In the Studio

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 815, 11 March 1955, Page 21

In the Studio

OU can’t tell what goes on in a composer’s mind; you really can't. Well, you'll say, that may very likely apply to you and me, too. But then, it is commonly held that a composer composing puts a little bit of himself into his music, that running through his symphony is something of ‘the pulse of his life. Maybe, after all, that’s true, as long as you are prepared to agree that the life that goes into the music is not necessarily the one the composer’s friends and relatives have to bear with in the daily roUnd. For all one knows, the artist fashioning his sounds. may have withdrawn into a private world of his own. For instance, take Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93, which the Orchestra is to play in a studio broadcast this week under the baton of W.. H. Walden-Mills (March t hee a ge and 4YC). You know this symphony, maybe, or perhaps you don’t, for it is not played quite so often’ as some of the others. You couldn't wish for anything merrier-although Beethoven does allow himself a little fury in the last

movement. Sir George Grove called it a "prodigious" work and "The Humorous Symphony." From the first puckish theme to what becomes outrageous laughter in the coda of the finale, Beethoven seems to be in the best of good spirits. And even if you discount the tradition that the repeated chords in_ the second movement represent Beethoven’s ticking off the ticks in Malezel’s metronome, there is no doubt about the playfulness of this scherzando.

The moody Beethoven, it would seem, must have been in a boisterous good humour when he wrote this Symphony No. 8 in F. The fact is that Beethoven completed and polished off this work in 1812 in Linz, where he was on a visit to his brother Johann. His brother set him up in a room with a beautiful view of the Danube and the surrounding countryside. It was a situation where any man might reasonably be expected to be contented, Judging by the music, Beethoven seemed to be; but when he wasn’t writing notes, he was storming about the place stirring up trouble im his bachelor brother’s household and taking umbrage at Johann’s > infatuation for Therese Obermeyer. Beethoven even went to the police to see if they would stop the goings on. Johann blandly took the view that it was none of Ludwig’s. business and countered by marfying the girl. By this time, Beethoven had completed, amid all this disagreeableness, some of his jolliest music. So, you never can tell. Dvorak’s overture, Carnaval, is another case in point; but a somewhat different one. First performed when Dvorak arrived, a happy man, in America, Carnava] started life as the second part of Triple Overture: Nature, Life, Love. Nature and Love have

become part-time wallflowers as Life goes on to grace many a concert programme. When life is as jocund as Dvorak’s Carnaval love isn’t in the picture. This is the gay Slavonic: peasant on his Saturday night out. It is a memory which Dvorak was never to forget, however far from home he was, nor however exalted his stature in the musical world of America. This was part of his life.

Owen

Jensen