Program Notes for "Beethoven and Mozart"
Written by Michael Ruhling, HIP Research Fellow
Questions about the program notes or pre-concert lectures? Email Michael

Mozart: Symphony No. 1
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23
Beethoven: Overture to Creatures of Prometheus
Beethoven: Symphony No. 8
Overview of Works

The works on this Beethoven and Mozart concert deftly exemplify the stages of development of Classical orchestral music, from its emergence in the 1760s through its Romantic transformation in the second decade of the 19th century.  Most notable are the expanded use of the winds as a separate choir of instruments, the shifts in instrumentation that clarify structural design and enhance character contrasts among and within movements, and the greater reliance on the middle and lower-registered instruments, especially clarinets, bassoons, horns, cellos and basses, all of which helped the “absolute” symphonic genre achieve a greater level of dramatic impact. 

Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, K. 16 (1764) follows the orchestration patterns of many composers in the 1760s.  It uses a standard early Classical “orchestra of 8” with four-part string writing, two oboes and two horns.  A bassoon would also have been expected to play with cellos and basses.  For special occasions two trumpets and timpani could be added (“orchestra of 11”).  Melody was still typically given to the violins, as in the music of Handel, and the lower strings characteristically played repeated notes—so called trommel (“drumming”) bass—to give forward motion to the simpler, slower-moving harmony.   A role reversal, too, could occur, with quick repeated notes in the violins adding an exciting drive over a sturdy lower instrument melody.  These roles are most noticeable in the first movement, especially during transitional passages between themes where the excitement of the music is amplified by the use of the trommel figures.  Oboes and horns either doubled the violin melodies or sustained chord tones, and horn calls signaled strong arrival points (candences), thereby helping to clarify structural markers.  The roundness of the sound of the horns and oboes sustaining fuller harmonies, and the trommel bass, help distinguish early Classical music from that of Handel and his contemporaries.  Winds display more independence in the second movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 than in the first movement.  Brief shifts from strings to winds at cadences reinforce the movement’s structural outline.  And typical of symphonies in the 1760s, the final movement is a light-hearted triple-meter rustic dance, characterized by predictable phrase lengths, and uncomplicated textures.  Oboes most often double the lively violin melodies, and the prominence of the horns enhances the rustic character.  But Mozart adds contrast to this simple music by interrupting it with some moments of more “learned” contrapuntal style. 

Mozart composed seventeen of his twenty-seven piano concertos after moving to Vienna in 1781. During the years between his first symphony and his Vienna concertos, the “orchestra of 8” had expanded to include one or two flutes and two independent bassoon parts, and at times two clarinets would replace or play alongside the oboes.  Expansion of the wind band coincided with a growing interest in changes in orchestral color, particularly for shifts in character and for reinforcing structural elements such as themes.  The simple harmony-sustaining and melody-doubling of the oboes and horns in the “orchestra of 8” textures of the 1760s and early 1770s gave way to greater sophistication: many brief woodwind solos and “wind choir” passages permeate Mozart’s orchestral music written after his move to Vienna.   Mozart showed a particular affinity for wind writing in his 1780s piano concertos, due in part (according to Christoph Wolff and others) to the sharpening of his wind-band skills while writing several divertimenti during his last years in Salzburg (late 1770s). Prominent use of the winds in the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488 (1784-6), along with the replacement of the bright oboes with softer clarinets and the A-major key itself, give the concerto an overall pastoral quality, or topos, and nicely compliment the sound of the 18th century fortepiano.   Beyond their pastoral identity, the skillful, characteristic Mozartian use of winds in this and other concertos, help us identify the various themes of the first movement, and thus lead us through the form.  To lock the melodies in our minds, first movement themes are played twice in the opening segment, once by strings and once by the winds, either as an ensemble or a solo line. This alternation continues when the themes reappear after the piano’s entrance, but between piano and strings or winds.  As in Mozart’s earlier works, horns still call out the ends of thematic sections with fanfare figures.  Alternating bodies of sound continue in the somber, minor second movement.  The arpeggiated accompaniment in the second violins, and then clarinets, is a remnant from Mozart’s wind divertimentos; recall the famous moment in the film Amadeus where an aging Salieri is speaking of the “rusty music box” figure in one of his rival’s wind pieces.  As in the finale of the Symphony No.1, the last movement of this concerto is the most lighthearted and brightest of the three, with leaping violin melodies and bouncy bassoon duets adding comic flair.  Yet among the comedy of the bassoons and the brightness of the violins, a sweetness emerges from woodwind duet passages, particularly those of the clarinets.

The delineation of structure using orchestral colors, as in the concertos of Mozart, became even more pronounced in the instrumental music of Beethoven. Pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets (along with timpani) made up the large wind group that in Beethoven’s hands became almost an equal partner of the string ensemble. Not everyone appreciated the attention to winds.  One critic said after the première of Beethoven’s first symphony that it was a nice work, but sounded too much like “band music” (harmoniemusik).  What truly sets Beethoven’s instrumental music apart is how he used all of the sounds of the orchestra to expand and manipulate topoi (suggestions of topics or settings, e.g. war or pastoral, created by specific musical gestures) into more sweeping dramatic events, “sound-dramas” within the context of clear structure. His symphonies notwithstanding, Beethoven’s genius here was uniquely well suited to ballet and incidental music for plays, where a specific story is told through orchestral sound.  As with opera, these dramas often began with overtures, and following Mozart’s lead, Beethoven conceived the overture as a brief overview of the coming drama, a foretaste of its emotional journey.  So successfully did Beethoven express the sentiments of the plots, that the overtures quickly became staples of orchestra concerts, and have remained so despite the neglect of the remainder of the music from these dramas.  Soon after completing his first symphony, Beethoven was commissioned to write ballet music for a staging of the Prometheus myth. Heroic tales had become common fare of German-Austrian theatre, and favorites of Beethoven, and this myth of the Titan whose wit was capable of challenging Zeus for the benefit of humans, tricking the god into accepting only sacrificial bones so that humans could feast on the meat, and giving his human creatures fire stolen from Olympus despite his ultimate punishment of having his liver eaten out by an eagle every day through eternity, was attractive to the composer.  The Overture to Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 (1800) is Beethoven’s first overture, and displays most of the trademarks of his early symphonic writing, including its emerging dramatic trajectory.  Full orchestra chords and dotted rhythms immediately clue the audience to the immenseness of the story, but the following simple horn and oboe material, the sounds of which match so well when using “period” instruments, suggests the dawn of the helpless human species.  After the tempo change, string (first theme) and wind (second theme) colors distinguish structural material in this overture, and push us forward, and fortissimo punctuations by full orchestra, including timpani, point out the conflict in the story.  In the development section, motives passed between strings and winds in quick succession imitate conversation, further advancing the impression of drama.   Beethoven often used this conversational device in his concert overtures, and his symphonies, and later composers such as Berlioz found this technique particularly useful for engendering what might be called virtual conversation, without words, such as in the “Love Scene” movement of Romeo and Juliet Symphony. 

Beethoven believed the structural solidity and character heterogeneity of the symphony genre made it equally capable of moving audiences as did the traditional dramatic forms.   To be sure, the heroic proportions of his Symphony No. 3 (1803), victory through struggle in Symphony No. 5 (1808), pastoral bliss interrupted only briefly by a storm in Symphony No. 6 (1808), and grand emotional swings of Symphony No. 7 (1812) pushed music’s dramatic envelope, without a single word sung.  Stacked against these monumental works, Beethoven’s reliance on the lightheartedness of an earlier, more Classical symphonic tradition in Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93 (1812) seems to suggest Beethoven taking a step away from the abyss, as if his glimpses into the sublime finally invoked fear in himself.  But a closer look at Symphony No. 8 betrays this as sleight of hand, revealing that it is in many ways the culmination of Beethoven’s thirteen-year examination of how musical gestures could be fashioned into a wordless sound-odyssey.   The first movement’s opening full orchestra forte theme, with the violins playing the melody, is interrupted half way through by the softer wind band; Beethoven wants us to hear this theme in two parts so that he can manipulate those two parts in different ways at later points in the movement.  On its face the lyrical second theme receives a more traditional, even Mozart-like treatment, as it is heard once in the strings and then in the winds, but the winds play it in a different key.  Strings return with a new octave-leap closing idea. The typically Beethoven development section features these various motives passed around all of the colors of the orchestra in a series of short solos, building to an ingenious and electrifying return of the first theme, girded with an fff dynamic marking (the first time Beethoven would use this loudest dynamic in an orchestral work), lifts us off of our seats.  The melody is here in the cellos and basses, not the violins, the horns scream a new motive over the top of the melody, and it is not interrupted this time by the soft winds.  Instead, the winds repeat the whole melody piano, only after it is heard in its entirety, so here the use of orchestral colors is similar to Mozart’s, with the theme heard twice in contrasting choirs.  Unlike the intense first movement, Beethoven directs the second movement to be jocular (scherzando), and the perpetual clucking of the winds, imitating Mälzel’s new metronome, helps maintain this character, as well as the fragmenting of melodic ideas into extreme upper and lower registers—violins and high winds, then cellos and basses. Although all of his earlier symphonies have a quick scherzo third movement, Beethoven reverted to a more Classical minuet tempo in the tradition of Haydn and some earlier symphony composers for this symphony.  The courtly, majestic minuet for full orchestra and the woodsy calls of the horns and clarinet of its rustic trio, offer a bit of relief from the jocund character of the second and final movement.  But it can’t all be serious:  note the early and late entrances of the individual instruments in the main minuet theme.  The bright, vivacious finale is the stuff of comic opera. Sudden, jolting shifts from ppp to ff and from one key to another enhance the breathless pace, and the octave-leap theme from the first movement takes on a farcical nature as it passes from basses to bassoons, and even to timpani, here tuned to an octave rather than the standard tonic-dominant (do-sol) pitches.  When it is finished, we realize that we have been treated to an ebullient, yet quite varied and at times intense emotional roller-coaster, so comically and easily presented that we didn’t notice our knuckles turning white. Now take a breath.  

Overview of Works

W. A. Mozart (1756-1791):  Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, K.16
Composed 1764
Instrumentation:  2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, 4 part strings (orchestra á8)
I. Molto allegro, 4/4, E-flat major
II. Andante, 2/4, C minor
III. Presto, 3/8, E-flat major

W. A. Mozart (1756-1791):  Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K. 488
Composed 1784-86
Instrumentation:  1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoon, 2 horns, strings, piano solo
I.  Allegro, 4/4, A major
II. Adagio, 6/8, F-sharp minor
III.  Allegro assai, 4/4, A major

L. v. Beethoven (1770-1827):  Overture to Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43
Composed 1801.  Overture to ballet music.
Instrumentation:  2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings.
Adagio—Allegro

L. v. Beethoven (1770-1827):  Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93
Composed 1812
Instrumentation:  2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings.
I.  Allegro vivace e con brio, 3/4, F major
II. Allegretto scherzando, 2/4, B-flat major
III. Tempo di menuetto—Trio, 3/4, F major
IV. Allegro vivace, 2/2, F-major

We encourage you to use these notes as a reference. If you do so for any publication, please cite Michael E. Ruhling and the Handel and Haydn Society as a source.

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