(#7185 cont'd). The evolution of the final movement of the Ninth Symphony to its present form is, according to Biedermann-Brandstifter, even more tortuous than you probably wish to know. In order to comprehend, we must return momentarily to the year 1822, to a sunny city promenade in Vienna. Beethoven is ensconced in front of his favorite beerhall, nursing his third Landshut of the afternoon, and pondering where to take his immortal beloved beer jingle.
Suddenly out pop six dirndl-clad beauties from the beerhall and burst into a Landshut commercial: "Landshut, schone Gotterfunken..." Predictably, passersby commence to flood into the beerhall clamoring for a cool one. On the other side of the promenade, the proprietor of the avenue's competing Bierstube (offering an inferior but cheaper Austrian beer, Hieflau), senses impending commercial disaster and shoos out his singing dirndlmadchen and they strike up a competing chorus: "Hieflau, schone Gotterfunken..." The Landshut maidens redouble their efforts, singing louder and louder. The proprietor totes out the kitchen staff and begins conducting the enlarged chorus. Ditto the Hieflau crew. Drunken fanatical Landshut drinkers from inside the beerhall begin to pour into the street, waving their steins and bellowing with the beerhall chorus. The Hieflau patrons, sensing a grievous insult to their favored brew, counter likewise. Inevitably, fisticuffs ensue, several patrons are bludgeoned with beersteins, and the gendarmes are called out to quell the disturbance.
Beethoven sits, transfixed. It hits him like a thunderclap. He will do the final choral movement of the Ninth as -- a "round." With audience participation no less.
How, you may ask, could Beethoven have gotten this idea from hearing this cacaphonous musical face-off, since he was supposedly deaf at the time? Shockingly enough, according to Biedermann-Brandstifter, Beethoven's deafness was no more than a myth, a sly ruse that he foisted on his ladyfriend, the so-called "Immortal Beloved," so he would not have to listen to her interminable chitchat.
Beethoven was certainly not unmindful of the efficacy of the "round," an admittedly seldom used musical form. Since youth he had been insanely jealous of the rousing success of audience participation in Handel's Messiah, and was often heard to grumble, "Why the hell don't they sing along with my stuff??" And he had previously used the "round" to good effect in his opera Fidelio, a work that evinced a pronounced tendency to put the audience (and critics) to sleep. In a stroke of unalloyed genius, he inserted his now famous intermezzo, Rud', Rud' Rud' dein Boot (roughly, "Row, Row, Row your Boat") in a particularly soporific stretch in Act II, whereby the orchestra section of the audience sang one contrapunt, and the balconies the other. It was a resounding success, although it has regrettably fallen out of fashion in modern stagings.
The rhythmic patterns of the Ninth final movement being vastly more complex than the easily performed Rud', Beethoven was flummoxed as to how to cue the two parts of the audience when to begin singing Freude Schone Gotterfunken etc. in a round. This leads to a remarkable musicological curio, the only known instance of Beethoven's tempo instruction, Folge dem Springendem Balle, or "Follow the Bouncing Ball." "Bouncing ball" video effects of course being unavailable in the early 19th Century. Furthermore, it is estimated that at least forty-five percent of an early 19th Century audience would have been functionally illiterate, and certainly incapable of bouncing ball sightreading along with the dense poetic structures of Schiller. Little more is known of this anomaly; we do know, however, that about this time, Beethoven placed an order with his tailor for two large leather balls, and may have intended for the balls to be bounced onstage by assistants, to cue in the two audience groups during the performance of the round. A note in Beethoven's handwriting, found in his tailor's personal effects, reads, "Ich habe Ihnen soviel fur diese verdammte Dinge bezahlt du Dummkopf!! Und sie konnen nicht ein schisswert hupfen!!" or, approximately, "You idiot!! I paid you a fortune for these goddamn things, and they don't bounce worth a shit!!"
Accordingly, we may surmise that the capriciousness of a mere technological glitch might have prevented Beethoven from risking the use of this arcane musical device in the final movement of the Ninth, thus leading to its presentation in the form we know today. |
