In May 1809, Napoleon’s troops attacked the city of Vienna. Throughout the following summer, the city shook with mortar fire. Ludwig van Beethoven, whose hearing was by this time severely impaired, suffered both the stress of living under attack and constant painful assaults on his ears. In July, Beethoven wrote his publisher, “Since May 4th I have produced very little coherent work, at most a fragment here and there. The whole course of events has in my case affected both body and soul … What a destructive, disorderly life I see and hear around me: nothing but drums, cannons, and human misery in every form.” On the night of May 11, Napoleon, having reached Vienna’s suburbs, launched a relentless barrage of firepower into the city that lasted for hours. Terrified, Beethoven hid in his brother Caspar’s cellar, his head buried in pillows.
The physical and mental trauma of living under these conditions prevented Beethoven from working for most of that summer, although he did eventually manage to resume composing. By the end of 1809, Beethoven had completed three piano sonatas, including the “Farewell,” along with his fifth piano concerto, arguably the most popular piano concerto he or anyone has ever written.
It is not clear how the nickname “Emperor” came to be associated with Piano Concerto No. 5; although there is an apocryphal story about a French officer who, upon hearing the work performed in Vienna in 1812, exclaimed, “C’est l’Empereur!” If the emperor in question refers to Napoleon, Beethoven, severely traumatized by Napoleon’s continuous bombardment of Vienna, would have certainly disapproved.
By this point in his career, Beethoven’s penchant for innovation in the opening measures of his concertos had become a signature, and the Fifth is no exception. After an introductory orchestral chord, the piano enters with a cadenza. Cadenzas, unaccompanied virtuoso passages filled with scales and trills created from fragments of thematic material, usually appear at the close of a movement. By beginning the concerto with a cadenza full of musical foreshadowing, Beethoven telegraphs the Allegro’s themes and ideas to the listener. This “preview” gives listeners a sense of inevitability, as if the music could unfold in no other way. The semi-subversive cadenza is a subliminal suggestion that plants the basic elements of later themes in our ears without our noticing.
In the Adagio un poco mosso, listeners may recognize the opening notes of Leonard Bernstein’s song “Somewhere” from West Side Story (As Pablo Picasso famously said, “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.”). We can picture Beethoven, surrounded by aural and emotional chaos, escaping from the turmoil of his surroundings into an ethereal other-worldly realm. Beethoven comes back to reality (i.e., the third movement) with an ingenious device: the whole orchestra drops down a half-step, from B to B-flat, and sustains that note while the piano storms into the Rondo. Piano and orchestra execute a series of variations on this theme, each more elaborate than the next. The playful, humorous aspects of Beethoven’s personality reveal themselves here in the “false ending,” abrupt key changes, and generally buoyant mood throughout.
Johann Philipp Christian Schulz gave the premiere with pianist Friedrich Schneider and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig on November 28, 1811 (by this time, Beethoven was too deaf to perform in public). In its review, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that “[the audience] could hardly content itself with the ordinary expressions of recognition” in their excitement at hearing Beethoven’s greatest and, though no one knew it at the time, final piano concerto.
© Elizabeth Schwartz
Elizabeth Schwartz is a writer and music historian based in the Portland area. She has been a program annotator for more than 20 years, and works with music festivals and ensembles around the country. Ms. Schwartz has also contributed to NPR’s “Performance Today,” (now heard on American Public Media). www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com
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