Symphony no. 7 in A Major, op. 92 Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven’s grand Seventh Symphony bears a dedication to Count Moritz von Fries, one the master’s most loyal Viennese patrons. But its date of composition (1812) and the circumstances of its first performance link the work, albeit indirectly, to that most powerful of political figures, Napoleon Bonaparte.
The premiere performance of the Seventh Symphony took place on December 8, 1813 as part of a concert at the University of Vienna for the benefit of casualties from the Battle of Hanau, where Austrian and Bavarian troops attempted to halt Napoleon’s retreat from his defeat at Leipzig. The concert, which had been arranged by Mälzel, the inventor of the metronome, was a gala affair. Among the members of the festive orchestra were some of Vienna’s most prominent musicians, including Antonio Salieri, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Louis Spohr, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and the celebrated bassist Domenico Dragonetti. Most of the large audience, which included a shy young musician by the name of Franz Schubert, eagerly anticipated hearing the first public performance, not so much of the Seventh Symphony, but of the fully orchestrated version of a work originally composed for a mechanical instrument called the panharmonicon—a patriotic pièce d’occasion by Beethoven entitled “Wellington’s Victory.”
The Seventh Symphony did not go unnoticed or unappreciated, however, although the critical acclaim for it seems to have devolved mainly upon the second movement, the Allegretto, which was encored at the premiere. The rest of the work only later found wide acceptance. A story is told describing how the deaf Beethoven behaved while “directing” of the coda of the first movement, a passage that features one of his most dramatic and exciting crescendos. The composer encouraged the orchestra to play as softly as possible at the start of this passage by crouching beneath his music stand. As the music grew in volume, he raised himself higher and higher until the climax, at which point he leapt wildly in the air. It was this very passage that led his contemporary, Carl Maria von Weber, to write that Beethoven was “ripe for the madhouse.”
Hector Berlioz called the first movement of the Seventh Symphony a peasant dance (“ronde des paysans”), but the most celebrated characterization of this work comes from the pen of Richard Wagner, who in his essay “The Artwork of the Future” dubbed it “the apotheosis of the dance.” Both Berlioz and Wagner clearly were responding to the work’s inexhaustible rhythmic energy and drive. The first movement opens with an immense and harmonically adventuresome introduction that prepares the way for a Vivace dominated by a persistent dotted-note figure that permeates virtually every measure. Listeners are always thrilled by the stunning high horn parts. The Allegretto’s immediate popularity is understandable, as it is an extremely appealing and hypnotic piece. One of its most arresting features also is a rhythmic figure—this time based on a dactyl (long-short-short) reminiscent of the Renaissance dance known as the Pavane. The scherzo, a Presto in F Major is surprising in that it is the only movement of the work that is not cast in either A Major or Minor. As is the case in the Fourth Symphony, this scherzo is in five parts, in which the contrasting trio section comes around two times. Another noteworthy feature of this movement is the reduced dynamic level at which Beethoven presents the second hearing of the scherzo. The finale may have been inspired by the Irish folk melody, “Nora Creina,” a setting of which Beethoven produced for George Thompson of Edinburgh around the same time he was composing this symphony. Some of Beethoven’s most explosive moments may be found here, at one point calling for the rarely used dynamic marking of triple forte.
Program Note by David B. Levy