In
the body politic as in music, it was a time of revolution...
The
American Revolution
Across
the Atlantic, the years immediately following Beethoven's
birth in 1770 saw the outbreak of the American Revolution
and the subsequent birth of the American nation. True,
it began not as a romantic idea, but as a mundane Tax
Revolt* by the American colonies against the British,
culminating in the infamous Boston Tea Party of 1773.
The British response was the punitive Intolerable Acts
of 1774 which in turn triggered an escalation of hostilities,
and the first shots of war were fired in the Battle of
Lexington and Concord in April 1775. On July 4,1776 even
as war raged on, the Second Continental Congress issued
the Declaration of Independence, marking the birth of
America. After a series of victories and defeats,** George
Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental
Army, accepted the surrender of the British general Cornwallis
in 1781. But it was not until 1783 that the British acknowledged
American independence in the Treaty of Paris which was
signed at Versailles. After briefly returning to private
life, Washington became America's first president, serving
two terms of office that lasted from 1789 to 1797. Thus
for a period of time, the age of Beethoven coincided with
the revolutionary era of George Washington and America's
Founding Fathers.
While it is not known if this revolution and the momentous
birth of a nation on distant shores left its marks on
Beethoven, the revolution that broke out in France certainly
did.
*Specifically in protest of such legislation as the Stamp
Act which required that a stamp be affixed to all documents,
newspapers and dice and the Townshend Acts named after
England's Chancellor of the Exchequer, that imposed revenue
duties on such items as tea paper, and glass.
** Victories such as at the Battles of Trenton and Princeton
(1776), and defeats such as at the Battle of Brandywine
(1777) and the desperate winter at Valley Forge (1777-78).
Beethoven and the French Revolution
In Europe, the age of Beethoven coincided with the French Revolution
- an era that saw the tyranny of royal opulence blown to pieces by
an explosion of events triggered by the wretchedness of ordinary lives:
the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789,
the mobbing of the king at Versailles and the royal flight to Varennes,
the promulgation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the execution
by guillotine of Louis XVI and his queen
Marie Antoinette, the proclamation of
the French Republic (1793), and the tragic interlude known as Robespierre's
Reign of Terror (1794). The French Revolution came to an end with
Napoleon's coup d' etat of 1799 amidst
his Napoleonic Wars in which he sought the conquest of all Europe
- a goal thwarted successively by the disastrous Russian campaign
of 1812, his defeat at Leipzig (1813) and exile to the island of Elba,
and his decisive loss at the Battle of Waterloo (1815).
The ideas that spawned the French Revolution did not fly over Beethoven's
head like stray bullets. Some of his most powerful music stirred with
the pulse of the revolution.
He
even came close to hero-worshipping Napoleon.
His Symphony No. 3 with its music of conflict and war and of
triumph and death would have been subtitled "Bonaparte".
But he would retract the dedication, disillusioned that the hero in
the end succumbed to the allure of conquest and grandeur over egalitarian
ideals. Instead the dedication became a nebulous statement "...a
symphony to celebrate the memory of a great man."
Although
to the end royalty numbered among his friends and patrons, he was
a believer in the republican ideas of equality and liberty and sought
to make music as accessible to the common man as it was to the nobility.
Indeed some of his most deeply moving music echo the dreams and longings,
the pleasures and pains of ordinary mortals.
UK
