Symphony No.1 in C-Major, op.21
performed Oct 7/8, 2006

Beethoven's time was one of revolutions and wars, terror and reform, poverty and extravagance and in many ways his music reflects the turbulence of the age in which he lived. Austria was at war with Ottoman Turkey, the French were in dispute with Austria, and England with France. The fall of the Bastille in 1789 was a sign of the end of the old order, extinguished forever. The period brought wide cultural changes, changes in political philosophy and in society, in literature, in painting and in music with the towering genius of Beethoven, later referred to by Liszt as "the pillar of smoke that led to the Promised Land." Beethoven is seen as the bridge from the restraint and preoccupation with form of the Classical era, to the wildly personalized and emotional Romantic era.

Beethoven had a remarkable musical output. Just to name a few: 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, 6 piano concerti plus a fragment (of which only 5 remain in the repertoire), 10 violin sonatas, 4 cello sonatas, 172 folk song arrangements, 60 canons and "musical jokes," at least 2 ballets, an opera ("Fidelio"), and a large number of other works for chamber ensembles, choir, voice ... and 9 great symphonies that still represent the highest consistent level of symphonic output by any composer in history. Regardless of the success that surrounded Beethoven during his life and the enduring admiration for his music, many works slipped through the cracks of time.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in the provincial court city of Bonn, Germany, probably on December 16, 1770. Beethoven's talent was such that, at the age of 12, he was already assistant to the organist Christian Gottlob Neefe, with whom he studied. Attempts to establish him as a prodigy in the mold of Mozart had little success, however.

In 1787 Beethoven was sent to Vienna, but his mother fell ill, and he had to return to Bonn almost immediately. She died a few months later, and in 1789 Beethoven himself requested that his alcoholic father be retired, a move that left him responsible for his two younger brothers. Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna a second time in November of 1792, in order to study with Haydn.

In 1794 French forces occupied the Rhineland; consequently, Beethoven's ties with and support from the Bonn court came to an end. His father had died a month after his departure from Bonn, and his brothers joined him in Vienna. He remained there the rest of his life, leaving only for holidays and concerts in nearby cities. His only extended journey was to Prague, Dresden, and Berlin in 1796. Beethoven never held an official position in Vienna. He supported himself by giving concerts, by teaching piano, and increasingly through the sale of his compositions. Members of the Viennese aristocracy were his steady patrons, and in 1809 three of them-Prince Kinsky, Prince Lobkowitz, and the Archduke Rudolph - even guaranteed him a yearly income with the sole condition that he remain in Vienna.

The last 30 years of Beethoven's life were shaped by a series of personal crises, the first of which was the onset of deafness. The early symptoms, noticeable to the composer already before 1800, affected him socially more than musically. His reaction was despair, resignation, and defiance. Resolving finally to "seize fate by the throat," he emerged from the crisis with a series of triumphant works that mark the beginning of a new period in his stylistic development.

A second crisis a decade later was the breaking off of a relationship with an unnamed lady (probably Antonie Brentano, the wife of a friend) known to us as the "Immortal Beloved," as Beethoven addressed her in a series of letters in July 1812. This was apparently the most serious of several such relationships with women who were in some way out of his reach, and its traumatic conclusion was followed by a lengthy period of resignation and reduced musical activity.

During this time Beethoven's deafness advanced to the stage that he could no longer perform publicly, and he required a slate or little notebooks (now known as "conversation books") to communicate with visitors. The death of his brother Caspar in 1815 led to a 5-year legal struggle for custody of Caspar's son Karl, then 9 years old, in whom Beethoven saw a last chance for the domestic life that had otherwise eluded him. His possessiveness of Karl provoked a final crisis in the summer of 1826, when the young man attempted suicide. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven's health began to fail, and he died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna.

Beethoven wrote his Symphony No.1 in C Major, op.21, on the threshold of the nineteenth century. Towering behind him were Haydn and Mozart, with a combined output of over 140 symphonies, yet Beethoven's first symphony heralds a new age in the symphonic form from the first measure. The first movement begins not in a firm C Major (as expected by symphonic practice of the day) but with an odd dominant-tonic resolution to F Major. Within a few bars, it's apparent that C Major is the true key for the work, but the originality doesn't stop there. Beethoven finds new ways to write for basses and winds, introduces what were seen as audacities of key change, dissonance, and dynamics, and - most audacious of all - marks his third movement a traditional menuetto but specifies a blinding tempo that actually introduces the frenzied scherzo to symphonic form. Beethoven's first symphony was premiered in Vienna on March 26, 1800, on a massive program that included a Mozart symphony, an aria and a duet from Haydn's Creation, a Beethoven piano concerto with the composer at the piano, a septet composed by Beethoven and dedicated to the empress, some piano improvisations by Beethoven, and Beethoven's first symphony. The evening was a modest success, but the symphony took some time to become fully accepted by audiences. Performances in Paris and Leipzig, for example, were panned by critics, but within a few years Beethoven's first symphony was acknowledged as a masterpiece.

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