Beethoven 250 - Unter der Oberfläche/ Beneath the Surface

Beethoven the Discarder

Matthias Pintscher

A few years ago, a television feature in the United States brought me the unexpected honor of being allowed to handle some of the most important music manuscripts held by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Without wearing gloves, I was permitted to take a close-up look at manuscripts of Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and Mendelssohn’s Octet— I still write with pencil on paper and, fortunately, never learned to compose at the computer, so it is truly fascinating for me to encounter other composers in this fashion and to be able to feel a small part of their soul.

Among the manuscripts was also the autograph of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor Op. 131. I think I read music fairly well, but on those pages, I could decipher almost nothing—contrary to Mendelssohn’s Octet, which is written in ink, without a single mistake from beginning to end, every note perfectly spaced according to the tempo. Compared to this, Beethoven’s handwriting resembles calligraphy penned with an incredible amount of verve, spontaneity, and emotion. Unlike almost any other composer’s hand, it reflects the unique ability to discard things, to cross them out, to delete them, in an incredibly vehement manner. To me, Beethoven is probably the most gifted “discarder” in European music history. Almost like a gold miner: if no nuggets remain in the pan, everything is brutally tossed out. I don’t think there is any other composer who had to act so radically against himself: casting aside, throwing away everything to get from one piano sonata to the next, from one symphony to the next, from one quartet to the next—destroying, burning everything from piece to piece, erasing the hard drive, starting again from scratch.

As a composer, my working method is quite different: the questions that remain at the end of one piece to me become the task for the next. Even when I finish a symphonic piece and then turn to a solo work, the problems and the questions—regardless on which level—remain so present that I use them as a bridge, as a transition to the next task I set myself. Beethoven has the courage to leave everything behind, to lock the door, to move on. When I look at his final string quartets, with the Grosse Fuge in the midst of them, I am sometimes reminded of the canyons in the United States: you drive through the countryside, everything is green and flat, you park your car, get out, and ten steps further, down you go—totally and utterly unexpectedly. I am sure that Beethoven did not choose these abysses, but there they were, and time and again, he found the courage to leap. His late works reflect all these antagonisms, the panic, the depression, the unfulfilled yearnings, the urge to truly, aggressively leave behind Classical form. He takes us out into the open. The seven-part structure of Opus 131, which is played attacca and which is already foreshadowed in the “Sonata quasi una fantasia,” the “Appassionata,” the “Waldstein” Sonata— absurdist composing.

That is Beethoven to me: the absolute will to put down on paper whatever it is that must come out, without looking left or right, with an impulse that resembles an infarction more than anything else. You feel that this music simply had to burst out. It is not necessarily a composer’s goal that your own personality is reflected one hundred percent by what you are writing. But I do believe that we all continue to be so touched by this music, feel drawn to it with a kind of stunned understanding, because Beethoven’s personality as a composer is so authentically and genuinely represented by what is there on the page—because all the barriers are removed. With Beethoven, the person and the state of mind at any given moment are inscribed in the music absolutely equivalently, as they are. That is very touching and very impressive. But also frightening. I have the greatest admiration for this.

Matthias Pintscher is music director of the Paris-based Ensemble intercontemporain, which was founded by Pierre Boulez. His composition NUR for Piano and Ensemble premiered at the Pierre Boulez Saal in January 2019.