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Beethovenian Notes – Dino Villatico, 7 October 2020
Beethovenian Notes
by Dino Villatico — 7 October 2020
The Beethoven year is drawing to a close. Yet not a day—perhaps not even an hour—has passed without the thought of his music occupying my mind. With the same insistence as that of a contemporary composer. Which means that my reading and listening to Beethoven have been, since childhood, the reading and listening of a “new” composer, one who had something new to tell me. The same had happened to me with Chopin, even earlier, when I heard my grandmother play him. And then Schumann: the Phantasiestücke played by Rubinstein, who on the other side of the record plays Beethoven’s Pathétique. And this continued to happen from my earliest, childish piano studies. I remember the emotion when I managed, fairly early, to play Für Elise. Chopin moved me, Beethoven captivated me, Schumann surprised me: I had not yet understood how the three emotions were in fact the suggestion of a single musical thought.
Not that Chopin, Beethoven, and Schumann resemble one another: what resembles itself is their way of conceiving music as a meaningful act—indeed, as a cultural act. Today I know that what bewitched me in Beethoven was, above all, precisely his way of thinking music. Inimitable and, at the same time, fertile with suggestions for the future: he in fact conditioned the two centuries that followed him, including composers distant from him or even opposed to him. As with Wagner, one may follow in his wake or oppose him, but in any case it is impossible to disregard him.
This is why, every time I read or listen to a Beethoven page, it seems to me that I am reading the discourse of one of my contemporaries—indeed, of one of my peers. For example, in the way he uses the preceding tradition.
Recently, in a concert broadcast by Radio3, the Sonata Op. 31 No. 3 was performed—I do not recall by whom (and I did not much like the interpretation). I did not know, as was said, that it was among Arthur Rubinstein’s favourites (him again, an anomalous interpreter of Beethoven, but precisely for this reason highly stimulating). Today, at almost eighty years of age, I believe I can guess why.
In this sonata Beethoven overturns an entire universe. Despite—or perhaps precisely because—the sonata appears to possess an extraordinary, captivating lightness, a lightness that is substantial from a formal point of view, yet ambiguous and unsettling in its deeper meaning.
I would like, however, to dwell on only one movement of this marvellous sonata: the Minuet. It is a dance that evokes an entire century: the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century, in Beethoven, is almost never a nostalgic glance at the past, but a reflection on a cultural experience not yet concluded, and therefore often suggests formal openings and almost metaphysical meanings, almost like the contemplation of a lost paradise—or rather, of one whose moral and political demands were deliberately abandoned because deemed irrecoverable, and for which one therefore feels neither regret nor nostalgia, but rather desire, and which one observes as an ideal model of equilibrium not only formal.
The Revolution was not, for Beethoven, an event soon superseded by the Restoration; indeed, the Restoration made him perceive even more—not only its relevance but its necessity. The moral imperative of equality, fraternity, and liberty runs through the composer’s entire oeuvre. Having intuited, understood, absorbed this principle renders it irreversible. Its loss, or absence, is a laceration.
That the dark, terrible opening of the second act of Fidelio employs almost literally (with more intricate and complex harmony) the opening of a funeral cantata for the death of Joseph II, written in 1790, clarifies very well Beethoven’s relationship with late eighteenth‑century composition. Joseph II, the sovereign who attempted to realise the separation of powers, and above all the separation between religion and the State.
But, respecting the lightness of the sonata, the eighteenth century is represented by a Minuet. Among the most singable pages ever written by Beethoven, the Diabelli Variations also conclude with a shamelessly Haydnesque Minuet, in which irony seems to prevail over regret. And Haydn, moreover, pervades this sonata (but also Mozart, especially in the first movement). Haydnesque is the Scherzo, in two‑four time. But the Minuet is, as has been said, among the most singable, most lyrical pages ever written by Beethoven.
Is it truly the portrait of a lost world, as someone wrote (I believe Rolland)? The sonata was composed in the same year as the so‑called Heiligenstadt Testament. And it would appear detached from the tragedy that inexorably and irreversibly struck Beethoven. But are we sure?
This is why I wrote that the lightness is apparent—real in the writing, ambiguous, unsettling in its meaning. How does one play all this? How does one make it reach the listener? In my view, by insisting on the general lightness of the sonata, on the irony (Rosen calls it “mocking”) of the Scherzo, on the furious virtuosity of the final tarantella, but above all on the expressive ambiguity of the Minuet: a page out of fashion, and therefore utterly contemporary—one is reminded of Nietzsche’s untimeliness, which becomes the interpretation of an unbearable contemporaneity.
That lost world is, for Beethoven, the paradise of Reason, but even more of the Categorical Imperative that imposes upon society as a whole the respect of a single moral law. It is the age, precisely for this reason—for this rationality, for this moral demand—of grace and amiability: the moral imperative is never, for Beethoven, harsh or intolerable. Harsh is the society that does not respect it.
To grasp fully the dimension of the loss, one must therefore make the listener feel how evoking it today makes the writing creak, renders it “inauthentic,” an imitation. The signs are not lacking. Surprising dynamic indications, sudden harmonic shifts that deform the eighteenth‑century features. Astonishing, unusual asymmetries.
Ludwig van Beethoven, 33 Veränderungen über einen Walzer von Anton Diabelli op. 120, Autograph. Beethoven-Haus Bonn, NE 294. Seite 86: Var. XXXIII – Tempo di minuetto moderato
I venture a thought: what if Beethoven, a century before Stravinsky, had already set forth a “neoclassical” poetics? How should we read the Eighth Symphony (which indeed surprised the public and was not immediately understood)? It seemed a step backwards. And it is not. It is instead a visionary leap forward—indeed into the body of the twentieth century, and perhaps even the twenty‑first. Let certain composers reflect on this. Those who think that to re‑establish order it suffices to skip the new (the avant‑gardes) and return to what came before. Beethoven never proposes that “before” as it was, but places it in parentheses, writes it “as if.” This is why he remains, still, one of our contemporaries. And what a contemporary! One who sees farther than we do.
For further insight into Dino Villatico’s work,
his intellectual formation, and his long-standing engagement with Beethoven’s thought, readers may explore the biographical note below. It outlines the cultural trajectory of a scholar shaped by multiple languages, diverse traditions, and a profound sensitivity to the moral and philosophical dimensions of music.
Additional listening materials related to the works cited in this essay — including Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 31 No. 3, the Diabelli Variations Op. 120, and the funeral cantata for the death of Joseph II — are provided here to offer a broader context for the reflections developed in the article.