Beethoven's symphonies revolutionised the form, and all nine will be performed at the NCH, writes Eileen Battersby
By the early to mid-18th century orchestral music, most often used in the form of overtures for operas, was beginning to assume another shape, that of the symphony. Joseph Haydn, as often called the father of the symphony as of the string quartet, composed more than 100 symphonies, while the tragically short-lived Mozart would write about 50.
These works by Haydn and Mozart usually lasted between 25 and 30 minutes in performance, and the symphony as a form was established.
Yet, it was with the next generation, beginning with the achievement of Beethoven, that the large-scale symphony was to evolve, expand and acquire compositional complexity.
It was Beethoven, the other-worldly and volatile genius - destined to die while a thunderstorm raged over Vienna - who would engage all the instruments with a new, radical totality that was as inspiring as it was demanding.
With John O'Conor approaching the completion of his performance of Beethoven's piano sonata cycle at the National Concert Hall, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, under German-born conductor Gerhard Markson, begins another artistic journey, that of Beethoven's revolutionary encounter with the symphonic form.
All of his nine symphonies will be performed over five days at the National Concert Hall, culminating in that most majestic of achievements, his triumphant Ninth, the Choral Symphony, featuring the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir.
This month marks the 200th anniversary of the death of German dramatist and poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), whose Ode to Joy so inspired Beethoven and this, his final symphony. Completed early in 1824, the Ninth Symphony was also first performed in May of that year. So the timing of this week's performances is perfect, honouring Schiller and the symphony's premiere.
Each of the symphonies, individually and collectively, offer an odyssey shaped by beauty, emotion, idealism and, increasingly, mounting despair. By 1800 Beethoven was 30, a famous piano virtuoso with a reputation for being difficult who had composed his first symphony and was by then, a marked man.
Some four years earlier, around 1796, he had detected some difficulty with his hearing. As the new century began, he realised that what he had thought was an illness was actually a deteriorating condition.
There would be no cure. He retreated from society. Conversation became impossible. Yet he could still rely on his supreme musician's inner ear and was capable of "hearing" music by looking at its written form.
In 1802, while staying at an inn in a village outside Vienna, he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament. It was a form of will in which he informed his two brothers of his grief at the deafness which he felt would cost him his life.
Yet, as he would several times, he triumphed over his depression to create art in the face of loss. His Symphony No 2 was completed that same year.
Within months he was deaf but had also moved into his heroic phase which would produce during the summer of 1803 his Third Symphony, the Eroica.
Initially it was named Bonaparte in tribute to Napoleon, who had captured the musician's imagination. Ever the idealist, Beethoven, who, for all his personal isolation, was politically engaged, hailed the Corsican as a revolutionary leader. When Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven was outraged. For him it was an act of betrayal. Disillusioned and reactive, he immediately changed the symphony's title.
ASIDE FROM THE political relevance of all of this, in musical terms the symphony represented a major benchmark for Beethoven the composer. He had placed the symphonic form within the full complexities of Romanticism, most specially German Romanticism. Eroica, with its cluster of recurring motifs, lasts some 45 minutes and redefined the nature of the symphonic form. It also confirmed that he had become, most emphatically, a 19th-century revolutionary innovator. Evolving in tandem with his symphonies was his dramatic and thematic treatment of the string quartet, which he would place increasingly on the concert platform, away from its more traditional, intimate drawingroom setting.
Symphony No 4 (1806) is, admittedly, relatively orthodox if seriously underrated - consider the Adagio - but the Fifth defiantly resumed the revolutionary demeanour of the Eroica. Its famous opening five-bar motif hints at that element of menace and darkness that makes Beethoven so compelling. Here is an artist pitching darkness against light.
Only after an intense confrontation has been experienced can the light return. This theme is brilliantly developed in Symphony No 6, The Pastoral, a Wordsworthian achievement which explores the contrasting moods of nature as understood by Beethoven, who loved the countryside. Sunshine and pleasure are obliterated by storm, and upheaval is followed by resolution. Both No 5 and No 6 were composed in 1808 and premiered together at Christmas that year.
Again, Symphonies No 7 and No 8 were written around the same time, in 1812. Whereas the weightily heroic Seventh reflects the turmoil caused by Napoleon's rampage across Europe as well as Beethoven's personal distress with yet another doomed romance, the Eight, often rather disparagingly referred to as "the little symphony", is lively and even wittier than No 4.
ALL OF WHICH sets the scene for the grandeur of Symphony No 9, the work that Wagner would claim was his greatest inspiration.
During the winter of 1823-24, Beethoven, then only three years from death, returned to an idea he had been pondering since 1793 - setting Schiller's famous poem, An die Freude (Ode to Joy) to music. The poet, who had died in 1805 aged 46, had settled in the artistic enclave of Weimar, where he had been a close friend of Goethe. Schiller's themes of political, personal and moral freedom versus responsibility preoccupied Beethoven.
As for the Ninth Symphony, it could be seen as the definitive, most cohesive statement of the form, intimidating and inspiring subsequent composers, from Brahms to Wagner and Mahler. At over an hour long, the Ninth has four movements that are diverse and capable of standing alone. The opening movement, the Allegro, takes the listener captive, and the second barely releases the pressure while, in the gentle third movement, the Adagio, Beethoven achieves a spirituality that eases the soul and also expresses the essence of Romanticism. The finale initially appears to echo the earlier sequences before setting the scene for the soloists and chorus to enter with the bass opening seven minutes into the piece intoning An die Freude. Sheer energy and intoxicating bombast supplant the initial beauty.
This is music at its most lyric, its most literary, and, ultimately most rousingly triumphant - hence its being highjacked as an expression of European nationalism through its use as the anthem of the EU. It is a work best experienced in a live concert. There is also a visual dimension. The Choral Symphony shares the vision of another great German romantic artist, painter Caspar David Friedrich. Think of paintings such as Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1818/1824), Deep in a Moonlit Forest (c.1823/1830) and, most eerily of all, Snow-Covered Hut, painted in 1827, the year of Beethoven's death - all part of the magnificent recent visiting exhibition, A German Dream, at the National gallery.
Too deaf to conduct his symphony of many moods, Beethoven sat in the audience on the night it premiered. Sunk low in his seat - his habitual brooding posture - he could not hear the thunderous applause.
Beethovenfest at the NCH, with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under conductor Gerhard Markson, opens Mon May 9 at 8pm with the First, Second and Fifth Symphonies. Tue: the Fourth and Third (the Eroica). Wed: Music from Egmont and the Sixth (the Pastoral). Thur: the Eighth and Seventh. Friday and Sunday: the Ninth (the Choral), with Franzita Whelan, soprano; Ann Murray, mezzo-soprano; Peter Hoare, tenor; Markus Brück, bass; the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir; Mark Duley, chorus master; Gerhard Markson, conductor.
John O'Conor's closing recital in the Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle takes place on Mon, May 23, at the NCH.
Booking 01-4170000. www.nch.ie