Ludwig Van Beethoven, 1770-1827
Sonata Op. 79, "Cuckoo" (1809)
Sonata Op. 28, "Pastoral" (1801)
Sonata Op. 31, no. 3, "The Hunt" (1802)
“How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under trees and over rocks; no man can love the country as I love it.” –Beethoven, to Baroness von Drossdick
Beethoven’s life-long ardor for nature had its roots in his early boyhood, and outlasted every other love he had. One of my favourite stories about Beethoven's childhood is that his family's home on the Rheingasse in Bonn had two telescopes positioned by the attic windows, from which he could see a distance of 20 miles. I love the image of little Ludwig at a telescope, looking for the most distant point possible and then trying to go further yet, a metaphor for his life's work.
Young Ludwig and his father took long excursions together into the countryside, sometimes lasting several days; they hiked up rugged hills and through leafy woods, climbed over dark slate outcrops, gazed down deep gorges, and felt the power of the ever-present Rhine. These formative days spent out of doors instilled Beethoven’s lifelong love for the Rhenish countryside. As an adult, Beethoven nostalgically recalled the “mysterious fir forests” and the “sweet stillness of the woods” to which he longed to return, and declared that “I never feel entirely well except when I am among scenes of unspoilt nature”. During the hot and dusty Viennese summers he fled to the countryside and dreamed of buying a small house there; and as communication with people around him became increasingly difficult due to encroaching deafness, he spent much time tramping across the countryside alone, compositional notebook in hand. Charles Neate, an English pianist who sometimes accompanied Beethoven on long walks, claimed that he had never met anyone “who so delighted in Nature or so thoroughly enjoyed flower or clouds or other natural objects”. Other Viennese friends tell us that Beethoven, who frequently moved lodgings within the city, refused to live in a home unless there were trees nearby, and that he insisted on daily walks even in torrential rain. Beethoven’s interactions with nature provided the relief, inspiration, and comfort that he often lacked in social settings.
However, Beethoven also had experiences with nature that were more terrifying than utopic. In 1784 his family’s home on the Rheingasse in Bonn was flooded as the great Ice Floods overwhelmed the region, and the 13-year-old Beethoven made a perilous escape across the roofs of neighbouring houses; and in 1816 most of Europe experienced the “year without a summer” as a result of the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia, leading to failed crops and subsequent food shortages. Beethoven may have been prone to rhapsodic outbursts about the countryside, but he was also too clear-eyed to succumb to the fashionable interpretation of pastoral life as one of quaint simplicity. The popular tropes, which equated retreat from the material world with a corresponding quality of inner life, celebrated a type of vacuous spiritual achievement foreign to Beethoven. While the 18th century aristocracy built imitation hameaux and played at Arcadian clichés, Beethoven squelched through mud, wiped rivulets of rain from his face, and tramped long miles until every muscle ached.
It's therefore no surprise that Beethoven's compositions parallel a natural world brimming with the struggle to survive and overcome. His development of musical motives rarely feels facile; one senses the great effort underlying their evolution and forward propulsion.
These structural parallels to the natural world also open the door to a profound inner experience. How can one describe a personal experience of nature without descending into platitudes about sublimity and transcendence? Even Beethoven despaired of being able to communicate these powerful experiences. “Who can give complete expression to the ecstasy of the woods!”, he exclaimed.
And yet, Beethoven's music exists as something that perfectly expresses our common experience of nature, and then elevates it. On the cover of the first edition of the Pastoral Symphony is the inscription Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei (more an expression of feeling than a painting). Beethoven asks us not to fixate on the literal images of nature, but rather on the response that they awaken in us. How staggering it is: the inner effect of nature links us in a great chain of shared human experience, and the 250-year gulf separating us from Beethoven disappears! We can imagine what Beethoven might have felt on his long walks – loneliness that is at once both terrifying and welcome, the impermanence of beauty, the vast microscopic world of leaves and bugs contrasting with the immensity of a night sky, awareness of how diminutive humans are, the regenerative rhythm of the seasons – because we can feel these same inner dissonances in the 21st century. Humanity’s eternal struggle to find a philosophical footing betwixt the finite and the infinite are summed up in Beethoven’s words, “In the country it seems as if every tree said to me: ‘Holy! Holy!’”
Beethoven’s elemental ecstatic connection to the natural world is distilled into the three sonatas on this program. These sonatas were all given descriptive titles by editors in reference to the many musical depictions of outdoor life and country tableaux: the cuckoo call in Op. 79, mvt. 1; the rustic country dance in Op. 79, mvt. 3; the bagpipe drone associated with musettes in the 1st and 3rd movements of Op. 28, no. 2; the bucolic hunting horns in Op. 28, mvt. 1 and Op. 31 no. 3, mvt. 4; and the pastoral charm of the gigue in Op. 28, mvt 3.
However, when I now play these sonatas that I first learned as a child, I recognize that their true magic is not found in their literal depictions of country life, but in how Beethoven transfigured his experiences into a universal language. The birdsongs and the unapologetically lovely dances are just a clever ruse to draw us all into a deeper and more resonant experience, in which nature exists not as a literal depiction, but as the structural foundation of the musical form itself. How astonishing it is to be drawn into new inner revelations with each replaying of these works!
Sonata Op. 79, "Cuckoo" (1809)
Sonata Op. 28, "Pastoral" (1801)
Sonata Op. 31, no. 3, "The Hunt" (1802)
“How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under trees and over rocks; no man can love the country as I love it.” –Beethoven, to Baroness von Drossdick
Beethoven’s life-long ardor for nature had its roots in his early boyhood, and outlasted every other love he had. One of my favourite stories about Beethoven's childhood is that his family's home on the Rheingasse in Bonn had two telescopes positioned by the attic windows, from which he could see a distance of 20 miles. I love the image of little Ludwig at a telescope, looking for the most distant point possible and then trying to go further yet, a metaphor for his life's work.
Young Ludwig and his father took long excursions together into the countryside, sometimes lasting several days; they hiked up rugged hills and through leafy woods, climbed over dark slate outcrops, gazed down deep gorges, and felt the power of the ever-present Rhine. These formative days spent out of doors instilled Beethoven’s lifelong love for the Rhenish countryside. As an adult, Beethoven nostalgically recalled the “mysterious fir forests” and the “sweet stillness of the woods” to which he longed to return, and declared that “I never feel entirely well except when I am among scenes of unspoilt nature”. During the hot and dusty Viennese summers he fled to the countryside and dreamed of buying a small house there; and as communication with people around him became increasingly difficult due to encroaching deafness, he spent much time tramping across the countryside alone, compositional notebook in hand. Charles Neate, an English pianist who sometimes accompanied Beethoven on long walks, claimed that he had never met anyone “who so delighted in Nature or so thoroughly enjoyed flower or clouds or other natural objects”. Other Viennese friends tell us that Beethoven, who frequently moved lodgings within the city, refused to live in a home unless there were trees nearby, and that he insisted on daily walks even in torrential rain. Beethoven’s interactions with nature provided the relief, inspiration, and comfort that he often lacked in social settings.
However, Beethoven also had experiences with nature that were more terrifying than utopic. In 1784 his family’s home on the Rheingasse in Bonn was flooded as the great Ice Floods overwhelmed the region, and the 13-year-old Beethoven made a perilous escape across the roofs of neighbouring houses; and in 1816 most of Europe experienced the “year without a summer” as a result of the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia, leading to failed crops and subsequent food shortages. Beethoven may have been prone to rhapsodic outbursts about the countryside, but he was also too clear-eyed to succumb to the fashionable interpretation of pastoral life as one of quaint simplicity. The popular tropes, which equated retreat from the material world with a corresponding quality of inner life, celebrated a type of vacuous spiritual achievement foreign to Beethoven. While the 18th century aristocracy built imitation hameaux and played at Arcadian clichés, Beethoven squelched through mud, wiped rivulets of rain from his face, and tramped long miles until every muscle ached.
It's therefore no surprise that Beethoven's compositions parallel a natural world brimming with the struggle to survive and overcome. His development of musical motives rarely feels facile; one senses the great effort underlying their evolution and forward propulsion.
These structural parallels to the natural world also open the door to a profound inner experience. How can one describe a personal experience of nature without descending into platitudes about sublimity and transcendence? Even Beethoven despaired of being able to communicate these powerful experiences. “Who can give complete expression to the ecstasy of the woods!”, he exclaimed.
And yet, Beethoven's music exists as something that perfectly expresses our common experience of nature, and then elevates it. On the cover of the first edition of the Pastoral Symphony is the inscription Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerei (more an expression of feeling than a painting). Beethoven asks us not to fixate on the literal images of nature, but rather on the response that they awaken in us. How staggering it is: the inner effect of nature links us in a great chain of shared human experience, and the 250-year gulf separating us from Beethoven disappears! We can imagine what Beethoven might have felt on his long walks – loneliness that is at once both terrifying and welcome, the impermanence of beauty, the vast microscopic world of leaves and bugs contrasting with the immensity of a night sky, awareness of how diminutive humans are, the regenerative rhythm of the seasons – because we can feel these same inner dissonances in the 21st century. Humanity’s eternal struggle to find a philosophical footing betwixt the finite and the infinite are summed up in Beethoven’s words, “In the country it seems as if every tree said to me: ‘Holy! Holy!’”
Beethoven’s elemental ecstatic connection to the natural world is distilled into the three sonatas on this program. These sonatas were all given descriptive titles by editors in reference to the many musical depictions of outdoor life and country tableaux: the cuckoo call in Op. 79, mvt. 1; the rustic country dance in Op. 79, mvt. 3; the bagpipe drone associated with musettes in the 1st and 3rd movements of Op. 28, no. 2; the bucolic hunting horns in Op. 28, mvt. 1 and Op. 31 no. 3, mvt. 4; and the pastoral charm of the gigue in Op. 28, mvt 3.
However, when I now play these sonatas that I first learned as a child, I recognize that their true magic is not found in their literal depictions of country life, but in how Beethoven transfigured his experiences into a universal language. The birdsongs and the unapologetically lovely dances are just a clever ruse to draw us all into a deeper and more resonant experience, in which nature exists not as a literal depiction, but as the structural foundation of the musical form itself. How astonishing it is to be drawn into new inner revelations with each replaying of these works!