Page 15 - Phil 8-28-22 concert program book_Neat

The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies were written together, introduced to the world
in the same marathon concert, and display certain superficial similarities –
opening motifs, followed by pauses, that generate the first movements, thicker
instrumentation as they progress, and final movements melded together. Yet, the
Fifth surges with snarling minor-key tension and explodes in triumphant defeat of
Beethoven’s demons, while the Sixth brims with gentle, poetic beauty and affirms
the sheer splendor of nature and life.

The most direct inspiration for the Pastoral Symphony had no direct connection to
music. Rather, it was Beethoven’s deep love of nature.

Musicologist Anthony Hopkins suggests that Beethoven moved so often within
Vienna (rarely going a year without changing his residence) because he hated
city living. Indeed, every summer he would move to the country. Charles Neate, an
English pianist who befriended Beethoven and spent the summer of 1815 taking
long walks with him, recalled that he had never met anyone “who so delighted
in Nature or so thoroughly enjoyed flowers or clouds or other natural objects.”
Countess Theresa of Brunswick, a student and possibly intimate friend, wrote: “He
loved to be alone with Nature, to make her his only confidante. When his brain was
reeling with confused ideas, Nature at all times comforted him.” Others reported
that Beethoven refused lodging without nearby trees, could not be dissuaded from
long daily walks even in heavy rain (for which he refused an umbrella), that he
wandered around jotting down themes in his ever-present sketchbooks, and that
he assumed a frightening presence by lapsing into the appearance and behavior of
a vagrant. Beethoven himself wrote in a letter: “How glad I am to be able to roam
in wood and thicket, among the trees and flowers and rocks. No one can love the
country as I do. … In the country every tree seems to speak to me, saying, ‘Holy!
Holy!’ In the woods there is enchantment which expresses all things!”

In the same letter, he also wrote, tellingly, “My bad hearing does not trouble me
here.” That, in turn, provides a crucial key to his inspiration for the Pastoral, as well
as the deep feeling he poured into it.

Unlike the vast majority of assumed names by which his works have become
known, Beethoven directed from the very outset that his sixth symphony be titled
“Pastoral Symphony, or a recollection of country life. More an expression of feeling
than a painting.” The label is found in a letter Beethoven sent to his publisher in
1809 and, together with the titles of each movement, on the program book of the
first performance and on the engraved first violin part. (Until 1825, when the full

2022/23 SEASON PAGE 15