VOA文化艺术2023--How Fast Should Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ Be Performed?

How Fast Should Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ Be Performed?

Ludwig van Beethoven has long been considered one of the greatest composers of classical music. Critics say that his final complete musical work, the Ninth Symphony, is possibly his best.

The symphony was first performed on May 7, 1824, in Vienna, Austria. Beethoven already had lost his hearing when he was composing the Ninth. He never fully¹ heard the performance himself. And nearly 200 years after the first performance, there is still disagreement over how fast the work should be performed.

Benjamin Zander is the music director of the Boston Philharmonic, a classical music performance group he founded in 1979. The nearly 84-year-old conductor is leading the Boston Philharmonic in a performance on Friday night at Boston's Symphony Hall. Then, on Sunday afternoon, he will do the same at New York's Carnegie Hall.

Zander believes that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony should sound far different than the way it is usually performed. He plans to finish the symphony in less than one hour during the performances in Boston and New York.

"There's so much information from Beethoven and so little information about how to interpret it," Zander told the Associated Press.

Zander said he sought advice from violinist and scholar Rudoph Kolisch. In the 1993 issue of The Musical Quarterly, Kolisch discussed how Beethoven marked his work using a metronome, a device that produces a steady beat to help musicians with the speed, or tempo², of musical work.

Beethoven wrote in an 1817 letter that he wanted to drop musical terms like "allegro³" for fast, "andante" for slow, or "presto⁴" for extremely fast. He added, the "metronome gives us the best opportunity to do so."

In 1992, Zander's recording⁵ with the Boston Philharmonic for the music company Pickwick International came in at 57 minutes, 51 seconds. His 2018 recording of the same music was 58 minutes, 39 seconds long.

"For the recording, I really set out to be a devoted⁶ servant," Zander said. He said he had a little statue of Beethoven and looked at it from time to time to see if it was smiling.

Some of the world's most famous conductors, however, took more time with Beethoven's Ninth in their performances.

Arturo Toscanini took 65 minutes for RCA Victor with the NBC Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1952; Wilhelm Furtwängler needed 74 minutes at the Bayreuth Festival in 1951; and Leonard Bernstein stretched the music for 78 minutes during his 1989 performance with members of six orchestras to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After Zander's performance at Carnegie Hall on October 10, 1983, Andrew Porter wrote in the New Yorker, "If Mr. Zander is right, we have been hearing the music of the greatest composer only in misrepresentation."

Many conductors noted⁷ Beethoven's loss of hearing as a reason to ignore his metronome markings.

James Conlon is the music director of the Los Angeles Opera and main conductor of Italy's Orchestra RAI. He said, "There are powerful arguments on both sides. I am not against performing Beethoven at the speeds suggested by the metronome." He added that if the resulting performance lacks expression, emotion, and dynamics⁸, then it should not be followed.

Andrew Price regularly plays oboe with several orchestras in Boston. He said, "The hardest thing is just to keep an open mind about it...All the stuff I learned as a 20-year-old student, I had to go back and relearn it all, just to have a completely different approach."

Words in This Story

composer –n. a person who writes music

classical –adj. relating to music of a European tradition including opera and symphony music

conductor –n. a person who leads a band or orchestra

interpret –v. to explain the meaning of something or to perform a work in the way that you understand it

opportunity –n. a chance to do something

devoted –adj. having a strong love or loyalty⁹ for someone or something

dynamics –n. (pl.) changes in how loudly a piece of music is played or sung

oboe –n. a musical instrument shaped like a tube that is known as a woodwind instrument

stuff –n. (informal) things

1 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

2 tempo   

n.(音乐的)速度；节奏，行进速度

参考例句：

• The boss is unsatisfied with the tardy tempo.老板不满于这种缓慢的进度。
• They waltz to the tempo of the music.他们跟着音乐的节奏跳华尔兹舞。

3 allegro   

adj. 快速而活泼的；n.快板；adv.活泼地

参考例句：

• The first movement is a conventional symphonic Allegro.第一乐章是传统的交响乐快板。
• My life in university is like allegro.我的生活在大学中像急速的乐章。

4 presto   

adv.急速地；n.急板乐段；adj.急板的

参考例句：

• With something so important,you can't just wave a wand and presto!在这么重大的问题上，你想挥动一下指挥棒，转眼就变过来,办不到！
• I just turned the piece of wire in the lock and hey presto,the door opened.我把金属丝伸到锁孔里一拧，嘿，那门就开了。

5 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

6 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

7 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

8 dynamics   

n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态

参考例句：

• In order to succeed,you must master complicated knowledge of dynamics.要取得胜利，你必须掌握很复杂的动力学知识。
• Dynamics is a discipline that cannot be mastered without extensive practice.动力学是一门不做大量习题就不能掌握的学科。

9 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。