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Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No.8, Op.93

Further Information

• Musicologists have made much of the alternating moods of Beethoven symphonies. The fact that the even-numbered ones tend to be light and bright while the odd-numbered ones are grand and powerful is viewed by some interpreters as a comment upon Beethoven's personality, that he could not persist for long at either extreme and needed to alternate in some manic-depressive fashion from one composition to the next. Beethoven's own working methods add a more detailed perspective to this theory, for he did not compose symphonies (or anything else, for that matter) tidily in order. Rather, he tended to work on several pieces simultaneously, even though they might convey drastically different emotions. The tumultuous Fifth and the placid Sixth were on his desk at the same time. The epic Seventh and the jolly Eighth also shared the drawing board. It was not one work following the other, but both in progress simultaneously, and the composer would tend to whichever piece suited his mood that particular day. Thus, either might have come to completion before the other, and the fact that the odd-numbered symphonies tend to be different in character from the even-numbered symphonies is only a coincidence.

  The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies premiered respectively in December 1813 and February 1814, about five years after the joint premieres of numbers Five and Six. This lengthy intervening period had been a critical time for Beethoven. He had won the admiration of Europe, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German author, philosopher, and statesman, who said of the composer, "His talent amazed me; unfortunately, he is an utterly untamed personality." That raw aspect to his character colored his Beethoven's daily interactions with others, even those closest to him. During these years, he feuded bitterly with his brothers, and suffered the personal indignity of having several proposals of marriage rejected. This is also the time when the composer wrote his famed "Immortal Beloved" letter, in which he passionately declared his adoration of a mysterious woman who would remain unavailable to him. His letters show these to be years of great emotional turmoil, yet little of that darkness is reflected in the music he produced. Both the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, as well as the opera Fidelio and other lesser works, are flavored with an essential optimism that is more indicative of the composer's thriving career than of his personal disappointments. The Fifth Symphony is in the past, the Ninth well in the future. Here, for a short time, Beethoven found a musical sense of humor, as if Haydn had come back to write a few more symphonies in these post-Napoleonic years.

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