It has been called “the most awesome concert in the history of Western Music” by someone who was not there (as the word “awesome” suggests). For someone who stayed for all 4 hours, it was proof “that one can easily have too much of a good thing — and still more of a loud.“
This was Beethoven’s benefit concert of 22 December 1808, three days before Christmas, lasting from 6:30 to 10:30 in the unheated Theater-an-der-Wien with an under-rehearsed orchestra playing two symphonies, a piano concerto, and something new and unusual.
The first half of Beethoven’s 22 December 1808 benefit concert consisted of the premiere of the Symphony No. 6 (Day 211), “Ah! Perfido” (Day 70), the Gloria from the recent Mass in C (Day 205), and the Piano Concerto No. 4 (Day 193).
The second half was the premiere of the Fifth Symphony (Day 208), the Sanctus from the Mass in C, and then a new work that Beethoven had just completed. It began with an improvisation on the piano followed by the orchestra joining in and then a chorus.
The Choral Fantasy is the most directional music that Beethoven ever wrote. It starts in C minor and ends in C major (like the 5th Symphony), but it also progresses from solo piano to full orchestra and chorus, as well as from free-form improvisation to structure and order.
The Choral Fantasy uses a melody familiar to modern audiences for both a set of variations for piano and orchestra, and for the choral part towards the end. This tune originated in Beethoven’s song “Gegenliebe” (Day 44) from 1794–95.
“Gegenliebe” was only published posthumously, so nobody would have recognized the melody when the Choral Fantasy was first performed. To us, of course, it has the peculiar status of being an early version of the “Ode to Joy” theme in the Ninth Symphony.
#Beethoven250 Day 214
Choral Fantasy in C Major (Opus 80), 1808
A performance in Paris by Alice Sara Ott at the piano with Laurence Equilbey at the podium.
The text is an undistinguished ode to music by Christoph Kuffner. In the article "The Choral Fantasia" published in the centenary year of Beethoven’s death, English musicologist Edward J. Dent indicates that Kuffner tried to capture “the mystical spirit of eighteenth-century Freemasonry, the new religion of liberty, equality and fraternity.” (pp. 116–7). Here’s Dent’s rather ornate rhyming translation of the Choral Fantasy text:
Strains of secret music hover
Round the wisely listening ear;
Eyes that Beauty once has opened
Find her flowers everywhere.
Happy souls, by her enlightened!
Sweet content is theirs and joy;
Toss’d no more on passion’s tempest,
Wafted toward the life on high.
When the singer’s notes are wedded
To the poet’s word of might,
Forth from formless void and darkness
Breaks the new created light.
Blest are those to whom ‘tis granted
To behold that wondrous ray,
Why by Truth and Beauty guided
Find the realm of endless day.
Every seed of noble nature
That within their hearts was sown
Wakes to nobler life and fragrance
In that glorious light alone.
There the seer of inward visions,
Borne aloft on Music’s wing,
Hears a thousand echoing voices
To his own in answer ring.
Haste, O soul, that voice to follow,
Haste, O soul, that joy to share,
Led by Love, by Strength and Beauty
On to Music’s final sphere.
#Beethoven250 Day 214
Choral Fantasy in C Major (Opus 80), 1808
It’s Martha Argerich and Seiji Ozawa!
I find the Choral Fantasy to be the most problematic and exasperating work in Beethoven’s oeuvre: We want it to be more than an historical curiosity as a “rough draft” of the 9th Symphony. We want it to stand on its own and be better than it is.
In its teleological structure and the use of a chorus, the Choral Fantasy has big ambitions. Yet, it’s cast in the form of a fantasy — traditionally not a very serious genre — and it’s short, usually coming in under 20 minutes.
Yet, when we contemplate how Beethoven could have made the Choral Fantasy a more substantial work, we might imagine something more like the 9th Symphony. But the more the Choral Fantasy would have approached that work, the less likely the 9th Symphony would have been.