Then, in spring 1804, as he was finishing the
symphony, news came to Vienna that Napo-
leon had declared himself emperor of France.
Beethoven’s response, according to his protégé
Ferdinand Ries, was a furious diatribe against his
former hero:“Now he, too, will tread underfoot
all the rights of man [to] indulge only his ambi-
tion; now he will think himself superior to all
men [and] become a tyrant!”A page in the pre-
served score shows where the word
Bonaparte has been heavily struck
through with a pen.
The composer’s decision to re-
move Napoleon’s name remained
a private one. He did not speak out
publicly against the French emperor,
but instead made a practical decision
to dedicate the Third Symphony to
Prince Lobkowitz, one of his first pa-
trons in Vienna.
On the score’s publication in
1806, a year after its premiere,
the Third Symphony was entitled
SinfoniaEroica(HeroicSymphony),with the subtitle: “Composed to celebrate the
memory of a great man.”For all that Napoleon’s
name had been erased, the masterwork is never-
theless haunted by him. The passionate strains
of the symphony encapsulate the turmoil of the
Napoleonic age that had inspired Beethoven’s
music, and shaped his life.AHero’sReception
The Third Symphony premiered in April 1805,
in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, under the
baton of Beethoven himself. Loyal critics pro-
claimed it a triumph—from its opening stately
melody on the cellos, the searing funeral march,
the frenetic, disorienting scherzo, through to the
final reiteration of the heroic theme on the brass.
The wider response was muted: It left the au-
dience, and many critics, bewildered. Far from
creating a pleasing sound, the composer had cre-
ated disturbing dissonances, which contribute
to the sense of a titanic struggle in which hope
overcomes despair. Although its first audience
had never heard anything quite like it, today it is
an essential part of the repertoire of the world’sSINFONIA
EROICA
The florid frontispiece
(below) of the
score of the Third
Symphony is
emblazoned with
the new dedication
to Prince Lobkowitz.
Gesellschaft der
Musikfreunde, ViennaSTAGES
OF GRIEF
B
eethoven spent the summer of 1802
in the village of Heiligenstädt. In an
unsent letter to his brothers, he ex-
pressed in harrowing detail the im-
pact of his growing deafness as a composer:
“Ah, how could I admit an infirmity in the
one sense which ought to be more perfect
in me than others.” The Heiligenstädt Testa-
ment, as it is now known, is written in a tone
of acceptance: “With joy I hasten towards
death—If it comes before I have had the
chance to develop all my artistic capacities,
it will still be coming too soon despite my
harsh fate.“ On other occasions, however,
Beethoven took a more positive attitude.
A year before, broaching the topic of his
deafness in a letter to a friend, he wrote:
“I will seize fate by the throat; it shall not
wholly overcome me. Oh, it is so beauti-
ful to live—to live a thousand times!” The
theme of the heroic struggle through grief
would burst through in all its power in his
Third Symphony.DEA/ALBUM
THE COURTYARD OF THE HOUSE IN HEILIGENSTÄDT NEAR
VIENNA WHERE BEETHOVEN STROVE TO COME TO TERMS
WITH HIS DEAFNESS IN THE SUMMER OF 1802. ALAMY/ACI