Beethoven's DNA

How the small can shape the large forms is the starting point when the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of its Chief Conductor Martin Fröst, who is also soloist and guide, appears at the Baltic Sea Festival. In this case, the “small” refers to the rhythmic and melodic building blocks – the DNA – on which Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is built. But the concert is also an exploration of the historical roots of dance music through Beethoven’s work, newly written works by Jacob Mühlrad, Göran and Martin Fröst, and new arrangements by Hans Ek.

The origins of dance, from baroque to the present day

The concert opens with Jacob Mühlrad’s newly composed work Helix, receiving its premiere with Fröst and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra earlier in August at the iconic BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. Like the other compositions in the programme, the piece is the result of a search for an origin or musical core, which Mühlrad approaches through Indian raga and Jewish klezmer – traditions rooted in centuries of spiritual dance music.

This is followed by Hans Ek’s suite Dance Now Always, an arrangement that blends dance-inspired works by some of the composers who influenced Beethoven: Bach, Handel and Rameau. Here we encounter several interpretations of the lively Baroque dances gigue and rondeau, which became popular as concluding movements in suites, as well as the more contemplative adagio from Handel’s Italian youthful work Dixit Dominus.

Next come Göran and Martin Fröst’s Nomadic Dances, a playful, energetic and rhythmically driven work for clarinet and orchestra that evokes a journey on the Orient Express. The music blends elements from various nomadic cultures, folk music and dance rhythms, with great improvisational freedom and a strong pulse.

Beethoven’s Seventh – the ecstasy of dance

After the intermission comes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, a work that Wagner described as “the apotheosis of dance” (the ultimate expression of dance). It was composed during a period of both financial and physical hardship for Beethoven, in an era marked by political and revolutionary upheaval. Yet there is little darkness or heaviness here; on the contrary, the symphony is characterised by light, spaciousness and an overarching dance-like pulse. Perhaps the composer’s summer stay at the Bohemian spa town of Teplitz renewed both his spirits and his creativity.

Beethoven opens the symphony with a slow, expectant introduction. As the tempo gathers momentum, a dotted, dance-like rhythm emerges – a pulsing motif that drives the movement forward and becomes the seed for much that follows throughout the symphony.

The second movement can be perceived as a pavane, a restrained “walking dance” with roots in the Renaissance. Here the expression is more subdued than in the first movement, and a melancholic melody is carried by the viola and cello. Its sombre character has led many to interpret the music as a funeral march, or even as an expression of world-weariness in Beethoven. His tendency to take the tempo indication allegretto (“a little lively”) closer to a slow adagio has surely contributed to this impression. The movement is likely one of his most famous, and it was already popular during his lifetime: it is said that at the premiere in Vienna on 8 December 1813, the audience asked for it to be immediately repeated.

The third movement, fast and scherzo-like, is charged with rhythmic energy and swirling vitality, full of grace notes and trills. The trio sections take on an almost folk-song-like character, before the ecstatic and grand fourth movement propels the symphony toward its powerful conclusion. In several works from this period, Beethoven alludes to – or directly quotes – French Revolutionary music, a tradition well known at the time but now largely forgotten. Towards the end of the finale, there is a reference to the divertissement Le Triomphe de la république (1793) by the influential Parisian composer François-Joseph Gossec (1734–1829).

As the programme ultimately moves toward its conclusion, it is as if the music steps out of history and into the present. The pulse remains the same, the movement just as infectious. What began as small building blocks – rhythms, motifs, fragments – has grown into a whole that makes it impossible to sit still. It is dance, in its most timeless form.

Text: Bodil Hasselgren