Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to 19th-
Century Music.
http://www.jstor.org
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:
A Search for Order
MAYNARD SOLOMON
We may begin, as Beethoven did, with hovering nuce the whole of the future action, inasmuch
open fifths, pianissimo, a missing third, a sense as it represents "an initial ambiguity leading to
of expectancy, soon to be fulfilled by a quicken- clarification."' At this stage, however, though
ing into life and the forceful emergence of a we know that we have begun, we cannot imag-
theme and a definite tonality. The opening of ine where Beethoven intends to take us: we do
the Ninth Symphony functions, like similar not know what to expect, we do not know how,
rhetorical gestures in the Seventh Symphony, or even if, the cluster of harmonic, thematic,
the "Hammerklavier" Sonata, and several of and rhythmic riddles offered in these measures
the late quartets, to raise a curtain so that the will be solved. We do not know why this over-
action may begin, or so that we may witness the sized orchestra and massed choruses and solo-
unveiling of a distant universe. ists are assembled before us. We may even dis-
More than a gesture is involved. There is a cover that each step toward clarification opens
sense in which this passage foreshadows in upon a new ambiguity, in a constant inter-
change of questions and answers.
Thus, although we have come to know that
19th-Century Music X/1 (Summer 1986). ? by the Regents the Ninth Symphony is implicit in its opening
of the University of California.
measures, we cannot predict the Ninth Sym-
Presented 16 October 1984 as the third annual Martin Bern- phony from them. As the work unfolds, we soon
stein Lecture, for the Department of Music at New York
University. A preliminary version of this paper was given in
July 1984 at Harvard University in Lewis Lockwood's semi-
nar on Beethoven's symphonies. 'Lewis Lockwood, personal communication.
3
19TH discover that these measures are not merely in- Like the critical inspection of themes that
CENTURY troductory, but are central to the thematic and opens the finale, this is a reminiscence, a refer-
tonal trajectoryof the movement, which, how- ence backward which engages the memory and
ever unique its sound, scoring, and dimensions, compels us to consider present action in the
turns out to be in one of the sonata forms. Learn- light of past events. After 1815, a variety of such
ing this, we are not surprised to hear the open- flashbacks becomes almost an obsessional sig-
ing measures again-varied in key, texture, dy- nature technique for Beethoven: in the Sonata,
namics, and harmonic detail-at the counter op. 101, a fleeting echo of the opening theme
statement of the opening at mm. 35-50, or breaks the yearning mood of the Adagio, and in
again at the recapitulation, fortissimo (ex. 1). the Sonata, op. 110, the somberly draped Arioso
However, those coming to the Ninth Sym- dolente arises unbidden from the depths of the
phony for the first time are wholly unprepared fugue to deliver its message again, before suc-
for the reappearanceof the hovering fifths in the cumbing to the fugue's inexorable affirmation.
first section of the finale, which passes in re- There are other such retrospective moments
view themes from each of the priormovements in the Ninth Symphony. An aphoristic exam-
beforegetting about its own business. And only ple, again derived from the opening theme, oc-
a few listeners might sense that in the Adagio curs when the sustained tremolo open fifths
Beethoven has rehearsed that reappearanceby give way to the symphony's first melodic ges-
an allusion to this passage-just the baresthint ture-a descending fifth, E to A, on the open
of it-by the violins, in the transition leading strings of the violins. As though to balance the
from the Adagio molto to the second theme, scales, Beethoven opens the recitative of the
Andante (ex. 2). finale with precisely this same interval, but
b! - -4 -
d---^ . l . -
* a
_ ~.~
w
Vc. ; o 0 :0 :
0
3 3 6i
2Inhis classic The Beethoven Quartets (New York, 1966)Jo-
seph Kermanobserved the parodisticrelationship between
the scherzo as a whole and the first movement: the sym-
b. phony "points its second movement backward,as a sort of
?, : op-:r :r-
9 - : e- & epitome to the first" (p. 320). This is not far from Tovey's
9i4 r I I'I
IIl classicist perspective: "After tragedy comes the satiric
drama."(Donald Francis Tovey, Beethoven's Ninth Sym-
f phony [London,1928], p. 24.) Beethoven himself may have
authorized this insight in his apparent reference to the
scherzo as "nur Possen" ("merenonsense," "a farce");see
Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Beethovens Leben, ed. Her-
Example3 mann Deiters and Hugo Riemann, vol. V (Leipzig,1908),p.
a. Movt. I, mm. 1-4. 29 and fn. 1.
b. Movt. IV, Presto I, mm. 9-11. 3Nottebohm,Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig,1887),p. 190.
5
19TH a.
CENTURY
MUSIC
b. 187
I
n"r4 II rI rI 4J4) II
r rgI. 4rIvr IrrIr f
ff sf if of Of Sf if
Example 4
a. Movt. I, mm. 15-16.
b. Movt. IV, Alla Marcia, mm. 187-95.
styles to suggest denotative ideas.4 The most ex- for more finite satisfactions, the enjoyments of
tensive such use in the Ninth Symphony is in which are inevitably suffused with a sense of
the trio of the scherzo, which, as has been fre- loss. Perhaps the trio of the Ninth Symphony
quently observed,5 is composed in an idealized fuses the naive and the ironic, telling of Nature
pastoral style, one closely akin to that of the recaptured and lost once again. And this may
opening of the Sixth Symphony (especially mm. help to explain why subtle suggestions of pasto-
67ff.). A bright, simple eight-measure tune, alla ral style reverberate in the Adagio at mm. 92-
breve, is endlessly repeated over flowing 94 and 114-18,6 in passages for winds and horns
strings, sustained horns, pedal effects, and that inspired Mahler to his own explorations of
drones reminiscent of peasant instruments. rusticity penetrated by elegiac sadness.
The refinement of pastoral style for expres- Many of these forecasts and reminiscences
sive purposes was one of Beethoven's ongoing are fairly close to the surface. They were in-
projects, spanning all of his creative periods. tended to be so, it seems to me, for Beethoven's
Normally, the style is to be understood as repre- aim apparently was to encode such patterns
senting an achieved return to Nature, though into his symphony so that the reasonably aware
there are pastoral movements in Beethoven (I listener could readily decipher them-could at
am thinking of the finales of the Violin Sonata least sense their presence and respond to their
in G, op. 96, and the String Quartet in F, op. 135) implications. Other procedures show greater
where it carries overtones of Romantic irony- subtlety, such as the scale gestures in the end-
the confession that we can never wholly satisfy ings of every movement (exs. 5a-d).
our metaphysical desires and thus must settle Endings of this type seem intended to sym-
bolize transcendence over the intransigent ma-
terials that preceded them. Lenz once com-
4For the currency of "the characteristic" in music of
Beethoven's time, see F. E. Kirby, "Beethoven's Pastoral mented: "Even his scales must be victorious!"7
Symphony as a Sinfonia Caracteristica," Musical Quar- Well, not always: the Adagio concludes on a ris-
terly 56 (1970), 605-23, and "Beethovens Gebrauch von ing scale in the winds, to which Beethoven has
charakteristischen Stilen," Bericht iiber den internationa-
len musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bonn 1970, ed. Carl
added a contrapuntal descending scale in the
Dahlhaus et al. (Kassel, 1971), pp. 452-54. For a conversa- first violins. The scale simultaneously rises and
tion between Beethoven and Karl Holz on "einen bestim- falls: are we being asked to consider scalewise
mten Charakter in einer Instrumental Musik," see Ludwig
van Beethovens Konversationshefte, ed. Karl-Heinz Kohler, contrary motion as a symbol of yearning incom-
Grita Herre, et al., vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1981), p. 268. pletion? Be that as it may, the conspicuous the-
5Chretien Urhan (1838), cited in Jacques-Gabriel Pro-
d'homme, Les Symphonies de Beethoven (Paris, 1906), p.
matic, textural, and harmonic connections
459; Hermann Kretzschmar, Fiihrer durch den Konzertsaal
(Leipzig, 1887), I, 111, Sir George Grove, Beethoven and His
Nine Symphonies (London, 1898), p. 359. In Viennese Clas- 6See Romain Rolland, Beethoven: les grandes epoques cre-
sical sonata cycles, the trio of the minuet or scherzo is often atrices, edition definitive (Paris, 1966), pp. 918-19.
the locus of nostalgia-whether pastoral or aristocratic, or 7Wilhelm von Lenz, Beethoven: Eine Kunst-Studie (Ham-
both at once, as in Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. burg, 1860), IV, 183.
6
86
a. 543 MAYNARD
^ Vn. I ~-.I- * ,-4 ---- I =1- -o I ^ SOLOMON
A Vn IpRr -~ I j ~~
~~~~
ii.4 i K Beethoven's
0
p,1 FEREO ~-a
- ,, I '
II Ninth
Sf if
-f
549
I I I
z00U4
2f -t-M r
trp~ ff :f f f
C. 156 -
Fl. y.
f
f., ~ ' ' ' t
/1ni.
OI.,
d. ~~~ ~
f,wwi^-7 3
<~. rrrr r |^
ottcln r^ -
~ ~
le. L -
bi rr 1.~ 4~ Jr I I t--
- _
t) Vn. I I' ' II I
Example 5
a. Movt. I, mm. 543-47.
b. Movt. II, mm. 549-59.
c. Movt. III, mm. 156-58.
d. Movt. IV, Prestissimo, mm. 86-90.
e. Movt. II, mm. 139-43.
7
19TH between these passages, to which Lewis ganic flow of the materials and their orderlyde-
NMUSIC Lockwoodhas called my attention, suggest that velopment. They may well obscure the
they are also intended as binding strands in the underlying tonal and harmonic issues, and, to
symphony's pattern of referential moments, "a the extent that they are "foreign bodies" in a
series of closing events that relate to one an- movement, may compel Beethoven to create
other almost as strikingly as do the 'curtains' mixed forms to accommodate their presence.
that open each of the four movements." Lock- Ultimately, in seeking to accommodate such
wood further observes that the upwardrushing disruptive elements within essentially classical
triplets in the winds in the final measures of the designs, Beethoven's structural powers are put
symphony are not a new idea (asTovey thought) to their most extreme test: he succeeds in re-
but an explicit referenceto a theme-also in the taining each of the cross-references both as a
winds over contrary motion in the strings- functional image and as a part of the formal
that closes the first large section of the scherzo structure. The references become embedded
at mm. 139-43 (ex. 5e). Thus, Beethoven simul- within the form itself, lending coherence at the
taneously refersback to "an ending theme from same time that they press beyond the merely
within the scherzo and to the basic interval (the formal to extra-musical denotation.
pentachord of the D mode) . . . that in a sense The precise nature of Beethoven's program-
underlies many aspects of the whole work."8 matic intentions will always remain open. Nev-
ertheless, the clear drive toward representation
II of determinate states in certain of his works is
Even without furtherexamples, and with due farfrom tangential to his creativenature.Forit is
allowance for the probabilitythat some of these apparent that Beethoven-who delighted in
interconnecting details may be fortuitous, or calling himself a Tondichter,9a tone-poet, and
may simply be conventional formulae, I believe who regardedpoets as "the leading teachers of
that this preliminary survey discloses the pres- the nation"'0-quite consciously wanted us to
ence in the Ninth Symphony of an unprecedent- find "meaning"in the symphony's text, design,
edly complex network of recurrentpatterns and and tonal symbols. The encoded network of im-
cyclic transformations. agery-the foreshadowings,the reminiscences,
Eachof the events in this network may be lik- the pastoral episodes, the heraldic calls to
ened to a discrete musical image or image-clus- action, the "terrorfanfare," the review of the
ter within a grand design. Like revenants in a themes, the Ode to Joy itself, and each of Schil-
drama,the reminiscences suggest the residue of ler's powerful images-are only "moments" in
past events in the present, while the forecasts- the total design. They do not spell out a literal
less literal than the reminiscences, in a process narrative, but they vibrate with an implied
of emergence-foreshadow things to come. In significance that overflows the musical sce-
them, the principles of development and varia- nario, lending a sense of extramusical narrativ-
tion spill over the fermataand double-barwhich ity to otherwise untranslatable events. The to-
normally fence off one movement of a sonata tality of these resonating signposts suggests the
cycle from the others. Details originating in an outline of a narrativein minimal form, but none-
earliermovement are projectedonto a later one, theless sufficient to set in motion within each
and materials which are embryonic, latent with listener a process of imaginative probingfor the
possibilities in their initial incarnations, are potentialities of the entire design.
brought to completion, undergo reversal, or are
superseded at the very moment that their im-
plicit meanings have been revealed.
Such connective features in a sonata cycle are
often said to strengthen the work's "organic" 90n the title-pageof the overtureZurNamensfeier, op. 115,
is inscribed:"gedichtet... von Ludwigvan Beethoven";the
structure. It is an attractive suggestion. How- same designationappearson the title-pageof his "Ausgabe"
ever, such proceduresmay in fact disruptthe or- for Archduke Rudolph, published by Steiner and Co. in
1820.
'OTheLetters of Beethoven, ed. Emily Anderson (London,
1961),I, 384 (letter 380, 9 August 1812, to Breitkopf& Har-
8Personalcommunication. tel).
8
One model of Beethoven's intentionality in tive monograph on the Ninth Symphony by MAYNARD
SOLOMON
the Ninth Symphony was proposed in the late Otto Baensch, who, somewhat reluctantly, Beethoven's
nineteenth century by the literary scholar and combined this suggestion with Lenz's earlier Ninth
Wagner devotee Heinrich von Stein. Perhaps one that the first movement outlined a narra-
under Wagner's influence, Stein proposed that, tive of Creation and the cycle as a whole a "sym-
in their perfection and sublimity, Beethoven's phonic cosmogony." After noting certain simi-
last symphonies portray the "Idyllic" state that larities between the scenarios of Haydn's
Schiller had proposed to be the goal of the mod- Creation and the Ninth Symphony, Baensch as-
ern poet." Schiller's was the most influential serted that Beethoven "starts with a portrait of
form of the scenario of alienation and reconcili- Chaos ... and he crowns the Symphony with
ation that dominated aesthetic and philosophi- the drama of the close of man's history, in the
cal thought in the post-Enlightenment era. In ... Elysian state of civilization."l4 This line of
his essay, "Naive and Sentimental Poetry" interpretation was accepted by Romain Rol-
(1795-96), of which "The Idyll" is the closing land'5 and, more recently, has been augmented
section, Schiller pictured a primal Golden Age, by Harry Goldschmidt, who takes the pastoral-
where humanity once dwelt "in a state of pure style trio of the second movement as an explicit
nature . .. like a harmonious whole." Ruptured musical metaphor for Arcadia.16 The implica-
by the onset of civilization, this "sensuous har- tion is that the Ninth Symphony is intended as
mony which was in him disappears, and hence- a musical analogue of a mythic narrative, a cos-
forth he can only manifest himself as a moral mic history, told by an evangelist/narrator re-
unity, that is, as aspiring to unity. The harmony calling the span of universal experience.
that existed as a fact in the former state, the har- Schiller's scenario is, of course, but a special
mony of feeling and thought, only exists now in case of other mythic patterns: the spiral journey
an ideal state."12 The role of the modern from Arcadia to Elysium is also that of Paradise
(termed by Schiller the "sentimental") artist, lost and regained, and of all utopian recoveries
accordingly, is imaginatively to represent the of a mourned Golden Age. Beethoven's utiliza-
possibility of a renewed harmony to heal the tion of Schiller's myth-drenched poem poten-
wounds inflicted by mankind's alienation from tially activates not only the more universal
Nature. This attempt to recapture the idyllic mythic design to which it belongs but also its
condition that existed "before the dawn of civi- numberless correlatives in literature, folklore,
lization" takes a utopian form. We cannot go theology, and philosophy.
backward to our biological or historical begin- Nor is there any reason to suppose that
nings, as the pastoral poet desires, for this Beethoven intended to limit his narrative to a
would place "behind us the end toward which musical translation of Schiller's parable. The
it ought to lead us." In Schiller's famous phrase, story of the journey from Arcadia to Elysium
the task of the artist, therefore, is to lead us, has, perhaps, already been implicitly merged
"who no longer can return to Arcadia, forward with another narrative, one that traces the route
to Elysium."13 from Lenz's Creation (or, to remain within
Stein's glancing remark entered the Greek mythological terms, from Chaos/Night
Beethoven literature by way of a richly specula- as the source of all being) to Cataclysm, to the
end of history. For the symphony does not open
in Arcadian innocence; its first measures sound
l"Die letzen Symphonien Beethovens, den Geist erhaben-
ster Heiterkeit ausatmend,stellen in seiner Vollendungdar,
was Schiller als Idyll ahnte und forderte."K[arl]Heinrich
von Stein, Goethe und Schiller: Beitriigezur Aesthetik der
deutschen Klassiker (Leipzig,n. d. [1888?]),p. 69; first pub- 40OttoBaensch, Aufbau und Sinn des Chorfinales
lished in Monatsschriftdes Allgemeinen Richard-Wagners- Beethovens neunter Symphonie (Berlinand Leipzig, 1930),
Verein10 (May-June 1887). pp. 94-95.
'2The Works of Friedrich Schiller: Aesthetical and Philo- 'SRolland,Beethoven: les grandes epoques creatrices, edi-
sophical Essays, ed. Nathan Haskell Dole (New York,1902), tion definitive, p. 931, n. 2.
II,32. 16Harry Goldschmidt,Beethoven: Werkeinfiihrungen(Leip-
'3Aesthetical and Philosophical Essays, II, 36 (translation zig, 1975), p. 66; see also pp. 46-48, on the Pastoral Sym-
amended). phony.
9
19TH a coming into existence, a stirring, an awaken- of refreshment in "the pleasant beams of the
CENTURY ing to life. Furthermore,there is here a twin or- sun." Here, it is Schiller's and Beethoven's Ely-
bit-an historical one that takes place within sium, where brothers find release from struggle
the orderof time, and, concurrently, a vertical, as well as the protection of a benevolent Deity
spatial route from the underworld (for the Ro- and the nourishment of an eternally young God-
mans tell us that Elysium lies next to Hades),17 dess of Joy.
to the Earth(Arcadia'slocation in the Pelopon- Beneath the literary, mythic, and psychologi-
nese), to the starry heavens, and beyond, to the cal levels, the symphony's shape mirrorsthe or-
place of the Deity. dered shapes of nature itself: the turning of the
These concentric myths are so fundamental seasons, the ceaseless interchange between life
in their shape that a host of related myths may and death, the movement of the heavenly
be subsumed in the scheme. Cosmogonic narra- spheres,the rhythms of biological existence and
tive is an organizing structure, offering models natural phenomena.20And this reminds us of
for social existence. It is also an extended meta- the difficulties of trying to endow music with
phor for the individual's road in life, his expul- denotative meaning. To give only one example:
sion, exile, and return to a transfiguredhome. it is surely plausible for the Romantic commen-
M. H. Abramssees this mythic journey "as a fall tators to claim that Beethoven's opening mea-
from unity into division and into a conflict of sures suggest chaos striving for lucid formation
contrarieswhich in turn compel the movement and therefore may be taken as an image of uni-
back towards a higher integration."'8HarrySlo- versal origins, particularly so in view of the
chower stresses that such mythic transcen- symphony's frankly apocalyptic telos. But all
dence is active and ongoing: "the harmony at- that we can really say is that the opening ex-
tained carrieswithin itself the earliermoments presses a sense of emergence or of crystalliza-
of dissidence and contains the seeds of a re- tion, which, though it may be taken to represent
newed conflict."'9 On a less cosmic scale, the Creation, can also symbolize birth, the transi-
alienation/reconciliation myth has the power tion from darkness into light, of awakening
to touch the deepest familial and fraternal from dream, the occurrence of a thought. The
yearnings, while the Creation myths echo with nebula of possibilities precludes any attempt at
issues attendant upon birth, ancestry, and delimitation. The scenario of the Ninth Sym-
death. phony is a nuclear design, standing for an in-
Among the Romantics, for whom exile was finity of related designs.
felt to be the primaryhuman condition, it is pre- But this merely confirms once again the inex-
cisely homesickness (Heimweh) and yearning haustibility of the symbol: the Ninth Sym-
(Sehnsucht) which keep alive the potential to phony is a symbol the totality of whose refer-
return. "Wo gehen wir denn hin?" asked Nov- ents cannot be known and whose full effects
alis: "Immernach Hause"-always homeward. will never be experienced. And there is no need
The distant goal is Blake's "Sweet golden clime to mourn the loss, for, as Eco explains, to decode
/ Wherethe traveller'sjourneyis done";and it is a symbol is to render it mute.2' In uncovering
Bunyan's high mountainside with its promise the mythic substratum of Beethoven's Ninth
'7Ifnot the underworld, at least "at world's end," for in 20Theseoverdeterminingsubstructuresor matrices of aes-
Greekmythology, Elysium is located in a far-distantregion thetic form are discussed by such aestheticians as Langer,
of the earth's surface (Homer,Hesiod). See "Elysium,"Ox- Dewey, Arnheim, and the psychoanalytic writers who de-
ford Companion to Classical Literature;and Pauly's Real- rive from Melanie Klein. See Susanne Langer,Feeling and
Encyclopidie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. Form(New York, 1953),pp. 240-42; JohnDewey, Art as Ex-
V, cols. 2470-76. Baensch emphasizes certain metaphoric perience (New York, 1934),pp. 147-50; RudolphAmheim,
aspects of Elysium, as "a moral state of perfect commu- Art and VisualPerception(BerkeleyandLosAngeles, 1969),
nity," the (heavenly)realm of freedom, morality, and true p. 376; The Critical Writingsof Adrian Stokes, ed. Lawrence
religion (Baensch,pp. 29, 51-52). Gowing (London,1978),II, 160-63 and III,150-51.
"Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism:Tradition and Revo- 21"Thesymbol has no authorizedinterpretant.The symbol
lution in Romantic Literature (New York and London, says that there is something that it could say, but this some-
1971), p. 193. See also Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criti- thing cannot be definitely spelled out once andforall; other-
cism: FourEssays (Princeton,1957),p. 161. wise the symbol would stop saying it." Umberto Eco, Semi-
19HarrySlochower, Mythopoesis: Mythic Patterns in the otics and the Philosophy of Language(Bloomington,1984),
LiteraryClassics (Detroit, 1970),p. 23. p. 161.
10
Symphony we uncover a fragment of his inten- morphoses,' without departing from the main MAYNARD
tionality; in refusing to accept the mythic de- image" of the theme. He held that the sym- SOLOMON
Beethoven's
sign as the ultimate or sole meaning of the sym- phony is a series of moments within a "great Ninth
phony we remain true to the nature of music, monothematic plan" by which Beethoven un-
whose meanings are beyond translation-and folds the Ode to Joy as a symbol of Elysium. "In
beyond intentionality. "The composer reveals both the opening Allegro and the scherzo, there
the inner nature of the world," wrote Scho- are not only flashes of major taken verbatim
penhauer, "and expresses the deepest wisdom from the theme of the [Ode to Joy],but even the
in a language which his reason does not under- developments in the minor are built on it."24
stand."22 Nevertheless, intentionality cannot Of course, reliance on this sort of tune-detec-
be wholly annihilated. And so we return, for tion can be fairly risky, for it is not difficult to
what it may be worth, to one aspect of discover what one wishes to find, especially
Beethoven's apparentintentions to try to learn with a melody constructed of such common-
more about how his symbol found its form. place elements. But it seemed clear enough to
Wagnerand Serovfrom the pervasiveness of the
III pattern that it was an intentional design. If they
Woven into the Ninth Symphony's system of are correct, each of the precursorsof the Ode to
forecasts and reminiscences are several over- Joytheme is a separateidea ratherthan a literal
arching patterns to which Beethoven has given anticipation. They are linked together by the
the shape of quests. As we have seen, the sym- similarity of their melodic shapes, which move
phony as a whole is to be regarded as an ex- upward and downward in stepwise patterns.
tended metaphor of a quest for Elysium. The ge- Most of them begin on a degree of the scale dif-
ography of this odyssey is retrospectively ferent from the "Joy" theme, and all present
mappedby the review and rejection of the open- rhythmic variants of the ascending and de-
ing themes of the earlier movements; the con- scending progressions(ex. 6). These may be seen
tours of Elysium are describedin Schiller's text, as forecasts of the Ode to Joyin a state of becom-
and the arrival is heralded by the Ode to Joy ing, as melody yearning for a condition that has
theme. However, that joyous unveiling may it- yet to be defined. However, what Serov had in
self be viewed as the climax of another teleolog- mind was no doubt even more literal: the rhyth-
ical pattern, which we may term a thematic mically-disguised presence, in the introduction
quest-a succession of themes and thematic to the second subject at mm. 76-77, of the ac-
fragments which by their prefiguration of the tual sequence of notes that make up the opening
Ode to Joy melody suggest that it was intended bars of the theme.
to be the culmination of a series of melodies as- The scherzo is bursting with fragments of the
piring to achieve an ultimate, lapidaryform. Ode to Joy melody (ex. 7). But it is the trio that
This notion seems to have originated with contains the most fulfilled of these "premature
RichardWagnerin 1851, when he observedthat variants" of the theme. Here the thematic jour-
the Ode to Joy melody was complete in ney finds a momentary resting place in a glow-
Beethoven's mind "from the beginning"; ing Arcadian moment within which may be
Beethoven, he maintained, "shatteredit into its glimpsed the sublimated kernel of the "Joy"
component parts" at the outset and only in the theme (ex. 8). In contrast to this tonic-centered
course of the symphony did he finally "set his
full melody before us as a finished whole."23
Wagner's Russian disciple, Alexander Serov, 24Serov,"Deviataia simfoniia Bethkhovena. Eio sklad i
smysl," Izbrannye stat'i, I (Moscow and Leningrad,1950),
was the first seriously to elaborate on this pro- pp. 429, 433. I am gratefulto RichardTaruskinfor the trans-
cedure, which he described as the "transforma- lation. Although never translated,Serov'sideas became in-
tion of a single idea through a 'chain of meta- fluential through Lenz, Beethoven: Eine Kunst-Studie,IV,
177- 78, andthence throughGroveandothers. See also Karl
Steinfried, "Das Freudemotifals Grundmotifder Neunten
Sinfonie ... ," Musik-Piadagogische Zeitschrift (formerly
22Schopenhauer,The Worldas Will and Idea, vol. I (Garden Der Klavierlehrer),25 (1892), 321-33; Rudolph Reti, The
City, N.Y., 1961),p. 271. Thematic Process in Music (New York, 1951), esp. pp. 22-
3Wagner,Opera and Drama, in Prose Works, trans. W. 30; Fritz Cassirer, Beethoven und die Gestalt (Berlinand
Ashton Ellis, vol. II (London,1893),pp. 109-10. Leipzig, 1925),pp. 161-74.
11
19TH
CENTURY
a. , C
MUSIC
A ('I L ~ ".
,.- I
v PM,.
P dolce ^'-^^"tLF
O. ' L"
~~~
b. ~ d108ol
~ .
Vn.p
Example 6
a. Movt. I, mm. 74-79.
b. Movt. I, mm. 108-10.
a. 93
A Ob. I . I I I I r
I i r cJrF I
^;
I
i: j X 1: Iiqj3 )? i. - w
ir II
Ar ' Ia
ff
b. 117
A Vn. I - -_Ob. _
---- -
F, Trr --; __--
~r --
F-I
I
P I
f ; c I
p P cresc. I I If
C. 210
Vn. I arco
P,
P dimi.
dilm.
Example 7
a. Movt. II, mm. 93-100.
b. Movt. II, mm. 117-27.
c. Movt. II, mm. 210-12.
folklike tune, several of these thematic materi- the Adagio theme in the Coda, occurs an almost
als embody the common configuration of so literal statement of the opening strain of the
many of Beethoven's "Sehnsucht" melodies- Ode to Joy (ex. 10). A counterpoint to the main
an upward striving that is ultimately defeated melody is heard in the flutes and oboes, in Bb
and returns to a point of unrest or disequilib- major, with altered rhythmic values but virtu-
rium. The Adagio's themes are especially con- ally unchanged melodic line, like a somnambu-
toured in this "yearning" pattern (ex. 9). The listic previsioning of the theme.
second phrase of the opening theme at m. 10 We now know that Wagnerwas correctin his
contains in the strings a subtle forecast of the surmise that the melody of the Ode to Joy was
characteristic turning figure of the "Joy"mel- fully formed by the time that Beethoven worked
ody, followed by an upward chromatic move- on the earlier movements, for Robert Winter
ment through a Ct, almost as though reaching and SieghardBrandenburghave shown that the
out for D major.Later,duringa free variation on Artaria 201 sketchbook, which contains the
12
414 MAYNARD
SOLOMON
f^?-j^^f^ Jr r r.,,. .
Beethoven's
? r r 'r t. f t --P
rr-
rrr- Ninth
._r_., J. F r
LiX :~~iyTr#*r Kryf Ty~~L i~
w P-===- X
Hn.
Fl.
22<t ~~~~
dd;.~A
Andante moderato
25
Vn. II esprcssivo
cresc.
30
^j FFR~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~d jTffli;..i4j
^JTOT^O^I^J
?tl, , , ,
cresc.
morendo
of humanity united with Nature. And more: for text of the mid-1780s. In an era of reaction, it
a Deity who transcends any particularizations represents homesickness for the Aufkldrung as
of religious creed; for a fusion of Christian and an historical model of a Golden Age. The Ode to
Paganbeliefs, a marriageof Faust and Helen. All Joyrevives the naive dream of benevolent (and,
of this resonates in the stanzas Beethoven se- equally important to Beethoven, aesthetically
lected from Schiller's poem. And, as I have pro- enlightened) kings and princes, presidingover a
posed elsewhere,33 the Ninth Symphony may harmony of national and class interests duringa
also be taken as an emblem of the idealism of moment of sharedbeliefs in progress,fraternity,
Beethoven's youth, when he was enflamed by and social justice.
what he called the "fever of the Revolution" From this point of view, the Ninth Sym-
(Revolutionsfieber).34This by virtue of its Clas- phony is Beethoven's A la recherche du temps
sicism, its renovation of a heroic style steeped perdu-that, at least, is one way of readinghis
in the celebratoryfestivals of the French Revo- backwardglances to Schiller, to France, to the
lution, and by virtue of its doubling back to Enlightenment, and to Classicism; one way to
Schiller's politically radical, quasi-Masonic explain his revival of a project dating back to
1792; and one way to understand why he fash-
ioned the "Joy"theme out of a dance-like pasto-
33Solomon, Beethoven (New York, 1977), pp. 309-10.
34Anderson, Letters of Beethoven I, 73 (letter 57, 8 April
ral tune that he had already used three times,
1802, to Hoffmeister). the first as early as 1794. An Elysium still to
16
come is modeled on a legendary dream-history Beethoven's music sought to disrupt. This MAYNARD
out of the accumulated desires of a composer's new quality was first understood, or at least ar- SOLOMON
Beethoven's
lifetime. ticulated, by Hoffmann, in his famous 1810 re- Ninth
I stress Beethoven's futuristic orientation in view of the Fifth Symphony in the Allgemeine
the Ninth Symphony. Whatever his yearning musikalische Zeitung. "Beethoven's music
for the past, he does not seek pure restoration. opens the floodgates of fear, of terror,of horror,
His purpose is to create a cosmos that had never of pain, and arouses that yearning for the in-
before existed; he wants to discover his own finite which is the essence of Romanticism,"
Ninth Symphony. His unprecedentedly com- wrote Hoffmann.36And while he claimed that
plex use of text, scenarios, programmaticindi- Beethoven's music represents the immeasur-
cations, characteristic styles, musical symbol- able, he did so within a frameworkthat we, too,
ism, and the web of forecasts, reminiscences, may find workable, for he went on to demon-
and other denotational devices is the hallmark strate the connectedness of Beethoven's sym-
of a profoundly modernist perspective. phonic form. Taking cognizance of the wide-
To come to this point quickly: in some of his spreadcontemporaryallegations of Beethoven's
most "Beethovenian" sonata-style instrumen- immoderation, bizarrerie,and infringements of
tal works, a range of novel, extreme states of be- the Classical models, he nonetheless insisted
ing were heard expressed for the first time in that Beethoven "can be placed directly along-
music-states that had previously been approx- side Haydn and Mozart with regardto his self-
imated, if at all, only in certain discursive forms possession [Besonnenheit]." By this idiosyn-
of dramatic vocal music. We encounter a wide cratic term, which he adaptedfrom JeanPaul's
spectrum of such extreme states in the Ninth School for Aesthetics,37 Hoffmann signified the
Symphony, among them those touching upon composure, serenity, and reflectiveness that are
such issues as creation, aggression, immensity, the qualities of an achieved Classicism.
the ecstatic, the celestial, or, if one were to at- In his earlier years, Beethoven had invented
tempt to find one term to encompass these, the (or adapted from other composers) numerous
ultranormal.It is not that priorcomposers of in- propulsive techniques with which to represent
strumental music had lacked depth of passion energy in motion and relentless striving. Con-
or that they had failed to write music of the currently,he devised a syntax that aimed to cre-
deepest emotional substance. But Beethoven ate, postpone, modulate, and fulfil cathartic ex-
strove to represent states of being that essen- pectations by a variety of innovative formal
tially were regardedas off limits by his prede- procedures.We may want to designate this dy-
cessors. For example, writing to his father in namic vocabularyand syntax of the middle-per-
1781, Mozart expressed this typical attitude as a iod sonata cycles as a "heroic" characteristic
matter of course, in a tone very like that of style, one which served as such for subsequent
Hamlet in his instructions to the players: nineteenth-century music. Overlapping with
the development of this style, and culminating
Passions,whetherviolent or not, must neverbe ex-
pressedto the point of excitingdisgust,andmusic,
even in the most terriblesituations,must neverof- 36Allgemeinemusikalische Zeitung, vol. 12 (1810); trans.
fendthe ear,butmustpleasethe listener,orin other RonaldTaylor, in The Romantic Periodin Germany,ed. S.
wordsmustneverceaseto be music.35 Prawer(London,1970),p. 287.
37Hornof Oberon:Jean Paul Richter's School for Aesthet-
And this is in conformity with the functions of ics, trans. MargaretR. Hale (Detroit, 1973),pp. 36-38, ?12.
"Reflectiveness,"writes JeanPaul, "implies at every level a
music in the salons, theaters, churches, and balance and a tension between activity and passivity, be-
courts of Europe-to instruct, to give pleasure, tween subject and object .... Inspirationproducesonly the
to reinforce faith, to arouse the passions only to whole; calmness produces the parts." For Hoffman's con-
cept of "Besonnenheit,"see RonaldTaylor,Hoffmann(New
soothe them, to probe but not to disrupt. York, 1963), pp. 33-37; Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht,
"Beethovenund derBegriffderKlassik,"in Beethoven-Sym-
posion Wien 1970: Bericht,ed. ErichSchenk (Vienna,1971),
pp. 54-56; and a variety of referencesby CarlDahlhaus, in-
35TheLetters of Mozart and His Family, ed. Emily Ander- cluding, "E.T. A. Hoffmanns Beethoven-Kritik und die
son, 2nd edn. (Londonand New York, 1966), II, 769 (letter Aesthetik des Erhabenen,"Archiv fir Musikwissenschaft
426, 26 September1781). 38 (1981), 79-92.
17
19TH in the last works, is the emergence of several developed a very wide variety of procedures,in-
CENTUIY other characteristic styles, intended to repre- cluding harmonic and rhythmic motion slowed
sent a range of transcendent states, states at- to the edge of motionlessness, clouded har-
tainable, it seems, only through the compound- monic progressions, passages in indeterminate
ing of unceasing striving by eternal longing. keys, nebulous and nocturnal effects, multiva-
The Romantic idea of such restless longing lent tonal trajectories, enormously extended
is, of course, central to Beethoven's aesthetic. time spans, several highly idiosyncratic fugue
He wrote to Christine Gerhardias early as 1797 styles, and a supremely ornamented variation
about the need "to strive toward the inaccessi- style that implies the infinite possibilities la-
ble goal which art and nature have set us" and to tent even in the simplest musical materials.42
Wegeler in 1801 that "every day brings me Sometimes, though he was wont to disavow the
nearer to the goal which I feel but cannot de- practice in theory, he used a more literal kind of
scribe";and, to a young admirerin 1812, he con- symbolism.43 On a leaf of sketches to "Ueber
fessed that the artist "sees unfortunately that Sternen muss er wohnen," he wrote, "The
art has no boundaries; he feels dimly how re- height of the stars [canbe pictured]more by way
mote he is from his goal."38For Beethoven, as of the instruments."44In Calm Sea and Prosper-
for his contemporaries,the drive for personalre- ous Voyage,op. 112, the words "Tiefe Stille" are
alization was the subjective aspect of a tran- represented by a long, sustained pianissimo
scendental longing as well. Such longing, wrote chord, and the words "der ungeheurn Weite"
Fichte in 1794, is "the impulse toward some- (immense distance) are describedby an upward
thing entirely unknown that reveals itself only leap of an octave and a fourth in the sopranoand
in a sense of need, in a feeling of dissatisfaction a downward plunge of an octave in the bass.
or emptiness."39To revert to Schiller's frame- Other representations of the boundless are the
work (but now in Nietzsche's paraphrase),Nat- astonishing consecutive repetition of a single
ure and the Idealhave become "objectsof grief," high A twenty-seven times in the Arioso do-
in which the "formeris felt to be lost, and the lente of op. 110 and the use of patently circular
latter to be beyond reach." Fortunately, how- shapes-symbols of infinity-in the Allegretto
ever, "both may become objects of joy when of the Seventh Symphony and the song cycle An
they are represented as actual."40The Ninth die ferne Geliebte.
Symphony'srepresentationof this grief and this Beethoven's modernist contribution, then,
joy is sculpted out of unprecedented materials was to symbolize extreme states by means of a
sufficient to portray, if not to solve, this di- host of new musical images and image clusters
lemma.
To create a vocabulary that represents ex-
tremes of despairand bliss, and their gradations, the visible world. " Ueber dramatische Kunst und Literatur,
became Beethoven's project in the Ninth Sym- 2nd edn. (Heidelberg,1817), trans. John Black and A. J.W.
phony and other works of his final decade. (In Morrison, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Liter-
ature (London,1846),pp. 26-27.
his hubris, he would not accept that, strictly 42Kermanconsiders the Adagio of the Quartetop. 59, no. 2,
speaking, neither the invisible nor the infinite as Beethoven'sattempt to representthe infinite: "Timeless-
can be represented.41)For this undertaking he ness for Beethoven meant motionlessness" (TheBeethoven
Quartets, p. 128); Nicholas Temperley proposes that
Beethoven'sframingof the Seventh Symphony'sAllegretto
with a 6 tonic chordis a way of "expressingin music the in-
38Anderson, The Letters of Beethoven I, 29 (letter 23); I, 68 finite nostalgia of the Romantics, forever unassuaged"
(letter 54, 16 November 1801); I, 381 (letter 376, 17 July ("SchubertandBeethoven'sEight-SixChord,"this joural 5
1812, to Emilie M.). [1981], 152).
39Fichte, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre 43"MehrAusdruck der Empfindung,als Malerey," he in-
(1794), p. 303, cited in Oskar Walzel, German Romanti- sisted on the title-page of the PastoralSymphony, even as
cism, 5th edn. (New York, 1965),p. 29. the work itself indulgedin severalnotorious touches of nat-
40Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy,trans. Francis Golffing uralistic imitation. It has been suggested that Beethoven
(GardenCity, N. Y., 1956),p. 116. hoped to avoid the criticism of such imitative practices
41A.W. Schlegel ponderedthis issue, and concluded: "The which had been heaped upon Haydn for his oratorios. See
impressions of the senses areto be hallowed, as it were, by a Adolf Sandberger, Ausgewihlte Aufsatze zur Musikge-
mysterious connexion with higherfeelings; andthe soul, on schichte, vol. II(Munich, 1924),pp. 211-12.
the other hand, embodies its forebodingsor indescribable 44Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, p. 186; Ludwig Nohl,
intuition of infinity, in types and symbols borrowedfrom Beethovens Leben,vol. III(Leipzig,1877),p. 395.
18
that we may collectively designate as authentic the Unendliche-the unending.49Disruption, MAYNARD
SOLOMON
characteristic styles, prototypical styles which disorientation, and dissociation are essential to Beethoven's
have yet to be named, let alone fully analyzed. his project; the late works alter, or dispense Ninth
This disruptive new content forced a reshaping with, easy conceptions of order,symmetry, and
of sonata structure in the direction of extreme decorum. Ultimately, of course, his new forms
organicist integration of highly dissociative ma- may be even more coherent than those of his
terials. To the other Ninth Symphony quests, predecessors,but their coherence bearsthe deep
therefore, can be added a quest for style and a impress of a journey through the reaches of
quest for form. And at the root of the sympho- chaos.
ny's many questing patterns is a single im- In some sense, Beethoven's aesthetic exem-
pulse-to discover a principle of order in the pifies the early Romantic dual program:to shat-
face of chaotic and hostile energy. ter the apparentorderof experience and to tran-
Of course, all art seeks simplification of the scend chaos through form. Novalis urged that
perplexities of experience: "Really, universally, "in every poem chaos must shimmer through
relations stop nowhere," observed Henry the regular veil of orderliness";50 Friedrich
James, "and the exquisite problem of the artist Schlegel insisted that "understanding and ca-
is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his price must be chaoticized in poetry."51 Their
own, the circle, within which they shall happily aim, of course, was, by a process of estrange-
appearto do so."45In Poulet's words, the work ment, to reach an underlying reality; in Shel-
of art "creates a cloister in whose shelter reality ley's words, "poetry lifts the veil from the hid-
can be isolated, contemplated and represented, den beauty of the world, and makes familiar
without running the risk of melting into the objects appear as if they were not familiar."52
universal multiplicity of phenomena."46There Thereby they wished also to repudiate the di-
is this difference, however: Beethoven limits lute rationality of the post-Enlightenment, to
chaos not by avoiding but by picturing it, enlarge the claims of intuition and of the pro-
thereby circumscribing its jurisdiction. ("We ductive imagination. Schubert became quite
gain power over worldly things by naming emotional about this issue in a diary entry of
them," writes Wackenroder;47to which Cas- 1824:
sirer adds, "knowledge of the name gives him
who knows it mastery even over the being and O imagination! Man's greatest treasure, inexhaust-
will of the God."48) ible sourceat which bothArtandLearningcome to
Beethoven's is a risky Classicism, which in- drink!O remainwith us ... so thatwe maybe safe-
troduces the original and the bizarre (i.e., the guardedfromso-calledEnlightenment,thathideous
skeletonwithoutbloodorflesh.53
modern)in the service of a higher conception of
the Classic, one that does not remain content to Unlike the main exponents of German liter-
imitate a preexistent model of harmony. He ary Romanticism, whose works so often splin-
casts suspicion on all such models, with their tered into oracular aphorism or into truncated
implications of complacency. He rejects every-
thing that can readily be completed, for he seeks
19
19TH structures, Beethoven achieved what Schiller know that the comedy would not last much
CENTURY had thought to be impossible in principle-to
MUSIC longer. "I often despair and would like to die,"
map the infinite without losing hold of the cen- he wrote to Zmeskall as he entered his last dec-
ter. Repeatedly he gave rein to chaos without ade. "ForI can foresee no end to all my infirmi-
being overwhelmed, in the widest spectrum of ties. God have mercy upon me, I consider my-
forms and with a limitless imagery of the seem- self as good as lost. .. . Thank God that I shall
ingly unsymbolizable. Thus, in the last in- soon have finished playing my part."54His body
stance, he transcended the existential states of knew it was dying, particularlyafter the attack
yearning and imperfection, creating a series of of jaundice in 1821, the first clear symptom of
individual universes which areat the same time the illness that eventually took his life. In the
perfected and dynamically open. face of physical decline, and of the emotional
chaos that had undermined his psychological
VI integrity for a full decade, Beethoven's creativ-
Beethoven's life, too, embodies a precarious ity may have served to ward off death, to stimu-
search for order. Perhapsthis is why the Ninth late the will to continue-to provide an imagi-
Symphony-beyond its mythic universality, native counterbalance against the forces of
beneath its congruence with certain conven- disintegration. The Missa solemnis has the im-
tions of contemporaneous thought-appears to plication of a double question to the Deity: Am I
touch upon so many of its composer's inner pre- merely mortal? Is there hope for eternal life?
occupations. Of course we can never know the "Even if you don't believe in it [religion], you
ways in which the Ninth Symphony was carved will be glorified. . . . You will arise with me
out of Beethoven's own experience. But the ob- from the dead-because you must," writes his
jects of his desire seem to be quite on the surface friend Karl Peters assuringly in the Conversa-
here: for the reconstruction of a splintered fam- tion Book for April 1823.55
ily, recaptureof an idyllic past, achievement of Even a frivolous canon, composed as a gift to
a loving brotherhood, attainment of an ex- his physician in 1825, tells the story of his fears,
tended moment of pure joy, and eternal life. No his helplessness, and his faith in music as a
small order.The objects of his fears-more ob- countervailing force against death. "Doctor,bar
scure, even opaque-are equally at hand. To the door to Death! Music too will help in my
Beethoven, chaos is not merely the riot of disor- hour of need."56For Beethoven, music, what-
ganized sense impressions that constitute the ever else it represented, was also a form of pro-
flux of perception, nor is it simply a convenient tective magic, in whose efficacy he placed his
mythological category to serve as pretext for a full trust. "Apollo and the Muses are not yet go-
mythopoeic symphony. It is these, of course, ing to let me be handed over to Death," he wrote
but it is also the totality of those tendencies to Schotts S6hne during the creative surge that
within his personality that require the imposi- bridgedthe Ninth Symphony and the late quar-
tion of order: the libidinal drives toward for- tets, "for I still owe them so much; and before
bidden objects; the egoistic and authoritarian my departure for the Elysian fields [the refer-
components of his character,constantly at war ence to Elysium is not fortuitous] I must leave
with his innate altruism; the eruptions of irra- behind me what the Eternal spirit has infused
tionality, countered by a grandiose complexity into my soul and bids me complete."57 The
of aesthetic structure; a variety of terrors, Heiliger Dankgesang of the A-Minor Quartet,
known and unknown-of illegitimacy, passiv-
ity, deprivation, punishment, and death. And
the yearning for chaos-the ultimate sign for
the loss of boundaries-itself. An exterminat- 54Anderson, Letters of Beethoven II, 701 (letter 805, 21 Au-
ing Sehnsucht is transcended by its own gust 1817).
55Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, ed. Karl-
symbolization. Heinz Kohler and Dagmar Beck, vol. III (Leipzig, 1983), pp.
Everfearful of death (except, it seems, at the 158-59.
very end), prone on occasion to suicide, and pre- 56"Doktor, sperrt das Tor dem Tod, / Note hilft auch aus der
Not." WoO 189.
occupied not only with immortality but with 57Anderson, Letters of Beethoven III, 1141 (letter 1308, 17
mortality, Beethoven in his last years came to September 1824).
20
op. 132, fuses gratitude-to music, to the God- beauty, sensuousness, and perfection, which he MAYNARD
head-for continued life with the foretaste of may have seen as leading to passivity, and, be- SOLOMON
Beethoven's
supernal beauty beyond life itself.58 The nulli- yond passivity, to the termination of life. At Ninth
fication of death through its transfiguration least, this is one implication of Beethoven's
into bliss is a covert program of the Ninth Sym- comment, which has its parallel in Schiller's ca-
phony. Beneath his frequent protestations of ad- veat that the beautiful, in contrast to the sub-
herence to Reason, Beethoven was far from im- lime, achieves a reconciliation of man with the
mune to the pull of the Romantic Nachtseite of sensuous world of objects, thereby disabling ac-
existence. tivity. Schiller prefers the sublime, which
In some way, the Ninth Symphony may be "opens to us a road to overstep the limits of the
read as a succession of flights from the Night- world of sense, in which the feeling of the beau-
Side, as a search for alternative refuges from an tiful would forever imprison us."62
inner or outer annihilating agency. Each refuge
is not only impermanent but is somehow suf- Werdie Schonheit angeschaut mit Augen,
fused with a sense of potential dissolution, thus Ist dem Tode schon anheimgegeben. (Platen)
compelling the pilgrimage onward. The cata- (He whose eyes have gazed upon beauty,
strophic implications of the first movement are Is alreadydelivered over to death.)
unmistakable, thrown into even higher relief by
the fleeting moments of yearning encoded into It does not require a Paterian equation of beauty
the fabric of inexorable pursuit. The sense of with death to understand Beethoven's need at
last to emerge from the realm of the Sirens. It
flight spills over into the scherzo, but now paro-
was enough that he had permitted himself, in
distically transformed from tragedy into farce.
The trio flees into the primitive, to Nature, to luxuriant and reverent detail, to partake of
these forbidden delights before yielding them
childhood, to the communal, to the Arcadian
Golden Age. But Death dwells in Arcadia, its up at last.
Of course Beethoven knew that the Adagio
presence there marked by manifold symbols of
was the necessary precondition of the Ode to
decay and all-devouring time: "Whenever, in a
beautiful landscape," wrote the poet Jacobi, "I Joy. As early as the Eroica Symphony, he had
encounter a tomb with the inscription Auch Ich learned that every resurrection requires a fu-
war in Arkadien ["I, too, was in Arcadia"], I neral; here he demonstrates that every awaken-
point it out to my friends; we stop a moment, ing presupposes a sleep-a turning inward from
which to gather strength for action.
press each other's hands, and proceed."59 Arca-
dia is "the retrospective vision of an unsurpass- The symphony's triumphant, final refuge is
able happiness, enjoyed in the past, unattain- in Elysium, where those shades of the fortunate
able ever after, yet enduringly alive in the dead favored by the gods escape the Plains of As-
memory," wrote Panofsky: "a bygone happi- phodel and discover "the Elysian plain / Beyond
ness ended by death."60 death's gloomy portal."63 In the Eroica Sym-
Of the Adagio Beethoven wrote, "This is too phony, Egmont, Coriolanus, and Christus am
tender."61 Evidently at that moment, and in this Oelberge, the death of the hero is explicit. In the
Ninth Symphony his death is implicit, the tran-
work, he found insufficient the modalities of
sition is miraculously accomplished, and he is
neither mourned nor exalted as an individual,
V. rIt
r;r^j-J < '^^ ^ ^
11
vn. r '
f
..
..B... .. . ...... .
mug
I r| II I
,- r r
.^S-, i,i^,<7
T-wi ,
s~~~~yi~
r ~
CI:~ - -
I I I
but merged through transfiguration into the death is no longer chaotic and destructive, but
community of heroes. affirmative, loving, and transcendent. "Here,
crowned at last, love never knows decay."65
Laufet,Briider,eureBahn, In Elysium, Beethoven may at last have
freudig,wie ein Held zum siegen! found his warrant of immortality. The Ode to
(Brothers, runyourcourse, Joy melody appearsto herald a personal as well
joyfully,like a heroto the victory!) as a universal resurrection. For though the im-
Death and resurrection-a pairing central to ages of this Utopia belong to us all, the underly-
the Romantic outlook-here occur simultane- ing impulse contains a unique-if unrecovera-
ously rather than successively.64 In Elysium,
life. It considers birth as a return and death as a survival."
Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. II
64"Inmythical thinking there is no definite, clearly delim- (New Haven and London, 1955),p. 37.
ited moment in which life passes into death and death into 65Schiller,"Elysium."
22
ble-biographical nucleus. In that resurrection, chorus's measured rhythmic unison disinte- MAYNARD
SOLOMON
Beethoven may have unconsciously expected to grates on the word "mug," which is sounded Beethoven's
find answers to several long-standing riddles. successively by the basses, tenors and altos, and Ninth
Seizing upon an ambiguity in the reports of his finally by the sopranos, as though by repeated
birth-year, and aware of other rumors that he emphasis to query what they dare not ac-
was the illegitimate son of King Friedrich knowledge in reality, that the multitudes have
Wilhelm II, Beethoven had long been in search been embracing before an absent deity, Deus
of his origins, seeking to discover both how and absconditus.
when he came into being, seeking reconcilia- Despite the resounding affirmations that try
tion with the memory of his real parents even as to erase the memory of this moment of the An-
he sought noble and royal surrogatesfor them. dante Maestoso, Beethoven has led us to under-
His longing for an ideal father merges with the stand that the question indeed remains alive. In
symphony's quest for a divine father. He dedi- the Messianic myth, the world is redeemed, and
cates this masterwork to King Friedrich its redemption coincides with the end of his-
Wilhelm III,the son of his rumoredfather. In it tory. But Beethoven is no mere translatorof old
he celebrates the principle of fraternity; indeed stories; whatever his models, he invented a new
he succeeds in creating the most universal para- mythology at the dawn of our age. We may add
digm of fraternity in world culture. Yet there is Beethoven to Northrop Frye's short list of
uncertainty, even in Elysium. Beethoven/Schil- mythmakers: "Those who have really changed
ler would not fix either time or tense for us: the modern world-Rousseau, Freud, Marx-
"Alle Menschen werden Bruder"("All men be- are those who have changed its mythology, and
come brothers"). The tense is neither past, whatever is beneficent in their influence has to
present, nor even quite future, but a process do with giving man increased power over his
tense, implying what will happen "if." Slo- own vision."67
chower suggests: "Poetically, it is a prayer for In Beethoven's re-creationof myth, history is
brotherhood."66Fraternity remains upon the kept open-as quest for the unreachable,for the
horizon of possibility. as-yet-undiscovered, for the vision of an ulti-
Nor is the search for an ideal father quite con- mate felicity. He refuses to accept that history
cluded. The Deity may be tacitly present in the is closed at either its source or its goal. Fora per-
"Creation" scenario of the opening and explic- fected orderwould signal the termination of life
itly present in the text of the finale; he presides and of striving. In the Ninth Symphony, the
over both ends of the temporal spectrum. But, condition of Joyis elusive, even in Elysium. The
though present he is not yet discovered. "Seek search continues for a hidden God, a distant be-
him beyond the stars!Beyondthe starshe surely loved, for brotherhood.And Creation can begin
dwells"-and Beethoven's music supplies a again merely by the omission "
heart-rending question mark (ex. 13). The of a majoror minor third.
23