The Egmont Overture is the first song in the incidental music for a play created from Goethe’s Egmont. Beethoven composed the music between 1809-1810 in Vienna and it was premiered on 15 June 1810. It represents one of the last pieces from Beethoven’s middle period.
The plot of Goethe’s Egmont
It is set in the sixteenth century Netherlands, when Catholic Spain ruled the Dutch. The Spanish king Charles V. is oppressing the people, sending the Inquisition to persecute Protestants. Count Egmont, the Flemish general leading the resistance is captured by the Spanish. The King sentences him to death. His love Clärchen desperately tries to save him and to rouse the Dutch, but she fails and commits suicide. Before the execution Egmont has a dream and sees freedom as the embodiment of Clärchen.
Both Goethe and Beethoven visualized a triumphant end as the Dutch will be free again one day. This way the fall of the hero is not tragic, but a new beginning.
The music of Egmont Overture (op.84)
The theatrical voice of Beethoven was never his best. Probably safe to say, he never reached the level of Mozart. This, however, does not mean that his works in the genre are not outstanding and Beethovenian!
Interesting fact that originally Beethoven wanted to compose music for Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, but was assigned for Egmont. It is not to say he was not interested! Without questioning his noble motives, Beethoven liked the idea of being associated with a name like Goethe’s!
The Egmont overture as music is very different from previous works, like Fidelio, Prometheus or Coriolan. The key is F minor, a key that in Beethoven’s world represents death and tragedy. The overture is in sonata form.
The music starts in unison then the low keys dominate suggesting the heavy feeling of the oppression. The time in the introduction is 3/2 which gives a sense of unrest. Beethoven introduces all the main themes that will reappear throughout the overture.
The music starts to speed up, then in the second theme, which evokes the first theme, even more fast. The music later wonders around in keys, but eventually returns to F minor. There is a symbolic conflict appearing between the woodwind instruments and the harsher strings.
The development section will work with the main theme, which is repeated unusually often.
The recapitulation is slightly different from the usual sonata form, in which the themes must appear in their original key. Here they are played in the dominant key. This section also contains a sudden silence, that represents the death of the hero.
The end is a victory symphony, a promise of freedom in the coming future.
This was a less productive period of Beethoven, which shows in the fact that instead of May, he only finished Egmont in June.
Beethoven told Bettina von Brentano (a common friend of Beethoven and Goethe) that “Goethe’s poems exert a great power over me not only by virtue of their content but also their rhythm; I am put in the right mood and stimulated to compose by this language, which builds itself into a higher order as if through spiritual agencies, and bears within itself the secret of harmony.”
