World Premiere: April 5, 1803
Most Recent HSO Performance: January 11, 2009
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass
Duration: 32'

In the summer of 1802, Beethoven’s physician ordered him to leave Vienna and take rooms in Heiligenstadt, today a friendly suburb at the northern terminus of the city’s subway system, but two centuries ago a quiet village with a view of the Danube across the river’s rich flood plain. It was three years earlier, in 1799, that Beethoven first noticed a disturbing ringing and buzzing in his ears, and he sought medical attention for the problem soon after. He tried numerous cures for his malady, as well as for his chronic colic, including oil of almonds, hot and cold baths, soaking in the Danube, pills and herbs. For a short time, he even considered the modish treatment of electric shock. On the advice of his latest doctor, Beethoven left the noisy city for the quiet countryside with the assurance that the lack of stimulation would be beneficial to his hearing and his general health.

In Heiligenstadt, Beethoven virtually lived the life of a hermit, seeing only his doctor and a young student named Ferdinand Ries. In 1802, Beethoven was still a full decade from being totally deaf. The acuity of his hearing varied from day to day (sometimes governed by his interest — or lack thereof — in the surrounding conversation), but he had largely lost his ability to hear soft sounds by that time, and loud noises caused him pain. Of one of their walks in the country, Ries reported, “I called his attention to a shepherd who was piping very agreeably in the woods on a flute made of a twig of elder. For half an hour, Beethoven could hear nothing, and though I assured him that it was the same with me (which was not the case), he became extremely quiet and morose. When he occasionally seemed to be merry, it was generally to the extreme of boisterousness; but this happens seldom.” In addition to the distress over his health, Beethoven was also wounded in 1802 by the wreck of an affair of the heart. He had proposed marriage to Giulietta Guicciardi (the thought of Beethoven as a husband threatens the moorings of one’s presence of mind!), but had been denied permission by the girl’s father for the then perfectly valid reason that the young composer was without rank, position or fortune. Faced with the extinction of a musician’s most precious faculty, fighting a constant digestive distress, and unsuccessful in love, it is little wonder that Beethoven was sorely vexed.

On October 6, 1802, following several months of wrestling with his misfortunes, Beethoven penned the most famous letter ever written by a musician — the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” Intended as a will written to his brothers (it was never sent, though he kept it in his papers to be found after his death), it is a cry of despair over his fate, perhaps a necessary and self-induced soul-cleansing in those pre-Freudian days. “O Providence — grant me at last but one day of pure joy — it is so long since real joy echoed in my heart,” he lamented. But — and this is the miracle — he not only poured his energy into self-pity, he also channeled it into music. “I shall grapple with fate; it shall never pull me down,” he resolved. The next five years were the most productive he ever knew. “I live only in my music,” Beethoven wrote, “and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start another.” Symphonies Nos. 2-5, a dozen piano sonatas, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Triple Concerto, Fidelio, and many songs, chamber works and keyboard compositions were all completed between 1802 and 1806. Of all these works, the Second Symphony is the one that most belies the difficult year of its birth.

The Symphony opens with a long introduction moving with a stately tread. The sonata form begins with the arrival of the fast tempo and the appearance of the main theme, a brisk melody first entrusted to the low strings. Characteristic Beethovenian energy dominates the transition to the second theme, a martial strain paraded by the winds. The development includes two large sections, one devoted to the main theme and its quick, flashing rhythmic figure, the other exploring the possibilities of the marching theme. The recapitulation compresses the earlier material to allow a lengthy coda to conclude the movement.

Professor Donald Tovey thought the Larghetto to be “one of the most luxurious slow movements in the world”; Sir George Grove commented on its “elegant, indolent beauty.” So lyrical is its principal theme that, by appending some appropriate words, Isaac Watts converted it into the hymn Kingdoms and Thrones to God Belong. The movement is in a full sonata form, with the first violins giving out the second theme above a rocking accompaniment in the bass.

Beethoven labeled the third movement “Scherzo,” the first appearance of this term in his symphonies, though the comparable movement of the First Symphony was a true scherzo in all but name. Faster in tempo and more boisterous in spirit than the minuet traditionally found in earlier symphonies, the scherzo became an integral part not only of Beethoven’s later works, but also of those of most 19th-century composers. A rising three-note fragment runs through much of the scherzo proper, while the central trio gives prominence to the oboes and a delightful walking-bass counterpoint in the bassoons.

The finale continues the bubbling high spirits of the scherzo. Formally a hybrid of sonata and rondo, it possesses a wit and structure indebted to Haydn, but a dynamism that is Beethoven’s alone. The long coda intensifies the bursting exuberance of the music, and carries it along to the closing pages of the movement.

©2021 Dr. Richard E. Rodda