I wrote:

>>What is the formal novelty in this symphony? (please,
>>don't tell me "that passage of bars 30-91 at the fourth movement"...).

Steve Schwarz responded:

>Why not? But if you want something more general, I'll mention the last
>movement.  Were there choral symphonies before Beethoven? Were there vocal
>soloists?

I asked about a formal novelty.  However, concerning that innovation
mentioned by Steve, Beethoven seems to let things flow "naturally" there.
I mean, the adoption of a staging apparatus in a symphony appears less a
radical novelty than a consequence of the dramatic sense that the symphonic
gender was taking since the end of XVIII century.  I mean, sometimes I
think that if Beethoven wouldn't write a "symphony with chorus" in 1824,
some other composer would do it, probably at the next year.  Actually, I
don't know why Beethoven or other contemporary composers didn't feel that
temptation before.  (Just in case: this is just a comment, and is far of
my intentions to discuss the global originality of the work.  I'm not so
naif!!).

>The formal novelty of the last movement can be related to theme
>and variations finales, which of course isn't new, but on the other hand,
>it's hardly a theme and variations structure like earlier ones.

Sorry but, introduction aside, I see there the same old structure, which is
the only possible (theme-variation 1- variation 2...etc).

>Mainly, it keeps threatening to stop, to break down.  Compare it with the
>finale of the third symphony, where the variations flow into one another.
>I'd say this tearing down and starting again is something so new and so
>radical that very few composers today know how to embrace it.

This is simply an operatic resource (I smell a lot of Don Giovanni there),
and belongs entirely to the introduction.  After it, we have only a bunch
of variations on a theme.  I'd say that this is more "new" than "radical".
Let's stay it clear: this is not in detriment of the Ninth --which I
consider the greatest of B's symphonies.  I only mean that novelties (real
or supposed) are not precisely the things that amazes me most in this work.

>>Concerning form, the "experimental" vein at the 9th is very modest
>>compared to that from the last quartets.
>
>It experiments with something different and in a way more essential - the
>listener's sense of time.

Beethoven was experimenting already in this field since the first movement
of the Eroica.  The handling of listener's sense of time is far more
Radical in this movement than anything at the Ninth, if we compare it
to the classical sonata-form structure.

Pablo Massa
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