Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony

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I have always thought that the Pastoral Symphony in F Major (No6) is a very special piece of music, even for Beethoven.

One could dismiss this symphony as music from a bygone age, ostensibly depicting a rural idyll from a time when Beethoven’s Vienna of the first decade of the 19th Century was hardly aware of the industrial age that was being born in Britain at that time.

In the 20^th Century modern consciousness seemed to be primarily concerned with the urban and the industrial. But, in what is sometimes called the post-industrial age, there is a much wider understanding of our dependance upon a global eco-system that comprises all living things. Our modern conciousness is now imbued with a sense of anxiety about the damage we’re inflicting upon the natural world and a renewed sense of its wonder and fragility. Until we are superseded by intelligent machines or human-machine hybrids we should be more than happy to consider ourselves to be works of nature. That being so, this symphony celebrates one great man’s response to the fundamental nature of our being – that we are a part of the greatest miracle in the known Universe: the living Earth.

The symphony is in five movements, rather than the usual four and, uniquely for a Beethoven Symphony, has as a programme, although he was at pains to stress that the  symphony is “more the expression of feeling than of painting”. Beethoven described the five movements as follows:

1. Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country: When Beethoven’s rather fast tempo markings are followed this movement has a somewhat jaunty air. The music contains several short motifs that are continuously repeated and interwoven, conveying the sense of nature continually burgeoning and blossoming. The movement culminates in a deep sense of contentment.

2. Scene by the brook:Beethoven’s most beautiful orchestration and one of his most serene and sublimely joyful pieces.(in 2 parts on YouTube: Part1 & Part2)

3. Happy gathering of country folk: A scherzo, an energetic country dance, rather than a minuet; we are with ordinary folk rather than at court with the aristocracy.

4. Thunderstorm Storm: Depicting a storm of ferocious intensity, the music also convey’s a sense of awe, terror and exhilaration at the power of nature.

5.  Shepherds’ song; cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm: The song is a hymn of ever swelling joy and thanksgiving.

The transition from the fourth to the fifth movement, as the last rumbles of the receding storm fade away is magical. One can imagine the return from darkness and fear to the light as the sun comes out to reveal the world, refreshed by rain, glowing with renewed life. These few bars, featuring the oboes, seem to me to faintly echo the old German hymn “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (Oh Sacred Head, Now Wounded), which Bach arranged several times, most movingly as the Passion Chorale in his St Mathhew Passion. If I am right, for a german speaking audience this would subliminally set a sacred tone, perhaps hinting at the thunderstorm during Christ’s Passion, except that here the storm has abated and the rebirth of the world is at hand. The transition culminates in the clarinet followed by the french horn announcing in embryonic form Beethoven’s hymn of joy and thanksgiving (and resurrection?). Its first full flowering is then given life by the strings.

It is pointless to try to convey in words the overwhelming joy that this movement conveys. Beethoven’s control of our yearning for joy is masterful. Towards the end of the movement the music rises to a false crescendo; we are taken to a new heights as the momentum builds again, so that when the true crescendo at last unfolds the listener is filled to overflowing with what might be called religious ecstasy.

I can think of no other piece of music before Beethoven’s time, apart from Bach’s Chaccone for solo violin, that conveys such overwhelming ecstasy of being. It has lead me to wonder if it could be seen as a precursor to the Liebestod in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

If this symphony evokes a religious response, what, one might ask, is the religion? On one level Beethoven was a devout Christian and and it would be perfectly reasonable for Christians to view this music as a hymn of thanksgiving to the Christian God. But Beethoven’s spirituality was, I believe, highly personal and indicative of a time when the old religious certainties were breaking down. He was undoubtedly devout, but he was a Catholic who hardly, if ever, attended mass or confession – something of a contradiction in terms. He had quotations from the Hindu Upanishads on his desk. His great Missa Solemnis might be been seen as a highly personal depiction of the human meeting the divine. His conversation books (his deafness progressed to completeness from his mid-late twenties onwards) seem to imply that music stemmed from a source of divine inspiration that was a force unto itself and, I would say, therefore not ultimately dependant on any particular religious doctrine.

At times a difficult and even an impossible man, Beethoven devoted his life to using his powers as a creator to scale the heights and plum the depths of human experience in order to reveal the majesty of existence that he had glimpsed. It is for this reason that Ludwig van Beethoven will always be my guru.

Postscript

During the the BBC Radio 3 programme ‘CD Review’ of Saturday 5th November 2011 the music critic Professor John Deathridge surveyed the available recordings of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and recommended the version taken from a live performance by the Bavarian State Orchestra (Bayerisches Staatsorchester) conducted by Carlos Kleiber (ORFEO C600031B (CD, mid-price)). The movements listed above link to this recording, which has been posted on YouTube in separate parts.

Professor Deathridge said this version won his selection ‘hands down’. He commended Kleiber’s loyalty to Beethoven’s fast tempo markings and he praised Kleiber for allowing in the last movement the music to unfold as an expression of religious ecstasy with an intensity that was almost heart-breaking. In turning the theatrical into the theological the performance became an event that left the audience stunned. Professor Deathridge concluded that the symphony is a deeply human document and a superb masterpiece.

It seems that many believe that Carlos Klieber (not to be confused with his father, Erich) was the greatest conductor of modern times. His mystique is enhanced because, before he died in 2004 at the age of 74, he performed fewer concerts and recordings than most leading conductors would do in a couple years.