A Tale of Two Symphonies - Birdsong:Deafness Theme

A Tale of Two Symphonies: Converging Narratives of Divine Reconciliation in Beethoven'sFifth and SixthAuthor(s): Raymond KnappSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp.291-343Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832010 .Accessed: 29/01/2011 16:50

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A Tale of Two Symphonies: Converging Narratives of Divine Reconciliation in Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth RAYMOND KNAPP

The birdcalls at the end of the second movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony disturb more through their interruption of a seemingly abstract musical flow than through their introduction of

descriptive musical material. By that point in the symphony, we have already heard a fair number of "characteristic" musical gestures of an easily identified pastoral kind, including birds, sheep, water, and shepherds.' Always before, however, these were absorbed into a conventionally modulated musical discourse, so that the musical flow, if not the musical substance, remained "absolute." With the labeled birdcalls at the end of the "Szene am Bach" ("Scene by the Brook"), Beethoven disrupts this flow, insisting that we hear, in that moment, his simulation of birdcalls as such, dismaying those who es- teem the music's more abstract qualities above all else, and puzzling those who have already noted and enjoyed the many subtly interwoven allusions to the sounds of the countryside, and thus have little need for such an overt topical reference.

I wish to thank my colleagues who have helped in various ways to shape this project: Frank D'Accone, Susan McClary, and especially Mitchell Morris for his careful reading and thoughtful comments. Because so much of this study derives from teaching these pieces to large classes on Beethoven over a period of more than ten years at UCLA, I would be remiss if I did not also thank, however anonymously, that succession of captive audiences who witnessed its gradual evo- lution.

1. The birds in the Pastoral Symphony have been much discussed, especially in the wake of Schindler's much-ridiculed claims about the Goldammer in the second movement (of which, more below). Regarding both brook and birds in that movement, see especially Owen Jander, "The Prophetic Conversation in Beethoven's 'Scene by the Brook,' " The Musical Quarterly 77 (1993): 508-59. Numerous high-lying trills in the first movement, such as those in the flute in measures 42-52, signal the presence of birds in that movement as well. The shepherd's pipe is most prominent in the first movement, especially in measures 29-33, while the repeated notes traditionally used to represent sheep (or goats?) may be heard in measures 53-64 and 328-41 of the first movement, and measures 18-20 of the second (unless, in view of the predominance of birds in this movement, we take the latter to represent the cooing of doves). One may also "hear" birds taking wing throughout the second group of the first movement, but perhaps this possibility owes more to the suggestive influence of the winged horses in Disney's Fantasia than to Beethoven's own intentions.

[ Journal of the American Musicological Society 2000, vol. 53, no. 2] ? 2000 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. 0003-0139/00/5302-0002$2.00

292 Journal of the American Musicological Society

Attempts to ground this passage in conventional musical procedure-to downplay its enigmatic qualities by calling it, typically, a cadenza or coda- inevitably stumble. To explain it as a cadenza, even if this does partly describe its function and manner, raises more questions than it answers: Why should there be a cadenza in this movement, or for that matter in a symphony at all? Why should a cadenza employ three instruments in a manner that is clearly not improvised? (For Beethoven's precise repetition of the entire passage, including every detail of the orchestral lead-in, the improvisatory flute, and the closely coordinated duet for oboe and clarinet that follows, marks it unmistak- ably as a composed structure.) Why these three instruments?2 Why are they assuming the personae of birds? Is this, indeed, a cadenza for three birds or for three wind instruments? If the latter, why is there no technical display? And why are these particular birdcalls labeled while other depictive passages in the symphony are not? Nor does classifying the passage as a coda (again, with some justification) provide adequate explanation. Even if we conceive a coda, in general, to be exempt from the more rigorous logic that governs the "movement proper," codas in Beethoven symphonies are consistently preoc- cupied with settling unfinished musico-narrative business. If we are to identify the passage containing the birdcalls as a coda, then, we need to consider how its introduction of new material may be construed as addressing other concerns of the movement.

In so dramatically disrupting the musical flow of the symphony, the birdcalls impart a sense of urgent communication without clarifying what is being com- municated, from whom the communication comes, or to whom it is directed. In this, the passage aligns itself with the instrumental recitative that launches the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which-not coincidentally-rivals the birdcalls in its capacity to dismay purists; for them, the disturbing direct- ness of these passages undermines their legitimacy within Beethoven's symphonic discourse. There are, however, important differences between the two passages: whereas the finale of the Ninth projects a human voice by imitating recitative, and eventually offers clarification through the addition of words written by Beethoven himself, the "voice" heard in the Sixth is decidedly nonhuman, an enigmatic presence whose identity is (apparently) never fully clarified.

Yet, as Owen Jander has recently shown, the message of the birdcalls may be at least partly deciphered, to the extent of providing a rationale for the passage itself and for the specific birds chosen to convey the message.3 Within the rich tradition of birds playing the role of cryptic prophets, he notes, "nightin-

2. Here, David Wyn Jones offers an explanation obviously informed by a Toveyesque desire to enfold the passage into purely musical concerns: "The material emerges unforced from its context of trills, duplet quavers and melodic emphasis on the submediant. Moreover, the instruments themselves are precisely those that had taken concertante roles in the development section" (Beethoven: Pastoral Symphony [FCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 66-67).

3. See "The Prophetic Conversation," esp. 525.

A Tale of Two Symphonies 293

gales are the birds who lament, while cuckoos are the birds who warn." More- over, citing the close association of the quail's distinctive rhythmic cry with references to God in Beethoven's 1803 Lied "Der Wachtelschlag" ("The Call of the Quail"), Jander securely identifies the source of the message.4 To sum- marize this part of Jander's argument, then, the prophetic trio of birds conveys a cryptic, melancholy warning from God, made more insistent through repetition. We may, however, wish to modify this account slightly, since the nightingale appears not as part of the message proper (the warning cuckoo, consistently and alone, follows each call of the quail), nor even with a particularly melancholy tone, but rather more in the manner of a herald setting the stage. More convincingly, then, the nightingale here filfills another of its traditional functions by marking the arrival of nightfall. Accordingly, in a modi- fied version of Jander's account, the prophetic trio of birds conveys a cryptic warning from God at the end of an otherwise harmonious day spent "by the brook."

The presence of God is surely signaled by more than the quail, however, for it may also be sensed in the very hush that precedes the birdcalls. Within the context that Beethoven indicates for the "absolute" musical flow of this movement, that flow must itself be seen to represent; specifically, it represents the flow of the brook. There is a long tradition of unnatural events serving as to- kens of divinity in association with prophetic messages (i.e., the burning bush that is not consumed), a tradition that this sudden cessation of flowing water would seem to invoke. In some ways, then, the nightingale acts as more than a herald, functioning also as the apparent agent for the wondrous effect of silencing the brook.

But what, precisely, is the warning conveyed by the birdcalls? Here, Jander offers a less plausible explanation based, however, on a truly startling (and little noted) feature of the warning's melodic profile. Putting aside the layer of lamenting commentary provided by the nightingale (even more easily put aside within my emendation to his account, since the nightingale does not contribute to the message itself), Jander maps the overlapping combination of quail and cuckoo-three repeated notes and a falling major third-directly onto the opening four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony,5 a motive widely understood to represent Fate and, more specifically, Beethoven's particularly

4. The association of the quail with God in "Der Wachtelschlag" is also noted by Wyn Jones, who links Beethoven's use of the distinctive rhythmic figure to Haydn's The Seasons, first performed in 1801, during Lent (Pastoral Symphony, 23-24).

5. See Jander, "The Prophetic Conversation," exx. 14 and 15. We may reasonably query this similarity, since rhythmic stress, duration, and scale degree do not correspond (thus 5-3 is here rendered 3-1). But Jander, who calls attention to the rhythmic differences, finds interpretive nuance therein, while Beethoven's use of the motive in the Fifth Symphony takes frequent advan- tage of its inherent modal ambiguity, even at the very beginning (which temporarily retains the orientation of E6 major when it returns with the repeat of the exposition). More to the point, scale degree is but one of many points of similarity that can trigger an allusive association of this kind; here, repetition and separating rests serve to reinforce the connection.


harsh fate as a musician who knows that he is growing deaf. For Jander, then, the Pastoral Symphony, no less than the Fifth, directly expresses Beethoven's need to come to terms with his deafness, and on this basis he elaborates a programmatic reading of the movement as a dramatization of its composer's pro- gressing deafness, presented in the form of a three-way conversation involving Beethoven, the brook, and the birds of the forest.

Jander's interpretation has not, so far, been well received. Thus, Richard Will, in his "Time, Morality, and Humanity in Beethoven's Pastoral Sym- phony," finds Jander's reading of the movement "unsupportable" while ac- knowledging (if rather vaguely) Jander's demonstration that the movement "may have triggered associations connected with the symbolic meanings of birdcalls."6 Regrettably, Will does not take the opportunity in his earlier discussion of Schindler's "Goldammer" anecdote to acknowledge Jander's important clarification regarding this identification: the English tradition for ridiculing Schindler's claims is based on a mistranslation of "Goldammer" as "Yellow-hammer" (a kind of woodpecker) instead of "Goldfinch," a bird set to music by Vivaldi with a figure almost identical to Beethoven's, and within a similarly layered texture. Will's lapse here is all the more unfortunate since he recounts that tradition with approbation and cites approvingly the point-by- point dismissal of Schindler's anecdote by Barry Cooper, which appeared in the same year as Jander's study.7 But an even more serious consequence of Will's general dismissal of Jander's line of inquiry is that it keeps him from following up on the latter's insight into the communicative nature of the concluding birdcalls, which might easily have provided him with additional support for his own reading of the symphony.

According to Will, the storm movement represents a manifestation of God, in line with a long-standing theophanic tradition. Thus, God, through the storm, disrupts the secular pleasures of the Landleute in the third movement and receives their thankful devotion in the hymnlike finale. Surely, as an

6. This Journal 50 (1997): 277 n. 32. 7. See Will, "Time, Morality, and Humanity," 273 n. 12; Jander, "The Prophetic Conversa-

tion," 520-21; and Barry Cooper, "Schindler and the Pastoral Symphony," The Beethoven Newsletter 8 (1993): 2-6. The near-simultaneous appearances of Cooper's and Jander's discus- sions of Schindler's anecdote provide a useful reminder that, however inaccurate and untrustwor- thy Schindler may be, he cannot simply be dismissed.

Wyn Jones, in his monograph on the Pastoral Symphony published two years after Jander's article, acknowledges Jander's clarification regarding the Goldammer (which, oddly, he consistently spells "Goldhammer"), but this does not stop him from further elaborating Tovey's dis- dainful dismissal of Schindler's claim, when he later refers to "the steroid-eating, giraffe-throated yellowhammer" in one of Beethoven's earlier sketches for the movement (Pastoral Symphony, 65-66). Wyn Jones also discusses Jander's more elaborate points in a note, but only in order to reject them with the plausible (if simplistic) claim that in the Pastoral Symphony, "Beethoven is dealing with universal values not individual torment" (ibid., 94 n. 9). While this view of the matter would seem to resonate with much of Will's discussion, the tone and context of Wyn Jones's dismissal seem calculated to discourage any and all particularities of interpretive detail that might serve to undermine the status of the Pastoral Symphony as "absolute" music, a perspective as in- compatible to Will's reading as it is to Jander's.


extension of this reading and in view of Jander's compelling explanation for the constitution of Beethoven's aviary, the birdcalls ought to be understood as a heavenly warning, foretelling not Beethoven's deafness, but the storm to come.8 Such an extension of Will's reading falls more clearly within the prophet-bird tradition as Jander discusses it than does the "conversation" that he himself proposes, since, according to the tradition he cites, the prophecy of birds is inherently cryptic, not to be fully understood until clarified by subsequent events, whereas in his scenario their "prophecy" acts to clarify, more or less after the fact. Thus, if we layer the most persuasive part of Jander's explanation onto Will's reading, we may understand the birdcalls as providing the first intimation of future troubles: through their advance warning, they miti- gate the seeming arbitrariness of the "extra" storm movement. Accordingly, the manner in which they disturb is a consequence of this prophetic function: as an interruptive, "extra-symphonic" utterance imposed on the movement "from above," they represent-in terms as literal as nontexted music permits- a harbinger of the more devastating interruption to come, which will impose on the symphony as a whole the more extended "extra-symphonic" utterance of an "extra" movement that behaves like no other movement in Beethoven.

The previously noted parallel with the Ninth may thus be extended. In both cases, an extreme violation of symphonic normalcy is prepared by a less overt disruption that soon reverts to a more conventional discourse. More- over, in both cases, it is ultimately the need to establish an appropriate relationship between God and humanity that provides motivation for the disruption, although the two symphonies force the issue from opposite direc- tions. Within Carl Dahlhaus's characterization of the double meaning of "Absolute Music"-that is, music as pure, abstract discourse and music as providing access to the "Absolute" in a theological sense9-both of these works present a curious irony, for it is by breaking through the "purity" of more conventional symphonic discourse-by introducing an enigmatic presence that stands apart from the music's "absolute" flow-that Beethoven most vividly suggests the presence of a transcendent power.

8. Compare, however, Wyn Jones's rather knotty declaration regarding the labeling of the birdcalls: "The labeling of the three birds is not a casual indulgence by the composer, much less a hint that there are further literalisms; rather it is an acutely conscious moment in a movement that is otherwise overwhelmingly subliminal in its working" (Pastoral Symphony, 62). To be sure, he is referring here to "literalisms" in the second movement and does not overtly rule out the possibility that the birdcalls anticipate future "literalisms." But the tone of the passage makes it clear that such a notion would be unacceptable, especially since the rather fussy wording of the passage seems to be designed in part as a way to sidestep an engagement with Jander's programmatic reading of the movement, which Wyn Jones later dismisses in a note, on somewhat different grounds (see n. 7 above).

9. See "The Twofold Truth in Wagner's Aesthetics: Nietzsche's Fragment 'On Music and Words,' " in his Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 19-39. A more extended discussion of this dichotomy and its historical roots may be found in Dahlhaus's The Idea ofAbsolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).


But why, if their prophecy concerns the storm to come, do the quail and cuckoo in the "Scene by the Brook" combine to sing the opening motive from the Fifth Symphony? To answer this question satisfactorily, we must understand the avian allusion, not as an isolated, focused invocation, but as one of a number of intricate links between the two symphonies, operating on many levels. We must, in other words, step back from the immediacy of the apparent allusion in order to consider its place within the larger picture.

Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies are easily the most intriguing of his symphonic "pairs." Although they are fundamentally different from each other in many respects, they are nevertheless linked through historical circumstance and a number of shared musical features, ranging from the overt and striking to the extremely subtle.10 Determining how much and in what way these works "belong together," however, is no simple task, although several approaches are readily suggested. For example, we may consider the two symphonies within the larger patterns of Beethoven's symphonic career; we may place them against their common historical background; or we may focus on internal details in order to define more precisely their relationship to each other. (Two other approaches will be taken up later, one more abstractly musical, the other concerning their implicit narratives.) However we choose to approach this oddly matched pair, Beethoven's extraordinary ability to redefine the symphony as a genre, both within individual works and over the course of his symphonic career, gives relationships of this kind a special significance.

The tradition for linking adjacent Beethoven symphonies into pairs is predicated in part on the elevated status of his odd-numbered symphonies composed after 1802, which encourages us to view his even-numbered symphonies as adjuncts to their more ambitious neighbors. The resulting mental construct, supported by the circumstances of compositional genesis in the later pairs (Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6; and 7 and 8), helps us to perceive a continuity in Beethoven's symphonic career and provides an explanation for his apparent inconsistency in being able to achieve "great" works only on every other attempt. Within this pattern, however, the Sixth Symphony presents an anomaly, since it does not fade modestly into its companion's shadow, even though that companion is no less daunting a work than the Fifth. Part of this has to do, of course, with the sheer length of the Sixth Symphony relative to the intensely concise Fifth. And part of it undoubtedly stems from our enjoy- ment of its evocative and programmatic aspects, even though many of us- following Beethoven's lead-are somewhat ill at ease in accepting their legitimacy in a genre of abstract art music. The most important factor, however, is probably the historical position of the Pastoral Symphony: the programmatic

10. See F. E. Kirby, "Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony as a Sinfonia Caracteristica," The Musi- cal Quarterly 56 (1970): 623, for a brief exploration of this relationship. Kirby usefully addresses the problem of reconciling programmatic concerns with the generic requirements of the symphony (see esp. pp. 622-23), a problem also tellingly addressed in Philip Gossett's "Beethoven's Sixth Symphony: Sketches for the First Movement," this Journal 27 (1974): 248-84.


traditions of the nineteenth century, in the symphony as well as other orchestral genres, are frequently traced to this work," whether as a general example or as a model for particular effects (for example, the suspension of temporal urgency in the development of the first movement, or the rustic-dance topic of the third).

From this standpoint, then, we would apparently do well to forgo the urge to consider this particular pair of symphonies together, whatever organiza- tional utility there may be in considering larger patterns within Beethoven's symphonic output. But much more than tradition and convenience link them together, and we do a considerable disservice to the Sixth Symphony if we ig- nore its proximity to the Fifth. Indeed, many of its central features are signifi- cantly illuminated when we consider the works together, both against their shared compositional background and with an eye for musical detail.

There is, first of all, much to indicate that Beethoven may have planned the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies as a complementary pair. He worked on them over the same period of time, first offering them to the public in his famous concert of December 1808. For this spectacularly miscalculated event,'2 they were numbered and presented in reverse order (with respect both to their order of composition and to their later numbering). Thus, in a manner suggestive of a symbiotic relationship between the two symphonies, the Pastoral was at that point presented first and numbered "5," a circumstance that continued to cause confusion until publication. (Jander argues that Beethoven's ordering of the works at their public premiere indicates that he intended for the Pastoral Symphony to serve as a preparation of sorts for the Fifth; this claim will be taken up below.)'3 On a structural level, the two symphonies present parallel experiments in inter-movement continuity, with the finale in each case dissolving instabilities introduced in the preceding movement. And, like the

11. See, for example, Wyn Jones, Pastoral Symphony, 81-88. 12. The apparent extravagance of the 1808 concert has perhaps been exaggerated, for its pro-

gram conforms in many respects to conventions of the time, in terms of both the number and type of pieces and the overall length. What proved to be a more telling miscalculation was the ambitious nature of the program itself, aggravated by Beethoven's mismanagement of his players; thus, inadequate time to prepare works that were almost entirely unfamiliar, Beethoven's much- discussed alienation of his musicians in rehearsal, and his last-minute completion of the evening's elaborate finale (the Choral Fantasy) nearly derailed the entire enterprise, both before and during the evening itself. Length, then, was a relatively minor issue. Indeed, contemporary complaints regarding its length curiously echo similar complaints leveled against Salomon and others in London a few years earlier, indicating that this kind of extravagance was common enough, even if sometimes judged excessive; we should resist the temptation to read these complaints against the backdrop of modern standards of concert length. (The specific makeup of the concert is discussed in more detail below. Regarding complaints about Salomon's concert lengths, see Simon McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], 101.)

13. "The Prophetic Conversation," 558 n. 32. For a useful discussion of the confused numbering of the two symphonies, see Wyn Jones, Pastoral Symphony, 1, 39-42, and 45-46. Wyn Jones argues convincingly that they were probably performed privately before the December concert (specifically, for Prince Lobkowitz, who had apparently commissioned them).


nearly contemporaneous Fourth Piano Concerto,'4 both symphonies encour- age programmatic interpretation, although only in the Sixth Symphony is that possibility actively (if warily) encouraged by Beethoven in the score itself.'5

Despite obvious shared characteristics of this kind, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies have generally-and persuasively-been understood as opposites, paired more through their mutually contrasting characters than through their surface similarities.16 Once again, however, the traditional view does not pene- trate beneath the surface. Whatever obvious differences exist between the works, they also have an affinity that extends well beyond their packaging as quasi-programmatic symphonies with inter-movement continuity. Parallels between them run deep, ranging from the nature and role of their principal motives to features of overall design, and involving the very manner in which motivic detail supports and vitalizes larger gestures. We need look no further than their respective openings to confirm the urgency of examining the many compositional details that link the two symphonies.

Both works begin with an introductory half cadence, placing the point of arrival on the downbeat of the fourth measure and extending it with a fer- mata. Essential features shared by the two openings include a melodic descent from the dominant to the supertonic; an opening anacrustic melodic gesture of three eighth-notes (both opening movements are in 2/4 meter); an initial reliance on strings rather than winds; and a continuation that both replaces the earlier emphasis on a single melodic line with melodic interaction among multiple voices, and displaces the melodic arrival on the tonic to the lowest voice, where it is sustained for four measures (see Ex. 1).

14. The Fourth Concerto was composed during the same period as the two symphonies and introduced along with them to the Viennese public during the concert of 1808; it too moves directly into the finale from the previous movement. A more telling point of reference for the middle movement of the Fourth Concerto may perhaps be found in the Waldstein Sonata; the concerto movement lies somewhere between the Introduzione that serves as a middle movement in the Waldstein and the linked inner movements of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, which are considerably more autonomous.

15. Owen Jander proposed a programmatic reading (and context) for the second movement of the Fourth Concerto in "Beethoven's 'Orpheus in Hades': The Andante con moto of the Fourth Piano Concerto," 19th-Century Music 8 (1985): 195-212. Jander has since extended his argument to include the outer movements; see his "Beethoven's 'Orpheus' Concerto," notes for Beethoven: The Five Piano Concertos, 22-25, Steven Lubin, Christopher Hogwood, and the Academy of Ancient Music, Editions de L'Oiseau-Lyre, CD 421 408-2 (1988); and "Orpheus Revisited: A Ten-year Retrospect on the Andante con moto of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto," 19th-Century Music 19 (1995): 31-49. The relationship of this reading of the concerto to the two symphonies will be discussed further below, in the context of what I project to be a thematic basis for the concert as a whole.

16. In this view, the Fourth Concerto might be seen as a kind of mediation between the tur- bulent Fifth and the (mostly) placid Sixth, putting a more benign face on the motivic intensity of the Fifth-an interpretation encouraged by the frequently noted motivic similarities between the Fourth Concerto and Fifth Symphony--and offering, as the structural premise of its middle movement, the reconciliation of a similarly conceived opposition (of which more below).


Example la Symphony No. 5, first movement, mm. 1-10

Allegro con brio

Vn.I

Vn. 2 .

.- ff p

Cb.

V . i I '- I l I

In noting these parallels-which encompass similarities in formal devices, musico-dramatic strategies, and basic musical materials-we must also note the enormous difference between the dramatic and affective ends these elements are made to serve. The differences that result from these opposed ends are at least as striking as the similarities listed above; in the opening half cadence of the Sixth Symphony, for example, a tonic pedal, a more elaborate melody, and the introduction along the way of an inner voice provide a harmonic clarity and stability notably lacking in measures 1-5 of the Fifth, with its stark octaves and indefinite tonal center (we hear a half cadence, but cannot be entirely sure of the key). And the three-note anacrusis is employed to much different effect in the two openings, creating metrical ambiguity in the Fifth, but establishing a clear sense of both pulse and meter in the Sixth, where it is launched by the downbeat opening of the tonic pedal. Despite the parallels between them, the openings are perfectly matched to their respective tasks, establishing two vastly different symphonic worlds.

The unusual relationship between these two openings, in which surface contrasts and structural similarities are stated with equal clarity, speaks directly to the larger relationship between the two works, to be echoed time and again in both structure and details. Thus, if we may reasonably ask why Beethoven adhered in these openings to a single pattern, even though his aim in each was so markedly different, then we may just as reasonably repeat versions of this


Example lb Symphony No. 6, first movement, mm. 1-8

Allegro ma non troppo

Vn. i A ,t

Vn. 2 IS_ _ _

Va.

Vc.

LO,

SO" I

6

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question at every turn. In tracing below the many additional points of contact between the two symphonies, we will find ourselves delineating a pattern best explained as a process of deliberate modeling. Moreover, we will find that a great many of their musical parallels involve the most striking and innovative features of the earlier symphony, so that the following survey looks remarkably like a list of "highlights" of the Fifth Symphony, coordinated with parallel features of the Sixth.

While the rationale for this process of modeling is surely complex, it may be seen in part as an emblem of Beethoven's uneasiness as he approached the project of a symphonic "pastoral." Thus, much-though scarcely all-of what the two works have in common may be explained in terms of how Beethoven perceived and approached the special problems he faced in writing a symphonic pastoral that would also qualify as a bona fide symphony, according to his ongoing redefinition of the genre.7 Equally telling, however, is the net effect of these many points of procedural contact between the two works,

17. See Wyn Jones, Pastoral Symphony, esp. 14-24 and 31-43, for a useful discussion of this issue. As Wyn Jones notes, the problem was compounded in part by the fact that the title Beethoven finally settled on ("Pastoral Symphony") figured already in traditions of church


which, taken together, create within each a shadow version of its companion that belies their sharply contrasting affective surfaces. Thus, if the possible allusion to the head motive of the Fifth Symphony provides a cryptic focus to the already enigmatic birdcalls in the Sixth, the many additional connections between the two link them more generally and deeply.

The following, then, is a listing of unusual musical features shared by the two symphonies-an even dozen in all-elaborated in approximate chrono- logical order. (If we include the introductory gestures, as already discussed, but put aside for now the allusive birdcalls, which do not constitute a shared feature as such, then the list becomes a full baker's dozen.)

1. Motivic organization (first movements). In both symphonies, the openings do much more than set quite different stages with similar structural gestures. As has always been recognized, the opening of the Fifth Symphony provides the essential motivic substance of the first movement and remains motivically relevant throughout the work. The Sixth Symphony forcefully echoes this or- ganizing feature, along with many critical details in its elaboration.

In the Fifth, the rhythmic motive of three anacrustic eighth notes, usually repeating a single pitch (Ex. 2a), carries over into virtually every phrase in the movement, giving the movement the sense of "motivic saturation" for which it is famous. Additional motivic kernels within the opening phrase also remain relevant throughout, including the repeated gesture of a falling third (Ex. 2b), the larger shape created through the repetition of this motive a step lower (Ex. 2c), the internal rising second (Ex. 2d), and the embracing span of a descending fourth (Ex. 2e; the latter is, as already noted, one of the specific links to the opening of the Sixth Symphony). Retracing the familiar ways in which Beethoven develops these motivic elements is scarcely necessary here, beyond indicating briefly some key moments at which the less commonly identified elements (the rising second and descending fourth) are given independent importance in ways directly relevant to the Sixth Symphony.

The rising second is the unifying locus for the expansion of the original contour to become the introductory motto for the second theme-group; as may be seen in Example 3, the new motto retains the central rising second, on the same pitch level (EK-F), and expands the flanking descents from thirds to fifths. The continuation-a variation of the motto, as has often been

music. In "The Symphonic Ideal," Joseph Kerman gives a succinct and useful account of Beethoven's transformation of the symphony as a genre, even if he does not rise above the impulse to deliver an ill-conceived swipe at the seemingly modest ambitions of the Pastoral Symphony: "[The Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Symphonies] all contrive to create the impression of a psychological journey or a growth process. In the course of this, something seems to arrive or triumph or transcend--even if, as in the Pastoral, what is mainly transcended is the weather" (Joseph Kerman and Alan Tyson, The New Grove Beethoven [New York: W. W. Norton, 1983], 105-10, at 107).


Example 2 Symphony No. 5, first movement, mm. 1-5, with abstracted motivic kernels

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I

(a) ?9"r" (b)

0,) (c) . ,

0,) (d) ., (e)

0,), (e) Ok 0 "

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Example 3 Symphony No. 5, first movement

(a) Mm. 1-5 (reduction) Allegro con brio

ff"M . -,

_

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_

Q) if

(b) Mm. 59-66 (reduction)

AI Vn.i p dolce

Hn. (concert pitch)

sf Y Sf sf -p

noted-alters this melodic contour to give added emphasis to the rising second. In a particularly striking passage during the retransition, measures 195-248, the second-group motto reverts back to the contour of the opening motto through a prolonged focus on this central two-note ascent (cf. mm. 195-97 and 228-31, Ex. 3c).

The famous oboe cadenza that immediately interrupts the recapitulation at measure 268 (Ex. 4b) explores the tension between a scalar descent from G to D (Ex. 4a)-offered initially as a simplified alternative to the opening contour


Example 3 continued

(c) Mm. 195-232 (reduction) 195

Winds fd

Strings

204 _ j.a

r

,, -,

. -

_ _ h - _ , ,- lor our -

Windsdim.

Strings dim. P semprepi

+t- v [ IIN IL I/


Example 3 continued

224 _

Winds f_

Strings __ I ,


(a) Mm. 14-18 (reduction)

14 (Allegro con brio)

(b) Mm. 261-68 (reduction) 261

() cresc.

Vn. WcI,- (P) cresc.

268 t"N Ob.

, f

-and the opening contour itself. Specifically, the cadenza reconstitutes the original contour within an elaboration of the more straightforward descents just heard, simply by restoring the internal movement upward to F. Like the retransition, this motivic reversion provides a focal point for the dramatic tension of the movement, which will never effectively break away from the


original mode and motivic shape. In both passages, it is the internal rising second of the original motto that is at issue.

The equally impressive motivic organization in the opening movement of the Sixth Symphony employs similar strategies, with an important reversal of emphasis: in this case it is the overall span (the fourth between C and G) that provides the unifying locus for the movement, with smaller motivic kernels-mainly neighbor notes and appoggiaturas (see Ex. 5)-taking on an essential but secondary role, somewhat analogous to the repeated-note motive and falling third in the Fifth Symphony. This reversal of emphasis explains why, even though one can find within this opening phrase the larger shape of the opening motto of the Fifth Symphony (cf. Exx. 2c and 5d), the shape is of almost no real consequence here, being merely one of the many ways in which the basic melodic span might be elaborated.

As in the Fifth Symphony, the original pitch level of the unifying locus (the fourth between C and F) is retained across the modulation of the exposition; and, again, the strategic parallel is accompanied by a fundamental reversal. Thus, whereas in the Fifth Symphony the ascent from E? to F in the second- group motto (Ex. 3b) rejects the initial arrival on the new tonic in favor of a subsequent arrival on its dominant, the preservation of the C-G pitch level in the Sixth Symphony reinforces the new tonic triad (on C). The harmonic significance of the motive thus changes over the course of the exposition, from an emphasis on the dominant in the first group to an emphasis on the tonic in the second (see Ex. 6).8 This shift provides a subtle point of balance against the fundamental teleological element in the exposition, the modulation to the dominant, whose dynamic impulse, if not mitigated in some way, could easily pose a threat to the complacent stasis of the pastoral. The "resolution" of the motive, from dominant in the first group to tonic in the second, exactly

18. The motivic emphasis on C and G against a background F, an effect obviously related to the overlapping drones in measures 5-8 of the finale (F-C added below the already established C-G), makes one of Gustav Nottebohm's extended speculations all the more tantalizing. In Zweite Beethoveniana, Nottebohm discusses possible sources in nature for some of Beethoven's musical ideas in the Pastoral Symphony, quoting Albert Heim (Nottebohm's contemporary, not Beethoven's) to the effect that running water produces a C-major triad, albeit with a weak third, above a deeper F (Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana: Nachgelassene Aufsiitze [Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1887], 375-78, esp. 376 n. 2). In different ways, the first and last movements of the Pastoral Symphony do indeed reproduce this effect (although in neither is running water part of the explicit pictorial dimension). Nottebohm's observations were made in reference to an early sketch that has been traditionally understood as relating to the Pastoral Symphony in light of the accompanying words ("Murmeln der Biche," and "je gr6sser der Bach je tiefer der Ton"). The passage presents a "murmuring" figure on middle C with an internal descent to G, which is then transposed down to F (ibid., 375; both Wyn Jones and Jander reproduce the figure in their dis- cussions of the movement). For a discussion of the confused relationships among Nottebohm's various essays on the sketches for the Pastoral Symphony, see Alan Tyson, "A Reconstruction of the Pastoral Symphony Sketchbook (British Museum Add. MS. 31766)," in Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson, 67-96 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 69.


Example 5 Symphony No. 6, first movement, mm. 1-4, with abstracted motivic kernels

I dnkI N E- I I I (a) 02

(eb) 9)?

(c)j

Example 6 Reductions from Symphony No. 6, first movement (exposition), showing use of C-G motive: (a) mm. 1-4, (b) mm. 16-26, (c) mm. 67-70, (d) mm. 93-101, (e) mm. 115-28

(a) Allegro ma non troppo

16

(b)

fAI

r-

ir

" r"

A I

(p) cresc.

21

dim. I i i i

- -P . -


Example 6 continued

(c) 67

etc.

(d)

98e

f I I etc. I _ 0I

coincides with the harmonic shift to the dominant; in this nearly seamless sub- stitution of one source of harmonic tension for another, the fundamental harmonic disruption of the exposition is neatly counterbalanced by the more stable harmonic orientation given to the basic motive.19 The kind of harmonic

19. See Gossett, "Beethoven's Sixth Symphony," 253, for another perspective on the "effort- less" modulation in the exposition. If "the sketches show that this aspect of the Pastoral's first movement was never in doubt," as Gossett claims, this merely reflects the fact that the effect was built into the material; this particular problem, it would seem, was solved in advance. See, as well, Wyn Jones, who provides yet another perspective on the problem of maintaining a sense of pastoral stasis across the change of key (Pastoral Symphony, 57).

Will sees the effacement of a strong tonic-dominant polarity in this movement (referring as well to the subdominant approach to the recapitulation) as a manipulation of "the rate at which time passes"; for him, this rate begins slowly, increases dramatically in later movements, and slows again for the finale (Will, "Time, Morality, and Humanity," 312-16).


Example 6 continued

(e)

115 F-

Winds

Strings, Harp (f)

119

Winds

(

WiindIsIdiI I ? 1 -

Strings, -)-iV \

Harp f) 3

123

Winds dim.

Strings, A _.-

_.,

Harp 3 3

:):JJJ J ;J J jj .l j~r


Example 6 continued

127

Winds

Strings, Harp etc.

reinterpretation involved in this transaction, wherein I becomes IV and V becomes I (especially favored by Haydn in the second groups of his sonata-form expositions as a clarifying gesture), provides in this case a particularly graceful re-entry into the repeat of the exposition (m. 123 through m. 4), as the descending fourth of the closing group becomes, in expansion, the opening phrase of the exposition.

Given the quite different effect at the analogous place in the Fifth Sym- phony, this particular parallel might well be understood in another way. In each symphony, the return to the opening is given an unusual emphasis, making a dramatic point of a structural given. By the end of the exposition in the Fifth Symphony, the opening four-note motive, restored to its original pitch level, has been absorbed into a fuill arrival on the new tonic, E (mm. 110-11 and 114-15). The return to the opening rejects this reorientation in the first of many reversions to the opening motto and its implications, with each reversion signifying, in the context of this movement, a dramatic reversal of for- tune. In the Sixth Symphony, nearly the same device confirms rather that we have simply arrived back at the starting point; we have traced a circle rather than been pulled back to the beginning of a linear progression. Yet even within this sharply drawn contrast, there is an essential parallel: in each case, the basis for the link between the end of the exposition and the opening-the harmonic ambiguity in the opening phrase of the Fifth, and the skeletal melodic descent from C to G in the opening phrase of the Sixth-is only latent at first hearing; it has to wait until the return for full articulation.

2. Dramatic structure of the development section (first movements). The development section in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony is laid out in three spans, with the third serving as the retransition. Each span has a specific function in re-enacting the dramatic opposition of the two main themes. The first (mm. 125-78) is based on the opening motto/theme complex, enhancing the relative level of tension inherent in this material by ascending



(a) Mm. 1-12 (reduction)

Allegro ma non troppo

L7e f 7 v

systematically upward along the circle of fifths, from F minor to G minor. The second (mm. 179-95) presents a concise reversal of that harmonic motion, based on an elaboration of the second-group motto, falling back harmonically from G major to F major. The third span then resolves the thematic conflict in favor of the first theme, as previously noted.

Like the Fifth Symphony, the Sixth Symphony also follows a three-span structure in the development section of the first movement, relying similarly on the emblematic qualities of circle-of-fifths modulations (favoring, with the exception of two coloristic harmonic shifts, the downward direction: B / D-G/E-A-D-g-C-F). As in the Fifth, the retransition hinges on a thematic reversion, from the theme first introduced in measures 9-12, which provides the substance for the third span after measure 243, back to the original theme, which dominates the first two spans; once again, the reversion hinges on two adjacent notes shared in the original presentations of the two themes, in this case D and C (Ex. 7).

In both symphonies, Beethoven focuses attention on a two-note melodic complex to enact an unexpectedly powerful return to the opening material. In the Fifth Symphony, the further reduction to a single reiterated pitch (mm. 196-240) suspends motion at the same time that it prepares the single-note reiterations of the opening motto. In the Sixth Symphony, the focus on the two notes in question is accomplished gradually, first through the accelerated harmonic motion and brief introduction of the minor mode (for the first time in the movement) at measure 257, then through a continued insistence on an appoggiatura D against the melodic pedal C, which eventually forces that pedal upward to restate the appoggiatura on a broader level, as part of the


Example 7 continued

(b) Mm. 263-89 (reduction) 263

Sf sf

LAO3

268

i F

273 rAK

OxJ 6l

Sf f 3 3 3

-IN-

PE

278 ~ - ~ JR- ?---

A

I I I I

283 _

r #r r40

-p ..


mammoth plagal cadence that announces the recapitulation (mm. 271-82; see Ex. 7b). The "power" in this passage is turned against the dramatic thrust of the return, replacing a dominant arrival with an approach through the subdominant, and cloaking the actual thematic return to the opening in measure 279. Once again, parallel structural devices are put to opposing ends.

3. Cadenza interrupting the recapitulation (first movements). The oboe cadenza in the Fifth Symphony has its counterpart in the Sixth Symphony, in the arpeggiated descent of the first violins from a trill in measures 282-88 (Ex. 7b). This elaboration of the dominant is a spillover from the resolution of the melodic pedal on C and serves to broaden even further the cadential re- entry to the tonic, compensating somewhat for the lack of an authentic cadence at the arrival on the tonic just before. The effect is thus diametrically opposed to that of the oboe cadenza in the Fifth Symphony, since it serves to relax the urgency of the discourse rather than to underscore a thematic crisis and its unhappy resolution.

4. Motivic background (second movements). Both second movements begin with a melodic leap to the tonic of the preceding movement, followed by a descent along a cycle of thirds (Ex. 8); the first melodic culmination in each case recalls the principal motive from the first movement, transposed to the new tonic (E6l falling to C in the Fifth Symphony, mm. 7-8; F descending to C in the Sixth Symphony, m. 5). In both opening themes, there are other signifi- cant motivic recollections as well, for example, in the three-note anacrustic figures introduced in measures 14-15 in the Fifth Symphony and in the extensive use of neighbor-note figures in the Sixth Symphony, most elabo- rately evocative across measures 5-6 (C-EV-G-F, a nearly exact transposition of the opening melodic gesture in the first movement-A-B -D-C-with an identical rhythmic profile; see Ex. 8b). 5. Structural parallels (second movements). Both second movements involve a variational approach to the main theme, in each case combining thematic variation with more elaborate formal structures. In otherwise fairly uneventful harmonic contexts, both movements introduce exotic modulations to keys a major third away from the tonic (to C in the Fifth Symphony, mm. 31-38, 81-88, and 148-58; to G6 in the Sixth Symphony, mm. 78-80). 6. Concluding gestures (second movements). Near the close of each slow movement, the upper winds (flute, oboe, clarinet) are given special emphasis in repeated passages that interact in dialogue with the strings; in each case, the exchange hinges on a distinctive melodic drop of a third (see Ex. 9). In the Fifth Symphony, the winds take over from the strings the emphatic falling third that concludes the opening phrase of the main theme (discussed above as a motivic recollection of the opening movement), softening it through ap-


Example 8a Symphony No. 5, second movement, mm. 1-8 (melodic reduction) Andante con moto

Va. 1 Vc.

6

Pf

Example 8b Symphony No. 6, second movement, mm. 1-7 (melodic reduction) Andante molto moto

Vn. 2i Vn. z

Va.

LII" dot. .

cresc cresc.

cresc. fp cec

poggiaturas and carrying it down to a scalar arrival on the tonic (mm. 191-94 and 220-24).20 In the Sixth Symphony, the focus of the passage is the series of labeled birdcalls already discussed; in a reversal of roles, the repeated melodic drops of a third are given to the winds, and the strings respond with scalar cadential figures. Correspondingly, there is also a reversal in effect: in the Fifth, the winds impose a tone of mournful resignation on the assertive descending figure, while in the Sixth, the strings project a complacent comfort in their more symmetrical scalar response.

7. Opening gestures (third movements). Each third movement begins with pianissimo strings sounding a triadic theme in octaves, launched with an ascending fourth; in each case, a partial string choir opens the movement, is soon joined by the remaining strings, and is subsequently augmented by winds, all

20. This exchange between strings and winds represents a restoration of the original configu- ration of the theme in the opening passage of the movement, which has long since been lost among the variations undergone by the theme.


Example 9a Symphony No. 5, second movement, mm. 191-99 (reduction)

191 (Andante con moto)

Winds

Strings

193

Winds

Strings _

Winds sf

dolce

Strings


Example 9b Symphony No. 6, second movement, mm. 129-33 (reduction) 129 Nachtigall

Fl. ___ _

_ SK cresc. K - Ie sW achtel

Ob. ,

"1-', ' .I

131 tr

etc.

Ob. f,, ' " -=

a2Kuckuk

Str., Bssn.p "-7:-7

the while maintaining a subdued dynamic level. Despite these unmistakable similarities, the two openings have starkly different thematic profiles: a complacent, high- to mid-range theme descends, with a staccato articulation, to open the scherzo in the Sixth Symphony, while a mysterious, low-lying, ascending theme with legato articulation opens the scherzo in the Fifth.

8. Structural parallels (third movements). Both third movements retain some aspects of the spirit and form of more traditional scherzos, but place them in the service of quasi-narrative patterns so as to articulate a double-trio structure in which the return to the opening after the second trio is surprisingly curtailed and ultimately left incomplete (most audibly, it is the level of dynamics that is curtailed in the Fifth Symphony; in the Sixth, the return is first abridged and eventually cut off).

As detailed in Figure 1, the structural parallels thus operate on two levels, the most obvious being the curtailed double-trio structure (only recently has this pattern been restored to the Fifth Symphony, in recognition of


Typical scherzo with repeated trio I: Scherzo Trio :I Scherzo I: A AA / B A' B A' II C C / D C1 D CI :I (Scherzo repeated) Fifth Symphony "scherzo" II: A A' / B A2 B1 A3-B2 II C C / C1 C1 :11 (Scherzo') m. # 1 9 19 45 71 97 141 141 161 198 236 #/mm. 8 10 26 26 26 44 20 20 37 38

Sixth Symphony "scherzo" II: A A A' / B B B1 II C C / C1 C2 :1 (Scherzol) m. # 1 17 33 87 106 123 165 173 181 189 205 #/mm. 16 16 54 19 17 42 8 8 8 16

Note: Superscripts designate non-trivial variants of the same material.

Figure 1 Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6: formal plans of "scherzos" compared to a more typical plan for a scherzo with repeated trio

Beethoven's intention and to correct an error that arose in publication).21 More subtly, each symphony elaborates a narrative over the typical binary structure of the scherzo, in which the first phrase serves as an introduction to what would normally be the beginning of the second phrase, but which functions, in dramatic terms, as the main thematic "event" of the scherzo (in the Fifth Symphony, the fortissimo, marchlike recollection of the rhythmic motive from the first movement, measures 19-34, presented as an "answer" to the "question" posed by the opening; in the Sixth Symphony, the "amateur concert" that begins after measure 87). In both movements, which in detail re- flect quite different approaches to the traditional structures, the basic binary dance patterns are most clearly stated in the trio: each trio sustains this formal clarity, which provides the only real sense of "relaxation" from the preceding scherzo, despite a more frenetic rhythmic impulse at a generally louder dynamic level.22

21. For an extended discussion of this issue, see Sieghard Brandenburg's "Once Again: On the Question of the Repeat of the Scherzo and Trio in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony," trans. David L. Schwarzkopf and Lewis Lockwood, in Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes, ed. Lewis Lockwood and Phyllis Benjamin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 146-98.

22. Many analyses of the scherzo in the Sixth Symphony place its trio at the beginning of the "amateur concert," quite reasonably taking as decisive the return to the tonic and textural climax that occurs just before, along with the sharp drop in dynamics that sets the stage for the concert; the fiery duple-meter dance may then be heard either as an extension of the trio or as a second trio. Will, for example, advances a persuasive double-trio description of the movement while noting the tendency of many (such as Tovey) to gloss over peculiarities (Will, "Time, Morality, and Humanity," 313-15). Wyn Jones, on the other hand, also argues strongly against Tovey's position, but unequivocally places the beginning of the trio at measure 165; he also notes the structural parallel with the Fifth Symphony and the "nervous pianissimo" that marks not only the openings of these two scherzo movements, but also that of the Eroica (Pastoral Symphony, 68-69). Against the backdrop of the Fifth Symphony, and with the sense, as in the Fifth, that the secondary idea is posed as a narrative consequent of the first, we may most appropriately hear these segments as complementary parts of a single narrative span, especially since the duple-meter


The thematic structure of the third movement of the Fifth Symphony is fairly conventional (as shown in Fig. 1); although there are few literal repeats, and although the harmonic structure is far from conventional, there are few surprises in the presentation and succession of themes, beyond the extraordinary emphasis given to "B." In this sense, the Sixth Symphony is more daring, as the harmonic resolution of A (Al in Fig. 1) takes place before the second phrase rather than after, and so cannot fulfill its traditional function of round- ing out the binary form of a more traditional scherzo. This displacement en- hances the narrative aspect of the movement, leaving to the parallel structures of A and B (a fairly literal repeat of an opening phrase followed by an extensive elaboration) the task of establishing formal clarity.23

As in the first movements of these two symphonies, a generic structural feature-the repeat of the opening section-serves strikingly different ends. The return to the opening of the scherzo in the Fifth Symphony, in parallel to the first movement of that symphony, represents a new engagement within an ongoing, linear process. This time, the process has a happier outcome since, the third time around, it leads to the celebratory finale. In the Sixth Symphony, however, the return expresses something quite different, in large part because of the differing topics evoked in the two movements. Thus, while the scherzo of the Fifth oscillates between its questioning opening and a res- olute marchlike figure before erupting in the conflicted textures of an ener- getic fugue in the trio, that of the Sixth unfolds a leisurely succession of solo "spots" (oboe, clarinet, and horn) before the combined band launches its culminating ecstatic dance in 2/4. In what is surely meant to convey a rather in- consequential cycling between these two activities, the combination is simply replayed in the Sixth Symphony in a potentially endless and increasingly point- less cycle, until it is interrupted by the storm. In both scherzos, we are made to wait, but in the Fifth we wait to see if projected goals will be achieved, whereas in the Sixth we wait for intervention, and for a higher sensibility and purpose to be imposed on the empty merrymaking of the Landleute.24

section--again as in the trio of the Fifth--is more sharply defined and self-contained, articulating a more recognizably traditional binary form and embodying more clearly the contrasting nature of a trio in relation to what has come before.

My use of the descriptive phrase "amateur concert" conforms with the tradition of hearing the many peculiarities of this part of the movement (mm. 87-164) as Beethoven's attempt to re-create the effect of inept (or inattentive) village musicians; see Thayer's Life of Beethoven, ed. Elliot Forbes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 438-39, for a substantial translation from Schindler's account.

23. The narrative aspects of this movement, which are somewhat inferential, must be distin- guished from those of the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony, which are entirely inferential, however essential they might be to a coherent understanding of the succession of musical events within the movement.

24. Compare Will's quite compatible reading of the scherzo of the Sixth Symphony, which "populates the countryside with decidedly profane inhabitants, Landleute so frantic in their revel- ing that they cannot finish one dance properly before beginning another" ("Time, Morality, and Humanity," 325).


9. Projection of a basic interval in the trio (third movements). After the initial upward surge, the fugal subject in the trio of the Fifth Symphony consists of a chain of descending thirds (Ex. 10a), reproducing, not only the structure of the main theme of the second movement, but also, in self-generating replica- tions, the basic interval from the motto opening of the first movement. In the Sixth Symphony, the opening melodic figure in the trio articulates the fourth between dominant and supertonic, again recalling the most prominent motive in the first movement (Ex. 10b). (Two other referential motives are projected at the climax of the trio, as discussed below.)

10. Transition to the finale. The oboe melody that secures the major mode at the end of the storm movement (Gewitter, Sturm) in the Sixth Symphony (Ex. 11la) has long been understood as a quotation from Bach's chorale "Brich an, o schines Morgenlicht," from the second part of the Christmas Oratorio (see Ex. 11b), with the appropriateness of both text and gesture enhancing the credibility of the claim that Beethoven was making an intentional reference.25 But the phrase has at least two other points of reference. Programmatically, it should be understood, by virtue of its archlike shape, its placement after the storm, and the traditional associations of C major with sun and light, as a musical representation of a rainbow. Indeed, a pictorial representation of a rainbow apparently accompanied this phrase in nineteenth- century dramatizations of the symphony.26 The representation works even on a mechanistic level: just as rainbows result from the combination of sun and raindrops, the oboe line results from the combination of the musical represen- tations of those elements, that is, C major combined with the opening melodic figure from the onset of the storm (Ex. 11c).27 And, in line with Will's theophanic reading of the storm movement, Beethoven's musical rainbow may be seen to represent the covenant between God and humanity enacted after the Flood: "And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for per- petual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth" (Genesis 9:12-13, King James

25. While sketching this passage, Beethoven experimented with various chorale phrases that could lead into the finale; see esp. fols. 36r-37r in the Pastoral Symphony Sketchbook, transcribed on pp. 73-75 in vol. 2 of Dagmar Weise's edition (Beethoven: Ein Skizzenbuch zur Pastoralsymphonie Op. 68 und zu den Trios Op. 70 [Bonn: Beethovenhaus, 1961]). In these experiments, Beethoven was concerned not only with appropriate phrases, but also with thematic links within the symphony, which will be discussed below. A connection with "Brich an" is by no means certain, although likely, especially since some of the experimental phrases suggest "Ich will dich mit Fleiss bewahren" and "Wir singen dir in deinem Heer," two other chorales from the Christmas Oratorio that also have appropriate texts. On historical grounds, the connection is entirely plausible, as Beethoven probably became acquainted with the Christmas Oratorio through Gottfried van Swieten in the 1790s (see Thayer's Life ofBeethoven, 158).

26. See Wyn Jones, Pastoral Symphony, 84-85. 27. Regarding the long-noted derivation from the opening of the storm, see ibid., 76.


Example 10a Symphony No. 5, third movement, mm. 140-47 (reduction)

140 (Allegro)

f1 146

1

Example 10b Symphony No. 6, third movement, mm. 165-68 (reduction) 165 (Allegro) sf sf s

ff

sf sf Sf sf

Version). Thus, the "covenant" is positioned between the receding storm and the finale, as the decisive link between God and a newly reverent humanity.28

More relevant in the present context, however, is the prominence given the melodic contour of the rainbow melody long before it is put to use to suggest raindrops at the beginning of the fourth movement. The shape is presented most obviously at the beginning of the "Szene am Bach" movement, again in association with water-related imaging (Ex. 12a). Twice, climactic phrases in the "Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute" movement retrace the shape (Exx. 12b and 12c), in the second case, at the climax of the trio, recalling the thematic sequence from the first movement in which similar oscillations out- lining a fourth yield to descending scales (cf. Exx. 6d and 12c).29 And of particular interest is the manner in which the shape evolves, over the course of the first movement, as a crystallization of central motivic material.

The structural basis for the shape as presented at the end of the fourth movement is a descent of a fourth, from G to D, which is a transposed version of the central unifying motivic element in the first movement. In this later

28. Curiously, Will does not note this symbolic significance of the transition into the finale, even though he grounds his reading of the preceding storm movement within biblical examples of a wrathful Nature serving to indicate the presence of God, going back beyond the Great Flood to the original fall from grace.

29. The main theme of the trio also suggests the shape of the oboe solo, as it expands the oscillating fourth between dominant and supertonic to include a resolution to the tonic and an upper-neighbor figure to the dominant (Ex. 11c); see the discussion below about similar strategies in the first movement.


Example 11a Symphony No. 6, fourth movement, mm. 146-55 (reduction)

(Allegro) 146 Oboe

pp dolce

150l

!51. !

A.,t I

, ":J

3

Example llb Bach, Christmas Oratorio, "Brich an, o sch6nes Morgenlicht," mm. 10-12 (reduction) 10

und letzt- lich Frie- de bring- en!

Example Ilc Symphony No. 6, fourth movement, m. 3 (reduction) Allegro


Example 12a Symphony No. 6, second movement, m. 1 (reduction) Andante molto moto

" LIZ

Example 12b Symphony No. 6, third movement, mm. 59-75 (reduction)

59 (Allegro)

--- I I

t

67 Y~~~~~~ " " 'I r : lB I Nc I %' = I I LA I ~ ;~ =: I: I : II.? i~~~~~ i "* . . I " I

Example 12c Symphony No. 6, third movement, mm. 165-68 and 189-97 (reductions) 165 (Allegro)

sf sf f sf 189

194

'"f 1%I " M I Y,

elaboration, the descending fourth (dominant to supertonic, as before) is launched with an upper-neighbor figure and resolved, after a pause on the supertonic, to the tonic. The shape represents a natural development of the opening phrase of the first movement: not only does the opening phrase itself yield in each of its two appearances to a displaced resolution to the tonic (originally displaced to the bass, then, at the recapitulation, in time as well; see Exx. 7a and 7b), but it also gives melodic play to the upper neighbor of the dominant, a feature greatly intensified at the recapitulation in the plagal arrival on the tonic (traced above; see Ex. 7b). The only feature of the oboe solo that is not fiully prepared in these passages is the straightforward scalar descent, which makes the opening of the second movement the first point of emergence for the shape as it will later be used. But scalar descents are used prominently in


the first movement at several points, most notably after the first cadential arrival in the second group (mm. 97-99; Ex. 6d), in an expanded retrograde inversion of what will later prove to be the definitive version of the shape.

In giving new emphasis to the most prominent material from the first movement-already revisited in all intervening movements-as a way of dra- matizing the central moment of transcendence in the symphony, the transition into the finale of the Sixth Symphony closely parallels the procedure followed in the Fifth Symphony at the analogous moment. Within a more local context, Beethoven in both cases transforms a mysteriously threatening melodic figure from the beginning of the movement into the actual agent of transcendence, mainly through a change in mode and a broadening of gesture.30 Re- garding the references to earlier movements, there is, as with many previous parallels, an important reversal. In the Fifth Symphony, the rhythmic figure that recalls the opening movement first recedes into a threatening background before being transformed into an energizing pulsation; it is then effectively superseded in the final stage of a linear progression from the despair expressed in the first and third movements to the alternatives elaborated in the finale. In the Sixth Symphony, the pattern is more circular: we return to a frequently heard shape after the benign nature of that shape has been called into question, so that its restoration is placed in the foreground of the musical discourse.

11. Thematic basis ofthe finale. In both finales, two distinctive triadic themes mark the tonic area of the exposition (from mm. 1 and 26 in the Fifth Sym- phony, and from mm. 1 and 60 in the Sixth Symphony); the second of these themes in each case is first stated in a lower register before being elaborated in higher registers. The triadic basis provides, for each finale, a symbolically un- complicated thematic presentation, with an essential difference in affect (celebratory and triumphant in the Fifth, piously thankful in the Sixth). 12. Re-enacted transition within the finale. One of the most celebrated features of the finale of the Fifth Symphony is the retreat, just before the recapitulation, back to the thematic material of the previous movement in order to

30. With somewhat different emphases, Leonard Bernstein also claims an affinity between the storm movement of the Sixth Symphony and the transition to the finale in the Fifth (in part to argue for an overriding musical coherence in the former, although one might easily invert the argument in order to make programmatic claims about the Fifth); see The Unanswered Question (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 186. In arguing against this claim of affinity, Will writes: "The transition [in the Fifth] essentially prolongs the final dominant of the preceding scherzo until the finale arrives. Because the storm resolves the corresponding dominant, its own concluding dominant is heard not as a prolongation of the scherzo's final chord but as the dominant of the new, F-minor tonic" (Will, "Time, Morality, and Humanity," 293 n. 51). But this line of thought errs in two ways: first in assuming that a striking difference mitigates a striking similarity-it is surely better to hold both in view than to use one to eclipse the other-and second, because the concluding dominant of the storm does not remain V/f throughout, but rather shifts, like the transition in the Fifth Symphony, from a minor-mode orientation to a major-mode one.


retrace the original transition to the finale (mm. 153-206). Even this seemingly one-of-a-kind effect is refashioned for the finale of the Sixth Symphony. Although the recollection is less overt and is absorbed more fully into the discourse of the finale, the parallels, once noted, are unmistakable.

Part of what Beethoven achieves in revisiting the transition to the finale in the Fifth Symphony is a renewed focus on the material that recalls the first movement. This is accomplished by purging the transition of its most dynamic element-the transmutation of the mysterious opening melodic gesture of the third movement-and by recalling a substantial portion of the section preceding the transition, which is based on the rhythmic reminiscence of the first movement. The new prominence given to this reminiscence paves the way for a new integration (in the coda) of the three-note anacrustic gesture with the thematic material of the finale (see especially mm. 350-52, and compare with previous presentations of the material).

A similar strategy is at work in the Sixth Symphony, although the setting demands a somewhat different profile for the recollected transition. Here it is the transmuted melodic figure that is the issue, since it provides the unifying link to previous movements. Consequently, no substantial quotation from the preceding movement is necessary, only that the figure be given a new form so as to be more easily absorbed into the fabric of the finale. The continuous running sixteenth-note accompaniments, employed to this point in the movement only with secondary material, provide the vehicle for absorption (see mm. 32-41, 46-53, 80-98). Accordingly, the arrival on the dominant in measure 99 introduces a new sixteenth-note figure based on the oboe solo from the transition to the finale (see Ex. 13).31 This then overlaps various versions of the yodeling figure from the beginning of the movement, which con- tinue to echo in the C horn even after the arrival on the drone tonic, as before.

The first two new variations of the main theme heard in the recapitulation represent the first stage of thematic integration (of particular interest is the inverted counterpoint in the violins across the two variations; see Ex. 14). The variation is based on the new sixteenth-note figure (altered, but preserving and even highlighting the referential shape), which pushes the original high point of the melody upward to include an upper-neighbor figure to the dominant across measures 119-20. When the counterpoint is inverted in repetition, we are then made more aware of the descending line that forms the basis for the remainder of the melody, which is carried this time all the way to the tonic (see the first violin, mm. 128-32). We are thus encouraged to hear the main theme of the movement as a broadened form of the oboe solo, tracing at its peak and through its subsequent descent the fundamental melodic shape of the symphony.

31. In the Fifth Symphony, the return to the previous transition takes place well after the arrival on the dominant, which helps make the gesture of thematic return more of an event unto itself.


Example 13a Symphony No. 6, fourth movement, mm. 146-50 (reduction)

(Allegro) 146 1-7

0)O%

Example 13b Symphony No. 6, fifth movement, mm. 99-102 (reduction)

99 (Allegretto)

p

101

,. ... . . ~

f 1 L ,'

i 1V I "

I I L;; I. : i r,- A

A Sf

Z KI4

As in the Fifth Symphony, further thematic connections between the outer movements are forged in the coda. After a unison presentation of the integra- tive figuration in measure 206, originally without accompaniment, the coda proceeds to afortissimo upper-neighbor figure presented over several measures (mm. 219-28), culminating in a long scalar descent. The pattern, heard lo- cally as an augmentation of the sixteenth-note figure, recalls not only the broad upper-neighbor figure at the recapitulation of the first movement, but also the long scalar descent in the coda of that movement (mm. 458-68), which similarly receded from fortissimo to pianissimo. The concluding measures of the symphony (mm. 260-64) are occupied, not with the main thematic material of the movement, but with the re-enacted transition to the finale, heard for the first time in the tonic.

Beethoven's concern for the kind of inter-movement motivic connections discussed here is amply documented in the sketches.32 The new figuration introduced with the retransition in the finale, for example, may be traced to one

32. See Gossett, "Beethoven's Sixth Symphony," 261-68, for additional examples of this kind of confirmation in the sketches for the Pastoral Symphony.


Example 14 Symphony No. 6, fifth movement, mm. 117-33 (reduction, violins only)

(Allegretto) 117

plZZ. p dolce

120

cresc.

stacc.

T T

132

,Sim.

129 "

132

""

of several figurational variations Beethoven devised for the second movement (Ex. 15a; from fol. 27r in the Pastoral Symphony Sketchbook).33 Beethoven's intention that there be a perceivable motivic connection between the opening and close of the storm may be ascertained from a staged augmentation of the opening motive he worked out at the bottom of folio 29r (Ex. 15b). If Beethoven eventually rejected this fairly obvious device, his concerns along

33. Examples 14a through the first line of 14e are based on Weise's transcription of the Pastoral Symphony Sketchbook.


Examples 15a-d Transcribed sketches for Symphony No. 6

(a)

(b)

ro-P 7f

,,0- . l!-, /

,,-p- ,,-1-

's - -J J

, _.

.

(c) ( d)F FII,

(d) I', l.'.r

-

;

Example 15e Transcribed sketch for Symphony No. 6, shown as an elaboration of the "rainbow" motive

JI ji

these lines remain evident. On folio 37r, for example, he worked out (above and below a nearly final version of the chorale melody, Ex. 15c) not only the figuration he would need for the retransition of the finale (Ex. 15d), but also a climbing sequence of six-note scalar descents (Ex. 15e, top line; the derivation from the chorale melody is shown below), which he then tried without much success to coordinate over the next few pages (fols. 37v-39v) with passage- work from the fourth movement. (The ultimate results of this effort may be found in two passages of the storm movement, the second of which, from just before the final dissolution, is shown in Ex. 15f.)34 The extensive sketch work

34. In the first appearance of this material in the movement (m. 78), it is presented as a dramatic augmentation of the basic motive, the culmination, in fact, of the most sustained crescendo of the movement, which also involves the most extensive presentation of the opening motive. Beethoven reinforces the connection by letting the new material take over the pitch level achieved in the final two presentations of the faster version of the motive (mm. 76-77). The material plays a pivotal role in the "shape" of the storm, providing a climax at its first presentation whose logic depends on its derivation from the opening motive, and signaling at its second presentation, with


Example 15f Symphony No. 6, fourth movement, mm. 119-30 (reduction)

119 (Allegro)

() sempre dim.

125-T... . T

122

...,,

Thl T T T T h,, T

.? ,,g ,

T -

T - T- kTh.

125

_

M- _1 -A

tf 1 . "' 1.. 10, - , _

: ,, I

i IT T

i732

l4

&d -, o4

lp-of ? eema~lal i

over these pages not only documents Beethoven's concerns for devising and articulating motivic relationships, but also explains to some extent why he in essence replaced the fourth-based motive that dominates the first movement with the arching accompanimental line that opens the second, since the latter evidently proved to be a more fertile referential shape as he proceeded with the later movements.

its retreating dynamic level and anticipation of the chorale melody, the approaching end of the storm. The capacity for the material to act as a pivot is built into it-its rising sequential pattern continues the preceding rising sequence in its first presentation, while its fundamental basis in a descending scale (or, perhaps, descending cycle of thirds) naturally supports the gesture of retreat projected by its second presentation.


The preceding exploration of the nature and extent of the parallels between the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies establishes not only the considerable extent to which the two works belong together, but also the commanding role that processes of modeling must have played in their composition. This modeling was often, but not exclusively, a reinterpretive process, wherein similar structures were put to quite different uses. What, then, was the model, and what was its function?

That the Sixth Symphony was not the model for the Fifth scarcely needs elaborate argument, since it was not begun in earnest until the Fifth was virtually complete. The possibility that an exterior model was used, whether a preceding work (the Fourth Concerto, for example) or some kind of fully elaborated abstract conception, must also be put aside. The above survey confirms not only that the parallels between the symphonies generally involve the more unusual elements of the Fifth Symphony, but also that this is not a two-way street; few of the more unusual elements of the Sixth Symphony find parallels in the Fifth, and, when they do, the parallel passages in the Fifth Symphony generally appear, in application, even more unusual. The Fifth Symphony has no birdcalls (unless, of course, we accept Carl Czerny's claim that the main theme itself derives from the call of the finch),35 no amateur instrumentalists, no storms, no extra movements, no harmonically static development sections, no overt program; yet almost every similarly arresting element in the Fifth Symphony does have some point of reference in the Sixth. In these circumstances, the possibility of an exterior model seems as unlikely as the notion that the (projected) Sixth Symphony could have provided a model for the Fifth. The remaining possible modeling relationship--which is, after all, the simplest-represents the only credible explanation: the Fifth Sym- phony provided a model for the Sixth.

What was it, though, that impelled Beethoven to use the Fifth Symphony as a model on so vast a scale? Was it the specific nature of the copious innovations offered by the Fifth Symphony, the symphony itself, or, perhaps, the ac-

35. Uber den richtigen Vortrag der sdimtlichen Beethoven'schen Klavierwerke, nebst Czerny's "Erinnerung an Beethoven," ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1963), 18 (see also the discussion in Jander, "The Prophetic Conversation," 524). Even if we accept Czerny's testimony (as we will consider doing, below), we must assume that it is the initial falling third or its distinctive rhythm that is so derived, since the larger four-note shape was constructed by setting out a chain of descending thirds and cutting away the lower members (as established by Notte- bohm in Beethoveniana: Aufsditze und Mittheilungen [Leipzig: Verlag von C. F. Peters, 1872], 11; his transcription from Beethoven's sketches has been reproduced in Thayer's Life of Beethoven, 431, and Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor [Norton Critical Score], ed. Elliot Forbes [New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1971], 119).

The end of the second movement of the Fifth Symphony does seem to provide a parallel to the birdcalls passage in the Sixth (see section 6 and Ex. 9 above), a rare instance in which a fairly unremarkable passage in the Fifth may be usefully matched with a truly startling one from the Sixth; here, however, we may easily imagine Beethoven making a place for his avian prophets by recasting the much simpler passage from the Fifth.


tual process of modeling that was at issue? One must suspect that all three were of some relevance; in any case, convincing rationales can be advanced from all three perspectives. Beethoven surely realized, for example, that the possibilities of many of the innovations of the Fifth Symphony were not ex- hausted by that work, and he would have been eager to revisit the devices in other contexts. But this could not be the only rationale, or he would surely have found a more obviously appropriate context for exploring those possibilities. The fact that Beethoven chose the project of composing a pastoral symphony as the unlikely arena for revisiting the innovations of the Fifth Sym- phony speaks to the presence of larger concerns.

Beethoven's first approach to the ideas and material of the Pastoral Sym- phony was apparently made at about the time he was composing the Third Symphony (late 1803 to early 1804); he may perhaps have been planning a companion symphony for the Eroica that never reached fruition.36 There are, indeed, at least two compelling reasons to suppose that such a project would have appealed to Beethoven at that time. His recent experiences at Heiligen- stadt, as projected in the Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, left him with both the heroic imperative (hence the Eroica and the onset of the so-called heroic period) and a wistful longing for the pastoral refuge he had sought at Heiligenstadt. Thus, Beethoven may have toyed with the idea of producing a second, contrasting sinfonia caracteristica to go with the Eroica. More specifically relevant, Haydn had recently completed the second of his oratorios conceived after the Handelian model, and the appeal of The Seasons lay largely in the strong dose of pastoral elements it offered-including a storm and an

36. These early sketches are discussed by Nottebohm in Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hirtel, 1880); reprinted in Zwei Skizzenbiicher von Beethoven aus den Jahren 1801 bis 1803, ed. Paul Mies (Wiesbaden: M. S&indig, 1970), 55-56. Rachel Wade dates the earliest of these sketches "before November 1803" ("Beethoven's Eroica Sketchbook," Fontes artis musicae 24 [1977]: 271). The only one of these early sketches that may be definitively attached to the Pastoral Symphony involves the melody of the trio (p. 64 of the sketchbook), apparently worked out as a possible option for the trio of the Eroica (the original version of the melody is in Eb).

Although there is thus little to indicate that Beethove

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A Tale of Two Symphonies - Birdsong:Deafness Theme

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