Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel

"[1] Barry Cooper has called the song "one of the finest examples of Beethoven's combination of simplicity and profundity that is so characteristic of his late style.

The composition of "Abendlied" competed for Beethoven's time with the preparation of a massive (48-page) legal document intended to win this case.

Cooper is led to speculate whether the consolatory message of the "Abendlied" poem, and its mention of evil foes, may have inclined Beethoven to set this text in song.

However, more recent research by Theodore Albrecht suggests a plausible candidate: Count Otto Heinrich von Loeben (1786–1825), using "Goeble" as a pseudonym.

Loeben's poem was published in Vienna, under the "Goeble" pseudonym, a few months before Beethoven set it to music, in the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung (May 11, 1819).

Schaut so gern nach jenen Sternen, Wie zurück in's Vaterland, Hin nach jenen lichten Fernen, Und vergisst der Erde Tand; Will nur ringen, will nur streben, Ihrer Hülle zu entschweben Erde ist ihr eng und klein, Auf den Sternen möcht' sie sein.

[13] When the sun sinks down And the day tilts to its rest, Luna beckons gently and kindly, And the night descends; When the stars gleam splendidly, And a thousand sun-roads twinkle; The soul feels so immense, And wrenches free from the dust.

Though earth's storms are raging, And false fortune rewards the evil, Full of hope it looks upwards Where the Star-judge sits enthroned.

Beethoven's musical setting is basically in strophic form; there is a single melody that is sung four times, once for each verse of the poem.

The story behind the magazine's solicitation of the song is unusually well documented, since by 1820 Beethoven's hearing had become so feeble that he used conversation books (still preserved) to allow people to communicate with him.

Albrecht suggests that Bernard was bigoted against several groups of people – Protestants, female intellectuals, and Jews – and he freely shared his offensive views in conversations with Beethoven.

The editor patiently addresses Beethoven's concerns about getting an accurate hand copy made, about the chosen printer, and about fixing typos in the proofs ("All of these marks will be removed.

The pianist Graham Johnson, who has recorded the work, admires how Beethoven creates his effects from very modest resources: "This is music of unaccountable majesty; any other composer would make something banal out of these rather ordinary chord progressions dressed up in rather hackneyed throbbing triplets.

And yet, seemingly as a result of sheer willpower, the composer has created something worthy of these exalted poetic images—he conjures a vista of sound with the broadest horizons.

"[18] Barry Cooper relates the song to the composer's own life and feelings: " 'Abendlied' is exceptionally rich in concepts that had great significance for Beethoven — indeed almost every line of the poem bears direct or indirect relevance to some of his own deepest thoughts and desires.

Graham Johnson conjectures that the copy was intended for performance with Schubert's friend and collaborator, the baritone Johann Michael Vogl.

[21] Cooper notes that "Beethoven is reported to have loved gazing at the stars, and according to Czerny was inspired to write the slow movement of the second 'Razumovsky' quartet by doing so.

"[22] The idea of a God beyond the stars was invoked by another poet, Friedrich Schiller, in his famous Ode to Joy: Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?

As Cooper notes, the connection of the starry canopy with a just God, and by extension with the human moral sense, can be found in an item Beethoven read shortly before composing "Abendlied"; it comes from the work of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).

Beethoven was evidently reading the 1 February 1820 issue of the Wiener Zeitschrift [23] (probably his own copy; see above), and encountered, at the end of an astronomy article, a paraphrase of a famous saying by Kant, taken from his Critique of Practical Reason: "Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: ... the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Thus, where the singer has "Wenn die Sonne nieder sinket," the piano part includes a "bass sinking downwards like the setting sun."

Youens describes the same passage: "at the first invocation of the shimmering stars, the musical cosmos is filled with pulsating, full-textured chords traveling in a majestic circle of fifths.

[Padmore] went on to speak of the way Beethoven is insistent with his musical material, that a song such as "Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel" consistently sits up "at the top of the voice"; of the way that Beethoven "keeps going with a musical idea; it doesn't matter how hard it is, if it breaks a string on a piano or fiddle, there is a raw power that is glorious.