Transcript of 527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall

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Hello, everyone. Happy New Year, and welcome back to for the recording of the live show that Dominic and I did at the Royal Albert Hall on the 18th of October. You should already have heard the episode on Mozart, and now in the second half, we are looking at Beethoven. I hope you enjoy it.

Please welcome back to the stage Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrooke.

Welcome back, everybody. Always start second half with a banger, they say. That, of course, was the banger to end all bangers. The first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony premiered in December 1808 in Vienna, and Dominic, the opening of that movement must be the most famous opening to any piece of music ever written, I'd have thought. Absolutely. We have had Mozart, and the second half is about a very different character, someone who is brooding, unfriendly, difficult, Hult. Here he is to talk about Ludwig Van Beethoven. Dominic, take it away.

When I wrote that joke, I knew you would laugh. Tom, you ended with Mozart's death and funeral in 1791. No great send-off, a slightly lackluster occasion. Let's start by fast forwarding three decades to March 1827, to the death and funeral of his great successor, Ludwig Van Beethoven. It's a completely different scene. As Beethoven lies dying, also in Vienna, presents, cash, cakes are coming in from all over Europe. Beethoven's last recorded words, greet the arrival from of a case of his favorite Rheinland wine. His last words were, Pity, pity, too late. And then he died. And when he When he did die on the evening of the 26th of March, it was the news story of the year. When they held the funeral three days later, crowds had gathered outside Beethoven apartment. There was a choir outside to see him off. There was a The schools were all given the day off. On the way to the church and then to the cemetery, the crowds were so thick, it took them ages to pass through. All the way, some of the best known people in Vienna were holding a torch-lit parade, most famously, the young composer Franz Schubert.

Clearly, something had changed since the death of Mozart, and a lot of that has to do with Beethoven himself. Many of you, I guess, will already have an idea of Beethoven in your mind. The wild hair, the ferocious, frowning expression, the unkept appearance, the papers falling from his pocket, an intellectual, an artist. Mozart is fun and Beethoven is serious. That's the stereotype. I think this is really important because I think it is Beethoven, more than anybody else, who invents this idea of the creator, the artistic genius, as a lonely family, difficult, unhappy, but brilliant man. A bit like Tom. Now, one difference between Beethoven and Mozart, obviously, is that Beethoven is not Austrian. Beethoven is German. He was born in Bonn in the west of Germany in December 1770. Bonn was a small town that belonged to the electorate of Cologne. Music was the family business. Beethoven's father was a singer, but his alcoholism stymied his career. Now, as with Mozart, his father pushed him ferociously. He started giving him regular keyboard lessons when Ludwig was just five. He would make him practice until he cried. He would make him practice until midnight, and he would beat him when Ludwig made a mistake.

And did it work? No, it didn't. Because although Ludwig was clearly very good, he wasn't a prodigy on the scale of Mozart. When he reached the age of 10, he was still barely known within his own town. Nobody effectively had noticed him on a continental scale. But then at the age of 11, he got a new piano teacher, a massively important figure in his life who rejoiced in the name of Christian Gottlob Neffer. Neffer was a Protestant. The Beethoven were Catholic. And Nefer was tied in to the enlightenment Enlightenment. So he was full of ideas about reason and virtue and reform, full of the writings of Voltaire and Kant, and he passes these on to the young Beethoven. Now, through his enlightenment enthusiasm, Nefer is very well connected and one of his friends is a chap called Count Ferdinand Valdstein, who lives in Bonn and is very friendly with the elector. It's Valdstein who gets Ludwig a job playing the organ for the elector. They think this is tremendous. They have great ambitions for Ludwig. In 1787, when he's 16 years old, they send him to the city of music, to Vienna. And there, legend tells, he meets the great man.

He meets Mozart. The story runs that Mozart got him to play the piano. Ludwig played improvising brilliantly. And Mozart stood there impassively. And when the last note died away, Mozart said nothing. He just went into the next room where his friends were sitting, and he said to them, Keep an eye on that young man. One day, he will give the world something to talk about.

Do you think that actually happened?

I think that happened, and that's how he spoke. That is just how he spoke. Well, maybe it did happen, maybe it didn't, but the fact the story exists at all-That's the important thing, right? The fact the story exists at all is proof of how desperate people were to see a connection between them. But that first trip didn't last long. So Beethoven came home after two weeks because his mother was ill. But then in the autumn of 1792, he came back to Vienna for good. Why? Because the French Revolution had broken out. French armies were rampaging across the map of Europe, spreading perturbation and despair. The court fled Bon. Bon was no longer safe, and Beethoven was sent to Vienna. Now, of course, by this point, Mozart was dead. So Beethoven is going to with that other great Austrian composer, Joseph Heiden. Before he left, Count Valtstein wrote him a note. Mozart, he said, is dead, but Mozart's genius is still alive and is in mourning. And When it is waiting for somebody. It is waiting for you. From Heiden, you will receive the spirit of Mozart. And so off he goes to Vienna, the city where he will compose his His greatest works.

I think what's so interesting about this is that a bit like Mozart, to begin with, he is better known as a player of music rather than as a composer. Since he started out on the piano, let's have one of his very greatest piano piece and we're going to hear the second movement of the fourth Piano Concerto, which premiered in 1808, at the same evening that saw the Fifth Symphony premiered. We are going to hear on the piano, Mishka Roshdi moment.

Beautifully played. On that evening in Vienna, when it was premiered, the piano was played by Beethoven itself. Dominic, we've talked a lot about Vienna over the course of this evening. Should we just focus in and describe the capital?

Sure, yes. Obviously, for Beethoven, Vienna is much more foreign than it is for Mozart. It's the capital of the Habsbourg dynasty. It is at this point by far the biggest German-speaking city in Europe, with about a quarter of a million people, so that's twice as big as Berlin. It's It's a city at war. From 1792, Austria is at war on and off for the next 22 years or so. It's twice occupied by the French. There are stories about Beethoven literally sheltering under his bedcloths as the shells are raining down overhead. Also, of course, for him, it's the city of Mozart. When he arrives, Mozart has been dead for a year. People are already saying, who is going to be the next Mozart? You have a sense, I think, that if the next Mozart doesn't exist, they're going to invent him anyway. Very soon after Beethoven' arrival, they say, Call off the search. We have found him. In fact, after his first year, his teacher, Joseph Heiden, wrote to the Elector of Cologne, and he said, he will be one of the greatest artists in Europe, and I will be proud to call myself his teacher.

The lovely thing is that is exactly what Tom's teachers used to say about James Holland. Sorry, Tom. Sorry.

No, I'm used to this. I'm used to it.

You deserved it after that singing.

Four long years.

Now, he can't just be Mozart because the context has changed. For example, the way you make music is changing. Beethoven literally has different instruments to play with. For example, pianos that have a much greater a range and a richer sound. If you've wondered why Beethoven might sound different from Mozart, that's one of the reasons. But even more importantly, I think, the way you make money from music has changed. Until this point, as Tom was describing in the first half, most musicians depended on an aristocratic household. Beethoven' teacher, Haydn, depended on the Esterházy family. He lived at the Esterházy Palace over the border in Hungary. He was dressed dressed in Esterházy livery as effectively a servant. He was a servant. But Beethoven moves in a new world. Beethoven is supported by a whole range of different aristocratic patrons, not as a servant, but as a business client. A good example of this is one of his first great patrons, who is a bloke called Prince Lichnowski, who was a patron of Mozart's.

They went on a lads trip to Berlin, and then they had a massive spat over money, as the Mozart tended to do by this point.

They did indeed. It's a bit like our Restes History tours. Lichnowski offered Beethoven an annual allowance plus board and lodging, and Beethoven said, Yes, but on the condition that I'm absolutely not coming as a servant. I'm coming as somebody who is almost an equal of yours. In other words, Beethoven is very, very protective of his status and his independence. There's a very famous episode in 1808. So Napoleon Bonaparte, not a friend of the rest of his history, has set up his brother Jerome as the king of Westphalia. And to bolster his regime a bit like a Saudi billionaire with a football club, he wants to get a star player. The star player he has in mind is Beethoven. He offers him a massive salary to come and be his Kappelmeister, his director of music. And Beethoven tells everybody this in Vienna. Of course, he does. He wants a counter offer, and he gets one. Three of his patrons, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinski, and Prince Lobkowitz, clubbed together, and they offer Beethoven an amazing deal. Four 4,000 florins a year for the rest of his life if he stays in Vienna and he doesn't even have to write another note.

The contract says this is in recognition of his extraordinary genius as a musician and a composer. They want to liberate him from the mundane cares of earning a living so that he can get on with writing works that ennoble the arts. Now, nobody had ever done this for a composer before. A deal of this magnitude, and it means that Beethoven has more security and more freedom, arguably than any composer who has ever lived to this point. He doesn't have to work to order. This obviously goes to his head a little bit. His status, his independence means so much to him. There are two wonderful stories that illustrate this. So one in 1806, he goes with his mate, Prince Lichnowski, for a country weekend. There are a load of officers staying there as well. And Prince Lyknowski says to Beethoven, Ludwig, I would like you to play the piano for these guests? That's how Prince Lignoski spoke. And Beethoven says, I'm not in the mood. I don't want to play. I don't want to play on cue. They have a massive row. And afterwards, Beethoven says to Prince Lichnowski, Listen, Yes, you're a prince, but you are a prince because of an accident of birth.

It's a very figaro. Very figaro. I am who I am because of what I have done. There are thousands of princes and there always will be, but there is and there only ever will be one Beethoven Then 1812. It's the thing that I have to put up with from you. 1812, Beethoven and the German writer, Goethe, are strolling arm in arm through the park.Oh.

It's like us, isn't it? It's just like us. It's just like us. It's lovely. Before this. The Kensington Gardens, before this show.

Exactly. They see coming towards them the Emperor Francis I and his son, the Archduke. And Goethe goes to get out of the way and to bow. Beethoven supposedly says to him, What are you doing? We don't make room for them. They will make room for us. Whether or not these stories are true doesn't really matter, because what they tell you is about the image of Beethoven and the conception of him, his own conception of himself, not as a servant, but as a star. I think he's probably the first composer who genuinely believes that every note that he writes will be played for as long as people are making music. So every work really matters. These are not throw away commissions. They're expressions of his soul, his intellect, his genius. You look at the number of symphonies he wrote. Mozart wrote 41. Haydn wrote 104. Beethoven wrote just nine because to him, this wasn't just entertainment. It wasn't something that you listened to while people were playing cards. This was art. This was serious. The work that sums that up is his Eroica symphony. Number three. It was first performed in 1804. It's twice as long as any of Mozart symphonies.

Everybody agreed that it was extraordinary, a work of genius. But people also said, many of them, that it was too long, that it was too loud.

Like our series on General Custer.

Like the General Custer series. Exactly. Tom, there were mugs then and they're mugs now.

But they all recognized it was a work of genius. Exactly. That's what mattered.

People said of the third symphony, this is so radical, so glaring. It is a work of anarchy. Of course, this has a political dimension because at the time, the Austrians are fighting against people that they believe represent the forces of anarchy.

Does this mean that Beethoven is on the side of the revolution? That's what I had always assumed, but I know your ways.

Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated. Is it? It is. It always is. That's a A bit abolishing. At first, Beethoven was sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution, and he was fascinated by the figure of Napoleon, a self-made man who blazed like a comet across the sky of Europe. Originally, a very famous story, he was going to dedicate this third symphony, the Eroica to Napoleon. But then in December 1804, he heard that Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor. He said, What? He's just another politician. He will sacrifice the rights of man on the altar of his ambition. He will become a tyrant. He wasn't wrong, Tom. He rips the manuscript in two and he scratches out the dedication to Bonaparte on the first page. No dedication to Napoleon, but good news. Tom, we are and we always have been a patriotic podcast. I'm very pleased to say that Beethoven never wrote a piece called Napoleon, but he did write one about the Duke of Wellington.

This is famously terrible, isn't it? Well, I mean, patriotic, but you got to be honest.

Why does he hate Britain? This was called Wellington's Sieg, Wellington's victory. He wrote it in 1813 to celebrate our brave boys' victories in the peninsula War. Tom, you'd be pleased to hear that it incorporates both rule Britannia and God Save the King.

So the EU went for Beethoven' ninth. We could have had that. Absolutely madness.

Absolutely madness. How different history would have been. You don't hear this, but the rest is politics. Anyway, the following year, 1814, Napoleon is temporarily booted out to Elba. Vienna explodes in celebrations and festivities. There are balls, there are receptions. This is Beethoven's most successful year. It's the year in which he makes most money. It is the year in which his pieces are performed more than any other. It is now that he stages the final version of his one and only opera, which is called Fidelio.

Brilliant. Well, let's hear a bit of Fidelio. It's the prisoner's chorus, and the two soloists are Andrew Staples and William Thomas.

We're all in this with trust, with God's help, with God's help.

We wollen mit Vertrauen auf Gottes Hülle, auf Gottes Hülle wagen. Die Hoffnung flüstert sanft mir zu, wir werden frei. We are listened with ear and look.

We find peace. We find peace. What a song! Oh, Freiheit! Oh, Freiheit, which you so bring.

„sperecht leise, haltet euch zurück.

Wir sind belauscht mit Ohr und Blick. Wir sind belauscht

Now, as you have been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom?

It absolutely did. That's because every piece of music you've heard during this podcast has been performed live by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

If you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was. We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode. Frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open and free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend in person.

The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is one of the most recorded orchestras of all time, giving more than 80 concerts a year across the world, including a stunning series in London at the Historic Church of St. Martin in the Fields.

The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is offering an exclusive, complementary, friends' membership to all listeners of the Rest is History.

You can attend open rehearsals, enjoy pre-concert talks and meet and greets with soloists, access exclusive digital downloads, and crucially, receive 25% off tickets to their London concerts. To claim your complementary Friends' membership and explore all these incredible opportunities, just go to asmf. Org/history. So don't miss out. Visit asmf. Org/history and sign up today. That is a passage of music that historians have always been fascinated by because it's conventionally seen as providing the the soundtrack to an age of revolution, isn't it? Just for those not familiar with the opera, to give a bit of context, it's set in Spain in the 16th century in a prison. What you've just heard is prisoners emerging from their cells, coming, blinking into the sunlight, singing of the delight they feel at their liberation. It's always associated with the fall of the Bastille, the overthrowing of monarchical despotism. But Dominic, as I said, I am familiar with your methods, and I have a hunch that you're going to tell me it's more complicated than that.

Surprise, surprise, it's more complicated than that. So Beethoven had been working on Fidelio for years, and he got the idea from a French play about a bloke who's rescued from prison by his wife. But it seems pretty likely that the French play is actually set during the terror, and this bloke may be an aristocrat. I think the politics of Fidelio may be a little bit more complicated, more conservative, maybe, than people think. Remember, this is taking place, this premiere in Vienna in 1814, in an atmosphere of conservatism, of reaction, The old order has won. At the end of Fidelio, when the hero gets his freedom, he doesn't get it because the mob has stormed the prison, not at all. He gets it because of the intervention of the kind-hearted, benevolent governor, effectively, the Emperor. In other words, this is a victory for the old order. It's the old order that has prevailed. The freedom that the opera is celebrating, Tom, in 1814, those first audiences in Vienna, to them, it's freedom from the war, freedom from the tyranny of Napoleon, freedom from the despotism of the French.

The despotism of the French. We know all about that, don't we? Because Theo, our beloved producer, is, of course, well, purports to be French.

Yes, exactly. But I think there's another aspect of Fidelio that is actually more interesting. Some of Beethoven's biographers suggest that this picture of this bloke who's locked up in a prison, cut off from the outside world is a nightmarish self-portrait. Because as many of you will know, at the time that Fidelio goes on stage, Beethoven has been going deaf for probably at least 12 years. The cruelest punishment possible for a composer. Now, his deafness probably starts at the end of the 1790s when he's in his late 20s. We don't know really what caused it. We do know that in the summer of 1802, he went to a place called Heiligenstadt for the summer He wrote a letter to his brothers explaining, apologizing for his horrendous form in recent months. He said, Listen, the truth is I'm losing my hearing and that one day I will be cut off from the outside world. I'll have to live like an exile in my own head. He says, I've thought about ending it all, about ending this wretched existence, but it was my art that held me back. It seemed impossible to me to leave this world until I'd written all the works that I was capable of.

And that brings us back to something that's been running through this story from the very beginning of the show, which is the idea of art as something special and something sacred, dare I say, sacral, Tom.Go for it.It is art that saves us, that gives our lives meaning. This, of course, becomes one of the foundational ideas of romanticism. The idea that art is the supreme good, the summit of human in existence, that it is art that makes life worth living. Now, of course, that's not much consolation to Paul Beethoven, who is losing his hearing. His hearing, in fact, gets worse and worse. By 1814, the year of Fidelio, if you sit down to listen to something and it's Ludwig Van Beethoven playing the piano, you know you're not in for a brilliant evening because he can't tell if it's been tuned properly, and he also can't tell if he's making mistakes. Actually, at the end of the year, he gives up in public. At this point, he starts carrying these conversation books. When he meets you in the street and you're talking to him, you have to write down in the book what you're saying. So sad to say, by the mid-1810s, Beethoven has, to some extent, ended up in that dungeon.

Now, he had a very unhappy and lonely love life. Some of you may know that he wrote a letter to a woman that he called his Immortal beloved. It's a great film, Gary Oldman. Which he made into a Gary Oldman film, exactly, in which he said, You're the love of my life, but we can never be together. We don't really know, again, who that was. His family life was a nightmare. For a lot of the 1810s, he's locked in this dreadful custody battle over his nephew, Karl. In 1820, he turned 50. By this point, I think he's a very disconsolent figure, Beethoven. When he goes out, he's very scruff and distracted. At one point, the Viennese police arrested him for being a tramp. And part of the problem, of course, is they're talking to him and he can't hear what they're saying. It's a bit of a problem. But the weird thing is that all this is actually great news for the Beethoven brand because it perfectly captures the ethos of the romantic age, the idea of a lonely hero who is battling with his demons in a spiritual exile. Now, all the time, Beethoven is still making music.

He He is making music that is more demanding, more challenging than ever before. Some people say it's too challenging. So you have a sense of an emerging breach between the masses who like the fun easy operas that are coming from Italy, and the connoisseurs who think that if it's difficult, that means it must be profound. Beethoven himself was in no doubt about who he was writing for. He said, I don't write for the masses. I write for people who are cultured, like you. But even though people find his stuff very difficult, they never doubt that Beethoven is a star. And by the 1820s, he really does have a brand. People are painting his portrait. They're making busts of him. Images of Beethoven are going all over Europe, and they're appealing to people who had never really existed before in the history of classical music. They're not admirers, they're not supporters, they're not patrons, they are fans.

That word is coming from fanatics, isn't it? They're fanatics for Beethoven.

Yeah, absolutely. I think part of the reason for this is that Beethoven's image perfectly fits the demands of the times. This is a conservative age, an age of reaction. People love the idea of tradition. They love the idea of Beethoven as the culmination of a tradition that began with Mozart and Haydn. But what's more, his Germanness is really important. The French Revolution was a foundational moment in the history of Germanness. That moment when French troops crossed the Rhine is when modern German identity is born. People are looking for a German hero and Beethoven perfectly fits the bill. But all the time, his health is getting worse. By the end of 1826, he's got pneumonia, he's got jaundice, he's got liver issues, and of course, he can barely hear anything at all.

But apart from that, he's doing fine. Yeah.

Apart from that, he's in great form. Now, we described his final days earlier, the presents and the wine and whatnot. But sad to say, on the 26th of March, 1827, in the middle of a tremendous thunderstorm, he takes his final breath. It is said that at the very end, he opens his eyes, he lifts his right-hand to heaven, he clenches his fist, and then he collapses. The artist defends to the end.

A sad, I want to say, a tragic moment. To mark it, let's now hear perhaps the most celebrated funderstorm in the entire history of classical music. It comes from the sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, and we are going to hear the fourth Movement, which gives us a funderstorm, and then right at the end, the hint of a rainbow.

Dominic, we began this half with the funeral of Beethovenhofen, and lo and behold, we've come full circle.

Exactly, Tom, it's almost as if we'd scripted it. As we said before, his death was an extraordinary public occasion. People were literally queuing up to take snippets of hair from his head to wear in lockets around necks like religious relics. Now, there was a very revealing eulogy at the Cemetery gates, and it was made by Vienna's greatest playwright, a man called Franz Grillpatser. Tom, are you familiar with his work?

I'll be honest, it sounds like an American steak restaurant rather than a great writer. It doesn't encourage me to want to read him, I have to say.

Well, Grillpitzer, in the eulogy, did He didn't mention God at all. Extraordinary. He mentioned only the gods of music and art. He was an artist, he said of Beethoven.

That's how he spoke again.

That's how all Germans speak when they're talking about art, Tom. And all that was his was his through art alone. He was an artist, and who shall arise to stand beside him? Who indeed? And this, I think, was Beethoven's greatest legacy. You talked about Mozart is a genius. I think what Mozart, what Beethoven rather creates is the idea of the artist with a capital A, the individual who suffers and overcomes, the martyr, the man who stands alone from masses. Somebody whose work, like mine, is long and difficult and therefore profound. Tom, he can see things and hear things that you and I can't.

Well, he can't actually them, can he?

That's the whole point. No, that's true. We'll always have that over Beethoven, won't we? Let us end with the passage that for many people represents the climax of Beethoven's genius. Beethoven began his ninth symphony in 1822, and at its heart is Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy, which he'd first written in 1785, a hymn to enlightenment values. As always, it's a complicated story.

Wow.

Schiller, Schiller was horrified by the excesses of the French Revolution. He was horrified by the execution of the King and the terror. And he actually toned down his original Ode to Joy to make it less radical, to make it more conservative. This is the version that Beethoven used. But my favorite story about the Ode to Joy and about the Ninth Symphony is one that many of you will know. Lots of you who know the story of Beethoven will know this story. Because when the symphony was first performed in 1824, Beethoven stood at the front, waving his arms next to the conductor, even though he could not hear a note. When it was all over, he couldn't hear the applause behind him. Very gently, the symphony singer Carolina Unger turned him round so that he could see but not hear the standing ovation.

Brilliant, Dominic. Thank you. We have some ovations of our own to give. An ovation to the Royal Albert Hall for hosting us, to the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, wonderful, wonderful orchestra, to the Philharmonia Chorus, its Chorus master, Gavin Carr, to our wonderful soloists, Nardus Williams, Katie Stevenson, Andrew Staples, William Thomas, Mishka Roshdi Mohman. But I think above all, we owe a debt of thanks to the great guiding spirit behind this entire evening, the man whose idea it was the wonderful Oliver Zetman.

Tom, let's be honest, it's hard to admit it, but we would be nothing without our own aristocratic sponsors. A huge thank you to Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, the Hapsberg emperors of our hearts. Thank you to our Viennese aristocratic patrons, the to a brilliant Tabi Siret and Anushka Lewis, and to our Parisian friend, the peerless Theo Young Smith, and all of their colleagues, a Goalhanger podcast.

Of course, a huge, huge thank you to all of you for coming and for your encouragement with this. I think it's been an amazing evening. It's been a privilege to be sat up here listening to this incredible music, so thank you. Now, to play us out, it's over to Oliver and to Ludwig.

Thank you for listening. We will be back next week without musical compliment. The series coming out next Monday will be on the Nazi's Road to War. Goodbye..