Program Notes – Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, “Pastoral”

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, “Pastoral”
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Written: 1803–08
Movements: Five
Style: Romantic
Duration: 40 minutes

“When you wander through the silent pine woods, remember that I have often made poetry, or, as they say, composed there,” Ludwig van Beethoven wrote to a friend. Anticipating arriving in the country, he wrote to another, “How delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, through grass and around rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo which man desires to hear.”

Beethoven’s workday usually included several long walks in the country; he boasted of walking around the city of Vienna twice daily. Like most Viennese, Beethoven spent his summers in the country. Initially he was the guest of nobility at their country estates, but when he was finally able to afford it, he rented his own summer lodgings. It was there he did his most productive work. Beethoven composed most of his Symphony No. 6, what he himself called his Pastoral symphony, in the “delicious wooded environs of Heiligenstadt.”

Unlike later composers such as Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt, who would give detailed descriptions of what their music was “about,” Beethoven loathed giving a blow-by-blow description of his Pastoral Symphony. Early on he wrote, “The hearer should be permitted to discover the situations for himself. He who has ever conceived an idea of country life ought to be able, without many indications, to think of the author’s meaning.” At the first performance he included on the printed program, “More an expression of feeling than of painting.”

If you were in the audience for that first performance at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 22, 1808, you would have heard quite a concert. Along with the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven also premiered his incomparably great Fifth Symphony, his Fourth Piano Concerto, the Choral Fantasy for piano, choir and orchestra (which prefigures his Ninth Symphony,) some movements from his Mass in C and the aria Ah! Perfido. Even though the concert was nearly four hours long (and the heater broke down), the audience still expected Beethoven to improvise alone at the piano as well. Think of it – an entire concert of “new” music!

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is entirely unlike his Fifth. While the Fifth Symphony is an epic musical journey, a powerful statement of man’s triumph over fate, the Sixth is just happy music. The first movement (“Cheerful impressions awakened by arrival in the country”) is void of the drama and tension that we so often hear in Beethoven. The second (“Scene by the brook”)—complete with orchestral bird calls—is about as lazy and serene as orchestral music gets. The third movement (“Merry gathering of country folk”) is a joyous folk dance which is suddenly interrupted by a fierce thunderstorm—the fourth movement. This is the only place in the entire symphony that reflects Beethoven’s tempestuous personality. And what a storm it is! Like all thunderstorms, it dies away. The country-folk of the third movement rejoice with a return to happy music in the last movement (“Shepherd’s Song; glad and grateful feelings after the storm). After an entire symphony of such unmitigated joy, we have to agree with a friend of Beethoven who said that he had “never met anyone who so delighted in Nature, or so thoroughly enjoyed flowers or clouds or other natural objects. Nature was almost meat and drink to him; he seemed positively to exist upon it.”

©2024 John P. Varineau