solo. PDF for free download.
- 6th Symphony (Beethoven) : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- An edited sound film (HD) of a full rendition of the "Pastorale" by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Herbert von Karajan (1967, trailer free of charge)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Barry Cooper: Schindler and the Pastoral Symphony. In: The Beethoven Newsletter, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1993.
- ^ William Kinderman: Beethoven. Berkeley 1995, p. 123.
- ↑ Maynard Solomon : The Quest for Faith. In: ders .: Beethoven Essays. Cambridge, Mass., 1988, pp. 216-232, especially pp. 220ff.
- ↑ Renate Ulm (Ed.): The 9 symphonies of Beethoven. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1994, p. 182
- ↑ Gustav Nottebohm: Second Beethoveniana: Post-processed essays. Leipzig 1887, pp. 375, 504.
- ↑ Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven: His Music - His Life. Metzler, 2009; P. 170.
- ↑ Note: In the linked articles you can also listen to the birdsong of golden hammer , nightingale, quail and cuckoo for comparison.
- ^ Sieghard Brandenburg (Ed.): Ludwig van Beethoven Sixth Symphony in F major Opus 68. Facsimile based on the autograph BH 64 in the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Bonn 2000, p. 45
- ^ Rudolf Bockholdt: Beethoven, VI. Symphony in F major, op. 68, Pastorale (work monograph) , in: Meisterwerke der Musik, Issue 23, Munich 1981, p. 57f.
- ^ Peter Hauschild: Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 (edition report), Leipzig / Dresden 1987, p. 107
- ↑ sound sample