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Symphony No. 4 in B flat-Major, Op. 60
Beethoven’s work on the Fifth Symphony brackets that on the
Fourth. Robert Simpson discusses their relationship in his illuminating
booklet on the Beethoven symphonies for the BBC Music Guides:
“[The B-flat major symphony] is highly compact, as the C minor was
going to be, yet lighter in character, as if Beethoven, unsure how to
release the thing that roared in his head like a caged tiger, turned
his attention to less obstreperous inhabitants of his extraordinary
domain. If the Eroica is like a noble stallion, the C minor and B-flat
symphonies might be thought of as belonging to the cat family, the
one fierce, the other lovable, but both sharing compact suppleness
of movement, a dangerous lithe economy that makes them akin, and
together, different from their predecessor. The Fourth belongs to the
Fifth—and ever so much as in the Stygian darkness of its introduction,
abruptly obliterated by vivid light.”
It has often been observed that Beethoven’s even numbered symphonies
and concertos tend to be more lyrical, less aggressive than
their odd-numbered neighbors. To Robert Schumann, the Fourth
Symphony was “a slender Grecian maiden between two Nordic
giants.” Beethoven spent the summer of 1806 at the Silesian estate
in Grätz of Prince Carl von Lichnowsky, one of the most steadfast
and knowledgeable of the composer’s admirers during his early years
in Vienna. It was through Lichnowsky that Beethoven met Count
Franz von Oppersdorff, to whom he eventually dedicated the new
symphony. Oppersdorff maintained an excellent orchestra, insisting
that all persons employed in his household be proficient on some
instrument.
As Haydn did in most of his last symphonies and as in his own first
two, Beethoven begins with a slow preface, and, while the key signature
does not admit it, the music is actually in B-flat minor. The
most musical of the guests at the Palais Lobkowitz in 1807 would
have been more aware than most of us today of just how slowly this
music moves—not so much in terms of notes per minute as in the
passage of events. The harmony stands all but still, and the effect
of suspended motion is underlined by the pianissimo that lasts—as
Beethoven stresses four times—unbroken through the first 12 measures.
Those 12 measures lead us, with exquisitely wrought suspense,
back to the beginning. The five octaves of B-flat are sounded
just a bit more emphatically than before, but the continuation is the
same, a pianissimo expansion of the note G-flat. The effect of the
G-flat is delicately dissonant, unstable, and the first time Beethoven
resolves it quite normally down a half step to F, the note that has the
most powerful magnetic pull back toward home, to B-flat. This time,
however, Beethoven treats the G-flat as though it were in no need of
resolution and continues by submitting to its own magnetic pull in
the direction of B-natural, which, in the context of a universe whose
center has been defined as B-flat, comes across as an absolutely reckless
excursion.
Beethoven finds his way back to the threshold of his proper harmonic
home—not, of course, without adventure and suspense—and the
first entrance of the trumpets and drums helps push the music into
a quick tempo. The material is of an almost studied neutrality. The
life of this ebullient allegro resides in the contrast between passages
when the harmonies change slowly (as they mostly do) and others in
which harmonic territory is traversed at a great rate, in the syncopations,
the sudden fortissimo outbursts and in such colorful details as
the stalking half notes in pianissimo. The development ventures a few
moments of lyric song, but most of the orchestra is impatient to get
on and to get back. The task of getting back to the home key and the
first theme sends Beethoven into one of his most wonderful passages,
in which wit and mystery are deliciously combined.
The Adagio is an expansive, rapt song; rarely does Beethoven insist
so often on the direction cantabile. Before the song begins, we hear
a measure of ticking accompaniment in the second violins. What is
characteristic of Beethoven is the refusal of that accompaniment to
disappear. It remains an insistent presence and a fascinating foil to
the flowing melodies. Not until the Ninth would Beethoven again
write a symphony with a really slow movement.
Concerned with bringing the scherzo in step with the expanding
scale of the symphony as a whole, Beethoven makes an extra trip
around the scherzo-trio-scherzo cycle. In the finale, certain of the
characters from the first movement reappear, newly costumed, but
this last Allegro (ma non troppo) is a more relaxed kind of movement
than the first (Allegro vivace).
Having mentioned Schumann, we can end with some good words of
his: “Yes, love [Beethoven], love him well, but never forget that he
reached poetic freedom only through long years of study, and revere
his never ceasing moral force. Do not search for the abnormal in
him, but return to the source of his creativeness. Do not illustrate
his genius with the Ninth Symphony alone, no matter how great its
audacity and scope, never uttered in any tongue. You can do as much
with his First Symphony, or with the Greek like slender one in B-flat
major!”
—Michael Steinberg
Michael Steinberg, the San Francisco Symphony’s program annotator
from 1979–99 and a contributing writer to the Symphony’s program
book until his death in 2009, was one of the nation’s pre-eminent writers
on music. His books are available at the Symphony Store in Davies
Symphony Hall and at sfsymphony.org/store. The notes on Beethoven’s
Piano Concerto No. 4 and Symphony No. 4 are copyright © San
Francisco Symphony and reprinted by permission.
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