@themajormayor said:
You two guys are frauds. Thanks for reminding me of how overrated Beethoven, and the Eroica especially, is and why no one should ever listen to Shostakovitch.
You watch. You watch now.
Or read.
The thing with the third symphony, specifically the first movement, is that because pretty much every idea from the first movement germinates from the opening theme, to novice listeners of the piece it comes across as an almost amorphous blob of similar sounding "melodies" and themes, with the line between themes being blurred. There's no hook. It's Beethoven the motive and developing composer at his most rigorous. First time listeners will have difficulty assessing the structure of the movement let alone trying to piece everything else it has to offer. There's no way, unless you have an impressively keen musical ear, that you would catch that chromatic step descent and rhythmic dislocation in the opening theme, and subsequently hear in the recap the C-sharp resolving down to a C natural and dissipating all tension, the omission of the rhythmic dislocation, and a more triumphant sounding cadence to the theme. There's no way you would pick up on the seemingly benign repeated note motive that intrudes with the dissonant C-sharp against the triadic melody, developed and expanded on in the development section. Or relate that same opening G-flat motive with the repeated G-flat at the end of the fourth movement. There's no way you would catch how the key changes at the beginning of the coda relate to the triadic opening theme and the step descent with that dissonant C-sharp. There's little chance you would think twice about how the trumpets at the end fail to reach that high B-flat of the triadic opening theme and instead fall on an octave lower B-flat, which sort of dampens what should be a triumphant ending. As an aside, most conductors actually "correct" the score and play the high B-flat, but the trumpets of the day could actually play that note with little problem. If Beethoven wanted that B-flat, he could have included it; he deliberately held it off for narrative, emotional and metaphoric reasons. It's disappointing that many don't play it as it was written in the original score, especially since Beethoven gives us that high B-flat in the ending of the final movement, and even goes one step beyond that with a high C.
But once you do pick up on all of that, you can then have fun trying to analyse the meaning of the piece. Why, after what is by all accounts is a well earned triumphant ending, is there a brief foray into darkness before the celebratory coda, that as I mentioned above harkens back to the opening G-flat of the opening theme, as well as those chords from hell by the trumpets and horns in the first movement development section (similar vibe to this chord) and the ending of the fugue in the second movement? It's neat to think of the metaphorical implications of this section. Is it a musical scar, that though healed will forever exist, and with the celebratory coda possible to move on from? I don't know, but it's neat, and it's something that A LOT of people will straight up not even think about, even after many listens. Or how about where Beethoven starts a fugue but then doesn't follow through with it, and instead we get all manner of rhythmic and harmonic dislocation and dissonance. Let's think for a moment what an actual fugue generally in Beethoven's time was; it's structured, ordered and brings balance to its themes. Beethoven instead breaks that all down to brilliant effect to serve the narrative of the piece. Now you could argue that I'm overanalysing the work, and that Beethoven might not have even meant half the stuff he put into it. I'd argue, because of the type of motive composer Beethoven was, and how the very act of composing on paper is a very conscious thought process, that he did mean it, but even if he didn't, the work supports itself divorced from the artist's intentions.
Like Greenberg said, it's remarkable storytelling, and absoultely nothing like it had been written before it. Even Berlioz, who in his own right wrote one of the greatest strictly orchestral musical stories, was slightly disheartened by how a lot of people seemed less than impressed as he was about the first movement. Having said that, musical storytelling can often times seem a little cheap emotionally, as fun as it often is, but in Beethoven you very rarely get the impression that he is using stock emotions to drive such works, like most opera for example. It feels personally sincere. Even the funeral march second movement, which is usually a stock musical form to elicit feelings of death and sorrow, still isn't lacking in sincere emotional weight. As Greenberg says, this isn't Beethoven affecting the general audience's feelings on what death and eveything associated with it should sound like, but this is Beethoven's personal image of death at that moment in his life. And that fugue is a dark place and emotionally exhausting.
And this is all without really mentioning the inventiveness and creativity of the final movement, and how Beethoven plays a tug of war with its two themes. Or where the original theme supposedly came from (the same Steibelt), and how Beethoven being Beethoven used the final movement of his hitherto greatest work to indulge in a little arrogant playfulness. And why not, it's earned. Even then, it still isn't lacking in earnest, and I think I will forever be moved by the oboe singing the main theme in the final movement. It's heartfelt, and it's just a wonderful moment in a symphony filled with wonderful moments. In other words.
I'm not saying it's the "best" piece of music (the fact that Beethoven's late string quartets or the aforementioned Mozart operas exist negates that possibility), but overrated? Nah, son.
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