Listen4 listening guides A brief guide to listening to Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Complete Incidental Music This outline serves as a listening guide, or “road map,” through a work being performed today. The intention is to help you follow along and enjoy it in more depth. We welcome you to email us with your reactions at [email protected]. Now ... let the music begin!

In 1788, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose bicentennial birthday celebration in 1949 gave birth to modern-day Aspen, composed a stirring drama about Count Egmont’s fight against Spanish tyranny in the sixteenth century. Beethoven used Goethe’s play as the basis for this musical work consisting of an overture and nine shorter sections. It was written in 1810 during the Napoleonic wars as an expression of opposition to the tyranny of the self-declared French emperor.

1 Overture: Sustained, but not too much (in Italian: Sostenuto, ma non troppo– Second Movement: Song: “The Allegro) 2 Drums Muffled” (in German: Lied: Die Listen for the alternation between strings Trommel gerühret) and horns playing the loud, exciting parts Listen for the alternation of the song lyrics and the winds replying with the soft, lovely and orchestral passages, which occasion- melodies in a truly exciting eight minutes of ally intervene as outbursts. In this song music. This is Beethoven celebrating his the soprano, representing Clara, favorite theme: the individual and society Egmont’s beloved, sings his praises as a being liberated from oppression and great warrior. She imagines accompany- tyranny, both of which were rampant in his ing him on his forays against the enemy, lifetime. The ending will have you standing wishing she, too, were a man in battle and cheering! dress.

Tenth Movement: Victory Symphony (in German: Siegesssymphonie ) 4 Listen for the short orchestral passage after the final narration. All four sections Fifth Movement: Song: of the orchestra–strings, brass, wood- “Joyful and Sad” (in winds, and percussion–reprise the ending 3 of the overture heard at the beginning of German: Lied: Freudvoll the piece. This one-minute-plus coda und Leidvoll) (meaning “tail” in Italian) features lots of Listen for the wide range of tone and dynamics brass and the Sousa-like piccolo in its (volume) in this fifth of the ten sections of inciden- highest registers. It’s a happy proclama- tal music (meaning, music intended to accompany tion that tyranny is defeated! the performance of a dramatic work). This short song laments the emotional extremes of lofty exuberance and deadly depression, ending with the words “happy is only the soul that loves.”