Free The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination by Matthew Guerrieri Page A

popular interpretation—an
     echo of such an initiation, especially when confronted with this detail of the elevation
     of an Entered Apprentice to the Fellow Craft Degree, from Malcolm Duncan’s 1866
Masonic Ritual and Monitor:
    [Senior Deacon]—Worshipful Master (making the sign of a Fellow Craft), there is an
     alarm at the inner door of our Lodge.
    W. M.—You will attend to the alarm, and ascertain the cause.
    The Deacon gives three raps, which are responded to by the Junior Deacon, and answered
     to by one rap from the Senior Deacon inside, who opens the door, and says:
    S. D.—Who comes here? 24
    It should be emphasized that such a connection with the Fifth is without any biographical
     basis (though still less far-fetched than much of the conspiratorial speculation that
     Freemasonry has attracted over the years).
    Accepting that Beethoven and/or Schindler may have come up with the fate/door image
     as an ex post facto interpretation allows another possible Masonic source: August
     von Kotzebue’s 1818 one-act comedy
Der Freimaurer
(
The Freemasons
). The play’s Count von Pecht is obsessed with Freemasonry, sending his hapless servant
     to spy on lodge meetings, and finally trying to get himself initiated just to satisfy
     his curiosity. But the Baron, the head of the local lodge, is suspicious:
    Gemeine Neubegier kommt nie dem Lichte nah
.
Nur wer die Wahrheit sucht, darf an die Pforte pochen
. 25
(Vulgar Curiosity never comes close to the light.
Only he who seeks Truth may knock on the door.)
    Kotzebue, a cheerfully arrogant man of letters, was far and away the most successful
     German playwright of his time. That was enough to interest Beethoven; in 1812, he
     approached Kotzebue about writing an opera libretto, something “romantic, serious,
     heroic-comic, or sentimental, as you please,” showing that he was familiar with Kotzebue’s
     wide (if not particularly deep) range. 26 Nothing came of the opera (Attila the Hun had been a suggested subject), but Beethoven
     did compose incidental music for two of Kotzebue’s plays,
King Stephen
and
The Ruins of Athens
. The latter yielded the famous “Turkish March,” the familiar tune of which is, upon
     closer examination, a cousin of the Fifth’s opening, flipped around: a drop of a third,
then
three repeated notes. The march supplied exotic color for the plot: Minerva, put
     to sleep by Jupiter for two millennia for letting Socrates die, wakes up to find Athens
     under Islamic rule.
    GIVEN B EETHOVEN ’ S fascination with all things Eastern, it is not surprising that Schindler’s tale would
     have gained immediate currency as an expression of individual fate, one not dissimilar
     from Eastern ideas of kismet or karma. Indeed, it is at the very least a pointed coincidence
     that what is quite possibly the first piece to purposefully quote the Fifth’s germinal
     motive carries the unmistakably Eastern title of
Nirwana
, Hans von Bülow’s op. 20 tone poem. Though today an obscure curiosity (and Bülow
     now largely remembered as a conducting pioneer, famous for his championing of Richard
     Wagner),
Nirwana
was the best known of Bülow’s compositions during his lifetime. The piece unfolds
     with full Romantic drama (some of
Nirwana’s
harmonies would influence Wagner’s
Tristan und Isolde
) until, just before the piece reaches its close, the strings suddenly unleash a barrage,
sempre forte e distaccato
, of Beethovenian short-short-short-long rhythmic volleys, the bassoons and timpani
     soon joining in, driving the orchestra to a
con tutta la forza
climax.
    The title,
Nirwana
, was a late change; originally Bülow called the piece an
Overture to Byron’s “Cain.”
27 Byron had published his three-act play-for-reading in 1821, portraying the biblical
     fratricide as motivated less by jealousy than by existential despair: Cain finds himself
     unable to worship a God who has burdened him with the knowledge of his own