Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 6 (1927-03)

The Phonograph Monthly Review 243 vsie —!|SV upon the well-known lines.” He at least assumed that his audience was intelligible. Can we insist on anything less? If an audience is willing to exercise its powers of concentration for a length of time on music as it does on drama or sport or occasionally even on the serious things of life, Beethoven takes them at their word and creates his masterpiece. His nine symphonies are few in number compared to Haydn’s hundred and Mozart’s forty and measured by their scale it is no wonder that some of his contemporaries were bewildered. Before his day the symphony had been ad- dressed to small and select circles of patrons and amateurs but Beethoven absorbed and turned to good use the stimuli he received and made the instrumental symphony the art-form of democ- racy.” Beethoven’s symphonies were all produced within the limits of about a quarter of a century. The first was performed on April 2, 1880 in Vienna where they were all brought out. There were performances soon at Leipzig, Frank- fort-on-the-Main, Dresden, Brunswick, Berlin, Breslau and Munich. Before the Ninth had been performed on May 8, 1824, the First had been performed at Philadelphia in 1821. As the American symphony orchestra as it exists today has grown up to a large extent in response to an enthusiasm for Beethoven’s symphonies, a table is added showing the dates of the first perform- ances in America as far as they are available. 15, 1843 New York Nov. 24, 1849 New York Nov. 27, 1841 Boston 15, 1842 Boston 18, 1843 New York Nov. 16, 1844 New York May 20, 1846 New York First Performance in First American Europe Performance 1 April 2, 1800 April 24, 1821 Philadelphia 2 April 15, 1803 Nov. 12, 1842 Boston 3 April 7, 1805 Feb. 4 March 15, 1807 5 Dec. 22, 1808 6 Dec. 22, 1808 Jan. 7 Dec. 8, 1813 Nov. 8 Feb. 27,1814 9 May 7, 1824 From the records available it appears that the symphonies were performed in the order follow- ing 1, 5, 6, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 4, practically all in the de- cade of 1840-50. As early records become avail- able it may be necessary to change a date or two, but the general impression remains. Beethoven’s symphonies got their start in America the decade of the Mexican War. It is thus seen that the Beethoven cult goes back many years even in America. One of the earliest expressions of ap- preciation was the Beethoven Festival held in Boston in connection with the inauguration of Crawford’s noble statue on the composer—the gift of Charles C. Perkins in March 1, 1856, Perhaps few occasions have been more thrilling than the memorable jubilee concerts in honor of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day, 1863. in Boston when Emerson first read his famous Hymn and Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, E-Flat Pianforte Concerto and the Fifth Symphony were performed. This brief survey of Beethoven’s Symphonies through their hundred and more years of exist- ence would of course be incomplete without refer- ence to Beethoven’s Symphonies and the phono- graph. Just as Beethoven could never have im- agined the large number of books that have been written about him, still less could he have had a vision of the process of tonal reproduction which was not only to carry his works to the far corners of the earth, but, which may be as im- portant, was to preserve the readings or tech- nical production—the equivalent of stage business in dramatics—of the great conductors of succeed- ing generations. A whole book has been written on the sub- ject of Beethoven as pianist and conductor. One point that might be mentioned is that Beethoven never played any music in public except his own —at least after his early years. Of course he improvised and many of his piano sonatas are evidently derived from improvisations. We know that he refrained from publishing many piano works so that he could keep certain tricks of execution to himself. It is possible that what was given out as an improvisation may have been something that was worked up more or less beforehand? This may sound like blas- phemy, but it is at least conceivable. Of course many of the improvisations were made on the spur of the moment because the theme could not have been known beforehand. Contrast this state of affairs with conditions of the present concert halls. It is quite the ex- ception to hear a great virtuoso play anything original. It would seem that the effort to repro- duce exhausts the impulse to original creation. And yet with the very high standards of the present day virtuosos, what would we not give for the privilege of hearing Beethoven’s own rendi- tion! It is not that he would play better than the contemporary artist, but he would play with understanding. It is a fact that much of the literature about Beethoven has grown up from the ineradicable question, “How would Beethoven have done it?” If this is the case with his piano music, which was in a way a personal diary, how much more so in the case of the symphonies, works which demand so much from so many participants? What would we not give to hear Beethoven’s per- sonal rendition of these? The parallel seems ob- vious, but from what we can gather it does not hold. The traditions of orchestral performance have probably never been as high as they are today. For many years after Beethoven’s symphonies were composed the art of conducting them was more or less in its infancy. In most cases they appear to have been conducted by the concert master (first violinist). We know that for many years the conductors faced the audience—merely beating time—so that as far as conducting in the modern sense goes, it is comparatively re- cent. And then the personnel of the orchestras which played Beethoven’s symphonies seems to have been rather casually constituted. The concerts