Wagner's Programme for Beethoven's "Heroic" Symphony

[Anonymous No.23288724]

>The characteristic of the great compositions of Beethoven is that they are actual poems: that in them it is sought to bring a real subject to representation. The stumbling-block in the way of their comprehension lies in the difficult task of finding with certainty the subject represented. Beethoven was completely possessed by a subject: his most pregnant tone-pictures are indebted almost solely to the individuality of the subject with which he was filled; in consciousness of this, it appeared to him superfluous to denote his subject otherwise than in the tone-picture itself. Just as our word-poets really address themselves only to other word-poets, so did Beethoven in this unconsciously address himself only to the tone-poets.
- Wagner

>The only lasting & authentic passages of the Ring are the epic ones in which text or music narrate. And therefore the most impressive words of the Ring are the stage directions.
- Wittgenstein

Following Wittgenstein's recognition of Wagner's immense talent for poetic, epical description, the explanatory programmes for Beethoven's symphonies immediately become a point of interest. Especially since we know Wagner's understanding of Beethoven's symphonies was groundbreaking for its era and set the standard for generations of conductors and musicologists. Even more so would Beethoven's Third Symphony benefit from this, a work which Wagner explicitly describes as beyond the comprehension of the 'uninitiated', and therefore requiring a guide such as his programmes hope to offer. Music here becomes literature. In full is his programme for Beethoven's third symphony:

[Anonymous No.23288726]

HIS highly significant tone-poem the master's Third Symphony, and the first work with which he struck his own peculiar path is in many respects not so easy to understand as its name might allow one to suppose; and that precisely since the title "Heroic Symphony" instinctively misleads one into trying to see therein a series of heroic episodes, presented in a certain historico-dramatic sense by means of pictures in Tone. Whoever approaches this work with such a notion, and expects to understand it, will find himself at first bewildered and lastly undeceived, without having arrived at any true enjoyment. If therefore I here permit myself to communicate as tersely as possible the view I have gained of the poetic contents of this tone-creation, it is in the sincere belief that to many a hearer of the forthcoming performance of the "Heroic Symphony" I may facilitate an understanding, which he otherwise could only acquire through frequent attendance at particularly lifelike renderings of the work.

In the first place, the designation "heroic" is to be taken in its widest sense, and in nowise to be conceived as relating merely to a military hero. If we broadly connote by "hero" ("Held"} the whole, the full-fledged man, in whom are present all the purely-human feelings of love, of grief, of force in their highest fill and strength, then we shall rightly grasp the subject which the artist lets appeal to us in the speaking accents of his tone-work. The artistic space of this work is filled with ail the varied, intercrossing feelings of a strong, a consummate Individuality, to which nothing human is a stranger, but which includes within itself all truly Human, and utters it in such a fashion that after frankly manifesting every noble passion it reaches a final rounding of its nature, wherein the most feeling softness is wedded with the most energetic force. The heroic tendence of this artwork is the progress toward that rounding off.

The First Movement embraces, as in a glowing furnace, all the emotions of a richly-gifted nature in the heyday of unresting youth. Weal and woe, lief and lack, sweetness and sadness, living and longing, riot and revel, daring, defiance, and an ungovernable sense of Self, make place for one another so directly, and interlace so closely that, however much we mate each feeling with our own, we can single none of them from out the rest, but our whole interest is given merely to this one, this human being who shews himself brimful of every feeling. Yet all these feelings spring from one main faculty and that is Force. This Force, immeasurably enhanced by each emotional impression and driven to vent its overfill, is the mainspring of the tone-piece: it clinches toward the middle of the Movement to the violence of the destroyer, and in its braggart strength we think we see a Wrecker of the World before us, a Titan wrestling with the Gods.

(1/3)

[Anonymous No.23288728]

This shattering Force, that filled us half with ecstasy and half with horror, was rushing toward a tragic crisis, whose serious import is set before our Feeling in the Second, Movement. The tone-poet clothes its proclamation in the musical apparel of a Funeral-march. Emotion tamed by deep grief, moving in solemn sorrow, tells us its tale in stirring tones: an earnest, manly sadness goes from lamentation to thrills of softness, to memories, to tears of love, to searchings of the heart, to cries of transport Out of grief there springs new Force, that fills us with a warmth sublime; instinctively we seek again this force's fountain-head in Grief; we give ourselves to it, till sighing we swoon away; but here we rouse ourselves once more to fullest Force: we will not succumb, but endure. We battle no more against mourning, but bear it now ourselves on the mighty billows of a man's courageous heart. To whom were it possible to paint in words the endless play of quite unspeakable emotions, passing from Grief to highest Exaltation, and thence again to softest Melancholy, till they mount at last to endless Recollection? The Tone-poet alone could do it, in this wondrous piece.

Force robbed of its destructive arrogance by the chastening of its own deep sorrow the Third Movement shows in all its buoyant gaiety. Its wild unruliness has shaped itself to fresh, to blithe activity; we have before us now the lovable glad man, who paces hale and hearty through the fields of Nature, looks laughingly across the meadows, and winds his merry hunting-horn from wood-land heights : and what he feels amid it all, the master tells us in the vigorous, healthy tints of his tone-painting; he gives it lastly to the horns themselves to say those horns which musically express the radiant, frolicsome, yet tender-hearted exultation of the man. In this Third Movement the tone-poet shews us the man-of-feeling from the side directly opposite to that from which he shewed him in its immediate predecessor : there the deeply, stoutly suffering, here the gladly, blithely doing man.

(2/3)

[Anonymous No.23288732]

These two sides the master now combines in the Fourth the last Movement, to shew us finally the man entire, harmoniously at one with self, in those emotions where the memory of Sorrow becomes itself the shaping-force of noble Deeds. This closing section is the harvest, the lucid counterpart and commentary, of the First. Just as there we saw all human feelings in infinitely varied utterance, now permeating one another, now each in haste repelling each: so here this manifold variety unites to one harmonious close, embracing all these feelings in itself and taking on a grateful plasticness of shape. This shape the master binds at first within one utmost simple theme, which sets itself before us in sure distinctness, and yet is capable of infinite development, from gentlest delicacy to grandest strength. Around this theme, which we may regard as the firm-set Manly individuality, there wind and cling all tenderer and softer feelings, from the very onset of the movement, evolving to a proclamation of the purely Womanly element; and to the manlike principal theme striding sturdily through all the tone-piece this Womanly at last reveals itself in ever more intense, more many-sided sympathy, as the overwhelming power of Love. At the close of the movement this power breaks itself a highway straight into the heart. The restless motion pauses, and in noble, feeling calm this Love speaks out; beginning tenderly and softly, then waxing to the rapture of elation, it takes at last the inmost fortress of the man's whole heart. Here it is, that once again this heart recalls the memory of its life-pang: high swells the breast filled full by Love, that breast which harbours woe within its weal; for woe and weal, as purely-human Feeling, are one thing and the same. Once more the heart-strings quiver, and tears of pure Humanity well forth; yet from out the very quick of sadness there bursts the jubilant cry of Force, that Force which lately wed itself to Love, and nerved wherewith the whole, the total Man now shouts to us the avowal of his Godhood.

But only in the master's tone-speech was the unspeakable to be proclaimed the thing that words could here but darkly hint at.

(3/3)

[Anonymous No.23288754]

>>23288724
Wittgenstein also claimed (weird):
>There are problems I never get anywhere near, which do not lie in my path or are not part of my world. Problems of the intellectual world of the West that Beethoven (and perhaps Goethe to a certain extent) tackled and wrestled with, but which no philosopher has ever confronted (perhaps Nietzsche passed by them).

[Anonymous No.23288831]

I just can't believe in Wagner and Beethoven, they lead to too much darkness. Even here Wagner is describing more of a redemption of an anti-hero; the lovable man a satyr, the full fledged man a depraved rebel. His hero as stomping cavemen, tho I have to admit the actual cavemen aesthetic has been underrated, I'm thinking of Fang from Dave the Barbarian. Some of the right things are there like the distinction of things into twos and the main recognition of it all as fallen or broken and needed to be repaired, but Wagner really seems more confused and like he doesn't have one central grounded point, he's trying to tame and unite all these different feelings. It's funny because Wagner's thinking seems to be the closest to henids yet at the same time the exact opposite. No one has yet to tame Wagner's thinking, not even Wagner himself

[Anonymous No.23288857]

>>23288724
I wish so bad I could I knew German for the unified experience of words and music

[Anonymous No.23289918]

>>23288754
That's not weird at all. Wittgenstein is saying that there are aspects of human creativity and expression that are the scope of linguistic inquiry (philosophical analysis). Beethoven's music communicates emotions (and ideas) that can't be captured through words. Where Beethoven could find a musical form for his century, philosophy could only run against the walls of language.

[Anonymous No.23289923]

>>23289918
*beyond the scope