The Symphony No. 3 in E♭ major, Op. 55, (also Italian Sinfonia Eroica, Heroic Symphony; German: Eroica,) is a symphony in four movements by Ludwig van Beethoven.

One of Beethoven's most celebrated works, the Eroica symphony is a large-scale composition that marked the beginning of the composer's innovative "middle period".

Composed mainly in 1803–1804, the work broke boundaries in symphonic form, length, harmony, emotional and cultural content. It is widely considered a landmark in the transition between the Classical and the Romantic era. It is also often considered to be the first Romantic symphony. Beethoven first conducted a private performance on 9 June 1804, and later the first public performance on 7 April 1805.

History

Beethoven began composing the third symphony soon after Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 36 and completed the composition in early 1804. The first public performance of Symphony No. 3 was on 7 April 1805 in Vienna.

Thematic origins

There is significant evidence that the Eroica, perhaps unlike Beethoven's other symphonies, was constructed back-to-front.: 75  The theme used in the fourth movement, including its bass line, originate from the seventh of Beethoven's 12 Contredanses for Orchestra, WoO 14, and also from the Finale to his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43, both of which were composed in the winter of 1800–1801.: 58  The next year, Beethoven used the same theme as the basis for his Variations and Fugue for Piano in E♭ Major, Op. 35, now commonly known as the Eroica Variations due to the theme's re-use in the symphony. It is the only theme that Beethoven used for so many separate works in his lifetime, and each use is in the same key of E♭ major.: 58 

The "Wielhorsky Sketchbook", Beethoven's principal sketchbook for 1802, contains a two-page movement plan in E♭ major that directly follows the sketches for the Opus 35 Variations, which has been identified as being intended for the Third Symphony.: 59 While the movement plan gives no explicit indication regarding the finale, Lewis Lockwoodargues that "there cannot be any doubt that Beethoven intended from the start" to use the same theme (and bass of the theme) that he had just fleshed out in the Opus 35 Variations. Thus, it is argued that Beethoven's initial conception for a complete symphony in E♭ – including its first three movements – emerged directly from the Op. 35 Variations.: 60 

The first movement's main theme (mm. 3–6) has thus been traced back to the bass line theme of the Opus 35 variations (E♭, B♭↓, B♭↑, E♭) by way of intermediate versions found in one of Beethoven's sketchbooks.: 60–61  In the second movement, the combined tonality (melody and bass) of the Opus 35 theme's first four bars – E♭, B♭↓, B♭7(A♭)↑, E♭ – appears in slightly altered form as the funeral's march's second theme (E♭, B♭↓, A♭↑, E♮) (mvt. II, mm. 17–20), followed by two sudden forte B♭s that echo later elements of the theme. That same tonality then appears unaltered as the scherzo's main theme (mvt. III, mm. 93–100).

Thus, the first three movements can be viewed as symphonic-length "variations" on the Opus 35 theme, ultimately anticipating the theme's appearance in the fourth movement. Moreover, Beethoven's choice to begin the symphony with a theme adapted from the bass line is also paralleled in the fourth movement, in which the bass theme is heard as the first variation before the main theme ultimately appears. This again parallels the structure of the Opus 35 variations themselves. Finally, the loud E♭ chord that begins the Opus 35 variations themselves is moved here to the beginning of the first movement, in the form of the two chords that introduce the first movement.

Alternatively, the first movement's resemblance to the overture to the comic opera Bastien und Bastienne (1768), composed by twelve-year-old W. A. Mozart, has been noted.: 59–60  It was unlikely that Beethoven knew of that unpublished composition. A possible explanation is that Mozart and Beethoven each coincidentally heard and learned the theme from elsewhere.

Dedication

Beethoven originally dedicated the symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte(pictured: Bonaparte, First Consul, by Ingres), only to renege after the latter declared himself Emperor of the French.

Beethoven originally dedicated the third symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, who he believed embodied the democratic and anti-monarchical ideals of the French Revolution. In the autumn of 1804, Beethoven withdrew his dedication of the third symphony to Napoleon, lest it cost him the composer's fee paid him by a noble patron; so, Beethoven re-dedicated his third symphony to Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz – nonetheless, despite such a bread-and-butter consideration, the politically idealistic Beethoven titled the work "Bonaparte". Later, about the composer's response to Napoleon having proclaimed himself Emperor of the French (14 May 1804), Beethoven's secretary, Ferdinand Ries said that:

In writing this symphony, Beethoven had been thinking of Bonaparte, but Bonaparte while he was First Consul. At that time Beethoven had the highest esteem for him, and compared him to the greatest consuls of Ancient Rome. Not only I, but many of Beethoven's closer friends, saw this symphony on his table, beautifully copied in manuscript, with the word "Bonaparte" inscribed at the very top of the title-page and "Ludwig van Beethoven" at the very bottom ... I was the first to tell him the news that Bonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, "So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!" Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor. The page had to be recopied, and it was only now that the symphony received the title Sinfonia eroica.

An extant copy of the score bears two scratched-out, hand-written subtitles; initially, the Italian phrase Intitolata Bonaparte ("Titled Bonaparte"), secondly, the German phrase Geschriben auf Bonaparte ("Written for Bonaparte"), four lines below the Italian subtitle. Three months after retracting his initial Napoleonic dedication of the symphony, Beethoven informed his music publisher that "The title of the symphony is really Bonaparte". In 1806, the score was published under the Italian title Sinfonia Eroica ... composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grande Uomo ("Heroic Symphony, Composed to celebrate the memory of a great man").

Early performances and reviews

Composed from the autumn of 1803 until the spring of 1804, the earliest rehearsals and performances of the third symphony were private, and took place in the Vienna palace of Beethoven's noble patron, Prince Lobkowitz. An account record dated 9 June 1804, submitted by the prince's Kapellmeister Anton Wranitzky, shows that the prince hired twenty-two extra musicians (including the third horn required for the Eroica) for two rehearsals of the work.The fee paid to Beethoven by Prince Lobkowitz would also have secured further private performances of the symphony that summer on his Bohemian estates, Eisenberg (Jezeří) and Raudnitz (Roudnice). The first public performance was on 7 April 1805, at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna; for which concert the announced (theoretical) key for the symphony was Dis (D♯ major, 9 sharps).

Reviews of the work's public premiere (on 7 April 1805) were decidedly mixed. The concert also included the premiere of a Symphony in E flat major by Anton Eberl (1765–1807) that received better reviews than Beethoven's symphony. One correspondent describes the first reactions to the Eroica:

Musical connoisseurs and amateurs were divided into several parties. One group, Beethoven's very special friends, maintains that precisely this symphony is a masterpiece.... The other group utterly denies this work any artistic value ... hrough strange modulations and violent transitions ... with abundant scratchings in the bass, with three horns and so forth, a true if not desirable originality can indeed be gained without much effort. ...The third, very small group stands in the middle; they admit that the symphony contains many beautiful qualities, but admit that the context often seems completely disjointed, and that the endless duration ... exhausts even connoisseurs, becoming unbearable to the mere amateur. To the public the symphony was too difficult, too long ... Beethoven, on the other hand, did not find the applause to be sufficiently outstanding.

One reviewer at the premiere wrote that "this new work of B. has great and daring ideas, and ... great power in the way it is worked out; but the symphony would improve immeasurably if B. could bring himself to shorten it, and to bring more light, clarity, and unity to the whole." Another said that the symphony was "for the most part so shrill and complicated that only those who worship the failings and merits of this composer with equal fire, which at times borders on the ridiculous, could find pleasure in it". But a reviewer just two years later described the Eroica simply as "the greatest, most original, most artistic and, at the same time, most interesting of all symphonies".

The finale in particular came in for criticism that it did not live up to the promise of the earlier movements. An early reviewer found that "he finale has much value, which I am far from denying it; however, it cannot very well escape from the charge of great bizarrerie." Another agreed that "he finale pleased less, and that "the artist often wanted only to play games with the audience without taking its enjoyment into account simply in order to unloose a strange mood and, at the same time, to let his originality sparkle thereby". An exhaustive review of the work in a leading music journal made an observation that may still be familiar to first-time listeners: "this finale is long, very long; contrived, very contrived; indeed, several of merits lie somewhat hidden. They presuppose a great deal if they are to be discovered and enjoyed, as they must be, in the very moment of their appearance, and not for the first time on paper afterwards." A review of an 1827 performance in London wrote that this particular performance "most properly ended with the funeral march, omitting the other parts, which are entirely inconsistent with the avowed design of the composition".

The symphony premiered in London on 26 March 1807 at the Covent Garden Theatre and in Boston on 17 April 1810 by the newly founded Boston Philharmonic Society, both performances receiving fairly mixed reviews.

Manuscripts and editions

The original autograph manuscript does not survive. A copy of the score with Beethoven's handwritten notes and remarks, including the famous scratched-out dedication to Napoleon on the cover page, is housed in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. A first published edition (1806) of Beethoven's Eroica is on display at the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague.

Several modern scholarly editions have appeared in recent decades, including those edited by Jonathan Del Mar(published by Bärenreiter), Peter Hauschild (Breitkopf & Härtel), and Bathia Churgin (Henle).

Significance

The work is a milestone work in classical music; it is twice as long as the symphonies of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – the first movement is almost as long as a Classical symphony (with repetition of the exposition). Thematically, it covers more emotional ground than Beethoven's earlier symphonies, and thus marks a key milestone in the transition between Classicism and Romanticism that would define Western art music in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

The second movement especially displays a great emotional range, from the misery of the funeral march theme, to the relative solace of happier, major-key episodes. The finale displays a similar emotional range, and is given a thematic importance then unheard of. In earlier symphonies, the finale was a quick and breezy conclusion; here, the finale is a lengthy set of variations and a fugue.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Beethoven) / License: CC BY-SA 4.0