Beethoven’s Für Elise perhaps misinterpreted, really a love note Für Therese?
Beethoven’s Für Elise perhaps misinterpreted, really a love note Für Therese?
A QUICK QUIZ:
What do the following have in common?
• Ice cream trucks cruising American suburbia • 40 different ringtones from a popular phone app • Multiple YouTube videos with a million-plus views • Nearly everyone who has ever studied the piano
Answer: They all play Beethoven’s Für Elise! And they all testify to the fact that this unassuming little piano piece has been fully embraced, co-opted and commercialized by today’s society― certainly a surreal scenario that its composer could not have imagined when he wrote the piece over 200 years ago. In fact, as surprising as it may sound, Beethoven never even intended Für
Elise to see the light of day. Not discovered until 1867, 40 years after the composer’s death, the piece was found among the papers of the work’s dedicatee, Therese Malfatti. Apparently the musicologist who discovered the work (and brought forth the first edition) misread the name on the autograph manuscript, deriving Für Elise instead of Für Therese from Beethoven’s terrible handwriting and causing historians headaches ever since.
Therese Malfatti was one of Beethoven’s wealthy, young piano pupils at the time the work was written in 1810. It’s easy to see the piece not only as a vehicle for Therese to play, but also as a musical profession of Beethoven’s feelings towards her. In that year, the 40-year-old composer apparently proposed marriage to the 18-year-old Therese. She rejected him, but he gave her the piece as a memento.
How does Für Elise (Therese) work as a piece of music, and more speculatively, how might it reflect Beethoven’s feelings for Therese? The form is very straightforward. It’s a rondo with a recurring main theme (A) and two contrasting sections, yielding the overall design ABACA. Everyone knows the opening eight bars; that’s not surprising, since they are heard a total of eight times during the piece, so one listening is all that is required for the tune to become thoroughly ingrained.
Despite the A-minor key, the mood of the opening is wistful rather than tragic. Indeed, the other three chords used in this section are all major chords, which causes the music to brighten towards hopefulness. With this disarmingly simple music, is Beethoven declaring his love for Therese in heartfelt, but non-threatening, terms?
If so, the next (B) section carries this ardor much further by becoming more animated and optimistic. Beginning pianists likewise need to be optimistic here, for this portion steps up the technical difficulties considerably. The note values accelerate as the music quickly reaches a joyful, fevered pitch― only to be stopped in its tracks by echoes of the opening music, which then returns. Has Beethoven presumed too much in his desire to court Therese, and perhaps overstepped accepted social boundaries?
In the third (C) section, the music suddenly turns tragic. Throbbing, repeated bass notes in the left hand create a mood of anxiety, perhaps reflecting Beethoven’s fear of rejection by Therese (which, of course, came to pass), and the dissonant chords in the right hand sound like stabs of pain. But this dramatic episode is short-lived; the opening theme returns, ending the piece as quietly― and unassumingly― as it had begun.
Für Elise, while a far cry from the monumental works that have made Beethoven famous, has undeniably captured our collective imagination. But how? Is it the stubbornly memorable hook of the opening nine notes? Or the entire, graceful opening section and its accessibility to beginning pianists? Or is the Für Elise phenomenon the result of musical bandwagoning in a society fixated on the popular? We can respond to the composition’s omnipresence by viewing it as a hackneyed trifle to be avoided whenever possible.
On the other end of the spectrum, we could equip our cellphones with various Für Elise ringtones and spend our days watching YouTube videos of all of the different versions and arrangements. Personally, I am content to appreciate the work as a touching reminder of the humanity of its composer (ice cream trucks notwithstanding). Now if only the title could be changed to Für Therese.
Pianist, instructor and musicologist Erik Entwistle received an undergraduate degree in music from Dartmouth College. He earned a postgraduate degree in piano performance at Washington University in St. Louis. He earned his doctorate in musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He teaches on Sanibel. Reach him at totimedia.com/contactus.