Symphony No. 6 in F Major, “Pastoral,” Op. 68
1. Awakening of Cheerful Feelings upon Arrival in the Country – (Allegro ma non troppo)
2. Scene by the Brook – (Andante molto mosso)
3. Merry Gathering of Country Folk – (Allegro) 
4. Thunderstorm – (Allegro)
5. Shepherd’s Song.  Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm – (Allegretto)

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the “Pastoral,” is filled with charm and gratefulness, the light of the sun through summer leaves, and the grace and quietude of nature observed.  When one regards Beethoven, with all his scowling portraits and the allusions to monumental struggle in his Fifth Symphony, hearing his Sixth comes as a complete surprise.  

As with his Fifth, the Sixth’s essence had been germinating in Beethoven’s head for many years.  His busy city life in Vienna was increasingly counterbalanced by long sojourns to its parks and out into the countryside, and especially in the lovely town of Heiligenstadt, where in the summer of 1808 he escaped to finish the Pastoral.  As he wrote to a friend, “No one can love the country as much as I do.  For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.”  The composer, now truly suffering from his increasing deafness and dissatisfaction with human nature, found joy in the purity of nature and captured it in the expression he knew best – music.

Beethoven himself chose the name for his Sixth, as the “Pastoral,” as well as each of the movement’s subtitles, and together they suggest a “program,” or narrative series of scenes which the Symphony will depict.  As such, the Pastoral is regarded as one of the first successful “programmatic” symphonies in the Classical repertoire – a fundamental structure that would soon dominate symphonic writing in the Romantic era.  But in 1808, Beethoven cautioned against pictorial precision.  In the brief, and rare, program note that he provided for its premiere, Beethoven called the Pastoral “… more of a matter of feeling than of painting in sounds… no picture, but something in which the emotions are expressed that are aroused by the pleasures of the country.”  His subtitles evoke, in a metaphysical way, the psychological essence of what being in nature meant to him, honoring nature’s “music” with his own.  Even so, Beethoven does indeed provide a few obvious, and delightful, musical representations in the Symphony.  The result is Beethoven at his happiest and most tenderhearted.

The methods of expression that Beethoven generally focused on, though, were quietness, repetition, and a relaxed pace (or, as musicologist Donald Tovey called, “lazy”).  One can hear this marvelously in the first movement, Awakening of Cheerful Feelings…, where the mood is exquisitely peaceful, and in which Beethoven seems to blissfully luxuriate in the simple repetition of themes – one such little five-note descending motive is repeated 80 times.  And the harmonic pace of the movement is also on holiday – for example, near the middle of the movement, the key (Bb) lollygags for some 50 measures before Beethoven moves to a new key (of D).  All of this contentment-in-your bones nurtures us, calms us, and brings us into nature’s realm.  And this will be the spirit pervading the whole Symphony.  

The second movement, Scene by the Brook, contains some especially lovely naturalistic representations.  The first can be heard beginning in the opening measures – a slow and sauntering triplet figure is played by the second violins, violas, and cellos representing Beethoven’s flowing brook.  The brook gathers a little speed as Beethoven doubles the triplet’s rhythm.  Most lovely, here, is the melody in the first violins above the burbling of the lower strings – as if the sojourning Beethoven is simply basking in the natural delights.  It’s some of the sweetest music in the entire Symphony.  And just before the end, some delightful imitations of birdsong arrive in an unlikely little quartet.  The birds themselves are identified by Beethoven in the conductor’s score: a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo are played by the flute, oboe, and two clarinets, respectively.

The third movement, Merry Gathering of Country Folk, is Beethoven at his most witty.  Beethoven’s friend, Anton Schindler, remembered something Beethoven had observed:

“Beethoven asked me if I had noticed how village musicians often played in their sleep, occasionally letting their instruments fall and keeping quite still, and then waking up with a start, getting in a few vigorous blows or strokes at a venture, although usually in the right key, before dropping to sleep again.”

It’s likely that Beethoven is making musical jokes at the musician’s expense here.  Although the Gathering begins in a relaxed way, quite soon the instruments start getting a little out-of-hand in volume – making “Merry” indeed.  Shortly, at about one minute into the movement, this friskiness leads to some overzealous French horn heralding, and it’s a gloriously fun moment.  Perhaps Beethoven was having the horns wake up the bassoonist, for as the next section immediately begins with a chirpy little tune in the oboe, the sleepy bassoon apparently can only manage two different pitches in accompaniment.

The fourth movement, Thunderstorm, is another of the famous musical representations in this Symphony.  It’s a marvelous moment, too, crafted as a kind of “Meanwhile, as the band is engaged in their frivolity, a storm is brewing on the horizon.”  Without a break, the country musical scene cuts to pianissimo (very quiet) tremolos (quickly repeated bow strokes creating a shimmering effect) in the basses, evoking the electricity that’s quivering in the atmosphere.  The storm builds up rather quickly.  To capture it, Beethoven uses thunderous timpani, squealing piccolo, and as the storm passes directly overhead of the now shelter-seeking Country Folk, a blistering climax that adds in the trombones in a colossally thunderstruck and dissonant set of chords.

As the storm gradually subsides, Beethoven creates one of the loveliest moments in any of his symphonies.  Out of the shivering tremolos arise the oboes, then, without any pause, the final movement, Shepherd’s Song.  Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm, musically opens up through the winds, then horns, and then the strings, like the breaking of the clouds and the glow of the sun spilling through the storm clouds and across the earth.  The Symphony ends in this happy radiance with a beautiful hymn-like theme, and as essayist Basil Lam astutely observed, it’s Beethoven’s thanks to “… the Creator …, not for ending the storm, but for the glory of Nature, of which the storm is a part.”