Review: Heroic Beethoven

Reviewed Work(s): Beethoven: The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven's Heroic Style
by Michael Broyles
Review by: William Drabkin
Source: The Musical Times , Feb., 1989, Vol. 130, No. 1752 (Feb., 1989), pp. 86-88
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/966358

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quence of works which include John Harris, and seems largely directed to argu-do not know that the opera was 'origin-
Blow's Venus and Adonis and Matthew ing that the music is complete as it stands.ally composed . .. for a private girls'
Locke's Cupid and Death, and later in theHer suggestion that the 'missing' dances school in Chelsea' or that the work's struc-
book, argues that Purcell's musicalwere in fact performed to repetitions ofture was influenced by its being written
declamation is the inevitable product of
the preceeding music is certainly feasible,for a 'planned performance at a girls'
a search for a declamatory techniqueand could be dramatically satisfying.school' (p.3; also pp.9, 42 and elsewhere).
dating back to Nicholas Lanier. However, her contention that the finale As Harris tells us several times, we know
Harris dismisses the allegorical sug-of the Grove Scene was not set, fails tonothing about the circumstances of its
gestions of both Curtis Price (Henry address the all-important question of why composition and first performance. The
Purcell and the London Stage) and Johnthe lines were included in the 1689 librettomost that can be said is that the work was
Buttery ('Dating Purcell's Dido and at all. Despite the convention of including'Perform'd at Mr. Josias Priest's
Aeneas'). This is curious because these arethe author's lines in the published text, Boarding-School at Chelsey', that
relevant to its place in masque history. Itthe unreliability of the libretto's details
Dorothy Burke probably took part in the
is even more curious that her reasons formentioned by Harris points to haste andperformance, and that it is possible that
doing so have little to do with the work carelessness in preparation - as has been Priest did too.. The voice correlations be-
itself, being concerned firstly with Brutussuggested elsewhere - and this supports tween the main musical text and the Pro-
of Alba (1678), and then with the 1700the view that the libretto is related to thelogue (p.60) were not made by Tate and
performances as a series of masques inwork as performed, rather than to the Purcell, but are similar to those offered
Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Har-work as written by Tate. by Thurston Dart and Margaret Laurie
ris suggests that as William and Mary were The last section, 'Performance in their reconstruction of the Prologue in
not on the throne when the former was History', opens with a chapter entitledthe Novello score. There is no evidence
written, any allegory which exists in the 'Late Eighteenth-century Performances'. to suggest that the vocal ranges were
later Dido and Aeneas cannot therefore This promises much, but proves to besimilar and the 'exact parity in roles'
apply to them. Her arguments assume minutiae relating to the musical sources. claimed by Harris is questionable.
that the same allegory must at all timesHarris concludes correctly that 18th- Put simply, the author allows her
apply in workings of the same legend, century alterations 'can teach us a greatjustifiable enthusiasm for Dido andAeneas
which is clearly not the case, and she does deal about important details of to lead her into many indiscretions - the
not comment on the close association of eighteenth-century style' (p. 146; Harris ?22.50 is best spent on a Norton Score.
Aeneas and William in the public mind. elsewhere refers to this as the 'facile MICHAEL BURDEN

Her concluding suggestion that the func- Rococo style', Eulenberg p.vii). Unfor-
tion of Dido andAeneas is that of a morality tunately, the chapter stops here, and we
(p.31) need not exclude a political never find out exactly what these details Heroic Beethoven
interpretation. are. Nor do we discover how they relate
Harris presents a detailed comparison to 18th-century operatic practice, aBeethoven: the Emergence and Evolu-
of Tate's libretto with Virgil's Aeneid discovery which could be the only justi- tion of Beethoven's Heroic Style by
(from which it is quite different) and fication for the inclusion of so much Michael Broyles
Brutus of Alba (with which it has much tedious editorial detail. The 'context' of- Excelsior (New York, 1988); 299pp.;
in common). Although it would be wrong fered here is confined to an inadequate, $38.50. ISBN 0 935016 74 0
to suggest that this comparison is itself solely subjective dismissal of Arne and
in any way inadequate, its real value does Boyce. The last 20 yea,rs of Beethoven scholar-
not lie in the author's familiar pinpointing Harris and I clearly disagree on many ship have achieved classic status in
of the differences in Tate's working of the points, and although she does not repeat modern musicology; the efforts that have
legend, but in the discussion of the signi- her earlier gaffe of referring to Dido's gone into this research its results obtain-
ficance those changes might have had in train as the 'townspeople' (Norton, ed must be well known to MT readers.
the context of the masque tradition in p.246), there are many small errors. The The high standards set by biographers like
which she has placed it, discussion of long plot summary is not of Tate's libretto Solomon, critics like Kerman and sketch
which Harris does not include. as Harris claims (p. 11), but is of the sec- scholars like Tyson and many others
The investigation of the background to tions of text that relate to-he surviving should facilitate the task of assimilating
the opera results in a repetitious and music. Tate does not substitute 'witches' this material into what Michael Broyles
circumlocutory chapter which concludesfor mythological machinery (pp.21, 22 calls 'a satisfactory overall picture...of
in a welter of unnecessary comparisonsand elsewhere); he calls them 'inchant- Beethoven's stylistic development'. Yet
which stretch to include Marlowe's 16th- resses'. The reason Dido andAeneas holds the appearance of each specialized study
century play and three Italian operas onthe stage today and not the big semi- adds to the already awesome corpus which
the subject of Dido, Dryden's All foroperas (p.7) probably has more to do with has set such high standards that any new
Love, Shakespeare's Antony and the cost and problems of staging the lat- work that fails to maintain them, however
Cleopatra, and the French opera Didon ofter, than with the emotional content and thoughtful, is easily branded as
Desmarets, of 1693. The case for Tate ascharacter development of the former. The amateurish.
'relatively small textual discrepancies
a musical poet, which closes part of this In spite of the risk of being engulfed by
book, only serves to prove that you can-among the primary sources' do not illu- what is known in the trade as 'new wave'
strate in these circumstances 'that no one
not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Beethoven scholarship, Broyles has taken
Much of the material in Part II: The text is definitive ...' (p.57); they merely the plunge and written a concise study of
Music has been presented elsewhere byshow that the sources do not agree. We the composer's stylistic development
86

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across a wide range of instrumental music
from the Bonn piano quartets to the Ninth
Symphony. He has a central thesis - with
which I basically agree - that it is more
profitable to view Beethoven's work as
developing along two paths than to parti-
tion it into three creative periods. The first
path starts from the symphonic Classicism
of Haydn and Mozart and culminates in
the big, confident music of the first decade
of the 19th century, of which the first
movement of the Eroica may be taken as
an example. The second, already visible
in the 1790s and providing easy access to
the sonatas of the 'quasi una fantasia'
years, merges with the first during the so-
called 'heroic' decade (though this con-
fluence is at first noticeable in only a hand-
ful of works) before leading to the reflec-
tive sonatas of the subsequent decade and,
ultimately, the late quartets (though these
are not discussed).
The distinction between 'symphonic'
and 'sonata' style, terms Broyles assigns
to the forces that give the two paths their
directions, is amply discussed in a number
of works, so we are never in doubt about
the intricacies involved in mapping
Beethoven's progress. The means by
which this is achieved, comparative
analyses of works produced under similar
circumstances, can best be appreciated in
the long chapter on the middle-period
overtures. This is the most original part
of the book, mainly because it deals at
length with works which are less often
analysed collectively in terms of motivic
development, harmony and phrase struc-
ture. It includes a sensitive analysis of the
'problem' of Leonore no.2, of the originali-
ty of Coriolan as 'absolute' music, and of
the success of Egmont as 'programmatic'
music.
As a whole, however, the book is disap-
pointing. In spite of the promises he
makes in the introduction, Broyles does
not take into account some of the recent
relevant historical scholarship, such as
Dorfmiiller's general bibliographic com-
pilation and Sieghard Brandenburg's
tracking of the Ninth Symphony in the
sketchbooks from 1812 to 1824; sketch
studies are largely ignored, in spite of their
obvious value to a general assessment of
Beethoven's creative concerns. Nor does
Broyles have much to say about current
analytical work: there is no mention of
Epstein on the Eroica, nor even of the
more analytically based essays in
Beethoven Studies (Imbrie, Cone, Kramer,
Lockwood). The impression is that some
chapters can stand quite happily as in-
dependent essays (two were published
previously as journal articles), but that the
subject of Beethoven's stylistic develop-
ment is too vast to be covered in 300 pages.
That Broyles has been misguided in tur-
ning his ideas into a book becomes all too
plain when one surveys its structure.
There is no bibliography; the index has
been assembled superficially; the notes,
which include important qualifying
discussion, are separated from the main
text. There are numerous misprints, with
German words and quotations coming out
very badly: Abgesange, E.T.A. Hoffman
and (Beethoven on op.22) 'Dieses Sonata
hat sich gewaschet'; nor are the mistakes
in the music examples, which include
wrong notes, accidentals and even key
signatures, any less frequent or more ex-
cusable. The music examples are not
numbered, yet the reader is occasionally
instructed, for example, to 'see Ex.lb,
below'; there are also numerous blank
spaces in the text in need of sharp and flat
signs and about half a dozen instances of
'cf. p.000'. Broyles's cliche-ridden prose
style will not be to everyone's taste
('...deviates one iota...', 'blowing the idea

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of a conventional finale to smithereens'). the original texts. The use of English we pick our way together through
In view of these shortcomings, I find prose gives the freedom to stay closer to Metastasio and Goldoni. His versions of
it hard to understand how Broyles can the words of the original verses than verse the German texts demonstrate familiari-
'owe a special debt ofgratitude to William forms would; the line-by-line layout ty with German syntax and idiom,
and David Zinn of Excelsior Music makes it easier for the reader of the whereas that stack of record booklets and
translations to keep in touch with theold programmes shelters versions defaced
Publishing Company' for having 'taken
extraordinary time and care withoriginal
the text. The texts are arranged inby howlers at which a student doing Ger-
manuscript'. Rather, they must sharealphabetical
the order of original title; theman at A level would blush. In that vital
poets are named and Deutsch numbersrespect readers possessing little or no Ger-
responsibility for producing a book whose
flaws, sadly, outweigh the gains to andbedates of composition are given. Inman are in safe hands.
made from reading a thoughtful, if those
notcases where the words Schubert set I find more instances where the order
fully ripe, Beethoven monograph. were already a translation from an English of lines has been transposed than are
WILLIAM DRABKIN source, that text is also given in full. Therenecessary, even in the interests of natural-
is an index of first lines. Errors in prin-sounding English, and I could take issue
ting and proof-reading are rare (I am surewith Mr Wigmore over many individual
the appearance of a 'green' in place of awords and phrases, from the hesitant
Schubert Song Texts
'hunting' in the second stanza of Die liebe'Now tell me' with which Der blinde
Farbe is no more than that). If you wantKnabe tries to attract his friends' atten-
Schubert: the Complete Song Texts:
to explore the repertory of Schubert's tion, where Colley Cibber's original did
Texts of the Lieder and Italian Songs,
songs into the remotest corners, you noit with a ringing 'O say!', to the disem-
with English translations by Richard
longer need to hunt for translationsbodiment of Goethe's Mignon: when she
Wigmore with a foreword by Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau through a stack of record booklets and old exclaims 'es brennt mein Eingeweide',
Gollancz (London, 1988); 380pp.; concert programmes. her pain, though psychosomatic in origin,
?19.95. ISBN 0 575 03961 2 Presumably the motive for sending this is more physical than 'my inmost being
book to a translator for review, rather than is aflame' conveys. Both these examples,
This is a handsomely presented and useful to a Schubert authority, was to give MT as it happens, illustrate a certain prevail-
book, containing the texts of all readers an opinion on whether or not the ing decorousness that could be overcome
Schubert's songs for solo voice and piano translations are-any good. The answer is, without surrendering the book's other
with workmanlike new English transla- up to a point. My Italian is rudimentary, virtues. It may be that the effect of wading
tions set out in parallel columns alongside but Mr Wigmore gives me confidence as through Adelwold und Emma (not so

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