Beethoven: Symphony No. 8

I have to say that one of my favorite things about this excursion through all the Beethoven symphonies is exploring the even-numbered ones. It's like finding an extra chocolate bar you didn't know you had! I was having a rehearsal with a good friend of mine on Sunday, a violist and violinist, and asked her what she thought of the Symphony No. 4. She has played in orchestras her whole life and could not recall if she had ever played this symphony! I don't think I had ever even listened to it before doing the post. Amazing!

So now we come to the last even-numbered Beethoven symphony: No. 8. This was written immediately after the Symphony No. 7. Beethoven had a special fondness for the 8th Symphony and told his student Carl Czerny that the 8th Symphony was less popular than the 7th because it "is so much better." The symphony has had a number of significant admirers including George Bernard Shaw who was a famous music critic as well as a playwright. Another admirer was none other than Igor Stravinsky who particularly admired the third movement for its "incomparable instrumental thought". Tchaikovsky thought the last movement was one of Beethoven's great masterpieces.

All this might seem a bit puzzling as in our time we exalt the 9th Symphony to the skies while barely admitting the 8th exists. But this is a remarkable symphony. Beethoven is more or less inventing neo-classicism a hundred years early. What Stravinsky was up to in the 1920s, a kind of re-imagining of the lightness, clarity and elegance of 18th century music, Beethoven had already done in the Symphony No. 8 and the last string quartet, op. 135, also in F major. The trio to the minuet, that Stravinsky so admired, may have been one of the inspirations for his Octet and Symphonies of Wind Instruments.

The obstacle for our appreciation of the Symphony No. 8 is very likely an aesthetic prejudice that we have learned from other pieces of Beethoven. His aesthetic range was so wide, as was Stravinsky's, that it is hard for us to reconcile the hard-charging drama of the 5th Symphony with the playful elegance of the 8th Symphony. Here is how it begins:

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The choice of 3/4 time signature gives the movement a waltz-like lilt, as does the inverted turn figure in the theme. I'm one for seeing a lot in the basic character of the initial theme--though of course, Beethoven, and others, likes to deceive the listener sometimes, especially if there is an introduction. But here, he launches right into the movement and the initial mood is not deceptive. Note how the first four measures are answered with a fluid phrase in the winds. This is also characteristic of this movement and the symphony as a whole.

In the "slow" movement which comes next, it is as if Beethoven is trying to compose against every expectation of a slow movement. First of all, the tempo is allegretto scherzando, a moderate rather than slow tempo. Then the movement has a mechanical kind of feel to it due to the constant ticking of the accompaniment. This movement is thought by some to be a parody of the recently invented metronome.  Then there are the ubiquitous staccato notes which also go against the grain of a typical slow movement which is supposed to be slow, flowing and sentimental. This movement, again, has a kind of artificial, wry, neo-classical feel to it. Here is the opening:

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And now the third movement: a minuet and trio, which by this point in the early 19th century is nearly an archaic dance. Here is part of the second half of the trio, whose orchestration Stravinsky so admired:

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The last movement is the weightiest of the symphony with an intense rhythmic figure that begins with repeated triplets that turn into little turnlet eighths. Here is how that looks at the beginning of the movement:

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This figure, which we see in the violins in the above example, has some real rhythmic impetus. There is a harmonically striking effect in the coda where a D flat is turned into a C# which interrupts the theme and is hammered insistently until its function is revealed as the dominant of F# minor, which leads to an episode in D major, hammered down into D minor, the relative minor of F, which gets us back into the right key. Here is that passage:

This really is an amazing symphony, though it is never going to have the widespread fame of the Symphony No. 9, whose aesthetic virtues are so much more likely to appeal to the majority of listeners.

Here is a lovely performance with Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the 2012 Proms. Here is a guide to where each movement begins:

00:05 1 - Allegro vivace e con brio

10:12 2 - Allegretto scherzando

14:23 3 - Tempo di Menuetto

19:35 4 - Allegro vivace