Schindler and the Pastoral Symphony (1993)

ANTON SCHINDLER, BEETHOVEN'S UNPAID SECRETARY FOR A TIME DURING THE 1820S, AND LATER HIS BIOGRAPHER, relates a fascinating and well-known story about the genesis of the second movement of the Pastoral Symphony, the Scene by the Brook: One day in the latter half of April 1823, a time of many troubles and reverses, Beethoven decided to take a respite by returning north to Heiligenstadt and its lovely surroundings. It was a place where he had put many musical works on paper and where, too, he had conducted his studies of nature; but he had not been there for ten years. The sun shone warmly and the landscape was already arrayed in its most beautiful spring finery. After we had looked at the bathhouse at Heiligenstadt with its adjoining garden and other pleasant sights, and he had expressed agreeable recollections concerning his creations, we turned our steps the Kahlenberg in the direction of Passing between Heiligenstadt and the latter village, through the pleasant meadow-valley through which flows a gently murmuring brook that rushes down from a nearby mountain and is overhung in places with tall elms, Beethoven frequently stopped and, full of happy feelings, let his gaze wander over the glorious landscape around him. Then sitting down on the meadow ground and leaning against an elm, he asked me whether there were any yellowhammers to be heard in the tops of these trees. But all was quiet. Thereupon he said: 'Here I wrote the Scene by the Brook, and the yellowhammers up there, the quails, nightingales and cuckoos, around me composed with me.' To my question, why he had not also inserted the yellowhammer into the scene, he took out his sketchbook and wrote: 'That is the composer up there,' he said; 'hasn't she a more important role to play than the others? They are only meant for a joke.' Indeed the entry of this motive in G Major gives the tone-picture new charm. Continuing on the subject of the whole work and its parts, Beethoven said that the song of this variety of yellowhammer species could be heard rather clearly in this scale that had been written down in Andante tempo and at the same pitch ...1 Two details from this anecdote have long been questioned. First, the Kahlenberg (a hill of about 1,500 feet) lies to the north of Heiligenstadt whereas Grinzing lies to the west, so that one could not walk towards the Kahlenberg in the direction of Grinzing. Second, the call of the yellowhammer is not an arpeggio but three short notes at the same pitch followed by a longer and usually lower one.2 Indeed Carl Czerny claimed that the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was based on the yellowhammer's song.3 Aside from these two inaccurate details, however, Schindler's reliability as a witness has been increasingly called into question in recent years, especially since Peter Stadlen's discovery in the 1970s that he had made many fake entries into Beethoven's conversation books long after the composer's death. The more cautious scholars nowadays are reluctant to accept any statement by Schindler that cannot be corroborated with other evidence, and so the above account of the Pastoral Symphony's genesis needs to be scrutinized more closely to see what else either supports or contradicts it. Several phrases or sentences in the account are susceptible to such an approach. 1. One day in the latter half of April 1823: Beethoven's conversation books for this period survive largely intact, and most of the fifteen days in question are represented in conversations; the only days missing are April 18-20.4 The entries for the period make reference to a variety of places around Vienna, such as Kalksburg, Modling, Baden and Hetzendorf, mostly in connection with possible places for Beethoven to stay that summer. The conversations also indicate that Beethoven and Schindler visited Hetzendorf together, probably on Friday, April 25.5 But there is no indication of any planned or recent visit to Heiligenstadt, Grinzing, the Kahlenberg, or anywhere near there. …