Here, finally, in the first two movements, is the Beethoven I love. I accept, on the testimony of people who understand the technical aspects of music, that the Third Symphony is a great achievement from that point of view, and that it does things that no one had done before. And as I said when I wrote about it a few weeks ago, I admire it and feel its greatness.
But if the Third constitutes a breakthrough, I would emphasize the breaking. There’s a violence in it, as in much of Beethoven. If we think of it as music breaking out of prison, we imagine not a cunningly planned and stealthy escape—a tunnel, perhaps—but giants smashing stone walls. I don’t know whether the Fourth is a consolidation and consideration of new freedom, or whether it is in some degree a return to older rules. But there is an ease and serenity about the first two movements which is not found any of the preceding three symphonies. It seems to flow freely, bearing little of the sense of straining after something that marks the others. It’s as if he is no longer struggling to become free, but being free.
The first two movements are simply beautiful, graceful and relaxed. The scherzo is brilliant and sunny, but I find the last movement a bit of a letdown. Taken as the end of a progress from reflection to joyful exuberance, it doesn’t, for me, quite live up to the promise of the earlier movements.
In a famous remark Schumann said that the Fourth in relation to the Third and Fifth is a slender Greek maiden between two Norse gods. Well, given that vision, I have no doubt that my eyes would be drawn to the maiden, so it’s not surprising that I like the Fourth so much. I don’t see why she has to be Greek, though—she can just as well be a maiden of the North, or for that matter a goddess herself.
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