Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season March-April 2016 | Page 24
{ program notes
that also figures in Friedrich Schiller’s
classic play Don Carlos and Giuseppe
Verdi’s opera Don Carlo — was very much
in the air in Vienna at this time. In 1786,
the great German poet Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe (1749 –1832) had completed
a play on the subject, and in turn, Schiller
touched up Goethe’s play for its Viennese
premiere in May 1810.
It was customary then for composers to create overtures and incidental
music to enhance spoken dramas. When
Beethoven was asked to participate in the
production of Egmont, he readily assented.
He even waived any fee for his work and
wrote that he took on the assignment
“only out of devotion to [Goethe].” The
composer revered Goethe as the greatest
man of their era and had already written a
number of songs set to his poetry.
Beyond his generalized admiration for
men like Egmont who lived and died for
their ideals, Beethoven found contemporary relevance in this story from the
already distant past. In 1809, Napoleon
had invaded Austria and even bombarded
and occupied Vienna. By 1810, this foreign conqueror— and Beethoven’s fallen
idol—had been driven from Austrian soil,
but the bitter memories of that occupation
were still fresh for the composer.
We usually only hear the superb Egmont
Overture, but at these concerts we will
also have the privilege of experiencing the
other nine numbers Beethoven created for
this production, including several orchestral sequences, two songs and a powerful
melodrama for speaker and orchestra.
A virile, martial portrait of the play’s
protagonist, the famous Overture in F
Minor, a key Beethoven associated with
deepest tragedy, foretells Egmont’s fate
with the ominous chords of its slow
introduction. Egmont’s heroic struggle
against oppression is sketched in the
Allegro main section. Then, after a
quiet linking passage, comes the exhilarating coda, now in F Major. This is
the music of the “Victory Symphony”
(Siegessymphonie), the play’s finale, with
Egmont’s triumph-in-death shouted
out by the entire orchestra, dominated
by the brass and those famous exuberant flourishes of the piccolo.
22 O v ertur e |
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Beethoven
A drum roll awakens Egmont
to face his death with fearless
exultation, knowing his fight
has not been in vain.
Balancing Egmont himself, Goethe’s
play also emphasizes a female character
Clärchen, Egmont’s fiancée, who —like
Leonore in Fidelio — struggles bravely
to save her lover, but in this case is unsuccessful. Beethoven created two contrasting
songs for her, carefully crafted not to
overtax the modest abilities of the actress
playing the role. In her spirited song from
Act I, “Die Trommel gerühret” (“The
Drum Rolls”), Clärchen longs to be a man
so she can join her lover in battle. From Act
III, “Freudvoll und leidvoll” (“Joyful and
Sorrowful”) is a touching portrait of her
sensitive nature and her complete devotion
to Egmont as she awaits his visit.
Beethoven composed four musical
entr’actes to bridge the play’s five acts. In
keeping with the traditional practices of
his time, they are divided between a first
section echoing the emotions of the previous act and a second section looking ahead
to the events of the act to come. Thus, the
First Entr’acte begins as a gentle Andante
for strings and woodwinds reflecting the
domestic scene in Clärchen’s home that
closes Act I, then shifts to energetic Allegro
con brio music with fiercely rushing strings
to foretell Egmont’s plotting to free his
people from Spanish oppression.
The Second Entr’acte, linking Acts II
and III, is more unified: mostly quiet,
expectant music in Beethoven’s heroic key
of E-flat Major anticipating the fatal events
ahead with distant fanfares and drum rolls.
Again in a contrasting two-section shape,
the Third Entr’acte immediately follows the
scene between Egmont and Clärchen in Act
III, and so its first section, featuring wonderful solos for the oboe (the instrument
Beethoven chose to represent Clärchen),
elaborates on her lovely song “Freudvoll und
leidvoll.” Its second section forecasts Act IV
in a crescendoing march announcing the
arrival of the Spanish Duke of Alba’s army
to quell Egmont’s rebellion and the frightened response of the Flemish people.
As Act IV closes, Egmont is arrested and
condemned. The Fourth Entr’acte mourns
his downfall with beautiful, sorrowing
music in the heroic key of E-flat. The
more animated second section describes
Clärchen’s frantic, futile efforts to save her
lover, with her signature oboe portraying
her love and courage.
The drama’s two great emotional crises
are also heightened by musical numbers.
In Act V, in despair over Egmont’s impending execution, Clärchen takes poison and
dies. Beethoven’s subtle music in D Minor
for this scene, “Clärchen’s Tod,” is among
the score’s finest, again with its prominent,
poignant writing for oboe.
In the same act, Egmont in his prison
cell awaits his summons to the scaffold.
In his sleep, he sees a vision of Clärchen
looking joyfully down from Heaven; she
holds out a laurel crown to him signifying
his ultimate victory as the Flemish will
indeed be freed from Spanish rule
(an event that would not come for another
century). Using a popular device of his era,
Beethoven sets this scene as a Melodrama,
a spoken text over music describing
Egmont’s vision. A drum roll awakens
Egmont to face his death with fearless
exultation, knowing his fight has not been
in vain.