Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies

by George Grove

This classic of music analysis by a noted musicologist offers revealing insights into Beethoven's personality and music. George Grove, the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, interweaves fascinating background information on the composer's historical era with quotations, letters, and anecdotes. He examines the nine symphonies in chronological order, movement by movement, illustrating his points with numerous excerpts — more than 400 in all.
In addition to emphasizing the uniqueness of Beethoven's music and its iconoclastic renunciation of established musical theory, Grove comments at length on the relation of the symphonies to the minor works, events in the composer's personal life, the conditions under which he worked, and other fascinating details. Examples of Beethoven's correspondence include several letters to the Countess Theresa and the famous letter to his brothers Carl and Johann.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Classical Music, History, Art

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

Sir George Grove (1820 - 1900) trained as a civil engineer, but is remembered as an English writer on music; immortalised in the title of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, first published in 1878.

Grove was also the first director of the Royal College of Music, from its foundation in 1883 until his retirement in 1894.

Reviews

[Colin Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author’s knowledge of Beethoven is without question, but in the same token, this was a little ‘dry’ for me. Undoubtedly, good research material for a music essay or thesis. The letters (including those written by Beethoven) and performance critiques, rather than the detailed analyses of the symphonies, were more stimulating.
3.5 rounded up to 4 stars
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Read on if you wish learn why I chose to read it:

After COVID lockdowns, my community orchestra continued with our weekly rehearsals, but only for pleasure rather than preparation for concerts which were not possible under social distances and crowd-capping rules.
An inspiring, young conductor suggested a complete run through of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, in order and sight-readings over nine weeks. It was a pleasure and honour to be part of this ‘project’, and to experience the joy of playing Beethoven’s masterpieces, plus some of the lesser-known symphonies.
The rehearsal cycle culminated in a pseudo-performance of the Ninth in our lovely Town Hall, technically a private affair with only about 20 invited guests, yet still complete with socially-distanced solo vocalists and choir. I cannot stress enough what a pleasure this was.
A former music critic attended. He congratulated us, saying despite limited rehearsal and some rough edges, he heard committed players, starved of performing, who demonstrated their passion for music. I was chuffed.
After the project, I spoke to a friend about my admiration for what Beethoven had achieved and also mentioned some of the symphonies were practically unknown to me. He, in turn, gifted me this book.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Early Study Of The Beethoven Symphonies

Sir George Grove (1820 -1900)is best-known as the writer of the original "Dictionary of Music and Musicians" which, with its many updates and versions over the years, has become the standard English reference work on classical music. In 1896, Grove wrote "Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies" which, unlike the "Dictionary" is still read today in the form in which Grove wrote it. I have recently returned to Grove's study as a guide in listening to and reviewing the Beethoven symphonies in the recordings by David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich and have learned a great deal.

Grove's book is written in an accessible late-Victorian style. He devotes a chapter to each of the nine symphonies. He begins with a summary of the instrumentation, publication history and early metronome marks of the symphonies. Grove offers material on Beethoven's life at the time each symphony was composed and describes Beethoven's composition process. He offers information on early performances and on the reception of each work, including a great deal of commentary from the works of later composers.

But the highlight of the study is Grove's movement-by-movement analysis of each symphony. It is a difficult skill to write about music in a way that amateurs may follow; and Grove succeeds admirably. He gives the score for the principal themes and highlights of each movement and discusses them in a way that anyone with a basic skill in reading music can follow easily. I used Grove many years ago when I was just coming to the Beethoven symphonies, and I continue to learn from his book. Much of what Grove says is still current in studies of the symphonies. For example, in discussing the Seventh Symphony, Grove aptly describes it as the most romantic of the nine, and he points out how the rhythm of the symphony may be scanned in terms of the meters and "feet" of poetry. Maynard Solomon has made the same points in detail in his essay on the Seventh Symphony in his recent book "Late Beethoven".

In addition to the musical analyses, Grove writes with great passion about Beethoven and his work. His study is replete with allusions to the works and writings of other composers that illuminate his analysis of Beethoven. He also gives a great deal of biography, some of which must be used with caution as Grove relied on the biographical writings of Anton Schindler about Beethoven. Schindler has been discredited as as source by modern scholars. Grove has a partiality for large-scale romantic performances of Beethoven, and I don't think he would have been overly impressed with the modern Zinman performances that I just heard and greatly enjoyed. For example, his book is full of strictures against performing Beethoven too fast.

Grove clearly shares the prevailing Nineteenth Century view that Beethoven was the greatest of all composers in the depth, variety, structure, and moods of his symphonies. Grove's enthusiasm and love for his subject is eloquent. He concludes his book as follows:

"These great works he did as no one ever did, and probably no one ever will.... Music will advance in richness, scope, and difficulty; but such music as Beethoven's great instrumental works, in which thought, emotion, melody, and romance combine with extraordinary judgment and common sense, and a truly wonderful industry, to make a perfect whole, can hardly any more be written. The time for such an event, such a concurrence of the man and the circumstances, will not again arrive. There can never be a second Beethoven or a second Shakespeare. However much orchestras may improve and execution increase, Beethoven's Symphonies will always remain at the head of music as Shakespeare's plays are at the head of the literature of the modern world."

Some readers in the early 21st Century may question Grove's adulation of Beethoven. Be that as it may, Beethoven's symphonies have remained an inspiration to an untold number of listeners, including myself, and will almost certainly remain so. Grove's book remains highly valuable for those wanting to explore in detail the richness of the Beethoven symphonies.

Robin Friedman

[Matthew Hodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot underestimate to what extent this book has changed my life. I came across it in the early 2000s in a second-hand bookstore in Brisbane and bought a copy. I'm not even sure what attracted me to it.

Grove's astonishing book on Beethoven symphonies was written for the amateurs of his day, to help the get into Beethoven symphonies. That said, back then, an amateur was somebody who could read music and understood six grades of music theory. At the time I read it, I was able to do the former, but didn't really know the latter - so the first time George started talking about sonata form and developments and recapitulations, I had no idea what he was talking about.

But why this book was such a turning point was that it suddenly pointed out something that I hadn't realised - classical music is highly structured. Up until then, as a relative novice, while I was familiar with a lot of pieces of music, I knew them only by the tunes, not by anything else. And so I really did believe that classical music was just long bunches of tunes strung together randomly. The end result was, that while I didn't mind listening to the Beethoven symphonies on CD, only the famous movements would jump out - the rest just sounded like a pleasant but identical orchestra noise.

But with Grove in hand, I started to realise the incredible structure of movements and forms that Beethoven was working with - and shaping to be his own. Sonata form, theme and variations, crazy jokes that assumed the audience was expecting something to be in one key and then Beethoven would shockingly come in on another. All of this opened up to me.

Finally, the beauty of Beethoven's music came alive, mostly due to Grove's enthusiastic prose. He'd be considered far too subjective and over-the-top today but just listen to these quotes and the infectious enthusiasm he has for the music. He describes the moment in the first movement of the Symphony No 3, the Eroica, when Beethoven requests the French horns to come in just before the main theme returns. You wouldn't even blink at it today, but in its time, it was hugely controversial because the horn note clashes with the note being played by the strings. Grove describes it like this:

"We are now near the end of the working-out, but one more surprise awaits us, shortly before the return to the opening theme of the work, at the place often selected for a passage of pathos or sentiment...So unexpected is it that Ries, standing by his master's side at the first rehearsal, thought the horn-player had come in wrong, and narrowly escaped a box on the ear for saying so...At that time, all the rules of harmony were against it; it was absolutely wrong - as wrong as lying or stealing - and yet how perfectly right and proper it is in its place! And how intensely poetical!"

Who doesn't want to listen out for something that is supposed to be "as wrong as lying or stealing"? Or a bit later, he is describing the epic funeral march that makes up the second movement of the Eroica. Grove jumps straight in, comparing it with a national funeral - there's no polite underplaying of the music - Grove thinks it's amazing and he wants his readers to think the same thing too.

"In this noble and expressive passage of fugal music we might be assisting at the actual funeral of the hero, with all that is good and great in the nation looking as he was lowered into his tomb; and the motto might well be Tennyson's words on Wellington -

In the vast cathedral leave him,
God accept him, Christ receive him.

"Then occurs a passage as of stout resistance and determination, the trumpets and horns appealing against Fate in their loudest tones, and the basses adding a substratum of stern resolution. But it cannot last; the old grief is too strong, the original wail returns, even more hopeless than before; the basses again walk in darkness, the violins and flutes echo their vague tones so as to aggravate them tenfold and the whole forms a long and terrible picture of gloomy distress."

I've never heard anyone describe Beethoven's symphonies since in such passionate and emotional language. "We might be assisting at the actual funeral of the hero." "The basses again walk in darkness". What fantastic language! Who can't help but want to listen closely to the music when you read descriptions like this? By sharing his unashamed (and subjective) enthusiasm for the music, Grove drove me back to the music again and again, and I listened more closely to the symphonies than I ever had before.

But the real reason this book changed my life, was that as a result of understanding the Beethoven Symphonies (and I wouldn't call it any exaggeration at all to say that my estimation of those works went up tenfold), I realised finally the importance of knowing how a piece of music is structured, and the importance of being infected by someone else's enthusiasm as a strong motivator for being encouraged to listen to music.

While I don't think any new people are going to get into classical music because of Grove's book (his language is too dated, and his idea of an "amateur" is way above the level of a typical amateur today), the concept of using structured walk-throughs in music, combined with subjective descriptions, has been one that has never left my mind as a way to potentially reach new audiences. We certainly have many books and pre-concert talks and other resources that provide the same semblance of tool that Grove was trying to provide (i.e. an introduction to listening to the music), but these are often above the level of a struggling classical music newbie. What would happen if we took the principles over the particulars?

If an amateur is someone who's listened to a few classical CDs, but studied no music, how do we explain music without using jargon they don't understand? (In other words, actually go out there with the intention of speaking to the amateurs of today.) What might a structured description of what to listen out for look like, if your audience has no idea of the rules of harmony and what is going on? What kind of descriptive, subjective language would work on a modern audience - or, more likely - on different types of people that make up our potential audience today?

Let's not forget, Grove and his writings (he wrote 20 years' worth of programme notes for the Crystal Palace concerts in London) were hugely influential in building an audience for classical music in the 1800s. I firmly believe that his approach, if not his particular language, could still switch on a generation of classical music fans today.

Certainly, he switched this reader on to the wonders of classical music, and for that I will be forever grateful. George, thank you very much.

[Khaled · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is around 400 pages including indexes, introductions, etc. This gives each symphony around 35 pages. Which is quite enough for music lovers; but for music academics, however, it might just be a "fascinating read".

Don't get me wrong, that book is brilliant. But for a more thorough examination of Beethoven's symphonies, I'd recommend Cambridge music handbooks.

[Lorens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat antique but still very informative and quite detailed introduction to B.’s symphonies for the non-professional.

[Derek Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely book - good background information and a solid analysis of the symphonies.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This an absolutely fantastic book insofar as it offers insights into the emotional or psychological aspects of Beethoven's music for the listener; detailed examinations of important technical features that remain accessible to pretty much anyone; and biographical and amusing anecdotal information from Beethoven's life. Even if you can't read music, you will come away with a feeling of having begun to grasp some of how the magic of this music works, as Grove reprints important excerpts and motifs in the book (which is organized mainly by the work it focuses on, I believe) and goes into exquisite detail of their significance, reiterations, variations, origins, etc. Very cool. Generally regarded as the authoritative exegesis of the body of Beethoven's work, its somewhat dated style is a small price to pay for the humor and excitement that Grove communicates. It doesn't hurt that Beethoven is one of the more personally interesting of classical musicians, either, or that he is right on the division of earlier baroque and classical music (like Bach or Mozart) and the immediately-following Romantic style, and basically all subsequent modern movements. In fact, he's not ON the division; he IS the division.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pleasure from start to finish. George Grove, whose name now stands atop music scholarship’s most important resource (the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians), takes readers through the basic structure of each of Beethoven’s symphonies. Along the way, however, Grove provides wonderful accounts of episodes from Beethoven’s life, excerpts from his sketch books, important snatches from the grand conversation that was “Beethoven” in the nineteenth century, a taste of what archival research is like, and a strong dose of Romantic art religion. This is way more than the sum of its parts.

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not light reading, but if you are a Beethoven-aholic, it may be the book for you. After finishing this book for the first time, I went back and listened to several of the symphonies and used this book as a "map" or "guide." I heard so many different things in the work that I had never realized were there.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent analysis of all 9 Symphonies, & for me, the capstone of all of them is the 6th...