The way I heard ther story, Beethoven was conducting just the chorus and soloists. The conductor secretly gave the singers the instructions not to follow Beethoven’s conducting, but his (the conductor’s) instead.That’s how Beethoven could have gotten so completely out of synch with the rest of the performance.
Incidentally, another great conducting story is told about Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky was perennially poor. A good solution would have been for him to score a gig as an orchestra conductor. This avenue wasn’t open to him, however, because in order to conduct an orchestra you need two hands and Tchaikovsky was so neurotic he *believed his head would fall off * if he didn’t hold it on while conducting.
My daughter was complaining to me that she had to write a report on a classical composer and they were so “boring” compared to today’s rockers. I told her, pick Robert Schumann. Among other things he permanently crippled himself with a home-made contraption to prevent him from using one of his fingers (so the others would grow stronger), thus ending his stellar concert piano career and died of syphilis in an asylum, stark raving mad. Beat that, Sid Vicious!
“Their stories vary somewhat in detail. Some place the dramatic moment [Beethoven not hearing the applause] at the symphony’s conclusion. Others maintain it occurred at the end of the scherzo. This difference of opinion might merely be credited to the passage of years between the incident itself and the day long after when those observers at last spoke to a biographer.”
If the moment was at the end of the scherzo, then Beethoven could have been conducting and gone on without realizing any applause. Often, scherzi continue into another movement without a break, which the audience might have inserted into the performance between the scherzo and the next movement.
I found some more info to note that the applause was possibly at the end of the scherzo. The website http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/symphony9.shtml, also posted in Cecil’s answer, states:
“There was spontaneous applause at the timpani entry in the Scherzo. And either at the end of this movement or at the end of the whole performance – reports are contradictory – Caroline Unger, the contralto soloist, tapped the deaf composer on the shoulder and turned him round so he could see the wild applause.”
I personally think that it would be disrespectful to a composer to not allow him to conduct the premier performance of his composition. My feelings are that the applause most likely occurred while Beethoven was conducting, between the scherzo and the next movement. Because, yeah, the conductor would most certainly realize when the piece ended, unless the orchestra did not acknowledge the conductor and went off and finished faster than the conductor did.
I would have to think the issue was not just his deafness. He should have been able to see the musicians stop (though if he was just keeping time he may have had his eyes closed). Also, even if he couldn’t hear, I would have to think he could have detected the cessation of vibrations emanating from the direction of the orcherstra and likely the commencement of those from the audience.
My guess is that he was probably lost in his own little world of the symphony and not really paying attention to the outside world. Now, whether his deafness contributed toward him doing that often or not is a different question.
That depends on your style. Richard Strauss once remarked that the proper position for a conductor’s left hand was in his pocket. (I confess that I’m glad I never had to sing in an opera he was conducting, but perhaps he wasn’t talking about opera.)
That’s what I was coming in to say - well, not the part about him being in ‘his own little world,’ which could explain how he wouldn’t notice the applause.
Still, it’s hard to imagine the applause being “thunderous,” and Beethoven not being shaken (literally) out of his reverie.
I can’t imagine a conductor having a deaf guy beat the time for him, even if it’s Beethoven. It would seem a lot more plausible that Beethoven was standing or sitting in a place of honor, and probably (as said above) lost in his own thoughts. It would make sense that he would be, since the 9th is outstandingly boring if you can’t hear it.
I have to wonder about this “some of the players reportedly wept” stuff. Surely the debut of the symphony wasn’t the first time they had played it. Wouldn’t they have learned to compose themselves after all the rehearsals? This sounds like more of the same. The greatness of the Ninth can certainly stand on its own without all this fakelore.
Note that, according to these references, 76 years had passed before this was reported. Beethoven was long dead, so was the conductor & probably most of the orchestra, and even the largest portion of the audience would no longer be alive.
Didn’t they have newspapers in Vienna in 1824? I can’t imagine a reporter not including such an episode in any story about the concert.
Somehow that makes me think the this is largely an ‘invented’ story, created by the author. Possibly slightly based on truth, but greatly ‘enhanced’. Like much of the so-called history about George Washington that I was taught as a kid, which I later learned was not really believed by historians.
Sir George Grove was a historian. His Dictionary of Music and Musicians is a standard reference work comparable in its field to the Britannica or the Oxford English Dictionary.
Rehearsal is different from performance. I have watched musician friends practicing, then watched them perform in concert, and there’s no question in my mind that performance takes them to a different level of intensity and involvement with the music.
Rehearsal is for disassembling the piece into its parts and aspects, studying them, putting them back together this way and that till the whole feels right, polishing, fine-tuning, with breaks in the flow to go back and go over things till they’re where one wants them.
Performance is music on the cliff’s edge, dancing across a tightrope, no second thoughts, no going back to fix this or tweak that, no stepping out of the torrent of music sweeping the performer to the conclusion.
Consider also how the emotions of the audience at that performance would have been rocking the hall, feeding back to the musicians as they played. Consider how they must have felt, caught up in the rapture of this incredible music, seeing its composer in the center of it all, the one who created such magnificence alone unable to hear it.
I am an actor, not a musician, so take this for what it’s worth, but even the most committed dress rehearsal doesn’t begin to compare in intensity to the first actual performance with an audience.