Beethoven
Sesta sinfonia

I confess that I have a fondness for Beethoven.

I’m a little sorry to admit it, to be honest, but never mind. Undoubtedly, he’s quite a “crucco” (a term for Germans that can sound negative). Which isn’t a great thing, in my humble opinion. It’s a matter of taste, you know.

To make up for it, I’ll confess that I’ve never managed to listen to Fidelio in its entirety. Which is funny because I’ve subjected myself to Wozzeck by Alban Berg at least three times to figure out if it was my fault or his (spoiler: his). Or Gianni Schicchi, for instance. And should we talk about I cavalieri di Ekebù? I believe I am the only person in the world, apart from the author, who has listened to it three times. Mascagni’s Lodoletta? But no, Fidelio, no, just no. And should we recall the premiere staging at La Scala (by the way, are you ready for Macbeth? It will be something, believe me) from a few years ago? Well, I turned it off after ten minutes. Shook my head, there are no more in-between seasons, where will we end up, this Rivera not scoring anymore...

And then the Ninth, and let’s not talk about that ridiculous film by Baricco that discusses it (have you seen it?) and that story about how from then on, the Ninth is known to be the last, like a testament... unbearable stuff. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies! Yet nobody remembers him. Why, did he have a worse agent?

I have always loved Beethoven’s quartet opus 132. I owe it to Vittorio Sereni. I don’t keep in touch. I don’t really know who he is. One day I read an interview with him. He says this quartet unfolds like a thought. I don’t know Vittorio Sereni, I don’t know anything about music but - perhaps you’ve realized - if I read a declaration of love, I get curious (last time it happened with Cofferati talking about Othello). Well, it was worth it.

Regarding Beethoven, there’s always been something that I hold dear. And maybe I hold it dear due to a mistake. It's the second movement of the sixth symphony. The movement is called At the Brook, the symphony Pastoral. Andante molto mosso, the sheet music says.

Well, let’s be clear. We’re talking about a symphony. A symphony isn’t like having three nice pieces to play. It’s not like a little melody just popped into my head. No, a symphony is a journey. To another planet. That you go to know, you go to discover. And you say hey! but it’s beautiful! (well, if the symphony turned out well, which doesn’t always happen). Sure, on that note, if I had to say who did it better in this regard, it’s my little friend Gustav. Every time a different planet. Every time a wonderful planet. And disorienting. And familiar. Every time that planet was your home. Whatever "your home" might mean for someone who didn’t even know what country he was born in.

Beethoven, a little less. Or more, if you prefer. The idea is that simple. We’re in the 19th century. And symphonies are really about building a world. Our world. Now we are modern, we understand things. The State will be like this, the laws these, life this way. Beethoven is this. The Heroic, the little-known Seventh, let’s not talk about the Ninth. The idea that - as the USA did in those times - we manage to order the world. Give ourselves an order that will make it a just world. Beautiful. Clean and precise. From that idea, you know, a thousand things are born. Not too pretty. But Beethoven is this. Nevertheless, I confess that I have a fondness for him. And I’m a bit sorry to admit it.

Beethoven’s sixth symphony is called the Pastoral. And if you just search on youtube, you’ll find it. And generally, you find it with some images. Some nice painting of a little shepherd in the countryside. One of those things I wouldn’t even think of hanging in my house. One of those harmless things, how beautiful life in the country is, what serenity. Those kinds of things. Things that, if one has read two lines of Leopardi, he grabs and throws them in the bin. Well, I don’t really know, Beethoven’s story. I don’t know why or how he wrote this stuff here. Certainly, he wasn’t the one crazy about the Strong Man who would change the World. Or even the one who believed in Universal Love that would save it. Maybe he was just writing to earn a few marks. A routine thing.

The first time I heard the second movement of the sixth symphony the conductor made a colossal mistake. I think it was Haitink. He didn’t make it andante molto mosso at all. No, he played it adagio. Stuff that they revoke your baton for. The second time I heard it was the same. The third as well. And even if now I hear another version, I always have that record in mind. (White, by the way, with the titles embossed. It was the seventies).

It’s eight notes. A melody. Very sweet. That repeats. Slowly. And it returns.

Like it should never end.

Oh, let’s be clear, in these matters, there was someone who was the best in the world. His name was Bach and theoretically, I should like him because he has a lot to do with mathematics. With this business of repeating, making canons, fugues, things like this, he was really the number one ever in the world. Not Beethoven. Rather, in general, he doesn't do it.
In this movement, he does. It talks about a brook. And there are eight notes. You hear them at least thirty times. They vanish, he plays some variations on them but small things (stuff Bach did with his eyes closed, nothing astounding) and then they return. And every time they return you say to yourself, but how beautiful are these eight notes? And they are always the same. Nothing evolves, nothing changes. I repeat, Bach would have discarded such a thing. Not even considered it.

Eight notes. They return even at this moment. You’ve already heard them. In my case, at least a billion times. They don’t speak of a weird and different world. But perhaps only of a little shepherd going to the river (and who cares). Every time I hear them I say: but how beautiful are they?

It’s a strange world, that of symphonies. And, yes, I confess, I have fondness for Beethoven. Even if I’m a little embarrassed to say it, I still hear those eight notes. Played slowly. And they aren’t on youtube.