DAILY DOSE of BEETHOVEN (June 7, 2020)
Our readers might notice that we’ve taken a subjective approach to the Grosse Fuge. This is because we feel that it is a composition that cannot be understood by musical logic alone. It demands a more philosophical approach! Beethoven insisted that his music was better than philosophy (this is not because he did not know philosophy). His boyhood music teacher, Gottfried Neefe, was the head of the Lesegesellschaft (reading society) in Bonn, and they studied the classical Romans and Greeks. Everyone may have their own preferred philosophical analogies, but this work is more than just music.
Today, we shall follow the second great fugue in Ab, to the point of near breakdown, and then into a surprising breakthrough: a sublime transformation.
Something has been missing for a while. The great Bb fugue that followed the overture was a double fugue, that gave both subjects equal weight, even though they were not in agreement. In the next three sections—which includes a beautiful slow part, the celebratory dance, and the great Ab fugue that we began to look at yesterday—the second subject was omitted. All three sections are based on just the first subject. That Ab fugue is not only based on just the first subject, but two different three-note derivations of it, including in diminution. It attempts to be autonomous, and it becomes like a hurricane, or a combat zone. There is something to be said for learning how to navigate through a hurricane, or survive in combat, but you don't want to live there.
We need the second subject. We need the dialogue. We don't need reason alone, we need love (which, rather than negating reason, compliments it).
At a certain point, this fugue almost threatens to self-destruct. We shall identify how at one point, the second subject seems to timidly raise its hand as if to say, " Don't forget about me." That at least puts a derailed train back on the track, though it is still a juggernaut. We will stop just before the sublime beautiful breakthrough, with an extreme, yet eerily moving dissonance. Fasten your seatbelts once again!