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THEY PLAY OPENING NOTES OF BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH SYMPHONY | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony may be | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:12 | |
It's certainly one of the most famous. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:14 | |
And those first four notes, once heard, are never forgotten. | 0:00:19 | 0:00:23 | |
The traditional wisdom has been that in the Fifth, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:29 | |
Beethoven is railing against fate and his increasing deafness. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
But conductor John Eliot Gardiner believes | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
that it contains a hidden, radical message. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
Expressing the composer's sympathy with | 0:00:42 | 0:00:45 | |
the ideals of the French Revolution. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
Liberty, equality and brotherhood. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
It's not just a matter of his expressing his inner turmoil, | 0:00:52 | 0:00:56 | |
it's also him nailing his colours to the political mast | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
of the French Revolution. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:02 | |
"I believe in the rights of man, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:09 | |
"I believe in the brotherhood of all men | 0:01:09 | 0:01:11 | |
"and I believe in political freedom." | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
I'm going to look at the evidence | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
for this revolutionary interpretation | 0:01:19 | 0:01:21 | |
of the Fifth Symphony. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:23 | |
I'll visit France, where in 1789, | 0:01:23 | 0:01:26 | |
the world order was turned upside down. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:28 | |
I'll be exploring Bonn, where Beethoven grew up | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
and was exposed to radical ideas. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
And I'll travel to Vienna, | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
the imperial capital that was Beethoven's home | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
as the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars convulsed Europe. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
We'll see how these extraordinary events affected Beethoven, | 0:01:47 | 0:01:51 | |
both as a man and a musician, and how his passion for the ideals | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
of freedom and brotherhood fuelled the Fifth Symphony. | 0:01:55 | 0:02:01 | |
With my Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
we're going to perform Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, | 0:02:08 | 0:02:12 | |
and we're going to try to incorporate the emotional turmoil | 0:02:12 | 0:02:18 | |
and passion and the republican political fervour | 0:02:18 | 0:02:23 | |
which informs this great symphony. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:25 | |
So, are you all sitting comfortably? | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
You're not meant to be. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:36 | |
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Fifth Symphony here in Vienna, | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
the Austrian capital, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:01 | |
where the composer lived and worked for most of his life. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
It's become a timeless musical monument, but it was directly shaped | 0:03:06 | 0:03:11 | |
by the troubled times in which Beethoven lived. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
And this may have been underestimated | 0:03:14 | 0:03:16 | |
in the centuries since it was written. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
There's no better place to start an exploration of how and why | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
this happened than the place where the symphony was heard | 0:03:22 | 0:03:25 | |
for the very first time in December 1808. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
I'm here at the Theater an der Wien, | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
a very important place for Beethoven, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:38 | |
and it's connected with a number of his great works. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
But it was in this very theatre that the Fifth Symphony had its premiere. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:45 | |
Beethoven was 38 and at the height of his creative powers. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:53 | |
The premiere of the Fifth was scheduled towards the end | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
of a benefit concert for himself, | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
a packed recital of his great works. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
Beethoven was the first successful freelance composer, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:06 | |
not employed by the court, so he needed the money more than most. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:10 | |
It turned out to be a very interesting evening | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
How does it go, this huge event, the Beethoven programme? | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
It's a disaster. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
It's a complete disaster, unfortunately. It's too long. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
Imagine, it takes four hours, | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
so it lasts until 10.30 in the night. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
Unfortunately, the musicians and Beethoven had a row, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
so he didn't actually talk to the orchestra himself, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:35 | |
he only talked to the conductors. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
And the conductors then talked to the orchestra. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
-LAUGHING: Right! -It's a nightmare. | 0:04:39 | 0:04:41 | |
-What had they had a row about? -About the rehearsal conditions | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
and about Beethoven being very late on delivering the score. | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
Apparently, there were also mistakes, because they didn't have | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
enough time to rehearse, and at some point, Beethoven actually | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
stopped the concert and started again from the beginning. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
IAN LAUGHS Was it full? | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
-No. -No? -Half-full only, unfortunately. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
No, unfortunately, the same night there was | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
another concert going on, for widows and orphans. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:07 | |
A benefit concert, similarly as this was | 0:05:07 | 0:05:10 | |
-a benefit concert for Beethoven personally. -For himself. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
Exactly. So now, unfortunately, it was only half-filled. Tough luck. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:18 | |
He didn't earn as much money as he would have hoped. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:21 | |
Beethoven has become the classic example of | 0:05:21 | 0:05:23 | |
the intense, tortured artist. | 0:05:23 | 0:05:26 | |
But he was capable of great kindness as well as terrible tantrums, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
compassion as well as passion, | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
the composer of deeply sensitive pieces | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
as well as what became known as heaven-storming works. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
As we'll see, the Fifth Symphony's four movements | 0:05:39 | 0:05:41 | |
display all these aspects of its creator. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:45 | |
But the symphony's opening was not a soothing composition | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
that the theatre audience could sit back, relax and enjoy. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:53 | |
It was meant to jolt them out of their seats. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
The Fifth - especially the first four notes - has become | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
so well-known that it's difficult to recreate the shock | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
and disorientation that Beethoven intended. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
Difficult, but not impossible. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:08 | |
Over the centuries, Beethoven's masterpiece has been performed | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
in ways that the bad-tempered maestro might well have hated. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:18 | |
But for over 25 years, conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique have been on a mission | 0:06:21 | 0:06:26 | |
to play Beethoven's symphonies in just the way he intended. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:30 | |
Here at St John's Smith Square in London, they have recorded | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
a performance of the Fifth Symphony especially for us, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
with all the pace and the ferocity | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
that the audience at the premiere would have experienced. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
Right, here we go. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:43 | |
If there is any single piece of Beethoven's | 0:07:03 | 0:07:05 | |
that really, really sort of sets one's pulse racing, | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
it's the Fifth Symphony. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:10 | |
Because there is something completely implacable about it. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
It's so full-on, and it leaves you breathless, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
because there is this searing energy right from the off. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:36 | |
And then once he is in his full stride, | 0:07:37 | 0:07:39 | |
he just never lets up and it's inexorable. | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
I think the thing about tempo is | 0:08:03 | 0:08:05 | |
that it has to be done with total conviction. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
And if you feel, as I do, that Beethoven is impatient | 0:08:10 | 0:08:15 | |
to get his ideas over, then it's going to come over fast. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
John Eliot plays the Fifth Symphony at 108 beats per minute - | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
the tempo Beethoven himself decided for it. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:29 | |
The composer famously started losing his hearing when he was | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
in his twenties, and specified this tempo | 0:08:32 | 0:08:36 | |
years after composing the Fifth, when he had become entirely deaf. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
108bpm is SO fast that many conductors and performers | 0:08:39 | 0:08:44 | |
have ignored this marking. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
So this metronome is set at...? | 0:08:47 | 0:08:49 | |
108bpm. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
-Right. -And this is a new invention. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
Beethoven was excited, and he would be, bound to be, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
because if he had no means of conveying to performers... | 0:08:57 | 0:09:00 | |
Because he wasn't a conductor and he was deaf | 0:09:00 | 0:09:03 | |
-and he couldn't convey his ideas... -Yeah, he could tell them | 0:09:03 | 0:09:05 | |
-how fast how fast or slow to go. -He could tell them. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
But...sitting here and listening to that is one thing. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
Actually standing in front of an orchestra | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
and playing the music is quite different. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:16 | |
But that's why you play it so fast, isn't it? | 0:09:16 | 0:09:19 | |
I do, I think it's a good guideline, | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
and I may even go a bit quicker than that, depends... | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
Well, it depends on the set-up. It depends on the hall. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
In the Albert Hall, you know, you don't want to go | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
at such a lick that the music | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
doesn't have a chance to register with an audience. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
Whereas if you're doing it in a small studio, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:37 | |
you can get closer to Beethoven. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:39 | |
Over the centuries, many conductors have played the Fifth | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
at much slower tempi. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:52 | |
All through the early part of the 20th century, | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
the great maestri of the day tended to expand it | 0:09:55 | 0:09:58 | |
and be very self-indulgent, and to pull around the tempo. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:02 | |
OPENING NOTES OF FIFTH SYMPHONY, MUCH SLOWER | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
One recording even slowed it down to close to 74bpm. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
OK, this is now at 74, how does that strike you? | 0:10:11 | 0:10:15 | |
Bit of a bore, bit of a snore, actually. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
How can one...? | 0:10:18 | 0:10:19 | |
How can you galvanise an orchestra...? | 0:10:19 | 0:10:21 | |
# Da-da-da-dee... | 0:10:21 | 0:10:23 | |
"Ugh..." | 0:10:23 | 0:10:24 | |
# Da-da-da-dee... # | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
I mean, they'd absolutely fall asleep in their chairs. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:30 | |
METRONOME TICKS | 0:10:30 | 0:10:32 | |
-It's having that effect now! -Well... | 0:10:32 | 0:10:34 | |
And he uses that kind of motto or icon, as it were, | 0:10:42 | 0:10:47 | |
the "ba-ba-ba-bam", | 0:10:47 | 0:10:48 | |
those four notes which... | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
Given in that rhythm as a constant right the way through the symphony. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:57 | |
So, what message could Beethoven be trying to convey | 0:11:00 | 0:11:04 | |
with a furiously fast performance of his four-note motif? | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
By the time he composed the Fifth, Beethoven had accepted | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
that his deafness was incurable. | 0:11:18 | 0:11:20 | |
The terrible realisation came during a stroll | 0:11:20 | 0:11:23 | |
with a friend, Ferdinand Ries. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:24 | |
Ries says "Master, listen to that shepherd blowing on his pipe." | 0:11:26 | 0:11:31 | |
And Beethoven realises he can see the chap playing the pipe | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
but he can't hear him, | 0:11:33 | 0:11:35 | |
and that's the first time that we know of | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
that it's not just someone talking that he can't hear, | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
but it's music - and what else is he but a musician? | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
This is why many have believed that the four notes | 0:11:49 | 0:11:51 | |
are the composer railing against his deafness. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
But not everyone. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:56 | |
John Eliot thinks differently. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
So what do YOU think Beethoven was saying in the Fifth Symphony? | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
Well, I think he's really trying to convey | 0:12:05 | 0:12:09 | |
his deeply-held political beliefs at the time. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:13 | |
I mean, Beethoven's political beliefs went up and down, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
but at the particular time he was writing the symphony, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
in the early 1800s, | 0:12:20 | 0:12:21 | |
he was completely under the spell of the French Revolution | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
and even contemplated moving from Bonn and Vienna to Paris. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:31 | |
And it always amuses me, | 0:12:31 | 0:12:32 | |
the thought of Beethoven prowling around in Paris | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
and not speaking a word of French - or very little - | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
and you know, how would musical history | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
have developed if he had become a Frenchman? | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
-It would have been... -Yes. -..a bit different. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
Could the revolution provide the secret to the Fifth Symphony? | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
If so, the answer will be here, in France. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
Fontainebleau Palace just outside Paris is a perfect example | 0:12:56 | 0:13:01 | |
of the world that the revolution revolted against. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
Monarchies with a divine right to rule, | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
absolute power and the privileges that came with it. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
Privileges like this 1,500-room chateau, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
property of the French royalty since the Middle Ages. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
The French monarchy was the most entrenched in Europe | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
and appeared to be everlasting. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
And this was just one of their playgrounds. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:26 | |
As far back as the 12th century, French kings and queens | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
and their families and their guests | 0:13:29 | 0:13:32 | |
and their servants and their retinues | 0:13:32 | 0:13:34 | |
had come here to escape the heat of Paris. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
And walking around out here, that sense of solidity, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:42 | |
of confidence, of complacency even, is very apparent. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
And that's just the exteriors. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:48 | |
Compared to the interiors, this is...understatement. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
The 18th century diplomat Talleyrand said, | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
"Those who have not lived through the years around 1789 | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
"cannot know what is meant by the pleasure of life." | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
Here in Fontainebleau, you can understand what he was getting at. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:13 | |
The French King Louis XVI and his bride, Marie Antoinette, | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
stayed here between October and November 1786. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:22 | |
Among the lavish festivities laid on, the royal couple attended | 0:14:22 | 0:14:26 | |
a specially-staged ballet here in this beautiful ballroom. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
They also had a chance to examine some new building work, | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
including this room, a gift from the King to his Queen. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
This exquisite room, with its own en-suite bathroom, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
was Marie Antoinette's private retreat. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
It's all set in silver, which you can see on the wall coverings there, | 0:14:50 | 0:14:55 | |
and there's more silver in these two pieces - | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
which are both original, they were here. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
This roll-top desk and this hopper table. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
And it's silver, and it's mother-of-pearl, | 0:15:05 | 0:15:07 | |
and there's brass and there's bronze and there's boxwood. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
I mean, they are quite beautiful. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
On her first visit to Paris, the 14-year-old Austrian princess | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
was greeted like some sort of rock star or celebrity. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
Tens of thousands of people turned out to see her | 0:15:25 | 0:15:29 | |
and 30 of them were trampled to death in the crush. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
But by 1789, stories of this sort of luxurious excess | 0:15:32 | 0:15:38 | |
had turned public opinion against her. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:41 | |
ANGRY SHOUTS | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
The queen's lavish lifestyle did not go down well with a population | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
struggling with years of bad harvests, | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
high taxes and corruption. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:57 | |
Resentment against the aristocracy and the clergy grew. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:03 | |
And with it came a hunger for change, for freedom. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:07 | |
In the long hot summer of 1789, the discontent reached breaking point | 0:16:11 | 0:16:16 | |
and Paris was consumed by chaos, riots and looting. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:20 | |
Then on the 14th of July, a mob stormed the Bastille, | 0:16:20 | 0:16:24 | |
a fortress and prison that stood as a symbol of royal power. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
Paris was now in rebel hands. Fontainebleau Palace was plundered. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:35 | |
The French revolution had begun. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:37 | |
This is Le Cafe Procope, Paris' oldest cafe, and supposedly | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
the place where Voltaire drank over 40 cups of coffee a day. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:51 | |
It's also the place where the leaders of the French Revolution | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
met regularly - Danton, Robespierre and Marat sat here | 0:16:55 | 0:17:00 | |
plotting the events that would etch themselves | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
in the imagination of a generation. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:05 | |
Across the continent, those inspired | 0:17:05 | 0:17:07 | |
included Europe's leading thinkers and artists - | 0:17:07 | 0:17:11 | |
Shelley, Coleridge, Goethe, Schiller. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:13 | |
And of course, Beethoven. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:15 | |
The English poet Wordsworth wrote, | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive | 0:17:21 | 0:17:23 | |
"but to be young was very heaven." | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
Beethoven was just 19. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
The old feudal order - the Ancien Regime - | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
was to be abolished, and its privileges, hierarchies, | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
laws, courts and taxes would all be swept away. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
On August 26th, 1789, the National Assembly, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
based in this building here, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
issued a guiding founding manifesto for how it would work. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:52 | |
It was called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:56 | |
In England, in Germany, and right across Europe, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:01 | |
there were many, including Beethoven, who hoped that this | 0:18:01 | 0:18:04 | |
might be the start of a new era, this might be year zero, | 0:18:04 | 0:18:08 | |
where the Enlightenment ideal of a system of governance based | 0:18:08 | 0:18:12 | |
on freedom, equality and common good would finally become a reality. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:18 | |
It's generally accepted that Beethoven believed | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
in the ideals of the revolution during these heady early days. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
But what's the evidence that those ideals later found their way | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
into the Fifth Symphony's first four notes? | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
I think it's a clandestine, subversive way | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
of articulating immensely strongly-held beliefs | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
and the fact is that there is this French Revolutionary Hymn | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
by Cherubini, the Hymne du Pantheon, which has a sort of rabble rousing | 0:18:49 | 0:18:54 | |
little chorus - "Nous jurons tous, le fer en main" - we all swear, | 0:18:54 | 0:19:00 | |
sword in hand - "De mourir pour la Republique" - | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
to die for the Republic - | 0:19:03 | 0:19:05 | |
"et pour les droits du genre humain" - and for the rights of man. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
In rehearsals, John Eliot and his orchestra | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
performed this chorus for us. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:13 | |
# Nous jurons tous | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
# Nous jurons tous le fer en main. # | 0:19:16 | 0:19:20 | |
OK, slowly. One and two and one... | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
# Nous jurons tous le fer en main | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
# Nous jurons tous le fer en main... # | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
John Eliot sees a similarity to Beethoven's opening notes. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:33 | |
MUSIC PLAYS: Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven | 0:19:33 | 0:19:38 | |
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? | 0:19:42 | 0:19:43 | |
It's not just simply against fate or death or disaster, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
it's exuberant, an enormous feeling of, "Yeah, we can do it. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:53 | |
"It's within human capacity to do it." | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
Where did you get the idea originally | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
that this is what he was up to? | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
It's not in the least bit original. I'm afraid I read it | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
when I was a student in Paris in the late '60s | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
and it was a German musicologist Arnold Schmitz who had | 0:20:06 | 0:20:11 | |
suggested there might be a rapport between or a link between his views | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
and the French revolutionary hymns which were in circulation. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:19 | |
And so I went off to the Bibliotheque nationale | 0:20:19 | 0:20:21 | |
and did a bit of sleuthing there and sure enough, the music kind of fits | 0:20:21 | 0:20:25 | |
the themes that Beethoven introduces in the first movement in the famous | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
"ba-ba-ba-baam" which goes, "Nous jurons tous, le fer en main," which | 0:20:29 | 0:20:35 | |
gives you a sort of clue to the type of rhetoric and the tempo, actually. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
MUSIC PLAYS: Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven | 0:20:40 | 0:20:45 | |
Luigi Cherubini, an Italian composer who supported the | 0:20:45 | 0:20:49 | |
revolution and settled in France, wrote his hymn in honour of | 0:20:49 | 0:20:53 | |
this building in the heart of Paris - the Pantheon. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
Its history is steeped in the ideal of fraternite - brotherhood - | 0:20:59 | 0:21:03 | |
that John Eliot believes drives the Fifth Symphony's first movement. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
The Pantheon was built as a church. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
But, in 1791, was transformed into an altar of liberty | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
and a secular shrine for great men. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
In the crypt below are buried two French philosophers | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
who inspired the revolution. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
Here's the man known as Voltaire. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
And just across the way, Jean Jacques Rousseau. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
It's the perfect place to find out more about | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
the French revolutionary music that Beethoven may have drawn on. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
There were many hymns written for the revolution. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
So the one by Cherubini is particular in that it was | 0:21:47 | 0:21:52 | |
especially grand and it called for a huge orchestra - | 0:21:52 | 0:21:57 | |
77 players, which was very big at the time. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:00 | |
Would Beethoven have known Cherubini's work? | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
Beethoven certainly knew Cherubini's works because they were | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
published and they were there for everyone to read and play from. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
He would also have known him because Beethoven was in contact with French | 0:22:12 | 0:22:17 | |
musicians like Kreutzer, who gave his name to the Kreutzer Sonata. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:22 | |
So I'm sure that these musicians didn't only make music together | 0:22:22 | 0:22:27 | |
but they must have talked and read music and discussed it. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
There's a very touching anecdote about French soldiers | 0:22:30 | 0:22:36 | |
visiting Beethoven and making music with him. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
So if I could go back in time, | 0:22:39 | 0:22:44 | |
this is one of the things I'd like to witness. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
And what do you think the appeal to Beethoven was of this music? | 0:22:46 | 0:22:51 | |
There is the elan. There is the energy, as you say, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:56 | |
and "energie" was one of the key words of philosophy at the time. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:03 | |
The revolution was a time of energy after | 0:23:03 | 0:23:08 | |
the decadence of the Ancien Regime. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:10 | |
Music was public by definition in these occasions | 0:23:10 | 0:23:16 | |
and it served the function of creating a sense of collective | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
feeling around the revolution. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
So it seems likely that Beethoven did know | 0:23:25 | 0:23:27 | |
about this new, radical form of music, a public art | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
that could express powerful political messages. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:34 | |
And if John Eliot's theory is correct, | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
that was exactly the effect that Beethoven was after. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
Rouget de Lille who composed La Marseillaise, | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
he was an officer and not a professional musician. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
There's a famous painting showing Rouget de Lille | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
declaiming his Marseillaise when he first had the idea. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:54 | |
But then it became a kind of national anthem. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:58 | |
MUSIC PLAYS: La Marseillaise by Rouget de Lille | 0:23:58 | 0:24:05 | |
But he hit on this fantastic tune, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
which is characterised by its elan, | 0:24:11 | 0:24:17 | |
the way it goes for the high notes. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:19 | |
# Allons enfants de la Patrie. # | 0:24:19 | 0:24:21 | |
And although nobody can sing it properly | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
because the note is a bit too high. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
It's too high, yeah, and then it goes very low again - | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
# Mugir ces feroces soldats. # | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
Especially on football fields it's rather painful. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
It's precisely this "energie", | 0:24:39 | 0:24:41 | |
a kind of musical call to arms, that John Eliot tries to | 0:24:41 | 0:24:45 | |
capture and communicate in his own performance of Beethoven's Fifth. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:50 | |
Schmitz' theory, which I profoundly believe in | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
and I feel it gives tremendous edge in the performance, it's not | 0:24:53 | 0:24:57 | |
provable in absolute terms. It's a way in | 0:24:57 | 0:25:02 | |
and I think it's a good corrective or it's a helpful corrective | 0:25:02 | 0:25:06 | |
to the rather wishy-washy, you know, fate and all the rest of it. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:11 | |
MUSIC PLAYS: Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven | 0:25:11 | 0:25:18 | |
Beethoven himself was far from a wishy-washy character. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
He was a notoriously tough and turbulent personality. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
But if he was also a radical who supported French revolutionary | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
ideals, where did all that come from? | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
Perhaps the answer lies in the composer's early life in Germany. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
Never an easy man, Beethoven, and this is the archetypal | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
portrayal of him - intense, furious, brooding, heaven-storming. | 0:25:55 | 0:26:01 | |
And this extraordinary, | 0:26:01 | 0:26:02 | |
contrary personality was shaped here in Bonn during an unhappy childhood | 0:26:02 | 0:26:08 | |
and a troubled youth, which made its mark on him as man and as artist. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:13 | |
Beethoven was born in 1770, | 0:26:19 | 0:26:21 | |
and grew up here at what's now called the Beethoven Haus. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:26 | |
The infant Beethoven joined a musical family | 0:26:26 | 0:26:30 | |
in a very musical city. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:31 | |
His beloved grandfather was Kapellmeister, | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
resident composer at Bonn's court. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:36 | |
But he died when the boy was only three. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:41 | |
So, how happy a home was the Beethoven Haus? | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
This is it, is it? | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
Yeah. We believe this is the birth room, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
but in fact we are sure this is the bedroom of the parents. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:55 | |
-Right. -His father has been not so gifted as his grandfather. | 0:26:55 | 0:27:02 | |
This has perhaps been a problem. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
If you have a great father and a great son, | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
being in the middle of it's not very easy. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:10 | |
He had some problems with alcohol. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:14 | |
You would say Beethoven had a complex relationship | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
with his father? | 0:27:16 | 0:27:18 | |
Yes, it is certainly true. It's not a normal family. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
Beethoven's father had to train him on music, on keyboard, | 0:27:21 | 0:27:25 | |
on violin and Beethoven had to learn this, | 0:27:25 | 0:27:31 | |
and the method of the time is punishment... | 0:27:31 | 0:27:35 | |
Involved hitting him? | 0:27:35 | 0:27:37 | |
Yeah. For all children, not only for Beethoven. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:39 | |
Beethoven as a child, he doesn't seem to have been happy. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:43 | |
He played with his brothers. He played with other children, | 0:27:43 | 0:27:47 | |
but not very much. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:49 | |
He had to practise very much and he was very shy | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
because he didn't go to school a very long time | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
so he was very unsure of himself. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:59 | |
When Beethoven was ten, | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
his father took him out of school to concentrate on music. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:08 | |
He hired a teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who some believe | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
influenced not only Beethoven's music, but his political ideas. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
This is Bonn's Palace Chapel, the rather grand venue | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
where Neefe, who was court organist, taught the young Ludwig to play. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:27 | |
Beethoven played the viola, the piano and the organ, | 0:28:29 | 0:28:33 | |
all brilliantly, but he wasn't an infant prodigy as a composer. | 0:28:33 | 0:28:38 | |
He wasn't like the young Mozart, who by the age of ten | 0:28:38 | 0:28:41 | |
had knocked out a series of symphonies | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
and concertos and even an opera. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:46 | |
No, this was a boy who needed nurturing. | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
And Neefe was the man for the job. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:51 | |
He'd had problems with his own parents, | 0:28:51 | 0:28:54 | |
and he helped give the young boy a voice of his own, | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
both as a player and as a composer, | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
away from the influence of his father. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
And when at the age of 12 or 13, the boy said to his teacher, | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
"Look, I actually want to write some piano sonatas," | 0:29:07 | 0:29:10 | |
being a composer himself, he said, "Go for it," | 0:29:10 | 0:29:13 | |
and Beethoven did and we have, at the age of 13, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:16 | |
his first three piano sonatas, absolutely incredible. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
Neefe occasionally let Ludwig stand in for him | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
as court organist, playing here for Bonn's ruler, the elector. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
Neefe introduced him to the works of JS Bach, | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
who at the time was considered difficult, or was just unknown. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
And it wasn't only unorthodox music that interested Neefe. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:39 | |
He was a member of the Freemasons, of the Illuminati, | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
of something called the Reading Group, which were slightly secretive | 0:29:42 | 0:29:47 | |
groups of intelligent young men who were playing with ideas that | 0:29:47 | 0:29:51 | |
would make the owners of these sorts of palaces distinctly uncomfortable. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:56 | |
At the time the boy Ludwig was studying music with Neefe, | 0:29:58 | 0:30:03 | |
the enlightenment was sweeping Europe in all branches of the arts. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:08 | |
Literature, the theatre, music, philosophy and, for the first time, | 0:30:08 | 0:30:14 | |
the theory of the divine right of the monarchy was being questioned. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:19 | |
"Hang on a minute, these people don't have a divine right | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
"to be ruling over us." | 0:30:22 | 0:30:25 | |
And Neefe, a born revolutionary at heart, | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
he's bound to have just chatted to Ludwig and as a 12-year-old boy, | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
you're going to listen impressed, aren't you? | 0:30:31 | 0:30:34 | |
So I think Neefe was more than just a teacher for the young Ludwig - | 0:30:34 | 0:30:37 | |
he was a kind of guru. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:39 | |
This guru had no time for the Catholic Church, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:43 | |
but he was religious and also had faith that mankind | 0:30:43 | 0:30:46 | |
could create a better society. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:49 | |
It's possible to detect the influence of these views | 0:30:49 | 0:30:52 | |
in the second movement of his pupil's Fifth Symphony. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
THEY PLAY SECOND MOVEMENT | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
It's very gentle and lissom and in the other movements, | 0:31:17 | 0:31:23 | |
there's often incredible beauty and a softness. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
The other thing that is so new with Beethoven | 0:31:39 | 0:31:43 | |
and so sort of enticing about the Fifth Symphony | 0:31:43 | 0:31:48 | |
is the extraordinary kind of humanity of the man, | 0:31:48 | 0:31:53 | |
the humanity of his breadth of vision. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:55 | |
We don't know a lot about Beethoven's religious views. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:09 | |
One senses that he had religious views | 0:32:09 | 0:32:15 | |
that were optimistic. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:18 | |
And you get a kind of foretaste of that in this second movement | 0:32:28 | 0:32:33 | |
of the Fifth Symphony that it feels like a prayer. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
In contrast to the struggle and the strife of the first movement | 0:32:43 | 0:32:48 | |
that Beethoven is suggesting that in humanity, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
there is a capacity to perfect itself. | 0:32:52 | 0:32:56 | |
So that it's a prayer in that sense for a better soul, | 0:33:01 | 0:33:05 | |
a better human being. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
In his mission to express the real meaning of the Fifth Symphony, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:16 | |
John Eliot and his orchestra insist on using instruments | 0:33:16 | 0:33:19 | |
from Beethoven's time. | 0:33:19 | 0:33:22 | |
They were in transition between baroque and modern design, | 0:33:22 | 0:33:25 | |
and the musical experience is very different, | 0:33:25 | 0:33:28 | |
for the audience and the players. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:30 | |
I mean, of course one can play this music on a modern set-up, | 0:33:32 | 0:33:36 | |
but it produces a different type of ethos, doesn't it? | 0:33:36 | 0:33:41 | |
-Pete, can you show us? -It's a different sound. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
Yes, this is a lovely old Italian violin with all gut strings on, | 0:33:44 | 0:33:48 | |
including an original type of G-string and it's sort of... | 0:33:48 | 0:33:54 | |
There is a definite purity about that, which I find very attractive. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:09 | |
So everybody in the orchestra has these strings | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
and it changes the string sound tremendously, I think. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
It's more layered, isn't it? You get more different textures. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:18 | |
It's a different feel and a different sort of sensitivity | 0:34:18 | 0:34:21 | |
that's required. I have got here... | 0:34:21 | 0:34:23 | |
..exactly the same maker, | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
but this one has got modern strings on. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
They're sort of nylon, metal. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:32 | |
It's a completely different type of sound, | 0:34:42 | 0:34:44 | |
you have to play it in a different way. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:46 | |
It's more powerful, it's more fruity, | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
it's got more sheer density, hasn't it? | 0:34:48 | 0:34:52 | |
But that one... | 0:34:52 | 0:34:53 | |
..just go back to that, cos that has... | 0:34:55 | 0:34:57 | |
It's got a purer sort of... | 0:34:57 | 0:34:58 | |
The result is that you get a much more multi-layered strata of sounds, | 0:35:18 | 0:35:26 | |
not all kind of curdling and amalgamating | 0:35:26 | 0:35:28 | |
in the way that they do, | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
or they tend to do in a modern symphony orchestra. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:32 | |
That's the good news, | 0:35:35 | 0:35:36 | |
but playing on these instruments has its challenges too. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:39 | |
And a thing like this, | 0:35:43 | 0:35:44 | |
which hasn't altered much in structure or in shape | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
since Monteverdi's day and is only held together, what...? | 0:35:48 | 0:35:53 | |
By a block of wood and some cord holding the thing together. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:56 | |
There is no soldered bits or anything like that. | 0:35:56 | 0:35:58 | |
Not like a modern set-up. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:00 | |
It feels like it is going to come to pieces in your hands. | 0:36:00 | 0:36:02 | |
And the challenges are immense | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
because these instruments of Beethoven's | 0:36:09 | 0:36:11 | |
are hugely fragile and compromised. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:17 | |
If you push them too hard, they splinter, they crack, they squawk. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:21 | |
With these instruments, because of their fragility | 0:36:27 | 0:36:30 | |
and their technical fallibility, you have to push them to the nth degree. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:34 | |
I had a conversation with a friend of mine who runs a Formula One team | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
and he was saying that his ultimate Formula One car, | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
the moment it crosses that finish line, | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
it would fall to pieces. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:57 | |
You know, it couldn't go another metre and when we play this music | 0:36:57 | 0:37:01 | |
on these instruments, I feel we are the same. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:03 | |
I mean, this is... | 0:37:17 | 0:37:20 | |
This is indomitable, relentless, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:23 | |
unreasonable music and Beethoven seems to me | 0:37:23 | 0:37:26 | |
a very unreasonable man | 0:37:26 | 0:37:28 | |
who makes unreasonable demands of these instruments | 0:37:28 | 0:37:31 | |
and we couldn't give it any more on these. | 0:37:31 | 0:37:33 | |
This unreasonable, rebellious side developed | 0:37:58 | 0:38:02 | |
when Beethoven enrolled at Bonn University in 1789. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:05 | |
The French Revolution took place that very year | 0:38:08 | 0:38:10 | |
and the young Beethoven immersed himself in the radical ideas | 0:38:10 | 0:38:14 | |
that swept through the university. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:16 | |
Like students before and since, | 0:38:18 | 0:38:20 | |
Beethoven spent time in the town's taverns, | 0:38:20 | 0:38:22 | |
where his fellows debated philosophy and literature. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:26 | |
And, of course, tried to seduce young women. | 0:38:26 | 0:38:29 | |
This tavern's claim to fame is that it was here that the young Beethoven | 0:38:31 | 0:38:36 | |
danced with his first love, Barbe Koch. | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
It's a charming image, but from what we know about Beethoven, | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
not terribly likely, given that he was notoriously badly coordinated | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
and socially awkward, particularly around women. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
Light-hearted flirtation was not really his thing, | 0:38:51 | 0:38:54 | |
more unrequited anguish. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:56 | |
But his personality perfectly suited | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
the prevailing arts movement of the time, | 0:38:59 | 0:39:02 | |
Sturm und Drang, Storm and Strife. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:06 | |
You couldn't get more Sturm and Drang | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
than the German playwright Friedrich Schiller | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
and he would have a lasting influence on Beethoven | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
and his Fifth Symphony. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
Danke schoen. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:18 | |
Beethoven went to see a production of Schiller's The Robbers | 0:39:19 | 0:39:23 | |
here in Bonn. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:24 | |
This was an epic melodrama which featured a hero who was a student, | 0:39:24 | 0:39:29 | |
a revolutionary who decided to rebel against what he saw as | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
the hypocrisy of class and religion and economic inequality in Germany. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:39 | |
You can imagine Beethoven was a fan, but it was more than that. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:43 | |
When the play premiered at Mannheim in 1782, an eyewitness wrote, | 0:39:43 | 0:39:48 | |
"The theatre was like a madhouse with people rolling their eyes | 0:39:48 | 0:39:51 | |
"and clenching their fists and outcries from the audience. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:55 | |
"Strangers fell with sobs into each other's arms, | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
"women became unconscious and had to leave the theatre. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
"It was a general uproar, a chaos." | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
That was the effect that real art could have on an audience. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
This is not entertainment for people, | 0:40:13 | 0:40:15 | |
this is a form of experience, of drama, | 0:40:15 | 0:40:19 | |
of perhaps, at that time, almost unparalleled power and strength. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:24 | |
I think that gives Beethoven a vision of what an artist | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
can do with an audience. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:29 | |
I can't prove it, but the relationship of how audiences felt | 0:40:30 | 0:40:34 | |
about Schiller's The Robbers in about 1780 or 1790 or so | 0:40:34 | 0:40:39 | |
and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is unmistakable. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:43 | |
Beethoven remained less lucky in love than music, | 0:40:43 | 0:40:47 | |
but he never stopped believing in the possibility of romance. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
Beethoven's history with women is not a hugely successful story. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:57 | |
We know for sure that he proposed marriage three times | 0:40:57 | 0:41:00 | |
to three different women. We know he was turned down each time. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
Some experts believe Beethoven may have died a reluctant virgin | 0:41:04 | 0:41:09 | |
and it's very possible that he channelled his unrequited passion | 0:41:09 | 0:41:13 | |
into his music, or into his politics, or perhaps both. | 0:41:13 | 0:41:17 | |
Until the revolution, Beethoven's own compositions | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
had been rather conservative, | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
but after it, he began to take more risks, | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
writing more challenging works. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
Some of them were overtly political | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
and one of these feeds directly into the Fifth Symphony. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:36 | |
# Wer, wer ist ein freier Mann...? # | 0:41:36 | 0:41:41 | |
In 1792, Beethoven set The Free Man, a poem by Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel, | 0:41:41 | 0:41:48 | |
to music. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:49 | |
# Wer ist ein freier Mann? | 0:41:51 | 0:41:54 | |
# Ein freier, freier Mann? # | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
This is the first published edition | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
of the score of some early Beethoven compositions, | 0:42:00 | 0:42:04 | |
including Der Freie Mann, | 0:42:04 | 0:42:07 | |
a definition of what makes a free man | 0:42:07 | 0:42:11 | |
and, really, it's a description of Beethoven himself. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:15 | |
The words go like this: "Wer ist ein freier Mann?" - | 0:42:15 | 0:42:19 | |
"Who is a free man? | 0:42:19 | 0:42:21 | |
"One who, enclosed within himself, can set at naught the venal favour | 0:42:21 | 0:42:27 | |
"of great and small alike - he is a free man." | 0:42:27 | 0:42:33 | |
It's pretty heady stuff, | 0:42:33 | 0:42:34 | |
but this wasn't just some youthful folly on Beethoven's part. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:38 | |
The opening bars of Der Freie Mann are identical | 0:42:38 | 0:42:43 | |
to the opening of the fourth movement of the Fifth Symphony, | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
also set in C major. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
# Wer ist ein freier Mann...? # | 0:42:48 | 0:42:53 | |
Beethoven first introduces this musical motif of freedom achieved | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
in the second movement of his Fifth Symphony. | 0:42:57 | 0:43:00 | |
# Ein freier, freier Mann. # | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
Der Freie Mann dates from many years earlier | 0:43:08 | 0:43:12 | |
and surely prefigures the Fifth | 0:43:12 | 0:43:16 | |
in a certain, at least embryonic, but nevertheless significant way. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:21 | |
Already here... | 0:43:21 | 0:43:22 | |
..is the rising triadic idea which has some parallel | 0:43:27 | 0:43:33 | |
already in that early song The Free Man. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:37 | |
THEY PLAY SECOND MOVEMENT | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
Even though he's hinting at the C Major of the triumph | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
that's going to eventually come in the last movement, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:13 | |
the eclat triomphal to which we're all moving towards, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:19 | |
it's a foretaste and yet it's aborted. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
No sooner have they arrived at that chord than it disappears, | 0:44:29 | 0:44:34 | |
it's sort of like a puff of smoke, it's gone into the ether. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
So one could say that the goal of the symphony - freedom - | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
has not yet been reached. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:52 | |
In 1792, Beethoven left Bonn for good. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
The ambitious 22-year-old was keen to make his musical mark, | 0:45:03 | 0:45:08 | |
so he moved to Vienna, the Austrian capital, | 0:45:08 | 0:45:10 | |
where he would write the Fifth Symphony in 1807. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
By this time, the revolution that Beethoven supported | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
was spreading across Europe | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
and it made his trip a troubled one. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:23 | |
Beethoven was travelling through the middle of a war. | 0:45:25 | 0:45:28 | |
France was trying to export the revolution, | 0:45:28 | 0:45:31 | |
with which he sympathised, | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
into the country where he wanted to live and work. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:36 | |
French troops, many of them marching to the Marseillaise, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
were advancing into Germany and towards Austria, | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
and defending troops were massing in the Rhineland. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:48 | |
Beethoven records in his diary that he had to tip his driver one thaler | 0:45:48 | 0:45:53 | |
because, "The fellow drove us at the risk of a whipping | 0:45:53 | 0:45:56 | |
"right through the Hessian lines," which were the German troops, | 0:45:56 | 0:45:59 | |
"going like crazy." | 0:45:59 | 0:46:01 | |
There are calmer ways to do the journey. | 0:46:02 | 0:46:04 | |
It would be surprising if Beethoven didn't have mixed feelings | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
as French troops threatened the city of his childhood | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
and it was becoming harder for him to support the realities | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
of the Revolution in France. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:18 | |
Events there were taking a much darker turn. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:23 | |
In 1793, just four years after the fall of the Bastille, | 0:46:23 | 0:46:27 | |
the ruling National Convention declared | 0:46:27 | 0:46:29 | |
that counter-revolutionaries would be executed. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:33 | |
King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, | 0:46:33 | 0:46:35 | |
were arrested and held captive. | 0:46:35 | 0:46:38 | |
And they weren't the only ones. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:41 | |
This grim-looking building is La Conciergerie, | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
used by the National Convention as a prison. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
With no artificial light, | 0:46:48 | 0:46:49 | |
this must have been an even more forbidding and gloomy place. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:54 | |
Enemies of the Revolution were imprisoned here... | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
..before being dispatched by a specially invented new machine, | 0:47:05 | 0:47:09 | |
the guillotine. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:11 | |
At the time, the Convention, | 0:47:11 | 0:47:13 | |
who were ruling France in the name of the people, | 0:47:13 | 0:47:15 | |
congratulated itself on this humane form of execution. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
On January 21st, 1793, the deposed king himself, Louis XVI, | 0:47:20 | 0:47:26 | |
was executed, publicly, and humanely. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:30 | |
And this is the chapel where his queen, Marie Antoinette, | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
prayed whilst imprisoned and awaiting her fate. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
This is the original floor and this is the exact spot where she knelt. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:51 | |
On October 16th, 1793, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
Marie Antoinette was dispatched to the guillotine. | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
And when the blade descended, the crowd shouted, "Vive La Nation!" | 0:47:59 | 0:48:05 | |
During the two-year Reign of Terror, | 0:48:07 | 0:48:09 | |
more than 2,700 people appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal | 0:48:09 | 0:48:14 | |
in La Conciergerie's grand chamber. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:17 | |
The condemned prisoners were held in batches in that compound, | 0:48:19 | 0:48:23 | |
behind those gates, | 0:48:23 | 0:48:25 | |
and their relatives were allowed to come in and say a last goodbye. | 0:48:25 | 0:48:29 | |
The Revolution had begun to devour its own children, | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
and Schiller and the English poets publicly recanted, | 0:48:35 | 0:48:40 | |
and Coleridge even called for the restoration of the Ancien Regime. | 0:48:40 | 0:48:45 | |
Beethoven was as horrified as anyone else by the excesses | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
thrown up by the French Revolution, | 0:48:48 | 0:48:50 | |
but he didn't lose faith with the ideals and the principals behind it. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:55 | |
Vienna in 1793 was an unlikely setting to write a symphony | 0:49:02 | 0:49:07 | |
supporting the ideals of the French Revolution. | 0:49:07 | 0:49:10 | |
It was the capital of the centuries-old European dynastic power, | 0:49:13 | 0:49:18 | |
the Habsburg Empire, which was a major force in a military coalition | 0:49:18 | 0:49:22 | |
battling the French armies. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:24 | |
Viennese society was under threat, yet the paranoid upper classes | 0:49:28 | 0:49:32 | |
distracted themselves with fun and frivolity. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
I suspect Beethoven would have seen plenty to disapprove of here, | 0:49:37 | 0:49:42 | |
but he also had very good reasons | 0:49:42 | 0:49:44 | |
to keep such political views to himself. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:46 | |
In a letter from August 1794, Beethoven wrote, | 0:49:53 | 0:49:57 | |
"I believe that as long as an Austrian can get his brown ale | 0:49:57 | 0:50:00 | |
"and his little sausages, he is not likely to revolt." | 0:50:00 | 0:50:03 | |
But he added ominously, | 0:50:05 | 0:50:07 | |
"People say that the gates leading to the suburbs | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
"are to be closed at 10pm. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:11 | |
"The soldiers have loaded their muskets with ball. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:15 | |
"You dare not raise your voice here | 0:50:15 | 0:50:16 | |
"or the police will take you into custody." | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
Austria seemed a bit like a police state. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:23 | |
So, why did the Austrians react so strongly to the events in France? | 0:50:26 | 0:50:30 | |
There was these family connections | 0:50:30 | 0:50:32 | |
between the French and the Austrian monarchy, | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
Marie Antoinette being an Austrian princess. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:39 | |
Right, so it was coming straight home? | 0:50:39 | 0:50:41 | |
And so, it was really coming straight home | 0:50:41 | 0:50:43 | |
and hitting the Habsburg family. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
Did they clamp down on any sort of radical thinking? | 0:50:46 | 0:50:52 | |
The police was reorganised and much more centralised. | 0:50:52 | 0:50:56 | |
The idea was to involve as many people as possible | 0:50:56 | 0:51:01 | |
in spying on as many people as possible. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
Do you think Beethoven would have been an obvious suspect? | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
I think he would have been a kind of an obvious target. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:13 | |
One can easily understand why he himself | 0:51:13 | 0:51:18 | |
tried to keep a low profile in his writings. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:22 | |
They would open letters, read letters. | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
I think he was quite aware of that | 0:51:25 | 0:51:27 | |
and probably kept also here a rather low profile. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:32 | |
The letters have jokes in them, but there's nothing dangerous there. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:36 | |
I think, you know, it's quite likely that they were | 0:51:36 | 0:51:39 | |
-watching him as they were watching a lot of people. -So we don't know? | 0:51:39 | 0:51:44 | |
But we have very good reasons to guess. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:46 | |
It turns out that the police definitely kept files | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
about Beethoven from 1815 to 1821. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:55 | |
This makes it very likely that they would have kept an eye on him | 0:51:55 | 0:51:59 | |
well before that. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:00 | |
So it's not surprising that Beethoven's letter of 1794 | 0:52:01 | 0:52:05 | |
about police arrests is his last mention of politics for a long time. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:09 | |
The glamorous city did have its dark side | 0:52:11 | 0:52:13 | |
and Beethoven clearly felt sufficiently under surveillance | 0:52:13 | 0:52:17 | |
to be careful with what he said. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:19 | |
And the bulk of what he really thought and felt | 0:52:19 | 0:52:23 | |
I think he kept for his music. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:24 | |
And Vienna was the only place to be | 0:52:38 | 0:52:40 | |
for an ambitious young composer like Beethoven. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:43 | |
It was home to the two musical giants of the age, | 0:52:43 | 0:52:46 | |
the men who Beethoven aimed to match: | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who'd died here in 1791, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
and Joseph Haydn, still alive, | 0:52:53 | 0:52:55 | |
and the composer of over 100 symphonies. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:58 | |
Beethoven never held a paid post within the Imperial Court, | 0:53:00 | 0:53:03 | |
the centre of the city's music making. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:05 | |
Instead, he carved out a pioneering place | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
as a freelance composer and musician. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:11 | |
So without having a salaried position, | 0:53:13 | 0:53:17 | |
Beethoven needed to find an alternative source of income | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
while he composed. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:21 | |
Fortunately, there were plenty of opportunities | 0:53:21 | 0:53:24 | |
for the ambitious musician to gain patronage from Vienna's aristocrats. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:29 | |
Unfortunately, Beethoven had very mixed feelings | 0:53:32 | 0:53:34 | |
about being dependent on the upper classes. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
And he had a patchy record with the Viennese rules of social etiquette. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:43 | |
One upper-class lady noted sniffily | 0:53:43 | 0:53:45 | |
that while Haydn would arrive "most carefully attired", | 0:53:45 | 0:53:49 | |
Beethoven came "negligently dressed | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
"in the freer fashion of the Upper Rhine" - | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
in other words, scruffy. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
Tell me where we are. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
This is the town palace of Prince Lobkowitz and his wife. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:05 | |
Concerts were the main purpose of this room, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:08 | |
because they had a private concert every week. | 0:54:08 | 0:54:12 | |
-That's him, is it? -Yeah, yeah. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
The young and very ambitious nobility of the time, | 0:54:15 | 0:54:20 | |
they wanted, really... There was a fun factor to it. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:24 | |
They invested in a guy who did good music, | 0:54:24 | 0:54:27 | |
it was like the rock concerts of the time. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:32 | |
I mean, you had brilliant new music, a very bizarre style - | 0:54:32 | 0:54:37 | |
they were really lifted up by this kind of new experience. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:43 | |
About 80% of his compositions are dedicated to noblemen. | 0:54:43 | 0:54:48 | |
And it's because he was very into, um... | 0:54:48 | 0:54:55 | |
-Um... -Being paid? | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
..being paid and he networked very, very well | 0:54:57 | 0:55:01 | |
and he was working very hard on that. | 0:55:01 | 0:55:03 | |
Do you think he found that annoying? | 0:55:03 | 0:55:05 | |
That he needed patrons? | 0:55:05 | 0:55:07 | |
What I think is that it was too much for him. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:11 | |
For example, his relationship with another patron, | 0:55:11 | 0:55:13 | |
Prince Lichnowsky, who wanted him to eat with him. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
Well, regularly at four o'clock in the afternoon, yes, we know that. | 0:55:19 | 0:55:23 | |
And he sometimes refused that. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:25 | |
He was older than Beethoven, about 17 years older. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:29 | |
-Yes, he looks grander. -Yes, he was already a patron of Mozart. | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
I mean, he allowed Beethoven in his house, | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
but he was with all the other servants at the beginning, | 0:55:35 | 0:55:38 | |
he was in not very agreeable rooms, and then he... | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
-He became his equal through his own talent? -Yes. | 0:55:42 | 0:55:46 | |
Then they would dine once in a while together. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:50 | |
And then the situation changed again, | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
that Beethoven sometimes said, "Oh, no, please, | 0:55:53 | 0:55:55 | |
"I just can't deal with it any more." | 0:55:55 | 0:55:57 | |
So, Beethoven can't do small talk, he doesn't dress properly, | 0:55:57 | 0:56:00 | |
he doesn't turn up to dinner when you ask him. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:03 | |
Why did everyone put up with him? | 0:56:03 | 0:56:04 | |
Because he was a brilliant composer. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
They just loved his music. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:08 | |
I'm getting a clear picture of a man whose attitude to Viennese society | 0:56:11 | 0:56:15 | |
was complex and conflicted. | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
On the one hand, he was genuinely fond of his patrons, | 0:56:18 | 0:56:22 | |
but on the other, he was a meritocrat | 0:56:22 | 0:56:24 | |
working in an aristocratic system. | 0:56:24 | 0:56:27 | |
He famously wrote to Prince Lichnowsky: | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
"what you are, you are by accident of birth. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:34 | |
"What I am, I am by myself. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
"There are, and will be, a thousand princes. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
"There is only one Beethoven." | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
Is this just egotistical, | 0:56:43 | 0:56:45 | |
or is this evidence of the old, firebrand radical | 0:56:45 | 0:56:49 | |
still in there somewhere? | 0:56:49 | 0:56:50 | |
But his patrons' generosity paid for Beethoven to compose | 0:56:53 | 0:56:57 | |
and by the early 1800s, | 0:56:57 | 0:56:59 | |
he had written concertos, sonatas and his first two symphonies. | 0:56:59 | 0:57:03 | |
To boost his income, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:04 | |
Beethoven taught piano to young upper-class women. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:08 | |
There was something of a love-hate relationship here too. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
He hated teaching, but he needed the money. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
One can imagine in that confined situation, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:18 | |
sitting next to a young attractive woman, and that's where most often | 0:57:18 | 0:57:22 | |
he fell in love and, of course, he fell in love frequently. | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
One failed infatuation led to Beethoven's famous piano piece, | 0:57:28 | 0:57:32 | |
the Moonlight Sonata. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:34 | |
MUSIC: Moonlight Sonata | 0:57:34 | 0:57:37 | |
Indeed, his finest work often arose from personal crisis. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
In 1802 came the most devastating of all: | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
Beethoven accepted that his hearing loss was probably untreatable. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:49 | |
He would go deaf. | 0:57:49 | 0:57:51 | |
Many believe this is "fate knocking at the door", | 0:57:51 | 0:57:53 | |
the secret behind the four-note motif at the Fifth Symphony's heart. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:57 | |
But not everyone agrees. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:01 | |
He sits down at his table in this cottage, | 0:58:01 | 0:58:04 | |
I imagine with a carafe of red wine there, | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
knocks it back to give himself strength | 0:58:07 | 0:58:09 | |
and writes his last will and testament. | 0:58:09 | 0:58:12 | |
And I imagine him staring at the paper before he writes the words. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:16 | |
He writes, "Ich bin taub" - "I am deaf." | 0:58:16 | 0:58:21 | |
And he stares at those words | 0:58:21 | 0:58:22 | |
and I imagine they were leaping out at him. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:25 | |
More wine and he's admitted it to himself for the first time, | 0:58:25 | 0:58:29 | |
and so we have the famous Heiligenstadt Testament. | 0:58:29 | 0:58:33 | |
He's confronted his deafness by writing those three little words | 0:58:33 | 0:58:37 | |
and by confronting it, he's overcome it, he's beaten it | 0:58:37 | 0:58:41 | |
and he never looks back. | 0:58:41 | 0:58:42 | |
If this is right, then it seems unlikely that the Fifth | 0:58:45 | 0:58:48 | |
is merely Beethoven railing against his deafness - | 0:58:48 | 0:58:51 | |
he has already in some way come to terms with it. | 0:58:51 | 0:58:54 | |
So began what's known as Beethoven's "heroic period", | 0:58:55 | 0:58:59 | |
where the composer produced masterpiece after masterpiece, | 0:58:59 | 0:59:02 | |
the Fifth Symphony among them. | 0:59:02 | 0:59:05 | |
The outlines of many of these great works | 0:59:05 | 0:59:07 | |
can be found in one of Beethoven's musical sketchbooks, | 0:59:07 | 0:59:10 | |
called Landsberg 6. | 0:59:10 | 0:59:13 | |
This definitive edition has been put together by Professor Lewis Lockwood | 0:59:13 | 0:59:17 | |
and his colleague, Alan Gosman. | 0:59:17 | 0:59:19 | |
Now, what's in this sketchbook? | 0:59:21 | 0:59:22 | |
All the sketches for all the works | 0:59:22 | 0:59:24 | |
from very late in 1802 to the beginning of 1804. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:30 | |
Now, very late in 1802 is only a couple of months after | 0:59:30 | 0:59:33 | |
the Heiligenstadt Crisis. | 0:59:33 | 0:59:35 | |
The sketchbook reveals that Beethoven has already decided | 0:59:35 | 0:59:39 | |
on the Cherubini-inspired motif. | 0:59:39 | 0:59:41 | |
On the next page and significantly marked "symphonia", | 0:59:42 | 0:59:46 | |
so he writes them a note to say, "This is what I'm writing, | 0:59:46 | 0:59:49 | |
"I'm writing a symphony now," | 0:59:49 | 0:59:51 | |
and we find the first idea for the first movement of the Fifth Symphony | 0:59:51 | 0:59:56 | |
in what appears to be a fairly developed form | 0:59:56 | 1:00:01 | |
for the basic themes of the exposition, | 1:00:01 | 1:00:03 | |
-the first theme... -HE HUMS OPENING NOTES | 1:00:03 | 1:00:06 | |
..continuing and then the second contrasting theme, | 1:00:06 | 1:00:10 | |
-second subject... -HE HUMS NOTES | 1:00:10 | 1:00:14 | |
..et cetera. | 1:00:14 | 1:00:15 | |
The rest is not clear yet, | 1:00:15 | 1:00:17 | |
but we have the beginning of the first movement, basic ideas, | 1:00:17 | 1:00:22 | |
and then some scattered ideas for what might come next. | 1:00:22 | 1:00:25 | |
And Beethoven sketched a rough version | 1:00:26 | 1:00:29 | |
of the beginning of the third movement, the scherzo. | 1:00:29 | 1:00:32 | |
At the bottom of the page, | 1:00:32 | 1:00:34 | |
late in the sketchbook, we find some interesting new material | 1:00:34 | 1:00:38 | |
which turns out to be a primordial version of the scherzo | 1:00:38 | 1:00:41 | |
of the Fifth Symphony. | 1:00:41 | 1:00:44 | |
And that continues on the next page, | 1:00:45 | 1:00:47 | |
where the trio of that scherzo in primitive form is present. | 1:00:47 | 1:00:51 | |
We have a sort of scherzo trio idea pretty well formed. | 1:00:52 | 1:00:56 | |
Now, the third movement in a symphony | 1:00:57 | 1:00:59 | |
is normally something light - | 1:00:59 | 1:01:02 | |
a dance, a minuet, something relaxed, jolly. | 1:01:02 | 1:01:05 | |
But Beethoven had other ideas. | 1:01:05 | 1:01:08 | |
THIRD MOVEMENT IS PLAYED | 1:01:08 | 1:01:11 | |
It starts off very unconventionally as a lyrical, | 1:01:26 | 1:01:29 | |
slightly ambling figure in the cellos and basses | 1:01:29 | 1:01:32 | |
and that is just a preamble to the opening rhythm, the motto, | 1:01:32 | 1:01:37 | |
that's been there right from the start of the first movement, | 1:01:37 | 1:01:40 | |
but now given in slow, whole notes by the horns. | 1:01:40 | 1:01:44 | |
And it's such a vigorous tramp of music, | 1:02:01 | 1:02:07 | |
as though Beethoven is saying, "This is how it's going to be. | 1:02:07 | 1:02:10 | |
"This is what I really believe in." | 1:02:10 | 1:02:12 | |
And it really does feel as though humanity is on the march again here. | 1:02:15 | 1:02:18 | |
And then he does something quite extraordinary. | 1:02:34 | 1:02:37 | |
In the place of a trio - the trio is usually the kind of contrast | 1:02:37 | 1:02:40 | |
to the minuet in a Mozart or Haydn symphony - | 1:02:40 | 1:02:43 | |
he goes completely berserk, totally berserk. | 1:02:43 | 1:02:46 | |
He sets off the cellos and basses and violas. | 1:02:46 | 1:02:50 | |
HE HUMS NOTES RAPIDLY | 1:02:50 | 1:02:52 | |
And you think, "What on earth is going on here?" | 1:02:58 | 1:03:00 | |
It's as though this inexorable march of the troops going into battle | 1:03:06 | 1:03:12 | |
has suddenly been diverted by a few complete hooligans | 1:03:12 | 1:03:16 | |
who are dashing off into the undergrowth saying, | 1:03:16 | 1:03:18 | |
"No, no, no, we're not going on this route, | 1:03:18 | 1:03:20 | |
"we're going somewhere completely different." | 1:03:20 | 1:03:22 | |
It's a kind of distraction | 1:03:42 | 1:03:44 | |
and then you go back to the security of the march tune. | 1:03:44 | 1:03:48 | |
Here in the third movement, it's everybody coming together, | 1:04:07 | 1:04:11 | |
as though asserting that there is an end | 1:04:11 | 1:04:14 | |
to this long march of the symphony | 1:04:14 | 1:04:16 | |
and there will be something of a conclusion. | 1:04:16 | 1:04:20 | |
Who knows at that stage what it's going to be? | 1:04:20 | 1:04:23 | |
So the scherzo seems to be revolutionary | 1:04:40 | 1:04:42 | |
in more than just musical form. | 1:04:42 | 1:04:44 | |
Maybe Cherubini's motif here is a reminder | 1:04:44 | 1:04:47 | |
that the fight for the rights of man continued, | 1:04:47 | 1:04:50 | |
as did Beethoven's own struggles in repressive Vienna. | 1:04:50 | 1:04:53 | |
Despite the personal risks, in the late 1790s, he attended the salons | 1:04:54 | 1:04:59 | |
of the French ambassador, mixing with radicals and French musicians. | 1:04:59 | 1:05:04 | |
It's most likely here that Beethoven was first introduced | 1:05:04 | 1:05:07 | |
to the work of Cherubini and other revolutionary composers. | 1:05:07 | 1:05:11 | |
France and its republican ideals seem to have been very much | 1:05:12 | 1:05:16 | |
on Beethoven's mind in the early 1800s, too. | 1:05:16 | 1:05:20 | |
The Landsberg 6 sketchbook also contains | 1:05:20 | 1:05:23 | |
the first outlines of his only opera, Fidelio, | 1:05:23 | 1:05:26 | |
that was inspired by the fall of the Bastille prison in 1789. | 1:05:26 | 1:05:31 | |
Beethoven also wrote very detailed sketches for his third symphony, | 1:05:33 | 1:05:36 | |
the Eroica - the "heroic" symphony. | 1:05:36 | 1:05:39 | |
MUSIC: Symphony No. 3 | 1:05:39 | 1:05:42 | |
It was originally named directly after this man - Napoleon Bonaparte. | 1:05:42 | 1:05:47 | |
As a young general, Napoleon had masterminded | 1:05:47 | 1:05:50 | |
the French Revolutionary Army's military success across Europe, | 1:05:50 | 1:05:53 | |
sweeping away old regimes | 1:05:53 | 1:05:55 | |
in the name of liberty, equality and brotherhood. | 1:05:55 | 1:05:58 | |
Napoleon symbolised the triumph of the individual, | 1:06:00 | 1:06:04 | |
the obscure Corsican who came from nowhere | 1:06:04 | 1:06:06 | |
in an incredibly short period of time | 1:06:06 | 1:06:09 | |
to make himself the most important man in Europe. | 1:06:09 | 1:06:13 | |
There's obviously a degree of self-identification with Beethoven. | 1:06:13 | 1:06:16 | |
They were both self-made men, they were the same age, | 1:06:16 | 1:06:20 | |
they were even the same height. | 1:06:20 | 1:06:22 | |
But the important thing for Beethoven, | 1:06:22 | 1:06:24 | |
as with so many others at the time, | 1:06:24 | 1:06:26 | |
was that Napoleon was the new standard bearer | 1:06:26 | 1:06:30 | |
for the ideals of the Revolution. | 1:06:30 | 1:06:32 | |
But for many across Europe, | 1:06:33 | 1:06:35 | |
Napoleon was becoming a parody of all he was supposed to believe in. | 1:06:35 | 1:06:39 | |
In England, caricaturists began developing the satirical stereotype | 1:06:39 | 1:06:43 | |
of Bonaparte that has lasted up to this day. | 1:06:43 | 1:06:46 | |
And the caricaturists' main line of attack | 1:06:47 | 1:06:50 | |
is that Napoleon is very small. | 1:06:50 | 1:06:53 | |
Yes. In fact, he wasn't very small. | 1:06:53 | 1:06:55 | |
He was 5'6", which is a perfectly decent height, | 1:06:55 | 1:06:59 | |
average height for a Frenchman at the time. | 1:06:59 | 1:07:03 | |
But if you show him as very small, | 1:07:03 | 1:07:04 | |
then we don't have to be that frightened of him. | 1:07:04 | 1:07:07 | |
You also show him as evil, so we have to fight him. | 1:07:07 | 1:07:10 | |
-Small, evil person. -Small, evil person who we can overthrow, yep. | 1:07:10 | 1:07:14 | |
-So he became known as "Little Boney"? -"Little Boney", yeah. | 1:07:14 | 1:07:17 | |
And there he is. And who is this? | 1:07:17 | 1:07:18 | |
This is Marianne, the genius of France, | 1:07:18 | 1:07:21 | |
this horrible harridan, blood-soaked, of course, | 1:07:21 | 1:07:25 | |
and she is dangling him as a little child on her hand. | 1:07:25 | 1:07:28 | |
And these are... Again, he's very, very small, | 1:07:28 | 1:07:32 | |
-but these are reproduced on mugs. -These are on mugs. | 1:07:32 | 1:07:35 | |
These show what will happen if Napoleon did arrive in London | 1:07:35 | 1:07:39 | |
and he's standing outside the print shop, of course, | 1:07:39 | 1:07:43 | |
of Mr Fores in Piccadilly | 1:07:43 | 1:07:44 | |
and he's pointing to lots of prints of buildings in London | 1:07:44 | 1:07:48 | |
and he's pointing to the Bank of England | 1:07:48 | 1:07:50 | |
and saying, "Can I have that one?" | 1:07:50 | 1:07:52 | |
The huge volunteer soldier is saying, | 1:07:52 | 1:07:56 | |
-"No fear..." -"No." -"..off you go." | 1:07:56 | 1:07:58 | |
And he's at least double his size. | 1:07:58 | 1:08:01 | |
-There is no threat. -Of course, no threat. | 1:08:01 | 1:08:03 | |
Beethoven developed his own doubts. | 1:08:05 | 1:08:08 | |
As he became more powerful, | 1:08:08 | 1:08:09 | |
Napoleon had the royal Fontainebleau Palace refurbished | 1:08:09 | 1:08:14 | |
for his own personal use. | 1:08:14 | 1:08:15 | |
It's what they called, "La vie de chateau". | 1:08:17 | 1:08:21 | |
Quite agreeable, really. | 1:08:21 | 1:08:22 | |
In 1799, a coup made Napoleon France's First Consul. | 1:08:25 | 1:08:30 | |
Elections were suspended and he assumed near dictatorial powers. | 1:08:30 | 1:08:34 | |
Napoleon had this beautiful room redesigned, | 1:08:35 | 1:08:38 | |
after he had seamlessly taken over the king's old palace | 1:08:38 | 1:08:41 | |
and placed himself in it. | 1:08:41 | 1:08:43 | |
Beethoven, like many others at the time, | 1:08:43 | 1:08:45 | |
had a love-hate relationship with Napoleon, | 1:08:45 | 1:08:49 | |
wavering between admiration and disgust. | 1:08:49 | 1:08:53 | |
But he clung on to the hope that, somehow, the French leader | 1:08:55 | 1:08:58 | |
could make the ideals of the Revolution a reality. | 1:08:58 | 1:09:01 | |
In 1803, he planned on naming his third symphony | 1:09:02 | 1:09:05 | |
directly after Napoleon. | 1:09:05 | 1:09:07 | |
A friend of Beethoven's wrote, | 1:09:08 | 1:09:10 | |
"At the time, Beethoven held him in the highest esteem. | 1:09:10 | 1:09:13 | |
"I saw a copy of the score lying on his table - | 1:09:13 | 1:09:16 | |
"at the head of the title page was the word 'Bonaparte'." | 1:09:16 | 1:09:20 | |
But the final straw for Beethoven came | 1:09:23 | 1:09:25 | |
when Napoleon was crowned emperor in 1804. | 1:09:25 | 1:09:29 | |
All in the cause of revolutionary ideals, obviously... | 1:09:29 | 1:09:33 | |
Even at home at Fontainebleau, Napoleon liked to have a throne. | 1:09:36 | 1:09:41 | |
In the actual ceremony, Napoleon wasn't crowned by the Pope. | 1:09:41 | 1:09:44 | |
He took the crown from the Pope and put it on his own head. | 1:09:44 | 1:09:49 | |
And to rub salt into the wound, | 1:09:49 | 1:09:51 | |
as he did so, he swore an oath to liberty and equality. | 1:09:51 | 1:09:56 | |
It is said that when Beethoven heard this, | 1:09:56 | 1:09:58 | |
he flew into an absolute rage | 1:09:58 | 1:10:01 | |
and began a foul-mouthed rant about Napoleon. | 1:10:01 | 1:10:04 | |
Beethoven shouted, | 1:10:04 | 1:10:05 | |
"He will trample over all human rights to humour his ambition! | 1:10:05 | 1:10:09 | |
"He will place himself above all others and become a tyrant!" | 1:10:09 | 1:10:12 | |
And he also scribbled out Napoleon's name | 1:10:13 | 1:10:16 | |
from the cover of the front page | 1:10:16 | 1:10:18 | |
of the Third Symphony, and he scribbled so hard in his anger | 1:10:18 | 1:10:22 | |
that he went right through the paper. | 1:10:22 | 1:10:24 | |
Sometime later that year, Beethoven changed the name of the work | 1:10:30 | 1:10:34 | |
to Sinfonia Eroica, the "Heroic Symphony." | 1:10:34 | 1:10:37 | |
But he still dedicated it to the memory of a great man | 1:10:37 | 1:10:41 | |
and some believe that great man was still Napoleon. | 1:10:41 | 1:10:45 | |
It can't have been an easy time for Beethoven, | 1:10:47 | 1:10:49 | |
seeing his hopes for the French Revolution raised | 1:10:49 | 1:10:52 | |
and then disappointed for a second time. | 1:10:52 | 1:10:55 | |
So perhaps we can see this crisis of faith reflected | 1:10:56 | 1:11:00 | |
in the Fifth Symphony's scherzo. | 1:11:00 | 1:11:01 | |
Beethoven is in some eerie terrain here. | 1:11:17 | 1:11:19 | |
To me, it's like looking at an image in a cracked mirror. | 1:11:20 | 1:11:25 | |
The stopped sounds the horns are obliged to make | 1:11:39 | 1:11:42 | |
produce this very pinched and unearthly sound. | 1:11:42 | 1:11:47 | |
It's like a sort of stray bird of prey, a falcon or a crow | 1:11:56 | 1:12:02 | |
or a rook coming by and cawing... | 1:12:02 | 1:12:05 | |
..and it creates a sort of sensation of a barren landscape, | 1:12:08 | 1:12:12 | |
a God-forsaken landscape. | 1:12:12 | 1:12:14 | |
It seems that after Napoleon's coronation, | 1:12:18 | 1:12:21 | |
Beethoven lost faith in the disillusioning realities | 1:12:21 | 1:12:24 | |
of revolutionary politics. | 1:12:24 | 1:12:25 | |
So how is the Fifth Symphony, written four years later, | 1:12:28 | 1:12:31 | |
a political symphony in a wider sense? | 1:12:31 | 1:12:34 | |
A clue may lie in the later work of Beethoven's great intellectual idol, | 1:12:35 | 1:12:39 | |
Friedrich Schiller. | 1:12:39 | 1:12:40 | |
He felt that the French Revolution had failed | 1:12:42 | 1:12:45 | |
and he wrote dismissively, "A great moment has found a little people." | 1:12:45 | 1:12:51 | |
But he did think alternatively that art could be used | 1:12:51 | 1:12:54 | |
to enlighten humanity. | 1:12:54 | 1:12:56 | |
He called this the "aesthetic education of man". | 1:12:56 | 1:13:00 | |
This vision of moral character being improved by art, | 1:13:00 | 1:13:05 | |
including music, had a huge impact on Beethoven. | 1:13:05 | 1:13:08 | |
He ascribed strongly to the Schillerian idea of the artwork | 1:13:14 | 1:13:20 | |
which would embody a power to inspire | 1:13:20 | 1:13:26 | |
present and future generations, even through periods of repression. | 1:13:26 | 1:13:33 | |
And so we find, actually, that in Beethoven's career, | 1:13:33 | 1:13:36 | |
there's this Schillerian trend | 1:13:36 | 1:13:39 | |
whereby his tragic works very rarely end in a tragic mode - | 1:13:39 | 1:13:45 | |
rather, they posit an alternative to the dark forces. | 1:13:45 | 1:13:53 | |
And there's perhaps no single work that does that quite so powerfully | 1:13:53 | 1:13:58 | |
as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. | 1:13:58 | 1:14:00 | |
Schiller's theory had breathed new life into the ideals | 1:14:03 | 1:14:07 | |
that Beethoven had long held dear. | 1:14:07 | 1:14:09 | |
I think this may well be what Beethoven had in mind | 1:14:11 | 1:14:13 | |
when he finally sat down to write the Fifth Symphony | 1:14:13 | 1:14:16 | |
in the summer of 1807. | 1:14:16 | 1:14:18 | |
We've talked a lot about the historical context | 1:14:20 | 1:14:22 | |
of the Fifth Symphony, | 1:14:22 | 1:14:24 | |
about the motivation behind writing it, the influences on it. | 1:14:24 | 1:14:28 | |
But here we are, this is the location | 1:14:28 | 1:14:30 | |
where Beethoven actually sat down and wrote it. | 1:14:30 | 1:14:34 | |
This is the somewhat unlikely crucible of that extraordinary work. | 1:14:34 | 1:14:39 | |
The building is called the Pasqualati House, | 1:14:42 | 1:14:45 | |
after Beethoven's landlord. | 1:14:45 | 1:14:46 | |
This recreated apartment is beautifully clean now, | 1:14:53 | 1:14:57 | |
but that wasn't the case when Beethoven was writing here. | 1:14:57 | 1:15:01 | |
Then, it was heroically messy and filthy. | 1:15:01 | 1:15:05 | |
Beethoven was known for living in squalor. | 1:15:05 | 1:15:08 | |
The Baron de Tremont wrote after an 1809 visit, | 1:15:08 | 1:15:13 | |
"Picture to yourself the most disorderly | 1:15:13 | 1:15:16 | |
"and dirty place imaginable - | 1:15:16 | 1:15:18 | |
"an old grand piano, on which dust vied for place | 1:15:18 | 1:15:23 | |
"with various pieces of manuscript and engraved music | 1:15:23 | 1:15:26 | |
"and under the piano, I do not exaggerate, | 1:15:26 | 1:15:30 | |
"an unemptied chamber pot." | 1:15:30 | 1:15:32 | |
That's one period detail which the Pasqualati House | 1:15:35 | 1:15:38 | |
have chosen not to recreate. | 1:15:38 | 1:15:40 | |
Back in 1807, it wasn't just Beethoven's apartment | 1:15:45 | 1:15:48 | |
that was in a mess. There were personal problems, as well. | 1:15:48 | 1:15:52 | |
About the time he is writing his Fifth Symphony, | 1:15:54 | 1:15:56 | |
his private life is in turmoil - yet another failed love affair. | 1:15:56 | 1:16:00 | |
He'd fallen in love with a young pupil of his, | 1:16:00 | 1:16:02 | |
and her sister wrote back saying no. | 1:16:02 | 1:16:04 | |
And Beethoven's great patron in Vienna, Prince Lichnowsky, | 1:16:06 | 1:16:10 | |
said, "Ludwig, I've invited some French officers to dinner tonight - | 1:16:10 | 1:16:13 | |
"why don't you join us?" | 1:16:13 | 1:16:16 | |
Beethoven, he had seen Vienna invaded by the French. | 1:16:16 | 1:16:19 | |
The last thing he wanted to do, this great revolutionary | 1:16:19 | 1:16:22 | |
and freedom lover, was sit down to dinner with French officers. | 1:16:22 | 1:16:25 | |
And the conversation went around and one of the officers said... | 1:16:26 | 1:16:29 | |
-IN FRENCH ACCENT: -"I hear you are a very good pianist | 1:16:29 | 1:16:32 | |
"and composer, Herr Beethoven - will you give us a tune?" | 1:16:32 | 1:16:35 | |
Beethoven stood up and said, "I do not play for people like you," | 1:16:35 | 1:16:39 | |
stormed out into the night | 1:16:39 | 1:16:41 | |
and would not have anything more to do with Lichnowsky. | 1:16:41 | 1:16:45 | |
So it's probably not too surprising | 1:16:48 | 1:16:50 | |
that Beethoven was scrabbling for commissions in 1807. | 1:16:50 | 1:16:53 | |
This aristocrat said, "Look, I say, Herr Beethoven, | 1:16:55 | 1:16:57 | |
"you wouldn't write another symphony, would you? | 1:16:57 | 1:17:00 | |
"Perhaps even dedicate it to me. I'll pay you five hundred florins." | 1:17:00 | 1:17:04 | |
Beethoven actually said, "I'll do it". | 1:17:04 | 1:17:06 | |
Is it possible that the main motivation for Beethoven | 1:17:07 | 1:17:10 | |
writing his Fifth Symphony was simply to pay the rent? | 1:17:10 | 1:17:14 | |
I don't think so | 1:17:14 | 1:17:15 | |
and not when you look at this portrait which was painted | 1:17:15 | 1:17:18 | |
just after he had written the first sketches for the Fifth Symphony. | 1:17:18 | 1:17:22 | |
He's looking suitably Romantic and radical | 1:17:22 | 1:17:26 | |
and this was a time in Vienna when one author wrote, | 1:17:26 | 1:17:30 | |
"Simply to have sideburns meant that one was suspected of Jacobinism." | 1:17:30 | 1:17:36 | |
It's a pretty good pair of sideburns. | 1:17:36 | 1:17:39 | |
And he did keep the Cherubini-inspired first four notes | 1:17:39 | 1:17:43 | |
from those first sketches | 1:17:43 | 1:17:46 | |
and he kept the draft of the third movement. | 1:17:46 | 1:17:49 | |
In that sketchbook, Beethoven was vague | 1:17:55 | 1:17:57 | |
about the form that the Fifth Symphony's finale would take. | 1:17:57 | 1:18:01 | |
"Maybe some kind of march," he scribbled | 1:18:01 | 1:18:04 | |
and after the scherzo's gloomy conclusion, | 1:18:04 | 1:18:07 | |
a march it was, | 1:18:07 | 1:18:09 | |
one based on the music of the French Revolution | 1:18:09 | 1:18:12 | |
and containing another coded message. | 1:18:12 | 1:18:14 | |
There's a very hushed feeling, | 1:18:18 | 1:18:21 | |
as though something ominous is about to happen. | 1:18:21 | 1:18:24 | |
It's really that sort of the calm before the storm. | 1:18:24 | 1:18:27 | |
And eventually the timpani, the kettle drums, emerge from the gloom | 1:18:37 | 1:18:43 | |
with a crescendo and then the whole sky erupts with this blaze of sound | 1:18:43 | 1:18:48 | |
and you're into the last movement. | 1:18:48 | 1:18:50 | |
And he takes what seems to be | 1:19:08 | 1:19:11 | |
a fairly straightforward march of the French Revolution. | 1:19:11 | 1:19:14 | |
He then, in typical Beethoven fashion, | 1:19:14 | 1:19:17 | |
writes variations and elaborations of it. | 1:19:17 | 1:19:22 | |
Subversively and surreptitiously, | 1:19:22 | 1:19:26 | |
he introduces a new theme | 1:19:26 | 1:19:28 | |
-which turns... -HE HUMS NEW THEME | 1:19:28 | 1:19:34 | |
And thanks to dear old Mr Schmitz back in the 1920s, | 1:19:35 | 1:19:38 | |
we can pinpoint the origins of that | 1:19:38 | 1:19:41 | |
and it's Mr Rouget de Lisle, Hymne Dithyrambique. | 1:19:41 | 1:19:45 | |
Rouget de Lisle was the French revolutionary composer | 1:19:45 | 1:19:48 | |
who composed the La Marseillaise and, sure enough, it's... | 1:19:48 | 1:19:51 | |
-HE SINGS: -# Chantons la liberte, la liberte. # | 1:19:51 | 1:19:54 | |
During his rehearsals for the Fifth Symphony, | 1:19:55 | 1:19:58 | |
John Eliot showed us what this revolutionary song sounds like. | 1:19:58 | 1:20:03 | |
# Chantons la liberte | 1:20:03 | 1:20:07 | |
# Couronnons sa statue | 1:20:07 | 1:20:11 | |
# Comme un nouveau Titan | 1:20:11 | 1:20:15 | |
# Le crime est foudroye... # | 1:20:15 | 1:20:19 | |
If you listen carefully, in the last movement of the Fifth Symphony, | 1:20:21 | 1:20:25 | |
this is what you hear... | 1:20:25 | 1:20:27 | |
THEY PLAY FOURTH MOVEMENT | 1:20:28 | 1:20:30 | |
THEY PLAY MELODY SIMILAR TO "HYMNE DITHYRAMBIQUE" | 1:20:30 | 1:20:33 | |
So there you have a completely impossible statement, | 1:20:38 | 1:20:43 | |
a paean to liberty, to freedom, in repressive Vienna. | 1:20:43 | 1:20:49 | |
That gets submerged in so many conventional performances. | 1:21:02 | 1:21:06 | |
I think it's really crucial that the audience clocks that, | 1:21:09 | 1:21:12 | |
that they register it. | 1:21:12 | 1:21:14 | |
We had a political tract in the opening movement | 1:21:24 | 1:21:27 | |
all about the rights of man | 1:21:27 | 1:21:29 | |
and here we have liberty. | 1:21:29 | 1:21:31 | |
So Beethoven is doing two of the great | 1:21:40 | 1:21:45 | |
three-motto symbols of the French Revolution. | 1:21:45 | 1:21:49 | |
But could it just be coincidence that Beethoven uses this theme? | 1:21:53 | 1:21:57 | |
How do we know that the musical reference to Rouget de Lisle | 1:21:57 | 1:22:00 | |
is deliberate? | 1:22:00 | 1:22:01 | |
John Eliot believes that the proof lies | 1:22:03 | 1:22:05 | |
in Beethoven's handwritten score for the Fifth Symphony. | 1:22:05 | 1:22:08 | |
It's extraordinarily moving looking at this facsimile | 1:22:11 | 1:22:14 | |
of Beethoven's score of the Fifth Symphony | 1:22:14 | 1:22:15 | |
because, on the face of it, it's anarchic, it's completely zany. | 1:22:15 | 1:22:23 | |
It's like a sort of force-ten gale going through a forest of bamboos | 1:22:23 | 1:22:28 | |
with all these crossings out and things leaning forward | 1:22:28 | 1:22:32 | |
and we're right in the thick of the last movement | 1:22:32 | 1:22:35 | |
and here, for the first time, | 1:22:35 | 1:22:38 | |
Beethoven insinuates through the textures | 1:22:38 | 1:22:42 | |
this little quotation from Rouget de Lisle's Hymne Dithyrambique, | 1:22:42 | 1:22:48 | |
with the critical words "freedom", "la liberte". | 1:22:48 | 1:22:52 | |
-HE SINGS: -# "La liberte, la liberte. # | 1:22:52 | 1:22:56 | |
It stands out very, very clearly | 1:22:56 | 1:23:00 | |
in contrast to all this rather messy ornamentation | 1:23:00 | 1:23:04 | |
and elaboration and crossings out, | 1:23:04 | 1:23:06 | |
So it's as though they are like structural girders | 1:23:06 | 1:23:10 | |
that hold the whole fabric and the edifice of the building into place. | 1:23:10 | 1:23:15 | |
And from then onwards, it's a great sprint to the line, | 1:23:21 | 1:23:23 | |
it's a huge celebration of an individual quest for freedom, | 1:23:23 | 1:23:30 | |
but also the realisation of a political utopia. | 1:23:30 | 1:23:34 | |
He bought into the values of the French Revolution | 1:23:51 | 1:23:55 | |
at a time when those ideas were incendiary in Europe. | 1:23:55 | 1:23:59 | |
So he comes up with this brilliant, but extremely dangerous strategy, | 1:24:01 | 1:24:06 | |
of investing his abstract music | 1:24:06 | 1:24:09 | |
with deeply subversive political content. | 1:24:09 | 1:24:13 | |
So what was the public reaction at the premiere | 1:24:17 | 1:24:19 | |
to this musical call to arms? | 1:24:19 | 1:24:21 | |
Did it have the same revolutionary impact as Schiller's The Robbers, | 1:24:21 | 1:24:25 | |
as Beethoven may have hoped? | 1:24:25 | 1:24:27 | |
Back to Vienna's Theater an der Wien | 1:24:28 | 1:24:30 | |
to find out what happened on that evening in December 1808. | 1:24:30 | 1:24:35 | |
What do you think the audience thought of the Fifth? | 1:24:38 | 1:24:42 | |
They didn't like it. | 1:24:42 | 1:24:43 | |
We know that it was received well, as in friendly, you know? | 1:24:43 | 1:24:48 | |
They said it wasn't bad, but they were not enthusiastic about it. | 1:24:48 | 1:24:52 | |
-Right. -Also, later, we have accounts of Goethe, you know, the big poet, | 1:24:52 | 1:24:57 | |
who said "You know, it's nice, but it's too much. | 1:24:57 | 1:25:00 | |
"It's sort of a house breaking down." | 1:25:00 | 1:25:04 | |
So it's too loud, it's too much, it's over the top. | 1:25:04 | 1:25:07 | |
So people were not exactly happy about what they heard. | 1:25:07 | 1:25:12 | |
At the end of all that, how did Beethoven feel? | 1:25:12 | 1:25:14 | |
Was he disappointed or cross? Well, how cross was he? | 1:25:14 | 1:25:19 | |
Well, quite cross. I don't think he was very happy at all. | 1:25:19 | 1:25:22 | |
It was a few years before the Fifth began to be appreciated | 1:25:26 | 1:25:30 | |
in Central Europe, as the perfect example of Romantic individualism, | 1:25:30 | 1:25:34 | |
with the emphasis on Beethoven's personal struggle. | 1:25:34 | 1:25:37 | |
But the response at the premiere in Paris, | 1:25:39 | 1:25:41 | |
birthplace of the ideals of the Revolution, was very different. | 1:25:41 | 1:25:45 | |
The audience there recognised the musical references | 1:25:47 | 1:25:51 | |
and embraced the symphony wholeheartedly. | 1:25:51 | 1:25:54 | |
From then on, the Fifth became a firm favourite | 1:25:54 | 1:25:57 | |
with French audiences. | 1:25:57 | 1:25:59 | |
I think I'm with them and with John Eliot Gardiner | 1:25:59 | 1:26:03 | |
in seeing the ideals of the French Revolution | 1:26:03 | 1:26:06 | |
as intrinsic to the power, to the force, of the Fifth Symphony. | 1:26:06 | 1:26:10 | |
That was certainly the view of one listener | 1:26:10 | 1:26:12 | |
at that first Paris performance. | 1:26:12 | 1:26:15 | |
He was an old soldier, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, | 1:26:15 | 1:26:18 | |
and he listened to the piece and at the end of the finale, | 1:26:18 | 1:26:21 | |
he rose to his feet and shouted, "C'est l'Empereur! | 1:26:21 | 1:26:25 | |
"Vive l'Empereur!" | 1:26:25 | 1:26:27 | |
When you're actually performing it | 1:26:33 | 1:26:35 | |
you're caught up in his vision, | 1:26:35 | 1:26:39 | |
you're caught up with his hugely daring exposition of human capacity | 1:26:39 | 1:26:44 | |
to overcome the slings and arrows of fate. | 1:26:44 | 1:26:47 | |
And if you give it your all, as this orchestra does, | 1:26:55 | 1:26:59 | |
and as I try to do when performing this piece, | 1:26:59 | 1:27:02 | |
the rewards are immense, but you feel total identification | 1:27:02 | 1:27:08 | |
with the vision that actually is inspiring the piece | 1:27:08 | 1:27:12 | |
as it's unfolding. | 1:27:12 | 1:27:14 | |
He's moulding clay, musical clay in such a way that it can only create | 1:27:20 | 1:27:25 | |
a monument of extraordinary conviction | 1:27:25 | 1:27:29 | |
and that's really the secret | 1:27:29 | 1:27:31 | |
and that's the real substance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. | 1:27:31 | 1:27:35 |