Behind the Musik: Beethoven and Bologne: The Winds of Change

Program Notes

By Patrick G. Jordan

The malleability of language is a fascinating thing. Today, when we see or hear the word “revolutionary,” it’s as likely to be in an advertisement for a new diet or vegetable cutter as it is to refer to the overthrow by force of political or social order. Our program Beethoven Eroica & Bologne: Winds of Change is most definitely driven by events in the latter category, particularly the French Revolution.

François-Joseph Gossec was amongst the most prolific composers in France during the latter half of the 18th century and was arguably the most adaptable to those considerable winds of change. He began as a court composer, a protégé of Jean-Philippe Rameau, and later established himself as an independent artist, directing subscription concerts and working for several public opera houses in Paris. During the French Revolution he became the foremost musician of the people, directing the band of the Garde Nationale, and along with Etienne Méhul and Luigi Cherubini was named an inspector at the Conservatoire upon its foundation in 1795 as well as being its first professor of composition. In a curious aside, after Napoleon made himself emperor, he offered Gossec a job as a composer. We have no record of why, but Gossec refused. Was it because he was old (almost 70)? Was it because he preferred to remain in his position in a revolutionary institution that meant a great deal to him? It may not have been out of revolutionary fervour, as Napoleon made Gossec a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur the following year.

The Overture to Le Triomphe de la République, first staged in 1793, is the introduction to an hour-long lyric divertissement featuring a massive choir and vocal soloists composed in response to the victory in 1792 of revolutionary forces against the Duke of Brunswick at the Battle of Valmy. If you sense the military and indeed the battlefield being represented onstage it is no mistake!

Very happily, the last twenty years have seen a remarkable resurgence of interest in the extraordinary life and music of Joseph Bologne, Le chevalier de Saint Georges. Bologne, the son of a plantation owner and an African woman enslaved to him, was for a time perhaps Europe’s finest fencer, an excellent violinist and composer (a protégé in turn of Gossec), a proponent of the abolition of slavery, and during the Revolution, a commanding officer of his own regiment of Black soldiers in the Garde Nationale. His Violin Concerto in C Major, op. 3 no. 2 dates from 1774, the decidedly pre-Revolutionary period. During this time, he attracted the attention of none other than Marie Antoinette. His association with her and others of the nobility would make his life difficult years later, when, in his role as regimental commander, he came under suspicion for his anti-Revolutionary associations and was imprisoned for 18 months. Why Bologne suffered such a fate and Gossec did not is a matter of some conjecture—they were working in the same milieu and for the same people. To learn more about the life of Joseph Bologne, read the article here.

The concerto itself is a vehicle both for Bologne’s virtuosity as a violinist, featured in the first and last movements, and for his exquisite melodic gifts, demonstrated most clearly in the dramatic and profoundly touching Adagio con sordino [with muted strings].

The myth of Prometheus is a touchstone in the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven for its themes of bringing divine power to humans (fire from the gods in Prometheus’s case, musical enlightenment in Beethoven’s), and of the concomitant suffering that brings the messenger (eternal agony for Prometheus, deafness and personal despair for Beethoven). Beethoven’s ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus, focuses primarily on the “bringer-of-knowledge” aspect of the story. Its Finale is the scene in which humanity is animated from statues, but the music will be instantly recognizable to many listeners as the theme of the extensive variations movement that is the Finale of “Eroica.” Beethoven was so focused on that theme that he used it in its most rudimentary form as one of 12 Contredanses (WoO 17, no. 7), as well as for the theme of his Variations and Fugue for Piano in E-flat Major, op. 35. Interestingly, in each case he left the theme in the key of E-flat, a key with heroic significance to composers and listeners of the 18th and 19th centuries.

From its genesis, the “Eroica” Symphony was conceived as a tribute to Napoleon Bonaparte, whose Republican ideals Beethoven deeply admired. In a famous account, Ferdinand Ries, one of the more reliable witnesses to Beethoven’s life, recalled being the first to deliver to him the news that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor. In a fit of rage, Beethoven ripped the dedication page from the score and tore it in half. That autograph score is now lost in its entirety, but a copyist’s score survives with an intact title page, whose dedication reads “A Symphony entitled Bonaparte.” The last two words have been so heavily erased that the paper has holes where the “hero’s” name was! The first edition dedication reads “Heroic Symphony … to celebrate the memory of a great man.”

The political developments, turmoil, and eventual continental wars were already heavily in the air in Beethoven’s Vienna. Military themes abounded, for example in Haydn’s Symphony no. 100, “Military” (1794) and his Mass in Time of War (1796). The Symphony in C Minor, op. 31 (c.1797) by Haydn and Beethoven’s colleague and “go-to” conductor, Paul Wranitzky, has the hopeful subtitle “Grand Characteristic Symphony for the peace with the French Republic” and features a Marche funebre with which Beethoven must have been familiar. In 1802 and 1803, comic operas by Cherubini and Méhul enjoyed great success in Vienna—their rescue themes, with allegorical references to revolution and military fervour, likely also had some impact on Beethoven.

In terms of its overall form, “Eroica” is not particularly revolutionary—when one looks at a program listing, it retains the four-movement layout that Haydn and Mozart typically used in their mature works. It is said that quantity has a quality all its own, and the scope of “Eroica” is absolutely groundbreaking. For the sake of comparison, Tafelmusik’s recording of “Eroica” clocks in at 49 minutes, while a typical performance of Haydn’s “Military” Symphony is less than half that long. The opening movement of “Eroica” has a dramatic expansiveness that confounded some early listeners and divided public opinion. The second movement, a Marche funebre, is almost three times longer than the one in Wranitzky’s symphony, and is a profound and serious affair. The trio of the Scherzo is a triumphal horn call, featuring three rather than the customary two horns, and when the Scherzo itself returns, we find ourselves not at the beginning, which the audience would have expected, but in a Scherzo “already in progress.” The Finale of “Eroica,” based upon the relatively simple Prometheus theme, begins with a dramatic outburst, which presages the incredible journey ahead.

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