Beethoven - which Eroica?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

it all sounds like doing a fast-forward search on a DVD. no music merit whatever. and I read somewhere that numeracy was never Beethoven's strong point, and that he struggled with it throughout his life.

[Bryn]

it all sounds like doing a fast-forward search on a DVD. no music merit whatever. and I read somewhere that numeracy was never Beethoven's strong point, and that he struggled with it throughout his life.

[amateur51]

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

it all sounds like doing a fast-forward search on a DVD. no music merit whatever.

To you, perhaps - and I don't entirely blame you, with such wonderful recordings by Kempff and Brendel and Gilels and Pollini and and and
But, if Beethoven consistently wrote metronome markings that you find "too fast" then perhaps, just perhaps, Beethoven's ideas of "music merit" were different from your own? Perhaps minim = 138 is too fast for some players palying on their modern Steinway grands (with their heavier action than the Broadwoods and Grafs the composer used) - but where is the logic (even on the rarefied heights of tha Alps) that says that this means he "must have meant" them to be much slower? This is apocolyptic Music: Beethoven's sturm is an electric one, his drang relentless: don't play it as if it were an "action replay", get sparks from the keyboard! 138 too fast? Then get as close as you can, and, next time, get closer - "fail again; fail better"! It's not "comfortable" Music: performer and listener need to be drained by the end

o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. No greater "musical merit" imaginable.


Which, I suppose, is my response to aeoli's excellent post #76. Quite right that performances shouldn't "be rigidly dictated by metronome indications" - the number of performers, the acoustic of the Hall, the type of instruments, the performers' abilities and even the altitude of the venue all have their influence on performance. But they were written by Beethoven (even if subsequent to the initial composition of the works to which they were attached - not the case in the Hammerklavier, by the way, Alpie) and represent the only indications about tempo from the great man, and therefore (in my book - and Beethoven's scores!) to be taken seriously, reverently, courteously. And just listen to the results!!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

and I read somewhere that numeracy was never Beethoven's strong point, and that he struggled with it throughout his life.

This wasn't the same book where you read that Brahms said he didn't want the Exposition repeats in his Symphonies to be observed, was it?

The metronome of Beethoven's time required fewer skills in numeracy than a modern microwave cooker: you find a number and press a button. And Beethoven had the advantage of having the inventor on tap to show him how it worked.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ferney, that's a very reasoned argument. my real point is that in this zeal to match the composer's speed, we can destroy more that we gain. it reminds me of boy racers who try to beat the times given by Google Maps, except that this experiment is not dangerous. If Norrington et al really feel that the music should be performed at such a fast pace, I can respect that. If it's simply to match a figure on a clockwork machine, it seems to have less value.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And Beethoven had the advantage of having the inventor on tap to show him how it worked.

But did he have anyone who could actually play the music at that speed? Don't get me wrong; I'm not normally a fan of sluggish Beethoven, though I would prefer a slow movement to be slow, as music benefits from contrast.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ferney, that's a very reasoned argument. my real point is that in this zeal to match the composer's speed, we can destroy more that we gain.

Indeed. But, then again ....

did he have anyone who could actually play the music at that speed?

He himself, perhaps? (I genuinely do not know this - are there any reports of Beethoven's private playing from these late years?)

[Roehre]

But did he have anyone who could actually play the music at that speed? Don't get me wrong; I'm not normally a fan of sluggish Beethoven, though I would prefer a slow movement to be slow, as music benefits from contrast.

There is more than one suggestion that the music was played at or near the speed as determined by the composer in an article in the Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung (13 dec 1817), i.e. for symphonies 1-8 (the same he sent to the publisher Steiner in Leipzig - then together with those for the string quartets opp.18, 59, 74 and 95)

Schindler's falsifications in the Conversation booklets and the changes he made in his biography of Beethoven between the 1st (1840) and the 3rd (1860?) edition not only were made to position himself as a regular and reliable friend and biographer of the composer's, but also to settle a dispute around the tempi Beethoven actually meant.

Mendelssohn, Czerny, Ries et al played B's music with approximately the metronome markings as guidelines, brisque tempi.
Schindler on the contrary favoured more sluggish tempi - and as his biography [from the 3rd edition including self-produced evidence from the Conversation booklets] was more or less considered to be reliable, performers like Wagner, Bülow, and later Mahler, Weingartner, Mengelberg, Furtwängler chose slower than marked tempi, backed by Schindler's suggestions.

Let's not forget that it was Schindler's (and only Schindler's ) suggestion (used as prove !) that Beethoven's metronome was faulty, leaving out of the equation the fact that Beethoven never changed either his tempi or his metronome. He used the latter for the tempo-indications of quartets and later for the 9th symphony as well. The indications for the 9th have been challenged, as are those for op.106 [which Beethoven sent to Ries in London in 1819], but not those of the early and middle quartets . [Please note: op.109-11 and the late quartets don't have metronome markings, though these were intended.]

Though we obviously cannot be fully sure, there is more than just a hint only that Beethoven's tempo-indications are exactly as he imagined them.

[Tempi might have the tendency to slow down autonomously. A good example of this is Mahler's Adagietto 5. According to Mengelberg's score Mahler himself took the movement in approx. 8 minutes, also the time it took Mengelberg to play the piece.
Walter's is approx. 9 mins, while the piece nowadays is sometimes even taking nearly a quarter of an hour]

[Roehre]

He himself, perhaps? (I genuinely do not know this - are there any reports of Beethoven's private playing from these late years?)

there are, but exclusively about his mistreating his keyboard in terms of loudness - breaking strings in the process-, but not the tempi, while composing (and then especially the late sonatas, e.g. op.106 1st mvt)

[Pabmusic]

This wasn't the same book where you read that Brahms said he didn't want the Exposition repeats in his Symphonies to be observed, was it?...

I don't know about Brahms, but Dvorak certainly came to think this (presumably the reason for abandoning the exposition repeat in the 7th and 8th symphonies). There are several letters and other written sources that testify to this. That makes the situation with the New World interesting, since Dvorak clearly writes an exposition repeat. This, surely, is tantamount to an instruction that the repeat be observed ("I have strong views about this; I left it out of my last two symphonies, but I've bothered to include it here. So play it"). Yet, even today, it's often treated as optional.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I don't know about Brahms, but Dvorak certainly came to think this (presumably the reason for abandoning the exposition repeat in the 7th and 8th symphonies). There are several letters and other written sources that testify to this. That makes the situation with the New World interesting, since Dvorak clearly writes an exposition repeat. This, surely, is tantamount to an instruction that the repeat be observed ("I have strong views about this; I left it out of my last two symphonies, but I've bothered to include it here. So play it"). Yet, even today, it's often treated as optional.

Didn't Dvorak cross out the exposition repeat in one of his symphonies after it's publication?
The Brahms situation is different. He said exposition repeats might not be necessary if the audience already knew the work an impractical situation in the 19th century. However, with this in mind, Brahms might well have omitted exposition repeats had he recorded them in our times.
This is pure conjecture and more than a little off topic, unless we refer back to the Eroica's exposition repeat.

[rauschwerk]

Since I read, in Sir Charles Mackerras's notes to his RLPO Beethoven 9 recording, that there were "misunderstandings on the part of both Beethoven and his nephew as to whether one was supposed to read the top or the bottom of the little weight on the metronome", I have accepted that Beethoven's metronome markings are almost certainly impractically brisk, and that the faster ones might be more in error than the slower. If, as I suspect, there are no recordings of the Hammerklavier sonata in which performers at any point get to minim = 138, then I think we are forced to agree with Tovey that it is an impossible marking. As to whether that speed might be achieved on a piano of Beethoven's time, I can only say that I doubt it. Such an instrument may well facilitate passagework, but there is a great deal more to the physical challenge of that movement that mere passagework, such as the high speed 2 octave lh leaps in the first couple of pages.

To return to the Eroica: I agree with Mackerras and others that Beethoven's markings must be taken seriously and believe also that when he wrote Allegro con brio it was what Rosen calls a standard classical tempo - he always meant the same one. Now the first movement of the C minor piano trio (not metronomed by Beethoven) is also Allegro con brio in 3/4, and if it were taken at, say, the same speed at which Klemperer recorded the first movement of the symphony in 1955 (dotted minim = 46 from my measurement of the first 28 bars) it would be hopelessly flaccid. I have never heard a performance a slow as that. That is one reason why I no longer listen to that Klemperer recording.

As for:

"Composers frequently revise their tempo instructions after hearing the work in performance, and learning what effects are achieved and what works and what doesn't. Sadly, that was a luxury denied to LvB."

and

"We're all blessed to enjoy our Beethoven the way we choose to listen to it - nothing is right, wrong, or definitive - aren't we lucky?"

I could not agree more!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Oh dear. The thread was closed and I appear to have been the last person to post on it. I don't think I was the one to close it - that would have involved several deliberate procedures - but if I was the inadvertently guilty party -

[rauschwerk]

Oh dear. The thread was closed and I appear to have been the last person to post on it. I don't think I was the one to close it - that would have involved several deliberate procedures - but if I was the inadvertently guilty party -

Perhaps it was your use of the dreaded phrase "off topic" that did it?