Turkish March in 4th Mvmt of 9th Symphony - What was Beethoven Thinking?

[Quijote]

Yes, but we're discussing the 9th! perhaps we should have a new topic on the symphonies? I'd be interested to hear your comments on the uniqueness of the 6th as well.

Perhaps I will take up Peter on his suggestion : a new posting on the symphonies, and to start with : the Sixth (Pastoral). Please see new thread.

[Quijote]

Honestly I think the march is splendid and highly original in its context.

I wonder if the 'Turkish March' is really as original as you think. The use of 'martial music' by Beethoven has its precedents, notably The Glorious Moment, op. 136 (with its alla turca section that includes triangle, cymbals and bass drum) and of course the infamous 'Battle Symphony'.

[Quijote]

Nice idea Sorrano, but I don't buy it - after all there was nothing much familiar about having a Turkish march in a symphony! I don't think for one moment Beethoven was thinking along anything other than artistic lines - the march (which is simply a variation of the theme) provides an almost operatic interlude before the double fugue and a dramatic contrast to the preceding episode.

Beethoven only "thinking along [...] artistic lines ..."? I think that Beethoven's setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" manifests many things that go beyond artistic / aesthetic choices, Peter.

[Quijote]

The ode was originally conceived by Schiller in 1785 to freedom, not joy (as Bernstein performed it in 1989) and was coming very much from enlightenment and masonic ideals. I suggest socialist 'utopia' had nothing to do with it, freedom from political oppression everything.

Peter's comments above reflect the confusion surrounding the original words of Schiller's Ode that persist to this day. Schiller's poem An die Freude [To Joy] was penned in 1785 and published the following year in the review Rheinische Thalia. The first line of the original version is as follows :

Freude, schöner Götterfunken [Joy, lovely divine spark, ...],

Which contradicts Peter's assertion above. What Peter is perhaps confusing is Schiller's drama Don Carlos, which does embody the concept of freedom [Freiheit]. However, the word Freiheit does not occur in the Ode to Joy, and as one commentator has pointed out, "there is no solid basis for the hypothesis that the poem is a politically 'readjusted' version of an earlier ode entitled An die Freiheit [Ode to Freedom]".

That the poem, as Peter puts it, "was coming very much from enlightenment and masonic ideals" is certainly the case, though principally considered at the time of publication from a more traditional religious viewpoint.

[Quijote]

I suggest socialist 'utopia' had nothing to do with it, freedom from political oppression everything.

I edited my original posting by mistake. If my memory serves me correctly, I said that Peter's comment is just one interpretation, and that the history of reception of B's "Ninth" is rife with differeing ideological standpoints.

Who can say if one interpretation is the right one? Not me.

[Hofrat]

I wonder if the 'Turkish March' is really as original as you think. The use of 'martial music' by Beethoven has its precedents, notably The Glorious Moment, op. 136 (with its alla turca section that includes triangle, cymbals and bass drum) and of course the infamous 'Battle Symphony'.

I fully agree. Beethoven was no stranger to marches, having written 2 marches (one discarded) to precede the entrance of the villian in "Fidelio" albeit without the percussion instruments. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Beethoven used a march variation in his "Choral Fantasy." His first variation in his opus 123 is a march. "Egmont" has several marches. And let us not forget the greatest of all Turkish Marches in the "Ruins of Athens."

And with various other stand-alone marches, Beethoven was little John Philip Sousa.

[Sorrano]

I see the finale of the 9th as a theme and variations form. It would make sense to me (particularly with previous variations compositions in mind) to have a march for a variation. The Eroica finale, also, has some march material in it.

[Peter]

Peter's comments above reflect the confusion surrounding the original words of Schiller's Ode that persist to this day. Schiller's poem An die Freude [To Joy] was penned in 1785 and published the following year in the review Rheinische Thalia. The first line of the original version is as follows :

Freude, schöner Götterfunken [Joy, lovely divine spark, ...],

Which contradicts Peter's assertion above. What Peter is perhaps confusing is Schiller's drama Don Carlos, which does embody the concept of freedom [Freiheit]. However, the word Freiheit does not occur in the Ode to Joy, and as one commentator has pointed out, "there is no solid basis for the hypothesis that the poem is a politically 'readjusted' version of an earlier ode entitled An die Freiheit [Ode to Freedom]".

That the poem, as Peter puts it, "was coming very much from enlightenment and masonic ideals" is certainly the case, though principally considered at the time of publication from a more traditional religious viewpoint.

There is no confusion, I have read that Schiller originally conceived an ode to freedom but changed it to Joy - this I accept may be right or wrong, does anyone know for certain?

[Quijote]

There is no confusion, I have read that Schiller originally conceived an ode to freedom but changed it to Joy - this I accept may be right or wrong, does anyone know for certain?

For an excellent study on this question may I suggest the following :

Esteban Buch, Beethoven's Ninth : A Political History, University of Chicago Press (2003). [Originally published as La Neuvième de Beethoven : Une histoire politique, Editions Gallimard, 1999].

[Peter]

For an excellent study on this question may I suggest the following :

Esteban Buch, Beethoven's Ninth : A Political History, University of Chicago Press (2003). [Originally published as La Neuvième de Beethoven : Une histoire politique, Editions Gallimard, 1999].

Thanks for the recommendation - it will have to wait a while as I have many other literary 'works' to get through at the moment! I take it that the author claims that Schiller did not originally conceive an ode to Freedom and later change it to Joy for political reasons?

[Quijote]

Thanks for the recommendation - it will have to wait a while as I have many other literary 'works' to get through at the moment! I take it that the author claims that Schiller did not originally conceive an ode to Freedom and later change it to Joy for political reasons?

No, not the author in question (see above); in fact it was Uwe Martin, "Freude Freiheit Götterfunken", Cahiers d'études germaniques, no. 8 (1990).

[Quijote]

There is no confusion, I have read that Schiller originally conceived an ode to freedom but changed it to Joy - this I accept may be right or wrong, does anyone know for certain?

There is confusion, and for reasons I set out below :

The nationalist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, founder of the German gymnastic-club movement (he was also nicknamed ‘Turnvater) claimed in 1849 that the ode entitled “To Joy” had originally been called “To Freedom”. He went on to claim that in 1796 a one-armed man (I’m not joking) named Heubner told him : “Schiller did not write an Ode to Joy but a poem that read Freedom, brilliant spark of the Gods. Since the censor blacked out the word Freiheit, they had to replace it with Freude. I personally did that, for at the time I was Schiller’s copyist”.

This seems to be the origin of the myth Peter alludes to above. The fact that Jahn reports the fact more than 50 years after the event does rather diminish its credibility, the one-armed copyist notwithstanding.

The lack of historical basis for the tale did not prevent its propagation in later texts, notably Ludwig Nohl in his 1877 biography of Beethoven, right through to Leonard Bernstein who substituted “freedom” for “joy” when he conducted the Ninth on 23 / 22 December 1989 as part of the celebrations marking the fall of the Berlin Wall.

[Quijote]

Whilst not strictly about what B was thinking in the Turkish March etc, I thought what follows could be included.

On another Beethoven forum (from which I successfully achieved escape velocity) I asked about the difficult horn passage in the third movement that B alloted to the humble 4th horn. We were not able to come up with any particularly convincing argument.

I am happy to relate that we may have an answer, and full credit must go to my Dutch friend 'JB' from that other forum who found a possible answer on the BBC 3 forum page.

I quote the post :

"This is why the 4th horn plays 'that solo':
After the very strenuous horn writing in the 1st movement, in which Beethoven requires the 1st and 2nd horns to crook their natural (valveless) horns in D, and the 3rd and 4th horns a 3rd lower, in B flat 'basso', the 2nd movement presented an opportunity to ring the changes and give the 1st and 2nd horns the lower, less demanding B flat basso parts. In any event, it was always customary for the 1st and 2nd horns to be crooked in the key of a work, with the 3rd and 4th (if scored for) to be in either the the dominant or sub-dominant. This scheme permitted a greater range of 'open' tones without the need for so much 'hand-stopping' unless the modulation scheme strayed too far from the home key.

Pairs of horns were always 'high and low',(alto and basso) dating back from the advent of 'stopping' technique in the early-to-middle 18th century,and it was the 2nd of the pair who was expected to have a more comprehensive ability to 'stop' the middle register tones so that, e.g. a scale passage could be played, by manipulation of the right hand in the bell of the horn. This was admittedly achieved at the expense of some muffling of the sound, or, at loud dynamics, a sizzling, snarling 'muted' tone quality.
These changes of tone were so pronounced that Dr Burney wrote of the 'new tones... produced by Mr Punto (the most famous horn virtuoso of the time) sounding like 'a man ridden by the nightmare, who tried to cry aloud but cannot'(!)yikes
Beethoven rarely asked the 1st (alto) horn to play 'stopped' passages; it was sufficent for the high horn player to cultivate a reliable high register technique, leaving the sophisticated middle register hand stopping to his 'basso' colleague.

To get back to the 9th symphony, if the variation that employs the 'basso horn' had occurred earlier in the movement, it would have been the 2nd horn who was required to play the solo, in B flat basso, a very murky-sounding and unreliable crook for anything other than long tones and chordal scoring.
Since the music had modulated to the key of E flat for this complex, intricate variation with its highly original use of the upper woodwind supported in the bass by single low horn at the outset, that horn simply had to be a horn in E flat, the 4th horn, capable of playing many stopped tones, virtuosic arpeggiations and one very striking, exposed scale passage, sounding in the key of B major.
The reason why that scale passage is almost entirely unaccompanied by the orchestra is that more than half the tones are 'stopped' or 'half-stopped' and simply would not have been heard above any other supporting instruments.
Strictly speaking, it is the 2nd horn of the Eb pair, who are in effect playing the 1st and 2nd horn parts of this movement, smiley who plays the '4th horn solo'."

End of quote.

It strikes me a credible, but as I am not a horn player I will have to examine the issue in more detail.

[Sorrano]

Very interesting, indeed. This sort of manipulation lends more credibility to Beethoven being above the average as an orchestrator.

[Hofrat]

Philip;

I think you are barking up the wrong tree with Beethoven's horn tuning in the 9th. There is simple harmonic logic in Beethoven's tuning. The D-horn can play D-F#-A without hand stopping. The Bb-horn can play Bb-D-F without hand stopping. So together, the horns can play D-major chords or D-minor chords because between the 4 horns there are an F# and an F natural. Also, all the horns can participate in that very dramatic F chord at "vor Gott" (because of the F natural and the A).