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Updated: May 31, 2025
A grand piano, covered with music, stood in a corner, and behind was a cabinet full of bound music. Mr Brindley, seated on one corner of the bench in front of the piano, cut the leaves of the Sinfonia Domestica. 'It's the devil! he observed. 'Aye, lad! agreed Mr Colclough, standing over him. 'It's difficult. 'Come on, said Mr. Brindley, when he had finished cutting.
Dorn conducted it, and as the performance went off all right, and the public showed no dissatisfaction, my overture was played with my full name on the programme several times during the run of the above-mentioned drama. Nevertheless, the passionate and bold element of the Sinfonia Eroica was distinctly discernible, especially in the first movement.
Upon the whole, these works make one see that, in spite of their apparent audacity, Strauss and Mahler are beginning to make a surreptitious retreat from their early standpoint, and are abandoning the symphony with a programme. Strauss's last work will lose nothing by calling itself quite simply Sinfonia Domestica, without adding any further information.
The name symphony, from sinfonia, a consonance of sounds, applied originally to any selection played by a full band and later to instrumental overtures, was given by Joseph Haydn to the orchestral sonata form inaugurated by him.
They will remember with gratitude the joys they have derived from the effusions of his fruitful intellect; they will call to their recollection the joyous chorus of the prisoners in Fidelio, the sublime and adoring hymn of the "Alleluia" in The Mount of Olives, the matchless pomp of the Sinfonia Eroica, the passionate beauty of the sentiment of Adelaida, the aerial grace of his quartets and waltzes, the thrilling and almost awful pathos of the dirge written for six trombones, but, above all, they will recall to mind the noblest work ever conceived and perfected by composer, one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, the Mass in D. And, bearing these wonders in their memory, their hearts will ache for the doom of Ludwig Von Beethoven.
Revolutionary feelings were not wholly dead, but they now vented themselves merely in gibes. On the night before the coronation the walls of Paris were adorned with posters announcing: The last Representation of the French Revolution for the Benefit of a poor Corsican Family. And after the event there were inquiries why the new throne had no glands d'or; the answer suggested because it was sanglant. Beyond these quips and jests the Jacobins and royalists did not go. When the phrase your subjects was publicly assigned to the Corps Législatif by its courtier-like president, Fontanes, there was a flutter of wrath among those who had hoped that the new Empire was to be republican. But it quickly passed away; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made so manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who had composed the "Sinfonia Eroïca," and with grand republican simplicity inscribed it, "Beethoven
It was his idea that the Sinfonia, in other words the Overture or Prelude, should indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the characters of the pieces, and that the instrumental coloring should be adapted to the mood of the situation, thus anticipating modern procedure. He prepared the way for the work of Cherubini, Auber, Gounod, Thomas, Massenet, Saint-Saëns and others.
He finally gave it the name of Sinfonia Eroica, in memory of a great man. It is dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, who had it performed before Prince Louis Ferdinand. The Prince was greatly taken with it, at once recognizing its worth and insisting on hearing it three times in succession the same evening.
And, certainly the most amusing passage of "Sinfonia Domestica" is that complex of Bavarian lustihood, Bavarian grossness, Bavarian dreaminess and Bavarian good nature, the thematic group that serves as autoportrait of the composer.
Now, how does the true Beethovenian Allegro appear with regard to this? To take the boldest and most inspired example of Beethoven's unheard-of innovation in this direction, the first movement of his Sinfonia eroica: how does this movement appear if played in the strict tempo of one of the Allegros of Mozart's overtures? But do our conductors ever dream of taking it otherwise?
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