Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

First performance: 1990 by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, conducted by John Adams. Instrumentation: two flutes one doubling piccolo, two oboes second doubling English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, trumpet, percussion, piano, and strings. Approximate duration: 17 minutes.

The composer has provided the following comments:

Cornucopia was commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and was premiered by them in the spring of 1990. This is my second work for chamber orchestra, the first being “re:act:ion,” which was composed for the San Francisco Symphony in 1984. John Adams was instrumental in the commission of both and conducted the premiere of each.

The title derived from the confluence of the traditional definition, signifying an overflowing abundance, and the fact that I was composing the work during the winter in Mendocino County, California, while residing in an isolated cabin surrounded by a redwood forest that happened to be experiencing an extraordinarily abundant fruiting of the delicious black chanterelle mushroom (Craterellus cornucopioides), also known to mycologists as “the Horn of Plenty.” Many a meal composed with this delectable fungus rewarded a long day of composition on this work.

There is no strict formal scheme the work follows. Rather, different sections investigate different questions. For example, in the opening, I explored the notion (suggested by Steve Reich back in 1981) that certain gestures from my electric guitar and tape loop system composition Liquid and Stellar Music could be transformed into a work for string orchestra. The second section asked the question, “how many different contrapuntal layers can we keep distinct in our hearing and at what point do the individual layers of counterpoint merge into a single fused texture?”

The commission was supported by the Jerome Foundation and I want to thank John Adams for both his support in the creation of the work and for his long generosity towards my work since we met at a concert in Berkeley in 1975.
©2010 Paul Dresher
(Note from Berkeley Symphony Orchestra program, February 11, 2010)

First SPCO performance: December 3, 7, 1974; most recent SPCO performance: November 30, December 1, 2004. Instrumentation: solo cello; two oboes, two horns, and strings. Approximate duration: 25 minutes.

At age twenty-nine, Haydn received a lucrative job offer from Prince Paul Anton Esterházy, head of one of Austria’s richest and most powerful noble families. The Esterházy court already had a Kapellmeister, the aging Gregor Werner, so Haydn’s appointment was to be Vice-Kapellmeister. Haydn ascended to the position of Kapellmeister upon Werner’s death in 1766 and then stayed with the Esterházy family for another twenty-five years.

Among his initial duties as Vice-Kapellmeister, Haydn directed the twice-weekly performances of the Esterházy orchestra. The ensemble was small in those years—it ranged from thirteen to fifteen players—but the performers were world-class virtuosos. Haydn composed about twenty-five symphonies during that period, as well as numerous concertos for violin, flute, horn, and other instruments, most of which have been lost. 

In a catalog of works, Haydn identified a cello concerto in the key of C—in fact he listed two, but they might have been variants of the same work. This concerto was lost until 1961, when a set of parts turned up in a Prague museum. The work dates from sometime between 1761 and 1765, and was intended for Joseph Weigl, the cellist of the Esterházy orchestra.

While the Cello Concerto in C is a very early work from the long-lived and prolific Haydn, it clearly represents his nascent Classical style. The Moderato first movement unfolds in a typical sonata form, complete with a tutti exposition by the orchestra. The cello writing is assured and idiomatic, with bold chords spread across the strings and bright melodies in the instrument’s upper range. The Adagio movement features delicate interplay between the soloist and ensemble; the cello enters on an understated held note, and then echoes the tutti melody it had been accompanying. The finale assigns the cello speedy passage-work and wide-ranging leaps, confirming Weigl’s considerable facility as a soloist and Haydn’s command of the instrument’s virtuosic capabilities.

First performance: December 22, 1808 in Vienna, conducted by the composer. First SPCO performance: March 15–16, 1985; most recent SPCO performance: September 14–15, 2007. Instrumentation: two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and strings. Approximate duration: 39 minutes.

The Fifth and Sixth symphonies, composed concurrently in 1808, were premiered together (with their numbers switched) as part of a four-hour extravaganza Beethoven produced in Vienna. The following year, they were published in the now-familiar order, with adjacent opus numbers. On the surface, the two symphonies seem unlikely twin siblings: the Fifth Symphony is dark and dramatic, with its imposing “fate” motive and triumphant progress to a major-key resolution, while the Sixth Symphony is relaxed and bucolic, full of extra-musical associations. 

Beethoven’s Sixth was one of the first programmatic symphonies, with descriptive movement headings that evoked specific ideas and images. But this was not, for the most part, literal tone-painting, as in later works such as Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique or the Symphonic Poems of Liszt and Strauss. Beethoven, for his part, made this distinction in the title he inscribed on the parts for the initial performance, which read “Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life: More an Expression of Feeling than Painting.”
Beethoven’s journals and letters reveal his love of nature, as when he wrote in 1810, “How delighted I will be to ramble for awhile through the bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.” Recognizing and appreciating the natural world was a cornerstone of the Romantic sensibility, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau. With the Sixth Symphony, Beethoven joined a common thread in music, art and literature of the early nineteenth century that rhapsodized on the beauty and grandeur of the natural world, with a reverence that was in no small part spiritual.

What the Fifth and Sixth symphonies share, along with other works from Beethoven’s “middle” period, is rigorous economy and unity in the musical language. Just as the first four notes of the Fifth Symphony influence every measure of the opening movement, the Sixth Symphony builds an expansive essay out of a seemingly naïve theme. The first movement, characterized as the “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country,” enters bashfully, with four quiet measures that trail off. Fragments of this figure build slowly, basking in long stretches of unmoving harmony and resonant pedal figures. The development section, often an opportunity for increased turbulence and activity, instead sinks deeper into a country calm, savoring each radiant change of harmony.

The second movement, “Scene at the Brook,” establishes a lapping triplet pulse under another mere wisp of melody. The idyllic scene ends with a trio of birdcalls from the woodwinds, representing a nightingale, quail, and cuckoo. From here, the symphony diverges from a typical four-movement pattern. There is a scherzo-like third movement, “Happy gathering of country folk,” but the rollicking dance music halts unresolved and is supplanted by the first staccato raindrops of the “Thunderstorm.” Fearful dissonances and thunderous timpani strikes make for a convincing tempest, until it trails off in one last upward patter from the flute. A clarinet takes over to establish the sing-song contours of the “Shepherds’ song; cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm.” This tune, at once humble and heroic, returns the symphony to its pastoral calm. Near the end, a hymn-like variant lends a deeper resonance to this warm-hearted conclusion.