Pablo Massa replies to me replying to him:

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

But it was Beethoven.  And, as to the "flowing naturally," if one
thinks about the problem of how to add voices to a symphony, it is hardly
self-evident.  The "naturalness" you remark on is a consequence of
Beethoven getting it right at the first shot.

>>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).

That's because you're looking at form as a static picture, rather than as
something dynamically coming into being.  What I mean is that if you listen
to theme and variations before the Ninth, including those by Beethoven, you
hear a very different dynamic shape, just as you hear a very different
shape in Webern's Variations for Orchestra.

>>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.

I don't know what performances you've heard, but in most of my listening
experience, there at least six large breaks, not even counting the intro,
by which I mean everything up to the first statement of the theme.  From
there, the movement begins as conventional theme-and-variations, but only
up to the introduction of the bass soloist (first large break).  From
there, Beethoven begins to hang variations together in the usual way until,
again, the musical flow breaks down at "und der Cherub steht vor Gott"
(second large break).  We then go through my favorite part of the movement
- the tenor solo and the instrumental double fugue.  At the end of the
double fugue, we have those oddly tentative unisons and octaves, which
I would consider another break, as I do the "Seid umschlungen" from the
male chorus.  So now we're up to four.  I won't even quibble about the
"Sternenzelt" and "Ihr stuertzt nieder" passages.  To me, the music
keeps threatening to grind to a halt, but I could also make a case for
a continuous texture.  At any rate, the choral double fugue inaugurates
another section (five), which lasts until the quick coda (six), "Freude,
Tochter aus Elysium."

Again, compare how those sections appear to the variations in the Eroica
finale.  In the latter, we have a concern for seamless joining (and for a
relative steadiness of tempo).  In the Ninth, the music breaks down and
starts again.

>After it, we have only a bunch of variations on a theme.

I don't really understand what you mean.  That's what you have with any T&V
structure.

>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.

That's fine by me.  As a matter of fact, the Ninth is not my favorite
Beethoven symphony (please don't ask me which one is, because it changes
from week to week and tends to be the last one I listened to).  I also
enjoy very much the Vaughan Williams essay on the Ninth, in which he lists
everything he can think of to say against it and still concludes that it's
a masterpiece.  You can find this in the collection National Music and
Other Essays, published by Oxford Univ.  Press.  On the other hand, I
believe that the Ninth is music radically re-imagined - as far away from
"conventional" as one gets.  Novelty, yes.  Formal novelty, indeed.

>>>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.

The main difference is that Beethoven lengthens the listener's time
sense in the Eroica (and he obviously bases the Ninth adagio on what
he accomplished in the Eroica) but alters the listener's sense of time
coherence in the Ninth's finale.  I don't want to get into which is more
radical than the other ("how high is the highest star?"), but I certainly
wouldn't put one achievement lower than the other.

Steve Schwartz