Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827. Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93. Completed October 1812, first performance February 27, 1814, in Vienna. Scored for 2 each flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, tympani, and strings.
In 1812 Beethoven, following a four-year hiatus, completed two new symphonies in the space of four months. The first, the incomparable Seventh, overshadowed its successor then and ever since. Yet although the Eighth is almost a trifle, and certainly less influential than its companion, it remains unmistakably the work of Beethoven and rewarding to both performer and listener. It also marks a turning point, for following its completion, the master would not return to the symphonic form for a dozen years.
Beethoven is well-known for his stormy music and raging personality. But he also possessed a well-developed sense of humor, and the Eighth shows this throughout. Shortly before he began composing it, he was introduced to Johann Mälzel, a man who, though something of a charlatan, revolutionized the performance of music by inventing the metronome. Beethoven was rather taken with Mälzel, even composing a second-rate piece (``Wellington's Victory'') at his suggestion. The Eighth Symphony also contains a tribute to the man, a bit of an ``in-joke'' appearing in the second movement, where the winds keep a steady staccato beat in imitation of the regular ticking of a predecessor to the metronome, which Mälzel called a ``chronometer.'' (Beethoven took the joke further by writing a brief canon on the theme, to the words ``Ta ta ta ta ta... lieber lieber Mälzel,'' or ``Ta ta ta... dear dear Mälzel.'')
In fitting fashion, however, Beethoven saved his best joke for last. For centuries before (and since), composers had been penning overblown endings, pounding the last few chords into the ground with a finality that seemed to state, ``Here, I'm done with my piece, and I'm going to repeat the last note ten times just in case you're not sure of it.'' Perhaps annoyed with this tradition, Beethoven lampooned it by drawing his finish out for 23 satiric measures, during which the penultimate C-major chord makes only 6 appearances, but the final F-major chord is repeated no fewer than 45 times. And so, in the best tradition of his teacher Papa Haydn, the master simultaneously skewers the silliness of the form and raises it to a pinnacle of perfection.
© 1996, Geoff Kuenning
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