If you could go back in time and choose a concert to attend Only one. Throughout the history of music. Which would you choose? 30 November 1975, at the Cologne opera house Keit Jarret improvises for an hour on a broken and out of tune piano. Giving life to one of the most iconic records in the history of jazz. January 30, 1966, the Beatles go up to the roof of their recording studio and play the last concert of their career. September 22, 1808, Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Beethoven holds one of the greatest concerts in the history of music. He presents to the public for the first time the 5th symphony, the 6th symphony, the 4th concert for piano and orchestra and the choral symphony. All in one giant 4 hour concert. The 5th and 6th symphonies couldn't be more different, the 5th is man's titanic struggle against his destiny, all punctuated by the famous 4 blows, destiny knocking at the door. The 6th is the pastoral symphony, which tells of Beethoven's relationship with nature. a placid and serene symphony. The peculiarity of the pastoral symphony is that of being one of the first examples of program music, that is, music inspired by images defined by the author and expressed through captions and descriptions. Beethoven links each movement of the pastoral to 5 short captions: such as "Pleasant feelings that are awakened in man upon arrival in the countryside" - a scene by a stream - a thunderstorm - and so on in reality program music, which will become popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was already very common in the eighteenth century, in which compositions directly inspired by concrete images abound, think of the concerts of Vivaldi's eighth opera such as the four seasons, in which the music represents the verses of four sonnets inserted in the score, for For more information, I recommend you watch my video about it. But Vivaldi also wrote other similar, although less famous, concertos, such as The Storm of the Sea. In eighteenth-century French music this representative component was very widespread, and many of Couperin's harpsichord pieces, for example, musically represent the images described by the title of the piece. Like in this Le Reveil-Matin in which Couperin represents the sound of an alarm clock. This representative tradition also continues in classicism, in which the pastoral symphony is configured as a real genre, consider that in 1784 the composer Justin Heinrich Knecht had published a pastoral symphony with a content very similar to that of Beethoven, which even included a storm in the penultimate movement. At the beginning of Beethoven's pastoral symphony we notice these long notes held at a distance of a fifth, we will encounter them throughout the symphony. this is a typical musical gesture linked to the pastoral world because it recalls a bagpipe, a pastoral instrument characterized by these long drones, these long and held notes. Consider that even Handel, in his famous oratorio Messiah of 1741, inserts a Pifa in the pastoral moment of the birth of Christ, a piece inspired by the music of the Abruzzo bagpipes that Handel had listened to in Rome and which is always characterized by these long held notes. But going back even further we could mention Vivaldi's Primavera of 1724, which in the third movement represents a pastoral dance to the sound of a "pastoral bagpipe", and here we find our long held notes again. Naturally, I have already covered all these works that I am citing and you can retrieve them by clicking on the links that appear at the top right of the video just when I cite the work. I invite you to subscribe to the channel, like, comment, donate and subscribe. The caption that accompanies the first movement of the pastoral reads "Pleasant feelings that arouse in man upon arrival in the countryside". Let's listen to a theme with a popular, rustic flavor. Beethoven is a master at building up musical tension, but this first movement is instead relaxed. The tempos are dilated, fragments of the theme are repeated for dozens of bars. it almost seems like listening to the trot of a horse in the distance that is getting closer and closer. And finally this simple, country theme explodes in all its joy. In these high-pitched embellishments of the flute one almost seems to hear the chirping of birds. The second theme of the movement is even sweeter and more caressing, all based on these delicate arpeggios of the violins. Beethoven continually releases tension in this symphony, for example by modulating to the subdominant at the beginning of the development. one of the typical ways in which music releases tension and relaxes. Everything is based on the repetition of the same musical cell, expressed through different tones. In the second movement of the pastoral symphony Beethoven describes the scene of the stream, this movement, undulating, continuous, repetitive of the quavers represents the placid flow of a stream. In music, water is often represented in this way, through repetitive and cyclical musical phrases, listen to this aria from a Bach cantata, whose text reads, "water flows quickly" notice how Bach represents the idea of liquidity . In the nineteenth century, the Czech composer Smetana, in his famous symphonic poem the Moldau, represented the river of the same name in the same way, through cyclical and repetitive patterns. But let's go back to Beethoven's pastoral. The whole second movement is crossed by this idea of the flow of the stream. At the end of the movement Beethoven represents the singing of birds, the flatute, the oboe and the clarinet represent the nightingale, the quail and the cuckoo. The imitation of birdsong was also an established musical tradition originating in Renaissance music. Listen to this composition by Clément Janequin from 1529 which is called the singing of birds: and of course we cannot fail to mention the birds represented in Vivaldi's Spring. In the 4th movement of the pastoral symphony a storm breaks out, it all begins with the rumbling of thunder in the distance, represented by this low tremolo of the strings. And then the first droplets, represented by these pointing notes. Until the storm explodes in all its unstoppable power. Beethoven represents the winds through these long chromatic lines of the violins. Naturally there are many storms in music, especially in opera, for example we could mention the storm that explodes in the third act of Verdi's Rigoletto. First we listen to the wind, represented by these chromatic figurations of the choir. And then the storm explodes in all its power, and naturally in this way it connotes and represents the most tragic part of the work. But let's go back to Beethoven, after the storm the sun shines again on the horizon, and we listen to clarinets and horns playing a sort of call. It is a melody inspired by the ranz de vash, the simple traditional melodies of the Swiss Alps. With which shepherds originally called their herds. Beethoven starts from this simple melody and elaborates it, first entrusting it to the violins. In this way Beethoven represents the triumphant joy of the morning, after a long stormy night. This is how Beethoven's pastoral symphony ends, in peace and serenity with this call that is lost in the distance. and this was a little analysis of Beethoven's sixth symphony. I advise you to watch my video on the third symphony, the heroic one. I greet you, see you next time.