Back to the Premiere of the 9th Symphony

In the Staff Report “Was Beethoven unable to hear the applause when the 9th Symphony premiered?” on March 28, 2006 (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbeethovendeaf.html) Alexander D. Mitchell IV wondered about the accuracy of the legendary story about Beethoven, conducting the 9th Symphony in total deafness, at its premiere in Vienna in 1824.

Mr Mitchell wrote:
… As the story goes, he conducted past the end of the final movement, and was still conducting as the audience behind him went ecstatic with applause. The musicians, seeing their conductor unable to hear the thunderous applause, were dumbstruck with grief for the tragedy of the moment, until one performer (reportedly the alto soloist) stopped the maestro and turned him to face the applause.

The problem with this story is that as not only conductor but composer, Beethoven must have been acutely aware of the pacing of his own symphony, presumably having the score before him. Not even a beginning conductor could be so incompetent as to conduct past the end of his own composition, even if totally deaf. This tale is as implausible as an Indy race driver not realizing the race has ended. Is there any account of what really happened? My presumption is that the individual movements of the Ninth Symphony are each themselves so magnificent that the audience may have spontaneously applauded at the end of the first or third movement, and a musician turned Beethoven to this unexpected applause. If this is an urban legend, how did it arise? --Alexander D. Mitchell IV

SDSTAFF Rico replied that in fact Beethoven was only assisting the actual conductor, and he quoted Sir George Grove’s dramatic account of the emotionally moving event.

Then he said,
“Seeing that Grove wrote about Beethoven and his symphonies in the 1890s, I would give great weight to his account, and state that while Beethoven was indeed present, he was probably simply standing by to assist the conductor while keeping time to the symphony he could only hear in his head.”

With all due respect to Sir George—he was not there in Vienna when the symphony premiered, and he wrote about that premiere some 70 years later at the height of the Victorian-era, Beethoven-worshipping mythology, when so many events in Beethoven’s life, both musical and personal, were blown all out of proportion or even totally concocted, and later were woven into his biographies as facts.

It is true, of course, that Beethoven was not the main conductor at that concert, and Michael Umlauf was.

Barry Cooper writes in his Beethoven, p. 316:

“Beethoven was far too deaf to direct the concert, and his role was to set the tempos for each movement, leaving the detailed direction to Michael Umlauf, assisted by Schuppanzigh as leader.”

Mr Mitchell’s theory was that somewhere mid-symphony the famous heart-tugging incident may have happened, and that would explain why Beethoven was still fully involved with the music when the applause burst forth.

So, the real question here was–when did the applause take place—during or after the symphony?

This issue was not addressed by SDSTAFF Rico.

Many recent Beethoven scholars, Barry Cooper included, are convinced that it was the simultaneous applause that broke out during, or at the conclusion of the Scherzo (2nd movement)—not after the finale— that caused contralto Caroline Unger to bring the outbreak of cheering to Beethoven’s attention.

From Beethoven, p. 317:

“At one point, probably after the second movement of the symphony, Beethoven stood turning pages, oblivious to the applause until Caroline Unger tugged him by the sleeve to draw his attention to acknowledge it. …On this occasion, if the incident did indeed happen after the second movement, his mind would have been fully occupied with the music and with the forthcoming Adagio.”

Here is a quote from Beethoven, Symphony No.9 by Nicholas Cook, p.23, about the premiere performance:

"…the *Theater-Zeitung * concurred: ‘The public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them.’

One of the sections that was interrupted in this way was the Scherzo; several reports mention that spontaneous applause broke out at the entry of the timpani. Some accounts say that it was at the end of this movement that Beethoven stood, leafing through the pages of his score, until Caroline Unger, the contralto soloist, tapped him on the shoulder and turned him so that he could see the audience applauding wildly…"

So, going back to the thoughtful and insightful questions and theory posed by Mr. Mitchell: It is certain that Beethoven’s presence on the stage electrified the audience, even if the “real” conductor was Umlauf. At some point there was a tremendous outbreak of applause that Beethoven was not aware of until he turned and saw it. There is not one conclusive eye-witness report about exactly when this ocurred, but considering the contemporary review in the Theater-Zeitung mentioning the interruptions of spontaneous applause during the symphony, and some eye-witness reports that it was during or after the Scherzo, it makes perfect sense that Beethoven continued to focus on the music pages in front of him, regardless of the cheering crowd, primarily because the symphony was far from over.

I know this report appeared a couple years ago, but May 7 was the 184th anniversary of the premiere of this eternal masterpiece, so it’s been on my mind.

Welcome to the Boards, Allegretto. And thanks for correctly putting in the link to the column.

We did a thread on this report right after the column appeared and had quite of few comments. I’ll link you to that previous thread. I made a contribution in post #30. I quoted from the most contemporaneous account I could find, the biography by Schindler in 1841. Schindler said that Sontag was the soloist who tapped Beethoven to alert him to the applause, not that there wasn’t much applause throughout the performance. The fact that so many biographies and accounts from 50-175 years later still insist that it was Unger who tapped him just makes me wonder about it all. Of course, Schindler could have been wrong.

Thanks for the welcome!—and the link to the original thread----I enjoyed reading all the entries, and I’m sorry I’m such a laggard on this topic!

I do have a copy of Schindler’s book Beethoven as I knew him, and on p.280, while describing the first performance of the 9th, he says “Then it was Caroline Unger who had the presence of mind to turn the master towards the proscenium and show him the cheering crowd…”

Schindler was a steppenfetchit for Beethoven from sometime in 1822 until mid-1824, and then again in 1826 until Beethoven died in March 1827.

There are alot of problems with Anton Schindler.

Beethoven never liked him, had no respect for him, and didn’t hesitate to tell others what he thought of him.

The worst thing Schindler did was to forge many entries into the “conversation books” (the home-made books Beethoven’s friends and visitors used to communicate with him beginning in 1818) when he obtained them after Beethoven’s death. The fake entries made it appear that he was an important and particularly chummy member of Beethoven’s inner circle.

So today, anything he stated as a fact is suspicious unless corroborated by others. His mention of Unger fits with the recalling of events by several others who were there–so, it almost had to be Unger.

I guess there is always the possibility Beethoven had to have the cheering called to his attention more than once—especially if there were a number of such outbursts during the symphony. Then maybe one of the times it was Sontag—or even a member of the orchestra—we will never be certain.

One more thing and then I’m outa here----I’m tired of the late 1800’s popular imagery (which persists) of an out-of-it, wild-haired geezer (he was 53 at the time) still swinging his baton furiously after the whole thing was over. It’s a crock.