This all-Beethoven program opens with his brilliant overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, the opening to a successful ballet from 1801. We end with one of his greatest symphonies, the massive third “Eroica” (heroic) Symphony of 1803, a work tied up in Beethoven’s love-hate relationship with Napoleon and his ideals of heroism. We then turn to two movements from Beethoven’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. Yes, you read that right…the opening movement reconstructed from existing sketches by Barry Cooper in 1988, and the scherzo recently reconstructed with the help of A.I.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Born: December 17, 1770 (baptism date), Bonn, Germany.
Died: March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.

Overture to “The Creatures of Prometheus,” Op. 43

• Composed: 1800-01.
• Premiere: March 28, 1801, at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria.
• Duration: 5:00.

This brilliant miniature overture opens Beethoven’s successful score for a ballet based upon the myth of Prometheus, who brought enlightenment to humanity.

Background

Shortly after the premiere of Beethoven’s first symphony in April 1801, the dancer Salvatore Viganò asked the composer to provide music for a new ballet on the Prometheus legend. Beethoven was the perfect choice: he was already one of Vienna’s leading musical celebrities and had a reputation as a bit of a musical radical. Viganò was a bit of a radical himself: he had created dances in a new style that rejected the old formal French courtly ballet for more naturalistic storytelling with pantomime and dramatic action scenes. Even the subject of the ballet, a titan from Classical mythology who defies authority for the benefit of all humankind, resonated with the revolutionary feeling that was present even in Imperial Vienna in 1800. Viganò danced the title role in the first production of The Creatures of Prometheus (Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus) in March 1801, and it was a huge success, with some 23 performances over the next year. Beethoven’s music, particularly the compact overture, also appeared in purely orchestral concerts. It was Beethoven’s largest musical project to date—the full score of the ballet is well over an hour long—and he was quite proud of the result. Though one encounter with his one-time composition teacher, Haydn may have brought him down a peg or two. The two met on the street in 1801, and Haydn complimented him on the Prometheus music. Beethoven said, “Oh dear Papa, you are too good, but it is no Creation [Haydn’s great 1798 oratorio, which we will be performing in April] by a long shot.” Apparently irritated by the flattery, Haydn replied with uncharacteristic grumpiness: “You’re right, it is no Creation, and I hardly think it ever will be!”

What You’ll Hear

The overture opens with a grand slow introduction that portrays “the solemn appearance of Prometheus.” The tempo quickens and the remainder of the overture is a brief sonata-form Allegro that borrows music from the ballet’s concluding scene. According to Beethoven, this music depicts “human creatures led to joy.” The exuberant style clearly owes a great deal to Mozart’s opera overtures. In the ballet, the overture leads directly into a storm scene, but in this performance, we use a bright concert ending that Beethoven wrote for a later performance of the overture.

Symphony No. 10 in E-flat Major

(Movement one completed by Barry Cooper; movement three completed by A.I. and Walter Werzowa)

• Composed: sketched in the final years of his life.
• Premiere: The first movement was premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra in 1988, and the third movement was premiered in Bonn in 2021.
• Duration: 24:00.

Beethoven was apparently planning to write a tenth symphony at the time of his death. The two movements here represent two very different approaches to completing this work.

Background

Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony. The words conjure up all sorts of mystique and wishful thinking among those who love Beethoven’s music. The Tenth Symphony has even inspired speculative fiction and stage works. [NOTE: When I found out that I would be writing about this work, I immediately dug up and reread Thomas Hauser’s The Beethoven Conspiracy. This 1985 thriller was still a fun read 40 years later, if pretty implausible. It opens with the murders of three talented freelance musicians and involves a hard-boiled New York City detective, a beautiful violist, a sinister Austrian billionaire, and—spoiler alert!—a long-lost manuscript of Beethoven’s tenth. -JMA]. But did this work actually exist? For his part, Beethoven, in a letter dictated and signed just over a week before his death, mentions “a new symphony, which lies already sketched in my desk.” And he did, in fact, have a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society in London for a symphony. However, while Beethoven had clearly been thinking about a tenth symphony, he was also notoriously prone to promising that works were much farther along than they actually were. No such manuscript has ever been found.

We actually know quite a bit about Beethoven’s compositional process: there are hundreds of pages of his sometimes nearly illegible sketches that survive, and a devoted cadre of Beethoven scholars who specialize in interpreting those sketches (a skill as rare as reading Babylonian cuneiform tablets) have been able to trace the evolution of many of his greatest works—in some cases, works whose genesis extended over several years. In the 1980s, Barry Cooper assembled a reconstructed version of the first movement of the tenth symphony from about 250 measures’ worth of sketches Beethoven made in the final years of his life. Cooper was able to rely on his knowledge of Beethoven’s music in general, as well as how Beethoven’s sketches related to his completed works. Though Cooper himself acknowledged that his reconstruction lacked the spark of genius, he noted that it was “as close as we are likely to come” to hearing this piece. Cooper also identified musical sketches of the other three movements—a slow movement, a scherzo, and a rondo, but noted that they were too fragmentary to be reconstructed using the same means. The first movement was performed and recorded in 1988 by the London Symphony Orchestra.

That was the state of the tenth for the next 30 years. Then, beginning in 2019, Austrian composer, producer, and A.I. expert Walter Werzowa led a team of musicologists and computer experts in producing reconstructed versions of the last two movements, employing artificial intelligence. This involved loading the entire body of Beethoven’s music and surviving sketches for the tenth into the A.I. and teaching it Beethoven’s compositional style. The results, completed scherzo, and rondo movements were played and recorded in Bonn by the Beethoven Orchestra in October 2021 under the title Beethoven X: The A.I. Project.

What You’ll Hear

The first movement, as reconstructed by Cooper, is framed by two broad Andante sections surrounding a long, stormy Allegro. The opening Andante treats a single, relaxed theme. The C minor Allegro, beginning with crashing chords, is set in sonata form, with a brash, turbulent main theme dominated by the horns. The second theme, scored lightly for solo woodwinds, is tragic in character. A blustery development section ends mysteriously, with a long timpani roll, which leads to a recapitulation and further development. In the end, a long-held horn note leads to the closing of Andante, with variations on the same limpid theme heard at the beginning. The last of these features a quiet horn obbligato above the theme in the woodwinds.

The AI-generated Scherzo, by comparison, is a miniature, lasting only about four minutes. It has a stormy opening idea suffused by a motive reminiscent of the opening of the fifth symphony. The central trio moves capriciously through a few thematic ideas before returning to the scherzo music.

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 (Eroica)

• Composed: 1802-1803.
• Premiere: April 7, 1805, Vienna.
• Previous MSO Performances: 1934, 1966, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2011.
• Duration: 47:00.

This 1803 work was originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, but Beethoven angrily crossed out the title when Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor, and the dedication was changed to celebrate “the memory of a great man.” This bold symphony expresses heroism throughout, from the vast opening and the solemn funeral march through a blazing scherzo and the enormous finale.

Background

The years 1802-1812 in Beethoven’s life have frequently been labeled the “heroic decade”—the most productive period in his life and years which saw a new set of personal and musical concerns. In the face of the ultimate challenge to a composer—ever-encroaching deafness—Beethoven’s output over the next decade was indeed heroic: the third through eighth symphonies, the “Razumovsky” quartets, the final two piano concertos, the violin concerto, and Fidelio. Beethoven’s writings and the dramatic content of his music during this period—particularly his only opera, Fidelio—show an increasing preoccupation with the ideals of human dignity, heroism, and freedom. These works greatly expand the Classical forms, sometimes transcending them altogether, and focus on the exhaustive development of the thematic material. Nowhere are Beethoven’s “heroic” tendencies more readily apparent than in the “Eroica” symphony.

The well-known story of the “Eroica” symphony’s dedication reflects Beethoven’s political and humanistic concerns during a time of great turmoil across Europe. He had followed the career of Napoleon Bonaparte with great interest, though, like many Germans, he probably began to question the French First Consul’s commitment to the ideals of the French Revolution as France became more and more warlike. The symphony was originally titled “Bonaparte” in recognition of Napoleon’s supposedly republican ideals. However, when he heard of Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor, Beethoven tore up the dedication page in disgust, exclaiming: “Is he too nothing more than an ordinary man?” (In an early manuscript copy of the symphony, Napoleon’s name has been crossed out so violently that there is a hole in the page.) In the first published edition, Beethoven noted merely that the work was composed “to celebrate the memory of a great man.”

The Symphony No.3 is formidable in length and depth. It was undoubtedly one of the longest and most complex symphonic works that his Viennese audience had ever heard, and several critics expressed dismay at its “incomprehensibility.” (Beethoven’s fascination with the gigantic works associated with revolutionary France—works by composers such as Cherubini and Méhul—was clearly an influence in this piece.) This symphony expresses the heroic ideals of struggle and triumph—and though it is not a strictly programmatic piece, despite the evocative “funeral march” of the second movement, it communicates valor and courage. One added dimension that would have been clear to listeners in 1803 is his pointed reference to the music of his Prometheus ballet in the final movement. His ballet score had been wildly popular after its premiere two years earlier, and its main theme in the context of a “heroic” symphony would have brought to mind the central character of the ballet: a mythical figure who defied authority to enlighten the human race.

What You’ll Hear

The Symphony No.3 begins by breaking molds. Most of the later symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, as well as Beethoven’s own first and second symphonies, begin with extensive slow introductions. Beethoven brusquely disposes of the introduction to the first movement (Allegro con brio) in two forte chords, which lead directly into the opening theme, played by cellos and basses. This theme begins simply enough, but a feeling of restless instability appears almost immediately. An extended transition section culminates in the second main theme, first stated by the clarinets and oboes. The exposition ends with an immense closing passage, which serves to introduce even more new melodic material. The development section is heroic both in dimensions and style—this section by itself is longer than many contemporary opening movements. After a climactic series of crashing dissonances, Beethoven introduces a new idea, a melancholy oboe melody. After a recapitulation of the main themes, the movement closes with an enormous coda that continues to develop Beethoven’s ideas.

The funeral march (Marcia funebre) is constructed as a rondo, with the somber repeating main theme presented at the outset by the strings. A major-key episode interjects a note of hope, but this is soon overtaken by the main theme. A second contrasting episode begins with bass rumblings and intensifies through a great fugal passage to an impassioned climax. After a final return of the main theme, the movement closes with a stark and haunting coda.

As in the Symphony No.2 of 1801, the third movement (Scherzo: Allegro vivace) is designated as a scherzo (Italian for “joke” or “trifle”), replacing the more usual third-movement minuet used in the symphonies of Beethoven’s contemporaries. This scherzo is set in the same three-part form as the minuet but has none of its courtly grace (or aristocratic associations). The opening section is a mix of perpetual motion in the strings and a playful melody in the upper woodwinds. The central trio has a more heraldic quality, beginning with a horn call. This call is answered by the strings and woodwinds. The movement closes with a return of the opening section and a brief coda.

Beethoven was never one to avoid recycling a good tune— to cite merely one example, the famous “Ode to Joy” theme of the Symphony No.9 appeared in at least two earlier works. The music of the third symphony’s finale (Allegro molto) is Beethoven’s final reworking of music that had appeared in three earlier works, beginning with his music for the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus (1801) and a piano contradance of the same year, and the Variations and Fugue on a Theme from Prometheus for solo piano. After a brief storm at the opening of this movement (probably a reference to the plot of the Prometheus ballet), Beethoven introduces a simple bass line in pizzicato strings. This bass line moves through an increasingly complex set of variations, acquiring a countermelody on the way. The central section is a tremendous fugue, which builds towards a broad and triumphant coda. In symphonies by his contemporaries, the fourth movement was typically a rather lightweight, breezy piece, but this finale is a weighty counterbalance to the symphony’s opening movement. If the opening movements of the “Eroica” break the 18th-century mold of symphonic form, this one kicks away the last traces!

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Program notes ©2024 by J. Michael Allsen