On 1 April 1815, Beethoven received a package in the mail from his old friend Karl Amenda. It was a libretto by Rudolph von Berge entitled “Bacchus: A Grand Lyric Opera in Three Acts.” Another potential opera project!
Some sketches exist for “Bacchus” (or perhaps they're for “Romulus and Remus” which he was also supposed to be working on). At any rate, Beethoven’s notes indicate that he struggled with the idea of composing music that might evoke a primitive era in Ancient Greece or Rome:
“Throughout the opera probably dissonances, unresolved or very differently, as our refined music cannot be thought of in connection with those barbarous times. — Throughout the subject must be treated in a pastoral vein.” (Thayer / Forbes, p. 618)
Also in the Spring of 1815, Beethoven revisited the poem “An die Hoffnung” (To Hope) by Christoph August Tiedge, which he had previously set a decade earlier (Day 185). Since then he had met Tiedge in Teplitz in 1811, and considered setting some other poems of his but never did.
Since Beethoven’s 1805 setting of “An die Hoffnung,” Tiedge had added an introductory verse, and in 1815 Beethoven set that as well, treating it as a recitative. This translation is from Paul Reid’s “The Beethoven Song Companion,” p. 63:
Whether there be a God? Whether he will one day
Fulfil those promises which human longing tearfully imagines?
Whether this enigmatic being will reveal himself
At some last judgement?
Man must hope! His not to question!
Structurally, Beethoven’s two settings of “An die Hoffnung” are very different. The Opus 32 setting is strophic; for Opus 94, Beethoven essentially wrote a da capo aria. Opera tenor Franz Wild (who said Beethoven wrote the song for him) even called it a “Kantate.”
#Beethoven250 Day 283
“An die Hoffnung” (Opus 94), 1813–15
An ad might precede this live performance by Peter Schreier
#Beethoven250 Day 283
“An die Hoffnung” (Opus 94), 1813–15
A recent performance of an arrangement for chamber orchestra with soprano Alexandra von der Weth.
In “The Beethoven Song Companion,” Paul Reid describes Beethoven’s achievement with the Opus 94 setting of “An die Hoffnung”:
“Beethoven, in his determination to do justice to Tiedge’s poem, has set new standards for the pianoforte song with this setting. Firstly, his striving for an appropriate tonal analogue for each poetic image and emotion is a Romantic feature and prefigures the extensive, consistent use of such devices in Schubert and the later Romantics. Secondly, Beethoven has managed to write a song of operatic proportions which works none the less as a German klavierlied and in so doing has promoted voice and piano once and for all to the public concert platform. The two points are, of course, related.” (p. 65)