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Ludwig van Beethoven
Septet in E-flat major for Winds and Strings, Op. 20
  • Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn (likely born December 16)
  • Died March 26, 1827, in Vienna
  • Composed in 1799
  • First CMS performance on October 16, 1970, by clarinetist Gervase de Peyer, bassoonist Loren Glickman, hornist John Barrows, violinist Charles Treger, violist Walter Trampler, cellist Leslie Parnas, and double bassist Gary Karr
  • Duration: 40 minutes

In December of 1800, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a cheeky letter to his friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who had just opened a publishing house that would eventually come to be part of Edition Peters. The composer enclosed new works for Hoffmeister’s perusal, including a particularly original score: “A Septet for violin, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, horn, and bassoon—tutti obbligati (I cannot write anything non-obbligato for I came into this world with an obbligato accompaniment.)” His joke is a play on instrumental roles of the time. It had been common for composers to write optional wind parts, which could be taken by strings if needed or left out entirely; a part marked obbligato (meaning “obligatory”) was truly essential. Beethoven was too invested in controlling the outcome of performances, and in the potential for specific instrumental sounds to interact with each other, to compose optional lines, and he credited the septet’s “frequent use of the three wind-instruments” as the main source of its success. The piece was indeed a huge hit, and its popularity lasted for the composer’s entire life. This eventually frustrated Beethoven to an extent that, according to his student and friend Carl Czerny, he “could not endure his septet and grew angry because of the universal applause with which it was received.”

Why did the piece come to conjure the composer’s scorn? Perhaps it was simply the disillusionment that comes with seeing anything become too popular. But he must have also felt uneasy with this reminder of his younger self. Many of the pieces that he published in the 1790s display vestiges of the random commissions and occasional music he wrote without opus numbers during that decade. In this septet, we can hear the Beethoven of his serious piano trios and sonatas and string quartets and symphonies, but it also contains hints of the playful young man who wrote mandolin sonatinas, dances for civic events, and outdoor wind band music. It may have been disarming for him to recognize that there is something in a less controlled combination of genres and musical functions that people then, and now for that matter, really want to hear.

The printed score to this piece, with its seven instruments, is highly symmetrical. The winds are on top, the supporting strings—double bass, cello, and viola—are on the bottom, and the violin sits right in the middle. For the entirety of the first movement, this visual centrality is matched by the actual distribution of musical roles. The violin bridges grand, orchestral statements in the opening Adagio with expressive, ornamental figuration, and proceeds to introduce all of the main themes of the exposition. When the winds reply with contrasting renditions of the tunes, they are organized more democratically; the bassoon often actively supports the clarinet’s lines and even gets a few solo gestures. The development section sees the timid emergence of other melodic voices, but the violin is still responsible for the bulk of the action.

The Adagio cantabile sees the clarinet take over, introducing a melody of aching simplicity, which the violin accompanies with flowing triplets. A transitional passage marked by wind solos follows, as well as a hymn-like secondary theme and a closing passage with heavy, yearning accents on the second beat of each measure. The solos of the cello and horn create an ethereal stasis in the development section before a lightly varied recapitulation of the first theme begins. When the transition gets going, Beethoven luxuriates on repeated, surprising harmonic turns instead of repeating the hymn-like tune, piercing us with the weight of these gestures before moving somewhere else. The violin is back in the limelight for the first minuet of the piece, though the cello is not ready to give up the freedom found in the second movement and insists on playing the tune at the end of the second repeated section. The contrasting trio becomes a vehicle for display in the clarinet and the horn, whose descending arpeggios are the first hunting calls we hear in the piece.

The fourth movement is a theme-and-variation set, which follows the general trend of diminutions: the harmonies move at the same pace in each section, but the speed of the notes on the surface increases. In the first variation, the viola gets a sassy, syncopated solo, and instead of repeating each half of the form, Beethoven has the cello play that solo back. The second variation features explosions of rapid notes for the violin, an impulse the bassoon and clarinet take up and turn into some brilliant, exposed counterpoint in the third. The fourth variation, marked by a minor-key horn solo, is given an understated agitation by the violin’s triplets, while the fifth variation cools the temperature considerably. This last rendition of the theme is extended into a coda, in which the group waffles between forte outbursts and timid releases. As in so many successful variation pieces, Beethoven lulls us into a sense of knowledge and security before embarking on his wildest twists and turns.

The horn call at the start of the Scherzo sets the mood for a raucous ride. It is proper outdoor hunting music, which sends the horses off on their brutal adventure at a gallop. In the trio, the cello sings a jolly aria, the sentiments of some aristocrat or other taking a break from the activities of the day. The horn also leads the suddenly operatic opening to the final movement, a melancholy funeral march. This is perhaps the serious part of the hunt, the knowledge that it all leads to a celebration of death. But the severity doesn’t last long; the violin comes in with a swinging tune above a continuo-like cello part. The Finale, like the first movement, is dominated by the fast and characterful fiddle part, which even includes a showy cadenza right before the recapitulation whose carefree virtuosity is likely one of the reasons this piece was so popular. 

The septet had quite a legacy. When the amateur clarinetist Count Ferdinand Troyer commissioned Franz Schubert to write a new chamber work for winds and strings in 1824, he requested that it be based on Beethoven’s model, and Schubert obliged with a massive, six-movement Octet in F major (D. 803). On the lighter side of things, Peter Schickele, under the pseudonym of P. D. Q. Bach, wrote a 1967 “Schleptet” in E-flat major, with movement titles like Menuetto con brio ma senza trio. One wonders if, after his frustrations with the enduring popularity of the Op. 20 septet, Beethoven would have been on board with Schickele’s parody, which lampoons many of the tropes that make concert works moving, silly, serious, and enduring.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Septet in E-flat major for Winds and Strings, Op. 20
  • Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn (likely born December 16)
  • Died March 26, 1827, in Vienna
  • Composed in 1799
  • First CMS performance on October 16, 1970, by clarinetist Gervase de Peyer, bassoonist Loren Glickman, hornist John Barrows, violinist Charles Treger, violist Walter Trampler, cellist Leslie Parnas, and double bassist Gary Karr
  • Duration: 40 minutes

In December of 1800, Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a cheeky letter to his friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who had just opened a publishing house that would eventually come to be part of Edition Peters. The composer enclosed new works for Hoffmeister’s perusal, including a particularly original score: “A Septet for violin, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, horn, and bassoon—tutti obbligati (I cannot write anything non-obbligato for I came into this world with an obbligato accompaniment.)” His joke is a play on instrumental roles of the time. It had been common for composers to write optional wind parts, which could be taken by strings if needed or left out entirely; a part marked obbligato (meaning “obligatory”) was truly essential. Beethoven was too invested in controlling the outcome of performances, and in the potential for specific instrumental sounds to interact with each other, to compose optional lines, and he credited the septet’s “frequent use of the three wind-instruments” as the main source of its success. The piece was indeed a huge hit, and its popularity lasted for the composer’s entire life. This eventually frustrated Beethoven to an extent that, according to his student and friend Carl Czerny, he “could not endure his septet and grew angry because of the universal applause with which it was received.”

Why did the piece come to conjure the composer’s scorn? Perhaps it was simply the disillusionment that comes with seeing anything become too popular. But he must have also felt uneasy with this reminder of his younger self. Many of the pieces that he published in the 1790s display vestiges of the random commissions and occasional music he wrote without opus numbers during that decade. In this septet, we can hear the Beethoven of his serious piano trios and sonatas and string quartets and symphonies, but it also contains hints of the playful young man who wrote mandolin sonatinas, dances for civic events, and outdoor wind band music. It may have been disarming for him to recognize that there is something in a less controlled combination of genres and musical functions that people then, and now for that matter, really want to hear.

The printed score to this piece, with its seven instruments, is highly symmetrical. The winds are on top, the supporting strings—double bass, cello, and viola—are on the bottom, and the violin sits right in the middle. For the entirety of the first movement, this visual centrality is matched by the actual distribution of musical roles. The violin bridges grand, orchestral statements in the opening Adagio with expressive, ornamental figuration, and proceeds to introduce all of the main themes of the exposition. When the winds reply with contrasting renditions of the tunes, they are organized more democratically; the bassoon often actively supports the clarinet’s lines and even gets a few solo gestures. The development section sees the timid emergence of other melodic voices, but the violin is still responsible for the bulk of the action.

The Adagio cantabile sees the clarinet take over, introducing a melody of aching simplicity, which the violin accompanies with flowing triplets. A transitional passage marked by wind solos follows, as well as a hymn-like secondary theme and a closing passage with heavy, yearning accents on the second beat of each measure. The solos of the cello and horn create an ethereal stasis in the development section before a lightly varied recapitulation of the first theme begins. When the transition gets going, Beethoven luxuriates on repeated, surprising harmonic turns instead of repeating the hymn-like tune, piercing us with the weight of these gestures before moving somewhere else. The violin is back in the limelight for the first minuet of the piece, though the cello is not ready to give up the freedom found in the second movement and insists on playing the tune at the end of the second repeated section. The contrasting trio becomes a vehicle for display in the clarinet and the horn, whose descending arpeggios are the first hunting calls we hear in the piece.

The fourth movement is a theme-and-variation set, which follows the general trend of diminutions: the harmonies move at the same pace in each section, but the speed of the notes on the surface increases. In the first variation, the viola gets a sassy, syncopated solo, and instead of repeating each half of the form, Beethoven has the cello play that solo back. The second variation features explosions of rapid notes for the violin, an impulse the bassoon and clarinet take up and turn into some brilliant, exposed counterpoint in the third. The fourth variation, marked by a minor-key horn solo, is given an understated agitation by the violin’s triplets, while the fifth variation cools the temperature considerably. This last rendition of the theme is extended into a coda, in which the group waffles between forte outbursts and timid releases. As in so many successful variation pieces, Beethoven lulls us into a sense of knowledge and security before embarking on his wildest twists and turns.

The horn call at the start of the Scherzo sets the mood for a raucous ride. It is proper outdoor hunting music, which sends the horses off on their brutal adventure at a gallop. In the trio, the cello sings a jolly aria, the sentiments of some aristocrat or other taking a break from the activities of the day. The horn also leads the suddenly operatic opening to the final movement, a melancholy funeral march. This is perhaps the serious part of the hunt, the knowledge that it all leads to a celebration of death. But the severity doesn’t last long; the violin comes in with a swinging tune above a continuo-like cello part. The Finale, like the first movement, is dominated by the fast and characterful fiddle part, which even includes a showy cadenza right before the recapitulation whose carefree virtuosity is likely one of the reasons this piece was so popular. 

The septet had quite a legacy. When the amateur clarinetist Count Ferdinand Troyer commissioned Franz Schubert to write a new chamber work for winds and strings in 1824, he requested that it be based on Beethoven’s model, and Schubert obliged with a massive, six-movement Octet in F major (D. 803). On the lighter side of things, Peter Schickele, under the pseudonym of P. D. Q. Bach, wrote a 1967 “Schleptet” in E-flat major, with movement titles like Menuetto con brio ma senza trio. One wonders if, after his frustrations with the enduring popularity of the Op. 20 septet, Beethoven would have been on board with Schickele’s parody, which lampoons many of the tropes that make concert works moving, silly, serious, and enduring.