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FREN 145 Intensive Intermediate and Advanced French: Reception

A guide to resources on Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony for studying André Gide's Symphonie Pastorale, emphasizing French-language resources

Beethoven's Legacy

Beethoven's legacy was profound. He served as a model for countless composers, including Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner, and Mahler. Aspects of his style were codified in textbooks, and his life and works became the subject of a vast scholarly literature. He inspired painters and sculptors, and numerous societies and festivals were named in his honor.

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Wagner's Book

Wagner, A Pilgrimage to Beethoven

In 1840, the young Richard Wagner wrote a short novel about a composer who visits Beethoven. You can read it online.

Cole Porter's Variations on a Theme by Beethoven

Beethoven Festival in New Haven

Beethoven Festival in New Haven, 18707

In 1870, New Haven honored Beethoven's 100th birthday with a four-day festival. One of the conductors was Gustave Jacob Stoeckel, the first music professor at Yale. Stoeckel Hall, now the home of the Department of Music, is named after him. This document is from the Stoeckel Papers. You can see a larger version here.

Reviews of Beethoven's Symphonies

Excerpt from Essai sur l'exécution musicale en France by Edme-François-Antoine-Marie Miel, based on a public lecture at the Société libre des Beaux-Arts, Dec. 30, 1833.
"Seated upon their thrones of immortality, the three sublime rivals [i.e. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven] remain unshakeable, and their crown is unattainable. But the field of the symphony has been extended and enriched under Beethoven's bold quill. Proud and passionate, fiery and wild, Beethoven pushes his virtues to the very borderline with his shortcomings, his energy right up to the acrimonious, his originality to the bizarre. But on the force of beauty, his deviations may be pardoned; whatever they may be, they never lead to disarray. For disarray is chaos, that is, the opposite of all creation. This musical giant seems to defy all rules, but he is careful not to break them; in this he is merely more impatient than others. Hence that independence which always pleases, for one feels liberty therein, and that grandeur which astonishes even if it might no longer please [trans.]" (p. 6)

Quoted in the Beethoven Bibliography database. 

Miel was one of the founders of the Société libre. A city official, he was also a conductor as well as a journalist and author of the book De la Symphonie et de Beethoven (Paris, 1829).

Nevertheless, Beethoven's symphonies were not well-received in France at first. As reported by the Tablettes de Polyhymnie in 1807, Beethoven's first symphony was full of "Germanic barbarisms" that "grated on the ears while freezing the soul" (as Johnson paraphrases Prod'homme in Symphonies de Beethoven, 1907). But the 1828 performance of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, "Eroica," in March 1828 at the Société des Concerts marked a definite change - it electrified and astonished the audience. The Journal des Debats announced "a revolution has just occurred in the musical world." The shift marked a transition in appreciating music in France, from the preference for programmatic portrayals of birds and storms to listening for and feeling the emotional impact in works of absolute music. Nevertheless, in 1838 Beethoven's Pastoral symphony was received poorly because of its program. Johnson describes this view as "absolute music with a vengeance." Beethoven had "prostituted his pen in imitation of the farmyard birds," according to Kalkbrenner, writing in La France musicale. Yet in the same year, Berlioz found the symphony's place assured in France, its beauties well-described, so that he needed not take time to review it. (The references in this paragraph are from Johnson "Beethoven and the Birth of the Romantic Musical Experience in France.")

By 1840, at a concert in the Salle Saint-Honoré, the work was received with "a religious silence," their souls in accord with the beautiful music - "Nouvelles," La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 7e année, no. 13 (Jeudi, 13 février 1840), 108. 

Sculpture of Beethoven

The heroic image of Beethoven appears most vividly in this sculpture by Max Klinger (1902), in the Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig.

Review References