Beethoven and Macbeth

[LuaLua]

Hello,

A friend of mine has asked me to find some information about Beethoven's opera regarding Macbeth. He would like any details on this, particularly on how far Beethoven progressed with it and why he stopped. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by LuaLua:
Hello,

A friend of mine has asked me to find some information about Beethoven's opera regarding Macbeth. He would like any details on this, particularly on how far Beethoven progressed with it and why he stopped. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

After the failure of *Fidelio*, Beethoven intended to compose an opera on Macbeth with a possible text by von Collin. 7 pages of sketches are preserved (some 350 bars of music). von Collin was very slow in preparing the text, and stopped on many occasions claiming that it was becoming extremely gloomy. With von Collin's untimely death in 1811, the project was scrapped.

[Peter]

The Piano Trio in D Major, opus 70, nº1, was composed in 1809. Its minor-mode slow movement, Largo assai ed espressive, is filled with such chromaticism and tremolos that Czerny associated it with the scene from Shakespeare where Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, but the connection is not with Hamlet but with Macbeth. In 1808 Beethoven was sketching ideas for an opera based on a Macbeth libretto by Heinrich von Collin, and entries for the abandoned opera project are found interspersed with ideas for the slow movement of the trio.

See the unheard Beethoven site for more info on this http://www.unheardbeethoven.org/sear...ce=mcbessy.mid
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'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 08-10-2005).]

[Geratlas]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
After the failure of *Fidelio*, Beethoven intended to compose an opera on Macbeth with a possible text by von Collin. 7 pages of sketches are preserved (some 350 bars of music). von Collin was very slow in preparing the text, and stopped on many occasions claiming that it was becoming extremely gloomy. With von Collin's untimely death in 1811, the project was scrapped.

Mein Hofrat! auf Eufrat! This most welcome insight to the matters concerning this planned opera fill me with admiration, and is of such interest to me that I push my luck to solely depend on your benevolence for 'the' answers to 3, I admit, rather tricky questions. Answers may be as many as you care (alas, may it be a bit over zero).
Q1) You give there is "some 350 bars" of music to this project, and I take it they are exclusively in short sketch form. Are these extant sketches explicitly designated for specific instrumentation, cast, or in some other way notated (with numbers, symbols or abbreviations of some sort)?
Q2) What was, or may have been the (outer) incentive(s) for LvB (and the theater for that matter, where I take it Collin served) to undertake this mastodont play (besides Shakespeare's play is of undeniable dramatic quality and well-suited for LvB's muse).
3) This third, is perhaps as devilish as the other two: When started the actual work (LvB's music; HvC's text)? - As I have read it, it was, already in 1807 that LvB and HvC begun planning to adapt Macbeth as an opera libretto (German text) although the earliest sketches, as I again have read things, date from the latter part of 1808, and later sketch(es) even date from as 'late' as 1810, indicating LvB had a perfectly serious go at the work once more before the project must have got doomed for all time due to the death of Herr HvC.
If at all possible, please give confirmation, correction, or just plain condesented commentation.
All this done with high hopes for a (not necessarily swift) reply if it so should come from the moderators themselves, banning me from this forum for believing I myself to be man for inquisition! Until then ... I equip myself with fortitude ... / Grtls



[This message has been edited by Geratlas (edited 08-12-2005).]

[Hofrat]

Source material for the Macbeth overture can be found in the following:

1. The Petter Sketchbook (in the Beethoven House in Bonn). It is one leaf of sketches that bears the inscription "overture Macbeths fallt gleich in den Chor der Hexen ein."

2. The Pastoral Symphony Sketchbook (in the British Library in London). This consists of 5 leaves of sketches.

3. The Landsberg Sketchbook (in Berlin). This leaf relates to the overture, providing direction for dramatic action and the scope and the character of the overture.

Inedita has recorded the realization of the "Overture Macbeth" and its liner notes go into more detail with respect to its realization.


Hofrat

[Droell]

Originally posted by Peter:
The Piano Trio in D Major, opus 70, n�1, was composed in 1809. Its minor-mode slow movement, Largo assai ed espressive, is filled with such chromaticism and tremolos that Czerny associated it with the scene from Shakespeare where Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, but the connection is not with Hamlet but with Macbeth.

Mention of the Ghost Trio brings me again to my theory that Beethoven sketched from life. Towards the end of the slow movcement a rumble in the bass (piano, I think) mysteriously ends without fanfare, leaving a stillness behind. Anyone who has ever been in a haunting - and I have - knows exactly what that means. I've been living with Beethoven for more than 40 years, but the more I study his music, the more I bring to it, the more astonished I am.