Bernstein–Form and Beethoven, Omnibus

We know the first four notes that open the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony—three G’s thunder out and are followed by a lower E flat. In a television program in 1954, called Omnibus, Leonard Bernstein acknowledged these notes but reminded us that they are just a “springboard for the rest of the symphonic continuity.”

Bernstein defined “form” for us:

[It takes] us on a varied and complicated journey, and to do that, the composer has to have a corresponding inner road map; he has to know what the next destination is going to be. In other words, he has to know what the next note has to be. He must convey to us a sense of rightness—the only note that can possibly happen at that instant.

In many ways, Bernstein was defining musical composition in a way that is analogous to the interrelationships among the physical laws of nature; he defined form as a series of notes, one following the other in a unique way, and that the chosen form is the one and only sequence of notes that is “right.”

Bernstein also reminded us that life is a struggle; we must wrestle with what appears to be the right answer. Many answers may look enticing, but only one will be “inevitable,” to use his vocabulary. Beethoven was both a genius and a man tortured and tormented by his search for perfection. Yet, Beethoven’s tortured search produced some of the greatest music ever heard.

The theme of the first movement of the 5th Symphony may be elegantly simple; however, it was anything but obvious. In the Omnibus video, Bernstein told us that Beethoven created fourteen versions over a period of eight years to find the “right” theme. To illustrate his point, Bernstein guided us through a number of rejected passages. “He altered passages as many as twenty times.”

This struggle extended into the choices of instruments that Beethoven chose to use to express his opening four notes of music. Bernstein explains that, of the twelve instruments used in the orchestration, Beethoven used only seven of them to play the opening four notes. Even the flute was eliminated in a final edit, because the soprano voice of the flute was not consistent with the masculine quality that Beethoven wanted to portray.

With regard to one rejected sketch in the coda, Bernstein explained that it is interesting because it has a little pain and mystery to it. However, in order to use it, Bernstein explained that:

[The music would have had to] come down from a high point to a low point so that we could build back up again to a still higher point. This is not unacceptable dramatic structure; it happens all the time in plays and music; but this isn’t the moment for it. Beethoven wants to maintain this high level to the bitter end. And this he does do, a very difficult thing to do. And he does it with astonishing brilliance. It is this genius of his, going forward, always forward that guides his hand in every case when he is struggling with his material.