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RICHARD WAGNER ON BEETHOVEN'S »HEROIC SYMPHONY« This highly significant tone poem - the third symphony of the master, and the work with which he first took his own peculiar direction - is in many respects not as easy to understand as its title would suggest, precisely because the title »heroic Symphonie« is involuntarily tempted to want to see a series of heroic relationships represented by tone formations in a certain historically dramatic sense. Anyone who sets out to understand this work with such expectations will at first be confused and finally disappointed, without actually having achieved any enjoyment. If I therefore permit myself to convey the view that I have gained myself of the poetic content of this musical creation as concisely as possible, I do so in the sincere belief that many listeners to the forthcoming performance of the "heroic symphony" will understand easier, which they themselves would only be able to achieve by frequently repeated hearings of particularly lively performances of the work. First of all, the term "heroic" is to be taken in the widest sense and by no means to be construed only as referring to a military hero. If we understand the term "hero" to mean the whole, full human being, who possesses all purely human feelings - love, pain and strength - according to the highest fullness and strength, then we grasp the right object, which the artist grasps in the speaking tones of his work can be communicated to us. The artistic space of this work is filled with all the diverse, powerfully penetrating feelings of a strong, perfect individuality, to which nothing human is alien, but which contains everything truly human and expresses it in such a way that, after the most sincere manifestation of all noble ones passions, has reached a conclusion of their nature, marrying the most sensitive softness with the most energetic power. The progress towards this conclusion is the heroic trend in this work of art. The first movement embraces, as if in a glowing focal point, all the feelings of a rich human nature in the most restless, youthfully active emotions. Bliss and woe, air and sorrow, grace and melancholy, musing and longing, languishing and wallowing, boldness, defiance and an irrepressible sense of self, alternate and interpenetrate one another so densely and directly that while we all sympathize with these sensations, not a single one of the can noticeably detach itself from others, but our sympathy must always turn only to the one who communicates himself to us as a human being who is capable of all feelings. But all these sensations come from one main ability, and that is power. This power, infinitely increased by all emotional impressions and driven to express the overabundance of its being, is the moving main urge of this piece of music: it accumulates - towards the middle of the movement - to the point of devastating violence, and in its most defiant manifestation we believe a world crusher to see us, a titan wrestling with the gods. This crushing force, which fills us with delight and horror at the same time, pressed towards a tragic catastrophe, the serious meaning of which is revealed to our feelings in the second movement of the symphony. The tone poet dresses this rally in the musical garb of a funeral march. A feeling tamed by deep pain and moved in solemn sorrow is communicated to us in moving tonal language: a serious male melancholy lets lamentation turn into soft emotion, into remembrance, into tears of love, into heartfelt exaltation, into enthusiastic exclamation. A new power sprouts from the pain, which fills us with sublime warmth: as nourishment for this power we involuntarily seek out the pain again; we give ourselves to him to the point of dying in sighs; but it is precisely here that we gather our full strength again: we don't want to succumb, we want to endure. We do not resist grief, but we ourselves now bear it on the strong waves of a courageous manly heart. Who would be able to describe in words the infinitely varied but inexpressible sensations that touch one another, from pain to the highest exaltation, and from exaltation to the softest melancholy, to the last merging into an infinite remembrance? Only the tone poet could do this in this wonderful piece. The third movement now shows us in its courageous cheerfulness the strength that – tamed by one's own deep pain – has lost its devastating high spirits. The wild impetuosity in her has developed into fresh, lively activity; We now have the lovable, happy man before us, who happily and happily strides through the fields of nature, smiling over the fields, letting the merry hunting horns sound from the forest heights; And what he feels about all this, the master tells us in the sprightly, cheerful sound image, that he finally lets us say himself about those hunting horns that give musical expression to the beautiful, happy, but also soft-hearted excitement of the human being. In this third movement, the tone poet shows us the sensitive human being from the opposite side to that from which he showed him to us in the preceding second movement: there the deeply and vigorously suffering person - here the happy and cheerfully active person. The master now combines these two aspects in the fourth – last – sentence in order to finally show us the whole human being, harmoniously united with himself, in the feelings in which even the memory of suffering is shaped into drives of noble activity. This final sentence is the clear and clarifying counterpart of the first sentence that has now been gained. Just as we saw there all human feelings in the infinitely most varied expressions, now permeating each other, now violently repelling one another in different ways, so here these manifold differences unite to form a conclusion that harmoniously encompasses all of these feelings, and that comes together in a pleasant, plastic form represents us. The master first captures this figure in an extremely simple theme, which stands before us with certainty and determination, and is capable of the most infinite development, from the most delicate delicacy to the greatest power. Around this theme, which we can regard as the solid male individuality, all the tenderer and softer feelings wind and nestle from the beginning of the movement, developing up to the manifestation of the pure female element, which finally at the - through the whole Energetic paced piece of music - male main theme in ever increasing manifold sympathy reveals itself as the overwhelming power of love. At the end of the movement, this power breaks a full, wide path into the heart. The restless movement continues, and love expresses itself in noble, emotional calm, beginning softly and tenderly, increasing to a delightful elation, finally capturing the whole male heart to its deepest depths. Here it is where this heart once again expresses the memory of the pain of life: the rather full breast swells high – the breast that in its bliss also embraces sorrow, like bliss and sorrow, as a purely human feeling, one and the same stud. Once more the heart twitches, and the rich tears of noble humanity well up; but out of the delight of melancholy the joy of strength breaks out boldly – the strength that has married love and in which the whole, full human being calls out to us jubilantly the confession of his divinity. Only in the master's tonal language could the inexpressible be made known, which the word here could only indicate in the greatest embarrassment. (From the program of a concert on February 25, 1851 in Zurich) |
program:
Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” 1804: First performed by Beethoven with 28 musicians in the Palais Lobkowitz in Vienna [01] 16:26 p.m Allegro con brio total time 44:16 Ensemble28 Daniel Grossmann, conductor |
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