How to make six-pointed snowflakes:
The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, composed concurrently in 1808,
were premiered together (with their numbers switched) as part of a
four-hour extravaganza Beethoven produced in Vienna. The following year,
they were published in the now-familiar order, with adjacent opus
numbers. On the surface, the two symphonies seem unlikely twin siblings:
the Fifth Symphony is dark and dramatic, with its imposing “fate”
motive and triumphant progress to a major-key resolution, while the
Sixth Symphony is relaxed and bucolic, full of extra-musical
associations.
Beethoven’s Sixth was one of the first programmatic symphonies, with
descriptive movement headings that evoked specific ideas and images. But
this was not, for the most part, literal tone-painting, as in later
works such as Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique or the
symphonic poems of Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss. Beethoven, for his
part, made this distinction in the title he inscribed on the parts for
the initial performance, which read “Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections
of Country Life: More an Expression of Feeling than Painting.”
Beethoven’s journals and letters reveal his love of nature, as when
he wrote in 1810, “How delighted I will be to ramble for awhile through
the bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks. No one
can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks
produce the echo that man desires to hear.” Recognizing and
appreciating the natural world was a cornerstone of the Romantic
sensibility, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. With the Sixth Symphony, Beethoven joined a common thread in
music, art, and literature of the early nineteenth century that
rhapsodized on the beauty and grandeur of the natural world, with a
reverence that was in no small part spiritual.
What the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies share, along with other works
from Beethoven’s “middle” period, is rigorous economy and unity in the
musical language. Just as the first four notes of the Fifth Symphony
influence every measure of the opening movement, the Sixth Symphony
builds an expansive essay out of a seemingly naïve theme. The first
movement, characterized as the “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon
arrival in the country,” enters bashfully, with four quiet measures that
trail off. Fragments of this figure build slowly, basking in long
stretches of unmoving harmony and resonant pedal figures. The
development section, often an opportunity for increased turbulence and
activity, instead sinks deeper into a country calm, savoring each
radiant change of harmony.
The second movement, “Scene by the brook,” establishes a lapping
triplet pulse under another mere wisp of melody. The idyllic scene ends
with a trio of birdcalls from the woodwinds, representing a nightingale,
quail, and cuckoo. From here, the symphony diverges from a typical
four-movement pattern. There is a Scherzo-like third movement, “Merry
assembly of country folk,” but the rollicking dance music halts
unresolved and is supplanted by the first staccato raindrops of the
“Thunderstorm.” Fearful dissonances and thunderous timpani strikes make
for a convincing tempest, until it trails off in one last upward patter
from the flute. A clarinet takes over to establish the sing-song
contours of the “Shepherds’ song; happy and grateful feelings after the
storm.” This tune, at once humble and heroic, returns the symphony to
its pastoral calm. Near the end, a hymn-like variant lends a deeper
resonance to this warm-hearted conclusion.
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