sneering at Beethoven

While gingerly reviewing my senior essay reevaluating McClary's interpretation of Beethoven's Fifth (none of which I remember, as I wrote it practically without sleeping), I dissolved into laughter at the following:

Finally, instead of working with existing materials to reach a resolution in the finale, Beethoven instead introduces a new theme, a new mood, and in fact an entirely new member of the orchestra, the chorus. This leads McClary to ask, “How could any configuration of pitches satisfactorily ground the contradictions set forth over the course of this gargantuan composition?” (Feminine Endings 129). Taruskin expresses a similarly indignant response at this “catastrophic descent:” “Who are all this riffraff, with their beery Männerchöre and sauerkraut bands? Our brothers? And the juxtaposition of all this with the disclosure of God’s presence ‘above the stars?’ No, it is all too much!” (249). The finale rushes onstage and shoves the other movements off as the storyline becomes too grim, and it uplifts the audience with a song and dance. While effective, grandiose, and beautiful, the finale trivializes the material that preceded it, for it answers few, if any, of the painful issues raised throughout the piece. Instead, it distracts listeners with its “beery,” grossly idealistic, and rather male chauvinist message of brotherhood. Even a contemporary critic agreed that the “An die Freude” was a travesty:

Wie konnte ein Mann, der Göthes Geist im Egmont so tief erfaßt hat, solche Trivialität dem Schillerschen Hymnus zur Einleitung geben?…Aber die Behandlung des Schillerschen Textes selbst zieht das hohe, schwungvolle Gedicht tief herab und mißhandelt die Poesie auf eine unbegreifliche Weise. (Berlin Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 1826, quoted in Kunze 490)