Bob Kasenchak ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Chris Bonds ponders Beethoven's humor:
>
>>3.  The false re-entry of the theme by first horn at the recapitulation
>>in the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.  Is this humor--
>>or something else?
>
>I've wondered about the 'false' horn entry there as well.  The whole
>movement's architechture is so deliberate that you -have- to wonder.  I
>think it's damned funny; but I'm not sure that's the intent.  Sometimes
>I wonder if LvB wasn't (like Haydn) anticipating what he knew you'd
>anticipate (is that clear?).  He certainly could write a sonata-allegro
>form movement like nobody's business.

I think it was another indication that he was both breaking with tradition
and expanding the sonata form.  Truncating the slow introduction usual
with Haydn and Mozart (and his own first 2) is the first indication.

I think it was Ferdinand Ries who, after the first performance, complained
to Beethoven that it was a pity the "damned horn" came in too soon.  I
gather that B was *not* amused, which reinforces my opinion that there
is nothing comic in the Eroica.

Deryk Barker
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