Few pieces of music have had a less auspicious introduction than Ludwig van Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. This hybrid work – part improvisation, part concerto with chorus and soloists – concluded an all-Beethoven concert that took place on a cold December night in Vienna in 1808. In addition to the Choral Fantasy, the four-hour program featured premieres of both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, as well as the Piano Concerto No. 4. To make matters worse, the musicians were under-rehearsed; stories abound regarding Beethoven’s sarcastic, short-tempered harangues aimed at the orchestra as they prepared. By the end of the night, when Beethoven finally launched into the Choral Fantasy’s opening notes, the audience had had enough; some had already left. Beethoven’s student and biographer, Ferdinand Ries, who attended the performance, noted, “I, no more than the extremely kind and gentle Prince [Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven’s patrons, with whom Ries was sitting], whose box was in the first tier very near the stage, on which the orchestra with Beethoven conducting were quite close to us, would not have thought of leaving the box before the end of the concert, although several faulty performances tried our patience to the utmost.”
Beethoven composed the Choral Fantasy expressly for the finale of the December 22 concert. He wanted to sum up, musically, all that the audience had previously heard; hence the concerto/chorus/symphonic character of the Choral Fantasy. One wonders that Beethoven did not reconsider the wisdom of programming so much music on one concert, particularly since the Choral Fantasy in particular “simply fell apart,” in the words of one audience member. Perhaps fortunately for Beethoven, his growing deafness probably shielded him from the most egregious mistakes.
The pianist begins alone; at the premiere, Beethoven improvised his part. After an extensive solo, which Beethoven later notated so as to convey the feeling of an extemporaneous performance, the orchestra enters and a theme remarkably similar to the “Ode to Joy” melody of the Ninth Symphony emerges. This familiar tune comes from Gegenliebe (Mutual Love), a song Beethoven composed in 1795. A series of ever-more-elaborate variations follows, and the Fantasy concludes with a chorus and soloists declaiming the gifts of art, which bestow “love and strength and divine grace” upon all humanity.
© Elizabeth Schwartz.