The third and final concert of Summermusic 2025 takes place Saturday evening at 7:30 at the air-conditioned Market Square Presbyterian Church in downtown Harrisburg. I mention this air-conditioning for those of you who might be suffering from heat frustration and who thought the weather reports couldn't possibly be more anxiety-laden than the news. Which might mean a program called "Trials and Triumphs" could be just the thing.
The program opens with the 2nd Piano Trio of Dmitri Shostakovich (you can read about it, here) written in the midst of World War II. Given its association with the recent death of a close friend and the news the Nazis had established concentration camps in Poland, the music possesses a cathartic intensity far beyond the scope of just three musicians. But, like other compositions from Shostakovich's career, there is always, however distant they might seem at the time, a sense of survival in the face of the inhumanity of history.
The “Archduke” Trio is usually considered the greatest of Beethoven’s piano trios, not a medium where one would expect a composer to be writing “heroic” works of the stature of symphonies like 3rd or 5th. It is certainly the grandest of the trios and, given all the details of Beethoven’s life around the time it was written and premiered, definitely a triumph over adversity – and not just his deafness. While we often listen to music “out of context” and even more often without really listening to it (the difference between “hearing” it and listening to it are two separate levels of involvement), what context can we place the piece in that would help a listener appreciate the music even more?
Since writing about Beethoven’s music can reveal an infinite number of rabbit holes, I thought I would begin with something I’d found a few months ago and jotted down (alas without referencing its source: a biography, I assume, either the one by Maynard Solomon or a more recent one by Jan Swafford, both of which I recommend for more avid rabbit-hunters):
“During the Congress of Vienna which was busy reshaping Europe following the Napoleonic Wars, Beethoven's cantata "The Glorious Moment," "Wellington's Victory" and the 7th Symphony were performed on November 29th, 1814, to great acclaim. But on Nov. 30th, the head of the Secret Police wrote in his report "The recital given yesterday did not serve to increase enthusiasm for the talent of this composer who has his partisans and his adversaries. In opposition to his admirers... is formed an overwhelming majority of connoisseurs who refuse absolutely to listen to his works hereafter."
Since we normally consider Beethoven one of the Greatest Composers of All Time, possibly The Greatest, this might put “The Master” in a more realistic context, especially regarding the work that concludes this year’s Summermusic Series, the Piano Trio No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 97, better known as “The Archduke Trio,” which was given its first public performance on April 11th, 1814, just seven months before the concert mentioned in the Secret Police’s report.
Before digging deeper, here is a performance of Beethoven’s last piano trio – with score – played by pianist Daniel Barenboim, violinist Michael Barenboim (yes, Daniel Barenboim’s son), and the Austrian-Iranian cellist Kian Soltani. Both string players had long played in Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, comprised of young Jewish and Islamic musicians formed in 1999.
Whatever prompted Beethoven to write the trio – does the noble and expansive opening represent a musical portrait of the Archduke as some writers suggest? – we know he began “sketching” it during the summer of 1810 at the same time he began work on the next string quartet which would become the Quartetto Serioso (one of the few works he would give a title). It was Beethoven’s habit to compose works in contrasting pairs, sometimes concurrently – in the course of the sketches, the “Pastoral” Symphony almost became No. 5 and the C Minor Symphony, No. 6 – and this would continue until the end. Having completed the 9th Symphony, Beethoven began sketching a 10th and the pages found in his desk after his death suggest it too would be, by comparison, a more lyrical, expansive work than the incredible 9th (if you’ve ever wondered “how could he possibly follow that…?”).
Personal history and health issues aside, what were the purely “academic” considerations Beethoven would address in writing a piece contrasting to the “Serioso”? Obviously, it should not be “so serious,” and that becomes fairly obvious when you listen to the scherzo and to the finale of the trio. Honestly, reading some descriptions of the music, you would almost think you were about to hear a slap-stick comedy (I suspect at least one annotator had heard a bad performance which colored his approach to the music itself). But, given the times – 1811 was still in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars and Vienna was still reeling from the French Occupation of 1809 – and given the memory of “Papa” Haydn (who coincidentally died during that occupation) who had his own unexpected twists that brought smiles of delight to his listeners, Beethoven was doing nothing new, though perhaps, for some, doing it “more new” than they’d expected.
Case in point – the opening “theme” of the scherzo is a simple scale in the cello with rhythmic punctuation. “That’s it?!” you could imagine Standard Music Lover No. 10 sitting there in the audience’s third row wondering if Beethoven weren’t in fact pulling their collective leg. But if the main theme of the first movement is generated by triads – not unlike the building blocks used in his 3rd and 5th Symphonies’ opening themes – why not, if you’re looking for contrast, built the next movement’s theme on a scale?
The finale is also rather light-hearted and is generally taken as a comfortable country-dance. (Curiously, Beethoven had remarked, in rehearsal, that his fellow musicians shouldn’t be so gentle with it, playing instead with “much energy and force.”) But there are also unexpected turns – Beethoven had established the disruption of the forward flow by extending a note’s duration in the opening theme, extending a four-bar phrase into five bars; and that trait shows up in delayed resolutions of up-beat chords in the finale. First of all, it starts right on top of the slow movement’s final chord, without a break and only a single chord preparation: bam! Between the sudden changes in dynamics, the almost snickering motive going back-and-forth between the strings and piano, and Beethoven’s favorite off-beat accents (hardly something a genteel courtly dancer would do), you already have something that amounts to a second scherzo (not so serious, now). And then when you get to the coda with its sudden change of tempo (fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride), here you are in the key of A Major. Okay, so it’s only a half-step away from B-flat, but in the universe of traditional 18th and early-19th Century tonality, it’s light-years away from the expected tonic. And then, once back home in B-flat Major, it’s over.
Compared to the taut structure that creates the tension in the Serioso Quartet (the Emerson Quartet’s performance clocks in at 23 minutes), the Archduke Trio is expansive, taking about 40 minutes. Compare the openings: the quartet’s is like a corkscrew, drilling into you in 3 seconds; the trio’s unfolds in a leisurely 8 measures (maybe 20-some seconds). The first movement alone takes about ten minutes compared to the Serioso’s less than half that. The quartet is relentless in its rhythmic and harmonic tension; the trio is, by comparison, a pleasant day’s walk in the park.
It’s also odd that in 1816 Beethoven would write in to Sir George Smart, the man who had introduced Beethoven to the English public that would lead to the commission for his 9th Symphony the following year, he thought "the Quartet is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public." Most would agree Beethoven didn’t mean that as a literal injunction (concerts in those days were different than they are today, anyway; music was still most likely to be heard, especially chamber music, in the “music rooms” of aristocrats like Prince Lobkowitz). Basically, it was the composer’s way of saying “this work is not recommended for popular consumption,” merely for entertainment. Perhaps, given his love of contrasts, he was specifically writing the Piano Trio to be exactly that: meant to appeal to popular taste and suitable for all ages.
The slow movement, placed between the scherzo and the finale for better contrast, continues this generally idyllic quality of the first movement. It is the only movement not in B-flat Major and is in the not very typical key of D Major (one would expect F Major or even E-flat; or, for a more serious tone, G Minor, the relative minor of B-flat Major, all sanctioned by the Classical Era’s text-book concept of tonality). But D Major has a brighter tone, due to the overtones of the open strings of the violin and cello, and it gives a different aura (so to speak) to a set of variations marked with an usual tempo indication: Andante cantabile ma però con moto. Thinking però could mean something distinctive, qualifying the singing character of cantabile – perhaps something like “whistfully”? – I looked it up and realized ma però con moto only means “but however with motion.” (Sigh...) By contrast to the scherzo (and the up-coming finale), the long-flowing singing melody, like a hymn, is accompanied by sustained harmonies that, as Beethoven’s lyrical imagination combines with his sense of the profound – think of the 9th Symphony’s slow movement – to create poetry that transcends its heart-felt simplicity.
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| from Beethoven's sketches for the 3rd & 4th movements of the Archduke Trio (if you're wondering about his handwriting, I refer you to the painting, fanciful or not, above...) |
When Beethoven’s new trio was premiered – a private musical evening at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz – Beethoven was the pianist. The Archduke was not only present, he also performed as a pianist in another composition on the program.
About that premiere – for one thing, it didn’t take place until three years after the trio was completed which is odd in itself, considering most of the piece was composed over a short period of three weeks. Beethoven had been plagued by symptoms of his increasing deafness for more than a decade, now, and by the time it was performed, he was almost completely deaf. Ludwig (or Louis) Spohr, a famous violinist and highly regarded composer of the time – enough that Beethoven knew who he was when they met and subsequently became good friends – “witnessed” a rehearsal for the premiere and wrote this in his Autobiography:
“On account of his deafness there was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist which had formerly been so greatly admired. In forte passages the poor deaf man pounded on the keys until the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of notes were omitted, so that the music was unintelligible unless one could look into the pianoforte part. I was deeply saddened at so hard a fate.”
Ignaz Moscheles, another leading pianist and composer of the day, wrote about the premiere: “in the case of how many compositions is the word 'new' misapplied! But never in Beethoven's, and least of all in this [piano trio], which again is full of originality. His playing, aside from its intellectual element, satisfied me less, being wanting in clarity and precision; but I observed many traces of the grand style of playing which I had long recognized in his compositions.”
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Another rabbit hole opened up when, googling information about the trio and asking the seemingly innocent question, sans Siri, “What did Beethoven compose in 1810,” the year he had begun sketching the Archduke Trio. And up came, “April 26th, 1810, Beethoven writes Fur Elise,” which of course makes it seem like (a.) we actually know when Beethoven wrote this ubiquitous little piano piece (scholars’ best guesses usually fall between 1808 and 1810, but sure, this is the internet we’re talking about), and (b.) this is the Greatest Piece of Music Beethoven Ever Wrote. But it is certainly one of the pieces most people, lovers of classical music or not, would recognize (and probably reach for their phones when they hear it). Without digging any deeper, it does present part of the problem when trying to place both composer and composition into some kind of context: we know he began sketching the piano trio in the summer of 1810 and saying he was “sketching” it is different from his actually writing it, which occurred during the month of March – one reference says “between March 3rd and March 26th” of the following year, 1811. If you want to consider what events were going on in Beethoven’s life at the time the work was conceived and written, you must consider he wrote very little around this time – why? – and what was going on in his personal life that might influence this.
Perhaps the biggest rabbit hole of all, then, is the whole warrenful of rabbit holes that opens up in 1812, all focused directly or indirectly around “The Immortal Beloved.” And while that seems to involve a period of time after the Archduke Trio, it is, naturally, not that simple. But I will do my best to refrain from taking you on a tour of the usual suspects regarding her mysterious identity. Just like no one seems to know who, exactly, Elise was, regarding that little, otherwise seemingly insignificant piano piece of a few years earlier…
More to the point, of course, is “Who Was the Archduke of Beethoven’s Title?” Unlike the Emperor in Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto – that title refers to no specific person and the nickname was possibly supplied by Beethoven’s English publisher who’d called it “an emperor among concertos” (or perhaps some French officer who’d heard the premiere in 1811 and thought it was about the French Emperor, Napoleon, which was, given Beethoven’s politics and the fact Napoleon’s Army had occupied Vienna, making everybody’s life miserable for all of 1809, highly unlikely. The concerto is, however, dedicated to the Archduke Rudolf who happened to be the youngest brother of the Austrian Emperor, Franz I.
Rudolf was born in 1788, the youngest son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and brother of the Austrian Emperor, Joseph II (he of Amadeus fame who actually did say there were too many notes in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio). But when Joseph died without an heir, Rudolf’s father became Emperor Leopold II and when he died less than two years later, his eldest son inherited the throne as Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire. Since that nation ceased to exist in 1806, thanks to Napoleon, he then became just Francis I of the Austrian Empire. Now, barring some cataclysmic dynastic extinction, Rudolf never had a chance at becoming an emperor. Besides, he ended up dying four years before his older brother, anyway.
So, his chances of being anything remotely imperial beyond being the youngest son of a Grand Duke (or Archduke), Rudolf was allowed to pursue his primary interest: music. He was a talented pianist and exhibited an early talent in composition, so in 1803 or so, when Emperor Franz (or Francis, as he’s usually called in English) was looking around for a possible music teacher for his little brother, they landed on Beethoven as a possibility. Ironically, as far as we Americans are concerned, Emperor Franz is not one of those historical personalities to gain much of a gleam of recognition; but because he’d studied with Beethoven, and Beethoven dedicated several works to him, including both the 4th and 5th Piano Concertos, three piano sonatas (Les Adieux, the Hammerklavier, and Op.111), as well as the last of his piano trios, the “Archduke” Trio. Beethoven also wrote his Triple Concerto for the Archduke to play, writing it around the time the 16-year-old Archduke started to study with him.
Since
the boy suffered from epilepsy and a military career was out of the
question, a life of music and scholarship was deemed
more satisfactory;
subsequently, he pursued a career in the church, and was appointed
Archbishop of Olmütz
(now
Olomouc in the Czech Republic)
when he was 31 (curiously, he was named a cardinal a few months
later, ordained a priest a few months after that, and less than a
month after that, consecrated a bishop). Sorry
about that particular rabbit hole, but his student’s sudden
elevation in the ecclesiastical world inspired Beethoven to compose a
mass for his investiture which took place in March, 1820. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be),
Beethoven’s inspiration turned his mass into a massive project which became his Missa
Solemnis
which, unfortunately, was not completed until 1824… The
fact he also wrote his 9th
Symphony at the same time, between 1822 and 1824, didn’t help with the deadline.
But it wasn’t just Beethoven cozying up to a member of the Imperial Family: Rudolf was well known as a patron of the arts and in particular of Beethoven, having arranged in 1809 for him and two of his aristocratic friends to present Beethoven with a “guaranteed annual salary of 4000 florins” to convince the composer not to leave Vienna. Yes, there had been almost immediate problems: the French occupied Vienna (again) in 1809, when much of the city’s nobility, including the Imperial Family, evacuated the city, leaving behind social and financial chaos. In 1811, the Austrian currency was devalued “fivefold,” placing an undue burden on the aristocrats’ contributions to Beethoven’s pension. When Prince Kinsky was thrown from his horse and died in 1812 and Prince Lobkowitz went bankrupt the following year, Rudolf alone maintained Beethoven’s pension.
So there you have, more than less, all you need to know about Beethoven and his Archduke.
Oh, and one more thing… Rudolf studied piano as well as composition with Beethoven, and Beethoven rarely taught anyone composition. The Archduke composed several piano pieces and chamber works (including a septet for winds and strings and a clarinet sonata) but due to his royal status, these had to be published anonymously; nor could he appear on the stage as a performer as a professional musician – it just wasn’t done.
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Among several questions I haven’t mentioned, one that bothers me is “If Beethoven finished the work in March of 1811 – especially if it only took him three weeks to finalize the piece – why did he wait until April, 1814, three years later, to premiere it? And then two more years before he’d publish it?” He did the same thing with the Serioso Quartet, completed presumably in October 1810, which wasn’t premiered until May of 1814, or published until 1816. These are two major works – “serious” works, I was going to say – so why the delay? Could he have had reservations about them? He was publishing other things at the time, so why not these two?
In the post about the Dvořák String Quintet, I mentioned how careful one had to be about using the publisher’s Opus Number when trying to sort out when a work was composed. In this case, Beethoven completed his previous string quartet, known as “The Harp”, in 1809 and published it as Op. 74 in 1810 and dedicated it to Prince Lobkowitz who held a musical evening at his palace after the French withdrew from Vienna in December of 1809. This soiree included the quartet’s first performance. The “Emperor” Concerto, also completed in 1809, was published as Op. 73 in 1810 (and premiered in Leipzig in November, 1811).
Beethoven was frequently tardy with his publications: the oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, for instance, was composed in 1803 and premiered the following year. But he was “quite critical” of the piece and the performance, only revising it in 1811 for publication as Op. 85. This was a time when apparently Beethoven dumped a lot of earlier works on his publisher, for whatever reason, including a trio for oboes and English horn which became Op. 87 despite being written in 1795 (if you want another rabbit-hole to explore, this piece along with other arrangements of it for string trio, has also appeared as Op. 29, Op. 55, and Op.55bis.) By comparison, the “Eroica,” completed in 1803 was published in 1806 after several private performances as Op. 53.
Given how composers’ styles often change within the span of a few years – Beethoven’s especially – it can be challenging to place a particular work in its stylistic context if the opus numbers are so skewed they “misrepresent” when they were composed. And there’s also the problem that many listeners (and program annotators) mention a work was written in such-and-such a year when, in fact, that was the year it was published. Normally it wouldn’t make much difference, if it would matter at all to the average listener, but there are those who would complain mightily if I mentioned the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series in 1959 – no, they didn’t, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957!
I rest my case…
– Dick Strawser
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