Giovanni Mura — Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony No. 6 and Its (Alleged) Connections to Croatian Folk Music
Article by Dr. Giovanni Mura, a pathologist with a deep passion for classical music, offering insightful reflections on the genesis of the thematic material in Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies.
In this essay I offer a series of reflections derived from my readings of various studies on Beethoven’s symphonies and their thematic material. I have often noticed that certain texts, even widely circulated ones, contain assertions about the supposed sources of Beethoven’s inspiration. These ideas are then genealogically repeated from one publication to the next, frequently without citing any sources and thereby generating confusion.
A first example appears in Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s Mozart, where the author notes a resemblance between the opening of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and the introduction to the overture of Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne. The similarity, however, is limited to the first four notes, and Hildesheimer himself expresses doubt that Beethoven could have known this youthful work by Mozart, whose first documented performance took place in Berlin in 1890—sixty‑three years after Beethoven’s death.
A second example emerges when listening to Mozart’s Misericordias Domini, K. 222, whose opening shows an evident resemblance to the theme of the “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Here too, it seems difficult to maintain that Beethoven knew this early Salzburg composition. It appears far more plausible that the theme of the Ninth—on which Beethoven laboured for years, as his notebooks reveal—was the result of a long process of creative experimentation, already present in embryonic form in the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80.
The Seventh Symphony has also been the subject of debate, though to a lesser extent. In 1935 The Musical Quarterly published an article by James Travis, who claimed that, while composing the Seventh Symphony, Beethoven was simultaneously arranging Irish folk songs on commission and was so influenced by them that he incorporated their melodies into the symphony’s architecture. According to Travis, the song Nora Creina (Save me from the grave and wise) contains the theme of the finale; I once had a true love (O Harp of Erin) includes melodic figures found in the Vivace of the first movement; Garyone (From Garyone, my happy home) lies behind the Scherzo theme; and finally Tell me, dear Eleveen and On the massacre of Glencoe contain melodic elements present in the Allegretto.
A careful listening to these songs, and an examination of their scores, does indeed reveal certain rhythmic affinities with the Seventh Symphony, but no significant thematic or melodic resemblance. This point is underscored by Lewis Lockwood in his Beethoven’s Symphonies: An Artistic Vision, in a chapter specifically devoted to rhythmic affinities between Beethoven’s symphony and possible external influences. Thus, aside from a few rhythmic parallels, Travis’s argument that “Beethoven, consciously or not, recalled Celtic folk melodies while composing the Seventh Symphony” appears quite weak, lacking any clear evidence of melodic quotation.
Let us now turn to the most relevant point: the Pastoral Symphony. My interest was first sparked by Giacomo Manzoni’s Guida all’ascolto della musica sinfonica (1961), where he writes that “in the first movement the composer inserted, almost wholesale, the melody of a Croatian folk song, subjecting it to every possible development without ever depriving it of its rustic serenity.” This claim seems to find support in Gastone Belotti’s Chopin (1990). Belotti notes that, just as one may detect a resemblance between Chopin’s Mazurka in E minor, Op. 41 No. 1, and the Polish folk song “There in the meadow the flowers shine,” there is an equally convincing example in Beethoven: comparing Croatian folk melody no. 1016 from the Kuhac collection with the first theme of Op. 68 reveals a similarity “bordering on identity.” Belotti even reproduces the Croatian melody in his text.
Giorgio Pestelli, in Il genio di Beethoven: viaggio attraverso le nove sinfonie, likewise writes that “the first theme of the Pastoral is almost identical to a Croatian folk song included in Kuhac’s late‑nineteenth‑century collection.” A few lines later, however, he adds that “it is possible that the themes of these Croatian songs reached the ears of Beethoven and Haydn and that, in more or less similar form, they recur in some of their symphonies; but it is equally possible that, by the late 1800s, certain themes from Haydn’s and Beethoven’s symphonies were so well known that they were echoed in folk songs.” Personally, I do not share this latter view: I find the “reverse path” implausible. I cannot easily imagine a peasant creating a folk song based on a symphonic theme he happened to hear. Nor do I believe that Beethoven’s other symphonies—each a world unto itself—contain Croatian melodies; if any exception exists (and I stress if), it would be the Sixth. (The case of Haydn is different, but this is not the place to discuss it.)
The hypothesis of a Croatian quotation in the Sixth Symphony is taken up again by Martin Geck in his Beethoven’s Symphonies: Nine Approaches to Art and Ideas (2017). Other authors, however, propose a different theory. Amedeo Poggi and Edgar Vallora, in Beethoven: signori il catalogo è questo, claim that Beethoven drew on a Bohemian folk song (not a Croatian one) while composing the first movement of the Pastoral, during a stay in Bohemia with the Brunsvik family. Yet they neither specify which song nor cite any source for this assertion.
Other major scholars—Guanti, Lockwood, Balbo—make no mention whatsoever of this issue in their works on Beethoven’s symphonies. This, in my view, is a highly significant fact, and I shall return to it later in my personal considerations.
After reading these studies, I began to wonder where the hypothesis of a “folk genesis” of the symphony had originated. The issue emerges between 1878 and 1881, when the Croatian ethnomusicologist Franjo Kuhač published his work Južno-slovienske narodne popijevke (Chansons nationales des Slaves du Sud). In it, he proclaimed his conviction that Haydn and Beethoven, the masters of Viennese classical music, had drawn on Croatian folk melodies for some of their symphonic compositions. According to Kuhač, Haydn, while serving in the chapel of the Esterházy court, would have come into contact with Croatian settlers, hearing and adapting their musical motifs in his works; Beethoven, for his part, would have encountered Croatian songs during a stay in Jedekovo as a guest of Countess Erdődy in 1808–1809, subsequently incorporating them into his symphony.
The songs in question are twofold: the first is Sirvonja, allegedly used as the incipit of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony and catalogued as song no. 1016 in volume 3 of Kuhač’s collection. The second is Kad sam v Šopron v šolu, listed as Slavonic tune no. 810 in the same volume, which Kuhač believed Beethoven had used as one of the secondary ideas in the fifth movement of the Pastoral. Audio files of both melodies are attached.
Kuhač’s work attracted the attention of Professor Heinrich Reimann, who expressed his skepticism regarding these claims in both his article “Folk-Song in Symphonies” (The Musical Times, 1 November 1893) and his essay “Zum Kapitel von den Entlehnungen” (Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, October 1893).
Reimann argued that Beethoven’s compositional process differed considerably from that of Haydn, being far more elaborative from a melodic standpoint. In the journal Staroslovan (Kremsier, 1913) an article entitled Das südslavische Volkslied bei Beethoven und Haydn appeared, presenting the two songs under discussion—Sirvonja and Kad sam—as sources for the Pastoral Symphony. Later, in 1935, George Grove wrote in his Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies that “a large collection of Slavonic songs, published in four volumes, contains melodies used by Beethoven in his Sixth Symphony.” These, then, are the origins of the issue, subsequently taken up by Giacomo Manzoni and, in turn, by many others.
Personal considerations. From a strictly musical point of view, the matter is irrelevant: Beethoven begins with the initial theme of the first movement and reworks it with immense genius, fragmenting it and generating new motives from it. From a historical perspective, however, the question becomes more intriguing. The thematic material of the symphony and the cited folk songs are indeed strongly similar—this is objectively true. And although Kuhač’s publication of Croatian songs dates from the late nineteenth century, while Beethoven completed the symphony in 1808, this does not in itself prove that Beethoven could not have known such melodies. Folk songs, by definition, lack precise dating; temporal comparisons are therefore impossible.
Kuhač maintained that Beethoven became acquainted with Croatian songs during his stay with Countess Erdődy in Jedekovo, yet Beethoven’s sketchbooks show that the opening theme appears already in the earliest drafts, well before 1808. Moreover, a close examination of these notebooks reveals that, although the theme seems to arise spontaneously, several measures later one finds deletions and corrections—evidence of a process of elaboration rather than spontaneous quotation.
One must also consider an important point: although melodic memory (so‑called “melodic reminiscence”) certainly exists, Beethoven’s deafness was already profound by 1803 (the Pastoral dates from 1808). It is doubtful that his auditory capacity at that stage would have allowed him to recall with precision a melody heard who knows where. Furthermore, the composer’s notebooks contain no annotations or sketches referring to Croatian tunes. (It is worth recalling that the Moonlight Sonata was composed only after meticulous preliminary study based on notes taken from the Commendatore’s death scene in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.) In short, there is no direct evidence in Beethoven’s sketches to support the hypothesis.
Finally, one must consider the possibility of a completely involuntary and unconscious resemblance. Beethoven is not unique in this regard: in Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen one finds a theme identical to one in Donizetti’s Dom Sébastien, yet no one would seriously claim a direct influence.
I previously noted that Guanti, in his book Beethoven, makes no reference whatsoever to the Kuhač question; on the contrary, he states that “the theme of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony, rather than being the product of harmonic progressions as in the earlier symphonies, is a genuine invention, already possessing its definitive form.” Tarcisio Balbo, in his monograph La Sesta Sinfonia (entirely devoted to the Pastoral), and Lewis Lockwood, author of Le sinfonie di Beethoven: una visione artistica, likewise make no mention of the matter. These are three of the most authoritative Beethoven scholars: if they did not dwell on the issue, it is perhaps because they found no compelling evidence of correlation, particularly from a historical standpoint.
In light of these considerations, my personal conclusion is that while the themes may indeed coincide, there is insufficient historical evidence to prove with certainty that Beethoven knew these melodies or made use of them. I therefore conclude that the similarities are the result of coincidental thematic convergence.
In closing, I wish to thank Roberto Flora, whose contribution was essential in the pianistic performance of the folk songs, and I invite all enthusiasts to listen to and explore Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony—a composition destined for immortality.
Giovanni Mura
