Norman Lebrecht

Why I hate Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony

Norman Lebrecht doubts even Beethoven liked this piece of travel journalism, a parody of country life

Why did Beethoven retract the original movement titles for the Pastoral symphony? Was he recoiling from what he had made of rural living? Credit: Lebrecht Music Arts / Bridgeman Images

I loved music before I could walk. It seemed I could harmonise anything my sisters were singing. I had perfect pitch, a mixed blessing since wrong notes made me cry.

I hated music when I first heard Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony. 

I was nine years old. My mother had died when I was two and my father got remarried to a Hitler refugee, half unhinged by exile. My stepmother took me to orchestral concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. She liked all the crowd pleasers, best of all the Pastoral symphony which she played at home on a portable gramophone. I grew to revile the opening rustle of strings, the ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside.’ 

That never worked for me. I’m not sure now whether Beethoven meant it either. Considered in the totality of Beethoven’s output, the Pastoral is a cuckoo in his catalogue. Had it never been written, our view of him would not change. It was composed alongside the Fifth Symphony and Fourth Piano Concerto and premièred together in an overlong concert in December 1808. Both the other works reflect nervous times, Napoleon hammering at the gates of Vienna.

I grew to revile the opening rustle of strings, the ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside’

The Sixth, however, is sheer escapism, a springtime day evoked in deep midwinter and telling a story, which Beethoven never normally does. Here’s how it goes. Chap gets up in the morning, goes for a walk in a meadow. Sits down beside a brook. Watches a ‘Merry gathering of country folk’ (Beethoven’s third movement title), looks up and sees a storm cloud. Finds shelter. Storm blows over. Chap admits to ‘Cheerful and thankful feelings’. Cliché? You said it. Banal? Absolutely. Surely not by Beethoven.

Research a little further and you’ll find more ambiguity.

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