Notes for: July 15, 2014
A composer’s Opus 1 is rarely the first work he has written or had performed, but the work he has selected to introduce himself to the musical public and to support his claim to its continuing attention. This was particularly true of Beethoven’s Opus 1 piano trios, the third of which we are to hear this evening.
Before publishing the trios in 1795, he had completed a ballet, two cantatas, a piano concerto, nine quartets, four trios, four duos, a quintet, a wind octet, nine violin pieces, 15 piano pieces, and some 30 songs. Thus, the trios were the work of an experienced craftsman, not an apprentice.
Beethoven reached the decision to publish the trios only after a considerable investment of time and effort. He had sketched them out two years earlier, while still in Bonn, and continued working on them while studying composition with Haydn. They were first played at the home of his patron, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, with Haydn in attendance. The older composer was less than enthusiastic about the third trio, and this put a strain on their relations.
Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s friend and student, describes the event:
Most of the artists and music lovers were invited, especially Haydn, for whose quartets all were eager. The trios were played, and at once commanded extraordinary attention. Haydn also said many pretty things about them, but advised Beethoven not to publish the third, in C minor. This astonished Beethoven inasmuch as he considered the third the best of the trios. . . Consequently, Haydn’s remark left a bad impression on Beethoven, and led him to think that Haydn was envious, jealous, and ill-disposed toward him.
Surely this was unfair. Haydn enjoyed an international reputation, and jealousy had never colored his earlier relations with Mozart. He subsequently explained to Ries that he had only doubted whether the third trio “would so quickly and easily be understood and so favorably received by the public.” There is no reason to question the older man’s honesty.
But the tension between the men continued. When Haydn suggested that Beethoven be identified as his pupil on the printed score, the latter declined. According to Ries, Beethoven told friends that “although he had some instruction from Haydn, he had never learned anything from him.” But apparently he had second thoughts, and after dedicating the Opus 1 trios to Prince Lichnowsky, he dedicated the Opus 2 piano sonatas to Haydn.
During the two years between their first performance and their publication in 1795, Beethoven revised the trios and encouraged other private performances to build up a market for his published sheet music. He also worked concurrently on three piano sonatas, a string trio and a string quintet, all of which were published the following year. Thus it seems he selected the three trios for publication as the opening salvo in a carefully prepared act of self-promotion.
The strategy proved sound. The plates for the three trios were made and the music printed by the leading Viennese firm, Artaria & Co., but the composer handled the sales personally through subscriptions. He sold 245 copies – an impressive sale for so young a composer, and after paying the publisher, he realized enough profit to cover basic living expenses for a year. Further, the list of subscribers included a number of aristocrats who were to become his future patrons.
To modern ears, these trios seem cast in the Classical mold that Beethoven inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but the tread of the Beethoven-to-come can be heard. He cast off the balanced three-movement structure, fast-slow-fast, by adding a scherzo or a minuet; expanded the emotional content of the outer movements to near-symphonic proportions, and made the final movements faster and more technically demanding. And he emancipated the cello from its limited accompaniment role, enriching the texture and adding to the opportunities for thematic development.
Still it is not difficult to see why Haydn had doubts about the marketability of the third trio, as it is by far the most advanced of the three. The opening presents Beethoven in the deadly earnest C minor key of his Fifth Symphony, which had a special meaning for him. He begins the first movement with a highly dramatic main theme, played in unison and leading to a tense “hold”. It continues with some passion until the piano introduces the gracious second theme. The tension of the opening soon returns and sets the movement’s dominating mood.
The second movement is a theme and variations, a format that the composer was to make uniquely his own. The theme is a simple tune, consisting of two eight-measure sections, each of which is repeated. While holding to this pattern, the five variations subject the theme to increasingly fanciful transformations, but it ends with a contemplative coda.
The third movement is a minuet in title and in its triple rhythm, but its minor key and the irregularity of its main theme are some distance from the minuet’s origin as an 18th century ballroom dance. It would also be difficult to dance the contrasting trio, based on a rapid downward scale in the piano part followed by a swaying strain for the cello.
The fourth movement, marked prestissimo, reverts to the dramatic mood of the first. After a brusque, commanding outburst, the violin and then the piano continue the passionate main theme. There is a more lyrical second theme, but the main theme dominates. In a final departure from convention, instead of leading to a strong or joyful conclusion, he allows the music to die out pianissimo.