Adelaide

Apart from a few significant exceptions such (Ninth Symphony, Missa solemnis, Fidelio), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is not widely regarded as a composer of vocal music. Even more, in the realm of songs for solo voice with piano accompaniment, he yields the palm to Schubert, Schumann, and others who followed. Yet he did write several hundred songs, including the song cycle An die ferne geliebte and Adelaide. Beethoven wrote Adelaide in 1795 using a text by the German poet Friedrich von Mathisson. The text resonated with a generation raised on Goethe’s Werther; it spoke directly to Beethoven, whose vehemence, rude manners, and eventual deafness caused him to idealize romantic bliss only from afar. He sets the poem to two musical ideas, beginning with a gentle larghetto in B-flat major. This theme becomes slightly more impassioned during the second stanza, particularly at the mention of “stars”. As the phrase closes in F major, Beethoven wrenches the music from F to G-flat (think Appassionata Sonata), which introduces a striking modulation D-flat major for stanza three. Gone are the gently rippling accompaniment. Now the piano plays pulsating, dare we say “yearning” chords. Hints of the nightingale’s call can be heard against the obsessive refrain Adelaide. (Note that the German pronunciation of Adelaide takes five syllables; not like Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, but rather as A-de-la-i-de and rhyming with opera’s Aïda.) The fourth stanza centers on the romantic trope of peace and reunion in death. And despite the somber message (“Some day a flower will bloom upon my grave from the ashes of my heart”), Beethoven uses this sentiment to shift to a vigorous Allegro in B-flat major. Optimistic to the last, here is the promise of a miracle, of love finally gained in the afterlife, that gives lift to this secular paean, deeply felt—one believes—by a composer all too ready to self-identify with the pathetic, poetic hero.

(c) Jason Stell