Napoleon’s second occupation of the former Imperial capital Vienna in 1809 formed the background to Beethoven’s composition of his overture and incidental music for Goethe’s play Egmont, a tale of tyranny, revolutionary struggle and eventual freedom set in 16th Century Brussels. The honourable Count Egmont is leading of his people against the Spanish invader, led by the Duke of Alba. But Egmont is conflicted by his loyalty to the rightful Dutch king, William of Orange, a loyalty that leads to his arrest and execution. In the play, Egmont’s love is Clara, an invention of Goethe (the historical Egmont had a wife and eleven children!). Clara, in despair at her failure to rouse the populace to rescue Egmont, takes poison. In the night before his death Egmont dreams of freedom personified as a heavenly Clara, and goes willingly to the scaffold sure in the knowledge that his sacrifice will inspire the down-trodden citizens to victory against their oppressor.
Duke of Alba
William of Orange
Egmont
Beethoven’s music consists of an overture and nine movements: two songs for Clara; four entr’actes; a very touching orchestral number depicting the off-stage death of Clara; a melodrama designed to fit around the words and actions of Egmont during his last night and his vision of Clara; and a “Victory Symphony”, which repeats the closing pages of the overture, representing the eventual rising-up of the populace. The overture has remained popular as a concert piece, but the rest of the suite, despite the quality and beauty of the music, has never really entered the repertoire, perhaps because it really requires a narrator to make much sense of what is going on.
Friedrich Starke
An arrangement of the Egmont overture by Friedrich Starke appeared in 1812. Starke started out as an itinerant horn player, travelling from employer to employer until around 1810 he had settled in Vienna. By 1812, he was a close acquaintance of Beethoven. They played Beethoven’s horn sonata together, and the composer said he “never heard the sonata performed with such shading, the pianissimo playing being especially fine.” After 1815 Starke was trusted to take over the musical education of Beethoven’s nephew, Karl.
Starke made and published a large quantity of arrangements: those for winds are mostly suites from operas popular in Vienna between 1815 and 1830, including several by Rossini. Among his other publications was a piano-school, to which Beethoven contributed a number of pieces including a solo piano arrangement of the finale of his third piano concerto. Starke’s arrangement of the Egmont overture is good, using all of the players in a creative and effective way. Perhaps surprisingly, however, given how many arrangements of Beethoven’s music were made, there is no wind arrangement of the rest of the incidental music for Egmont.
So I set out to make one.
Cover of Starke’s Harmonie arrangement of the Egmont overture
I resolved quite early that rather than a suite of movements, I wanted to make a piece that was dramatic, mirroring the action of Goethe’s tragedy in quite a compact form. The problem with this approach is that the overture itself, like others from this period (the various Leonores, Fidelio) is already rather spoiler-heavy, already depicting the very end of the play. So I decided that rather than perform the overture complete, my version would jump from the moment that (for some commentators) represents Egmont’s death, straight to Clara’s first song, and where she sings about the oppression that her people are suffering.
After that it was a question of which music would best suit the wind instruments, whilst also telling the story, so I had to include the very beautiful second entr’acte in E-flat major, which, again, some writers see as a portrait of William; and then the third, which in the original is a very long solo for the oboe, and which probably represents Egmont’s own character. This movement is interrupted with a march depicting the approaching Spanish army, and then I was able to use some of Beethoven’s transitional music to get furtively straight into the heart-breaking Death of Clara, her failing heartbeat clearly audible in the horns. A final section then hints at moments from the melodrama to represent Egmont’ vision of Clara, and then moves directly into the victory music.
Advert for Beethoven’s publisher Steiner, showing the Starke’s Harmonie arrangement of Egmont
Practicably, I tried to avoid transposing any of the movements. Historical arrangers had few such qualms, and some suites from operas (Triebensee, Sartorius!) are all in only one or two keys. But for me this practice changes the character of any existing wind solos (which I always prefer to preserve in their original scoring), and also creates a real headache as I find I have to transpose the original score in my head to effectively arrange it in the new key! However, I did make an exception for the movement that depicts Clara’s Death. I found that moving this down a tone from D minor to C minor makes it a better tonality for the Harmonie and for the shape of the suite, and also means the horns don’t have to quickly change crooks during some soft music. The oboe solo, of course, I left complete, but I make no apology for making some fairly heavy cuts in the music that follows it, or in the E-flat entr’acte: in both of these cases I think we can assume that Beethoven, exactly as modern film composers, was creating music that lasts a certain length of time to fit the requirements of scene changes or stage business
Arrangement completed, I was able to test it on some willing guinea pigs (I didn’t hear any complaints, anyway!) at our annual Benslow Music course, which confirmed everything worked, before several performances and our Beethoven Transformed CD recordings. Sadly there wasn’t space on the disk for the lovely E-flat entr’acte, so you will have to experience that live at one of our concerts!
by Robert Percival
The Egmont Overture and Incidental Music are featured on our forthcoming CD, Beethoven Transformed vol. 2. You can hear more about the project in the video below and here on our Beethoven Transformed page, where you will also find details about how you can support our Crowdfunding campaign and help us finish the project!