In conclusion, this idea of construction of the interval itself, this focus on the distance and the imaginative space between notes stretches our perception of time and space : and this consciousness of the ‘navel’ of music is what brings a stillness, a sacred realm. In a discussion with B.Fournier, I was told that the most recent publication project he had was one centered on Beethoven’s spirituality, as a form of culmination. The stillness is produced ooften by a continuous rhythm, with the help of a dotted legato. This idea is rather permanent in Beethoven’s music, and throughout his creative output he manages to deduce from music itself this idea of mystery, this strange blend of divinity and humanity, of invention and restraint, evocation and expression, or frailty and stillness, which I think appears even in the op.1 n.1 piano trio’s slow movement :
In Fournier’s ’le génie de Beethoven’, a great deal of contrast is made in ‘dramatic’ and ‘reflective’ motion and energy : the former rather vertical (chords), the latter undulating, horizontal, stretching time : that is such an energy that allows performers to transcend the written text of Beethoven and
turn for example the slow movement of the 9th symphony, under W. Furtwängler in 1942, into a 20-minute meditation in another realm. And Fournier notices that some of those ‘rising’ motions often open such movements, in different manners, either by opening the emotion, or on the contrary closing it, wrapping the arpeggio motion into a sustained emotion. For example (these are my examples, not Fournier's: his point is not to use score excerpts in this book)
WoO 80 C minor piano variations : variation 12 : piano semplice : rising major third (the theme was a rising minor third, and most variations before the 12th have descending motions)
What is unique about here ? How does it fit in Beethoven’s thought ?
I must also point out that this variation possesses hints and sheds light on a feature of the late period of Beethoven’s output : that of a ritual sentiment – this variation almost being a separate entity from the continuous process toward flourishes, ornaments, and, as we will see with the last variation, the granulation and stretching out of the form.
Beethoven’s idea of putting the ‘heart’, the ‘conscience’ of a piece within a movement structured by variations enables us to make the ‘jump’ more easily from a virtuosic process to a reflective one.
Development, in a variation movement is, with Beethoven’s musical thinking, either :
very much goal- if not form-oriented (Eroica Variations, op. 35, slow movement of the piano sonata in f minor op.57)
or ‘erratic’, counting on the essence of the theme varied to permeate through the strangest transformations (Diabelli variations op.120). And we realize that the self-reflective stage is what allows the last,’ Grande’ variation to come out of its slumber, out of a process of enantiodromia (coïncidence of the opposites) :
such is the case with the Eroica variations, or the set of variations 29-31 of the Diabelli set, a ‘dark night of the soul’ that dissolves harmony and melody in order to bring a fugue.
Here, with the op.47 sonata, we are very much in the continuous territory, though the ‘gap’ with the other variations is represented by a very simple gesture, that will be often overlooked by performers :
These ‘moments out of time’ also call out the opening of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier sonata (in unison too), which installs immediately a new sense of rhythm, color, but remains uncertain in terms of harmony (especially following the b-flat/b minor region of the end of the preceding movement) :
As a short conclusion to the previous discussion on this ‘rising arpeggio’ detail, it is of crucial importance to the interpretation of op.47 and 61 that minor key details like this are brought up but integrated within the variations form. I believe the main difference in the treatment of time between different schools of interpretation – going back to Mendelssohn’s time, with filiations that gave birth to the conflict of Liszt’s new music and Hanslick’s objective treatment of musical thought – up until Toscanini and Furtwängler fighting over the almost political defense of Beethoven’s music come from these moments. This unsolvable ambiguity is only now beginning to fade into a compromise in interpretation, between the core of collective sound and clarity of shapes, formal drive and attention to the local inflections of the moment (a form of lushness), personality and objectivity, focus and wonder, with in mind Riccardo Chailly’s symphonic cycle with the Gewandhaus Lepizig orchester. Though it is very easy to linger, during performance, on these characterful pitches, the sense of grandeur that was given by Beethoven may only come with an impertubable rigor and certainty in tempo. Grandeur will come next, with the last variation.
Many authors (R. Rolland, M. Solomon, E. Brisson, C. Rosen) have linked this obsession with this directionality of music form from music itself, this affliction of music, to Beethoven’s own melancholia, borne of his own familial and social upbringing, as well as rising health issues, tearing him away from mainstream musical thought. J. Kerman refers to it as the « vocal impulse » which ties us back to Van Oort’s sources and considerations. That is why, I think this idea of ambiguity and contradiction within musical signs is very much conscious, explored, exploited, in Beethoven’s music : he had, through many reasons, a synthetic ability to observe and play with contradictory elements of music (phrasing, harmony, dynamic), which are quite open for interpretation in Haydn’s or Mozart’s music, but which in Beethoven ‘pile up’ meaning in a way that creates conflict, for as can be seen in Mozart or Haydn, notes themselves have dynamics, have direction, as does harmony or pace – and only in structural standpoints do these composers clarify their thought with a dynamic that usually serves as a reminder, or sometimes a conscious contradiction to be followed (as is B. van Oort’s theory, which states that the appearance of dynamics is not prioritary over other parameters, but instead compound to them).
Piano sonata op.110 : third movement bar 4 : Recitativo più adagio (no dynamic, una corda) the suspension is obvious here, and only such a sense of disorientation will make the fugue convincing as a structural ‘solution’ to this sonata.
Or the end of the slow movement from ‘l’Absence’, in the piano sonata Op.81a, where the « turn » motif of the opening of the movement is transcended through a simple harmonic unity (such an example is also found in the rising fourth at the end of the slow movement of the Waldstein sonata, which brings order after various attempts at rising figures throughout this ‘introduzione’ but only bring dissonance) :
well, this was a bit of a mouthful, for the presentation of a now rather accepted 'ethos' in Beethoven's music, it is accepted as an ethos, but how is it defined as a style? the answer will be give little by little during the rest of the paper, here we can observe more clearly their properties of rising figure, large arpeggios.
Examples in the late string quartets abound, and here are two which I hope are not obvious (unlike the Cavatina, or the opening of 132 (the third movement is very, very much different from that style I'm trying to convey) :
Beethoven’s issue is that he often suspends the codes behind a rhythm or the allusions behind the harmony so that only the dynamics speak for the form of a work. (it should also be noted that Beethoven’s predilection for this softness of timbre is also linked to the performers he was working with throughout his life, with Pierre Rode and the french school of violin playing at the forefront, then Franz Clement, and later in his life, Dorothea von Ertmann and her relationship to the op.101 piano sonata).
Beethoven’s own growing interest in Greek chanting and versification brought him even further from classical thought of rhythmic tropes and codes, or turning said tropes into their greek counterparts. Though this interest appears much later than the works we study here.
Piano and violin variations on Mozart’s « Se vuol ballare, Signor continuo », variation 6 and 7 : espressivo/sostenuto (p), note that the theme descends instead of rising, but the right hand has a rising figure in filigree.
This is the opening introductory bars from the 12th quartet’s second movement, the first of the late : while timbre is quickly established, rhythm is not, and harmony only comes to a difficult affirmation (we ended the first movement in e flat major, and here it is quickly contradicted and explored), this harmonic confusion is in fact heightened by the fact that there is neither calm nor tension in the harmony : as if truly the music was projected, revealed to us (it is a V pedal, the same oxymoron as the one we have in the op.47’s opening of the slow movement)
More closely related to the op.47 ‘minor switch’, the variations of op.127 also have 2 (or 3, depending on the interpretation of text) increasingly ornamental sections, before the halt of this unison that turn into a sort of ‘super-minor’ : the first degree, a flat, is taken as a V of c sharp minor, which in turns is treated as VI of E major. The collective rising figure, as in the Kreutzer sonata, is opposed to the copious other variations. Also in the late string quartets, nearly all of the openings to slow movements are of a ‘ritual’ kind (op.132, the ‘beklemmt’ in the Cavatine from op.130, and the chord opening the 6th movement of op.131), and the middle ones bear it too (opening to the slow movement of the Adagio mesto from op.59 n.1, the mancando from the op.59 n.2, bar 24 from the Adagio ma non troppo from op.74, and the octaves in the Larghetto espressivo that serves as introduction to the Allegretto agitato of the Quartetto Serioso.
Piano trio op.70 n.1 : p sotto voce in octaves, taking the opening gesture of the first movement in minor mode, and stretching it into its harmonic essence.
This idea of a ‘leap of faith’ into another realm recalls an excerpt from René Char’s Feuillets d’Hypnos, n.51 :
which can be read as (parenthesis mine) : « rip it from its native soil (harmonic enstrangement). Crop it in the presumed harmonious soil of the future, knowing an unfinished success (the leap that is made comes from dissatisfaction of the form and organic, and the idea of the soil suggests a form of stillness, contemplation). Make it touch progress with the senses (forward motion of musical history comes from an affinity with nothingness, accessed only through music’s production of itself). Here is the secret of my skill (composition as craft). »
