Ludwig Beethoven
Symphony No. 6 in F major, op. 68 “Pastoral”

“No one can love the countryside as much as I do,” Ludwig van Beethoven assured his friend Therese Malfatti in a letter from May 1810: “How delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, over grass and rocks..” His love for nature was also expressed musically, most notably in the sounds of his Sixth Symphony. The “Pastoral” was conceived alongside the seemingly contrasting Fifth Symphony and even premiered in the same concert on 22 December 1808. This was no coincidence. The “Fate Symphony” is about liberation from great danger; in moments of utmost distress, fate is overcome through one's own strength. The “Pastoral,” Beethoven’s sister work in the guise of a rural idyll, deals with much the same theme: the two symphonies are related at their compositional, structural core, despite their very different outward appearance. Both, for example, begin with an initial gesture where the music pauses briefly after an opening phrase, which soon proves the seed of the whole piece, before it gathers momentum for a longer stretch.

Described by the composer as  a “Sinfonia caracteristica”, the “Pastoral” was particularly noted, lauded and criticized for its vivid portrayal of natural events. Even Beethoven’s contemporaries debated passionately about these imitations, such as the calls of the nightingale, quail, and cuckoo at the end of the second movement, or the rain, thunder, and lightning in the fourth movement, arguing whether such things could be considered legitimate in the context of a serious symphony. What matters, however, is not the congruence between the acoustic image and the original –  a feat Beethoven’s 17th-century predecessors, even a composer such a Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, not to mention his teacher Joseph Haydn, had already accomplished. Beethoven’s intention, as Kirill Petrenko underlines, was different: he wanted “first and foremost to show what we feel when we hear birds, or the fear we have when a storm comes. This is already a prefiguration of Romanticism” – or, in Beethoven’s words, “more the expression of feeling than tone painting.”

The first, third, and fifth movements reproduce few natural sounds or none at all, instead tracing the effects of nature on humankind and their reactions to it, right up to the indulgently humorous depiction of a village band in the third movement, where the oboe stubbornly enters a quarter-note too early in the second theme. The ominous intrusion of higher powers, in the form of a thunderstorm, that follows this rural pastoral idyll demands a separate section and thus an expansion of the symphonic form to five movements. Beethoven creates an irresistible flow via the artistic device of allowing the last three movements to transition directly into one another. The gratitude expressed in the “Shepherd’s Song” at the end is not one of jubilation. This inward-looking hymn reflects humility and an awareness of individual personal responsibility: to have been spared from a storm means preparing oneself and the community for the next one.

Nature offered Beethoven refuge from intrusive contemporaries, a sheltered environment where his ailments tormented him less than in the city: “My unfortunate hearing does not plague me here.” Being alone in nature was, for him as an artist wishing to speak to humanity, not a paradox, but the search for a utopia – “For the woods, the trees and the rocks give man the resonance he needs.” Country life was, for him, the epitome of an all-encompassing world that includes humanity. Above all, he felt a closeness to creation: “Almighty in the forest! I am blessed, happy in the forest: every tree speaks through You. O God! What glory! In such a forested area, in the heights, there is peace, peace, to serve Him.” This was a faith that did not merely repeat what was preached, but saw itself as a duty to humanity and to nature, which enabled human existence in the first place.