Ludwig Van Beethoven & the Eroica Symphony

Beethoven's symphonic program reconstructed

Beethoven's 3rd symphony, which he named Eroica, has long been said to be a symphonic portrait of Napoleon. In support of this is a story told by his friend & associate, Ferdinand Ries:

In 1802 Beethoven composed his Third Symphony (now known as the Sinfonia eroica) in Heilgenstadt, a village one and a half hours outside Vienna.

When he was composing, Beethoven frequently had a certain subject in mind, even though he often laughed at and inveighed against descriptive music, particularly the frivolous sort. Occasionally Haydn's Creation and The Seasons came under fire in this respect, though Beethoven did recognize Haydn's greater achievements, especially the many choral works & certain other things for which he properly lavished praise on Haydn. In this symphony Beethoven had thought about Bonaparte during the period when he was still First Consul. At that time Beethoven held him in the highest regard and compared him to the greatest Roman consuls. I myself, as well as many of his close friends, had seen this symphony, already copied in full score, lying on his table. At the very top of the title page stood the word "Buonaparte" and at the very bottom "Luigi van Beethoven," but not a word more. Whether and with what the intervening space was to be filled I do not know. I was the first to tell him the news that Bonaparte had declared himself emperor, whereupon he flew into a rage and shouted: "So he too is nothing more than an ordinary man. Now he also will trample all human rights underfoot, and only pander to his own ambition, he will place himself above everyone else and become a tyrant!" Beethoven went to the table, took hold of the title page at the top, ripped it all the way through, and flung it on the floor. The first page was written anew and only then did the symphony receive the title Sinfonia eroica. Prince Lobkowitz later bought this composition from Beethoven for his own use for several years, and it was performed many times at his palace. Here it happened that Beethoven, who was himself conducting, once threw the whole orchestra out of rhythm in the second part of the first Allegro, where it runs on so long in half-notes on the off-beat, that they had to start all over again from the beginning.

* * *

In that same Allegro Beethoven plays the horn a mean trick. Several bars before the theme re-enters completely in the second part, Beethoven has the horn suggest it, while the two violins are still holding a chord on the second. To anyone who does not know the score it inevitably gives the impression that the horn player has miscounted and entered too early. During the first rehearsal of this symphony, which went appallingly, the horn player did come in correctly. I was standing next to Beethoven and believing the entry wrong said: "That damned horn player! Can't he count? - It sounds terrible!" I believe I was very close indeed to having my ears boxed. - Beethoven was a long time in forgiving me.

(Ferdinand Ries, from pgs. 67-69, Beethoven Remembered, translated by Frederick Noonan. Great Ocean Publishers, Arlington, VA, 1987)

1. General remarks: People say they hear Napoleon's footsteps in the first movement. Many also think the second movement, the famous Funeral March, was written for Napoleon's own eventual demise (or for Beethoven's!), which is silly on its face. Imagine writing a funeral march for the president-elect!

I have also heard speculation that the horn in the trio of the third movement is the voice of Napoleon in his chambers, or before a large, excited crowd, giving a speech, full of wise counsel & advice. Something like this seems reasonable to me. And long ago I deduced that the theme & variations of the fourth movement were a general sketch of the life of the Hero. The movement starts, not with the theme itself, but with the harmonic bass-line of the theme, which, in musical terms, would indicate Napoleon's parents or ancestors. The movement - and the Hero himself - develop until it reaches a crisis, whereupon the Hero dies or disappears & we, his followers, are left bereft. But just when we have given up hope, the Hero bursts forth anew & sweeps us all onward, aka the finale. In the finale, note the cleverly written clarinet part, indicating, I think, that all will be included. The Hero never dies, he was merely in hiding, waiting for our call. He will always be with us. Such is the well-known myth of the Hero.

The first movement, with its many short phrases & constantly changing orchestration (which was to have a large impact on the young Ries) has always struck me as a musical description of an early town meeting, a very lively one. A Citizen states his opinion of the matter at hand. He is immediately interrupted by another Citizen, voicing a second opinion, etc. If Beethoven is working in motifs (rather than mere melodic phrases) and if these various motifs have individual meaning to him, then we begin to understand why "new" material is introduced in both the development & coda. Rather than vary his melodies, Beethoven is instead showing us how the various motifs interact, what one Citizen does to another. The result will always be something new. In the background are the famous footsteps. I have always been skeptical they were Bonaparte's, as there seems nothing heroic about them.

In this symphony to Napoleon, the second movement, the Funeral March, makes no sense at all. It might be reasonable (just barely) to write the ultimate memorial to a man still very much alive & with most of his life still ahead of him, but if that is so, the music Beethoven wrote utterly fails that simple mission. The musical format of a funeral march had long been clearly established. Beethoven had written a funeral march in that format in a sonata a few years before. Chopin wrote a funeral march, in the same format, in his second piano sonata. That format is a slow opening section in minor, followed by a slightly faster section in major, followed by a repeat of the opening slow section.

In this symphony, Beethoven starts his funeral march in the customary form. He then goes on to a more hopeful section, in major, and then, for a time, returns to his opening. But then, without warning, he starts writing episodic music. This is music that clearly describes something or someone, but who & what? It's not heroic music, it doesn't sound as if Beethoven is memorializing Napoleon's heroic words & deeds. Is there a solution? What might it be?

2. Analysis & deduction: Many years ago while in France, I chanced to visit a museum to Napoleon, somewhere near Paris. I don't remember exactly where. I do remember it contained many of Napoleon's personal carriages. Among the many exhibits, I was struck by a certain bee emblem, a bee motif. I had not known that about Napoleon.

Decades later I found myself listening, for the thousandth time, to Beethoven's great symphony and when I heard the Scherzo, I had one of those "eureka!" moments. Beethoven had written - as clearly as anyone could - a buzzing beehive. The musical symbology was unmistakable. So - yes. The third movement is about Napoleon, as Queen bee. The third movement was Napoleon as a beehive of activity, the fourth movement was a generalized survey of the life of the Hero. And, by contrast, now, more than ever, the first two movements made no sense.

So if the second movement was not Napoleon's death (not forgetting a mini-funeral march towards the end of the fourth movement) then who, exactly, is memorialized in that long dirge? But then I had a hunch.

Suppose the first movement was the French Revolution itself. It seems to fit what the music is describing: A lot of individual citizens, newly empowered & free to speak for the very first time. Exciting, exhilarating, frightening, terrifying & a thousand other emotions, all mixed together. Are there still footsteps? Sure. But listen again to those passages. Does the music sound confident? Heroic? Driven? No. It sounds timid. It sounds fearful. It is as if there are spies among us, that we must guard what we say or do. Who are these spies? Are they the spies of the Terreur? Not so far as I can tell. There does not seem to be a "Terreur" in the preceding passages, or for that matter, anywhere in the first movement. Suppose they're the footsteps of the king's men? The king's spies? That puts us in the early days of the Revolution. Which gave me another hunch:

Suppose the first movement ends, in typical Hollywood cliff-hanger fashion, with the charge on the Bastille? If that is so, then,

Now we know what the second movement is about! It is a memorial to Louis XVI, it is a description of his last days & execution.

But there's more. Beethoven, a native of Bonn, owes nominal allegiance to the French court. So maybe, sort of, kind of, he could be interested in writing about the death of the French king, one way or another.

On the other hand, Vienna, Beethoven's adopted home, was the birth-place of Marie Antoinette, the ill-fated & much slandered French queen. As a Viennese native, her death sent shock waves through the many Austrian courts.

So it seems to me the "official" excuse for Beethoven's funeral march was Louis XVI, but the unofficial & very real person memorialized therein is none other than the French queen herself. A movement that exists on two separate levels.

So now we have the program to Beethoven's Eroica Symphony:

1. Allegro con brio: The early days of the French Revolution
2. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai: The death of Marie Antoinette
3. Scherzo: Allegro vivace: Introducing Napoleon & his beehive
4. Finale: Allegro molto: A Hero's life

3. Other considerations: With Beethoven's original intentions clearly revealed, the four movements become sort of a hodge-podge. So often we listen to these great works mechanically, by rote, without thought. When we focus our minds & listen as if it were new, as if for the first time, it becomes clear the first two movements of the Eroica are episodic, descriptive, in nature. The last two movements are purely musical. Beethoven is a master of both types.

I was curious a week ago & wanted to know where Napoleon's bees came from. I had presumed they were a family motif, part of the Bonaparte crest, perhaps. But no. Napoleon planned his coronation as emperor as carefully as he planned everything else in his life. He chose the bee as an emblem of his rule. I think we can safely presume he chose it for all the usual qualities associated with bees: Industry, organization, discipline (etc.) all under the wise stewardship of the queen herself.

It seems to me that Beethoven somehow got wind of this & in his imagination saw Napoleon as the ideal ruler, the queen in charge of her hive, with its many worker bees, all toiling for the greater good. This is precisely the kind of leader Beethoven would have admired.

So it seems possible to me that the bee was the inspiration behind the entire symphony. Napoleon as a new man, a new leader. As the genesis of a symphonic project, the bee motif accounts for the last two movements. But what about the first two?

If the last two movements are the longed-for new world, then the first two movements would be the story of how we got here. In other words, the French Revolution & the execution of the French royal house. Although a hodge-podge, the four movements form a unified whole.

Now we can, perhaps, understand Beethoven's "mean trick" played on the horn. If the horn's motif is "liberation" or "freedom" (or whatever Beethoven wants to call it), and if this quality is inherent in man himself, then it follows that it may arise at any time, at any place, without warning. Which brings us to -

4. Beethoven's methods of composition. So often we throw up our hands & insist that the act of creation is both unknown & unknowable. This may be true in many cases, but not of all of them. It is a challenge to us, admirers of the great, to puzzle out what they did & how they did it, to the best of our small ability.

In the Third Symphony we can see Beethoven at work. He in fact knows little about Napoleon. For example, he does not know that Napoleon has already stranded an entire army in Egypt. Beethoven has to work with the little he does know. He knows about Napoleon's bees. He can write a beehive. And he can write heroic.

When it comes to writing a funeral march, how can this be approached? From where do we get a theme? Listen carefully to the very opening notes. Imagine a man who is stricken with grief. He is a man, he will bear it silently, but then, his eyes water & twitch & without being able to stop himself, he sucks in his breath, and bursts out: Boo-hoo-hoo. And then he cries & cries, inconsolable. We have all heard it. Eventually we all do it. Beethoven made it his motif. Listen again to the very first notes of the march. Suck in your breath & cry along with it. It is unmistakable.

We also think of Beethoven composing whatever he wants, whenever he wanted, and though I think that's true, it's also true that Beethoven, like all great creative geniuses, knew how to market his works. He may want to write a symphony about Napoleon, but he knows if he puts in a memorial to the slain home-town girl, he's guaranteed a good reception from Viennese high society. In the back of his mind he remembers the trouble Mozart found himself in as a result of The Marriage of Figaro. Beethoven does not wish this upon himself. By temper he is rude & foppish, he knows he is tolerated only for his skills as a musician. He is not so foolish as to write revolutionary diatribes (despite what we want to believe about him). A symphony about the French Revolution, a memorial to Marie Antoinette, ending with a plea for a brave new world, yes, that will work. The nobility will buy it. The real subject of the second movement must have been so clearly known that it passed entirely without comment. As if a modern Italian composer (say) wrote a symphony in honor of the young Prince William, and for the second movement wrote a funeral march. Everyone would immediately know it was in memory of Lady Di.

But what about the original title page? "Buonaparte" at the top, "Beethoven" at the bottom. What to put in-between? Ries did not know. Presumably Beethoven thought long & hard & could not decide. I have heard it suggested that Beethoven seized upon Ries's announcement to get himself out of a self-inflicted tight spot. I am still thinking about that.

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