Beethoven's 8th Symphony: Your Opinions

[Conchis]

This is my least favourite Beethoven symphony, by some considerable distance. Whenever I listen to it (which I did, for the first time in years, last week), I ask myself two questions:

1) why did he bother?

and

2) what - if anything - was he trying to prove?

I'm not sure whether I read somewhere once that this symphony was a strictly commercial proposition designed to help market the metronome? It certainly sounds bereft of inspiration. And the final movement has to be the ugliest, most ungainly thing that LvB ever wrote. I'm astonished he put his name to it. The phrase that Beecham (wrongly) applied to the final movement of the Seventh symphony ('like a lot of yaks jumping about') certainly applies here...

It's especially strange that the composer should come up with something so uninspired when his previous symphony is most people's favourite (including mine) and he went on to change history with the 9th.

GBS, of course, argued (with characteristic perversity) that the 8th was 'much better' than the Seventh. But what did he know?

Not even my favourite Beethoven conductors - Klemperer and Szell - can convince me of the merits of this work. To make a pop music analogy: it's as if The Beatles, having made Sergeant Pepper, had decided to follow it up with an album of early rock and roll covers.

Over to you.....

[Richard Barrett]

Bit of a wind-up that, Conchis.

[silvestrione]

I recommend reading Donald Tovey's account of the Symphony in his Essays in Musical Analysis Vol 1. Then listen to Karajan BPO 1960s version.

[Conchis]

I recommend reading Donald Tovey's account of the Symphony in his Essays in Musical Analysis Vol 1. Then listen to Karajan BPO 1960s version.

I've heard it, and I'm unconvinced. But I've heard his mono Philharmonia recording is supposedly better.

[Lordgeous]

Beethoven 8? Love it!

[Bella Kemp]

I remember reading, years ago, that Mahler used to regularly whistle the opening bars of Beethoven's Eighth on his way to work. Those bars seem to open the door to so much that is good in the world and it seems to me that one has to go to some effort not to like this symphony.

[Richard Tarleton]

Didn't I read somewhere that Beethoven told Czerny that he thought more highly of it than he did of the 7th? I don't think I'm making that up.

[Conchis]

Didn't I read somewhere that Beethoven told Czerny that he thought more highly of it than he did of the 7th? I don't think I'm making that up.

You may be right. I've read that he seemed to have liked it.

There is also the assertion that it is the 'easiest' Beethoven symphony for a conductor to interpret. Even a clumsy lummox like Edward Heath was entrusted with it!

[Conchis]

And even if you 'like' the 8th, isn't it hard to view it as anything other than musical recidivism?

[Bryn]

A great work! What's not to admire (and like)?

It gets a good Servicing here.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think it’s great. Mature, concise, superbly structured, and not in B flat.

There is a niggle though. The second movement’s rather late modulation in the final bars gives the impression of ending in the wrong key.

[Joseph K]

Beethoven 8? Love it!

Same.

[Bryn]

I think it’s great. Mature, concise, superbly structured, and not in B flat.

There is a niggle though. The second movement’s rather late modulation in the final bars gives the impression of ending in the wrong key.

Hardly an accident of Beethoven's part. I reckon it's there partly to wake up the listener to the symphony's inventiveness. I think the Service piece linked to in #10 is well worth reading, by the way.

[gradus]

Can't remember the last time I listened to it but I always enjoyed it's light-hearted nature. What's not to like?

[cloughie]

Beethoven 8? Love it!