Eroica

Beethoven, Ludwig van: Symphony 3 (Eroica). Performed by the Orchestre national de France and conducted by Josef Krips (1958).

————————

The Heiligenstadt Testament:

“O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me, you do not know the secret causes of my seeming, from childhood my heart and mind were disposed to the gentle feelings of good will, I was even ever eager to accomplish great deeds, but reflect now that for six years I have been a hopeless case…

but what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence

It is said that I must now choose patience for my guide, I have done so, I hope my determination will remain firm to endure until it please the inexorable parcae to break the thread, perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not, I am prepared. Forced already in my 28th year to become a philosopher”

From “The Riddle Of Beethoven’s Eroica:”

“Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony has disturbed not only people who write about music. It bothers musicians too. And I must confess I am no exception. Perhaps this points up to a lesson, for whenever I hear it I find the work beautiful. Only when thinking about it am I teased and tantalized.”(Holden)

Who is the funeral march for?

“Hector Berlioz compared the funeral march to the rites for the slain Pallas from Virgil’s Aeneid. In the 1840s, Richard Wagner believed that Beethoven was depicting the philosophical idea of heroism in all of its forms, including sorrow, and implied that Beethoven himself was the hero.14 Arnold Schering argued in 1933 that Homer’s Iliad had served as the inspiration for the Eroica, with Hector being the hero. Thus, the Funeral March portrays the Trojans mourning the slain Hector…

Others have regarded the Eroica Symphony not in mythological– literary–historical terms, but as an autobiographical work. Thus, according to Romain Rolland, Beethoven was struggling with the onset of his deafness, and in the Funeral March, he depicted his own death. This type of psychological approach was also followed by Maynard Solomon, who stated that “the symphony, with its Funeral March, is centrally concerned with the death of the hero as well as with his birth and resurrection.”18 Sipe disagrees with this theory as well, stating that “The symphony is not about the death and resurrection of a hero, as Solomon suggests. Instead, it is about the hero’s character in all its manifestations, including grief and resignation over loss.”19 This idea was in fact first presented by Wagner, and in my opinion, makes the most sense…

According to another anecdote, told by Alois Fuchs, Beethoven had remarked upon hearing that Napoleon had won a decisive victory over the Prussians at the Battle of Jena in 1806 that “It’s a pity that I do not understand the art of war as well as I do the art of music, [otherwise] I would conquer him!”21 I believe that this statement helps us understand Beethoven’s original meaning. Wagner had intimated that the hero of the Eroica Symphony was not Napoleon, but Beethoven himself: Beethoven as the revolutionary liberator—the Napoleon—of music. Writing this symphony—setting out on a new path, as he described his aim—was itself a heroic act of great courage. If this theory is correct, then it is Beethoven himself who is grieving over the death of someone in the Funeral March...

My new hypothesis is that Beethoven, because his plan to dedicate the First Symphony to Max Franz was thwarted, decided to honor his deceased ruler with a symphonic Funeral March.” (Steblin)

————————

Holden, David. “The Riddle of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica.’” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 3, no. 4, 1962, pp. 635– 53. JSTOR.

Steblin, Rita. “Who Died? The Funeral March in Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony: The Musical Quarterly; The Funeral March in Eroica Symphony.” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 1, June 2007, pp. 62–79, doi: 10.1093/musqtl/gdk010 .

Wikisource contributors. “Heiligenstadt Testament.” / Wikisource/. Wikisource , 23 Apr. 2018. Web. 2 Mar. 2019.

The Show Image features a painting by Joseph Willabrord Mahler of beethoven playing a lyre guitar.