Going to Ground in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

I’m thinking about Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Those opening measures set the tone for the entire work, embodying Beethoven’s subtitle “Cheerful feelings on arriving in the country.” You drive up to the mountains, open the car door, and take that first great breath of pine trees. Total relaxation. That’s the breath I feel in those opening measures. A drone on F, the gorgeous violin tune, and a cadence in C major. It’s the feeling of “amen.” Only it isn’t… 

Here’s the problem. It isn’t a plagal cadence at all. It’s ahalf cadence, the kind of ending that isn’t an ending at all, but more like a question mark, a moment of tension that requires another cadence to finish. So then why does it feel so satisfying? 

The short answer: this is the beginning of the piece, so we’re not yet sure what key it’s in. By itself, the openingfeels like a plagal cadence. Had the music that follows established the key of C major instead of F major, then our feelings of an “amen” would be confirmed. Only that doesn’t happen. The next phrase establishes F major. In retro-hearing,so to speak, we hear a half cadence instead. Think about that: how can the same chord progression sound either calm or tense?

The “amen” cadence (music theorists call it the plagal cadence, or IV-I) makes a satisfying conclusion for countless musical works. Just think of the Hallelujah Chorusin Handel’s Messiah. But in fact, the plagal cadence is present to some degree in every piece of classical music. Who would suspect that lurking within this ubiquitous chord progression lies a challenge to the very structure of tonality?

This question goes to the psychological root tonality, a system that balances chords of tension with chords of release. A chord five notes above another chord creates tension. Falling back down five steps to the original chord releases that tension. If C major is the home key, then the G major chord five notes higher (C-D-E-F-G) is the chord of tension, and the C major chord the chord of stability and release. This process of releasing tension by chords falling by fifths is what establishes a musical key in the first place. A central chord is surrounded by other chords that all fall by fifths. That’s the name of the tonal game. 

Here is a picture of a musical key as a circle of chords. The top chord I is the home key (tonic). The chord to the right of it is the dominant, called the V chord because it is five scale notes above the tonic. From the tonic chord to the dominant chord is a half cadence; it creates tension and a desire to go back to the tonic.

Only the plagal cadence doesn’t seem to follow that rule. In fact, it seems the opposite, in which a chord five steps above is actually less tense than the chord five steps below it.* For instance, if C major is the home key, then in a plagal cadence an F major chord is the chord of tension and the C major chord, five notes above F major (F-G-A-B-C), is the chord of release. That seems to refute the entire system.  

The reason for this glorious exception has to do with gravity and context. Once a musical key is established, then the “pull” to that key from either direction—either a chord a fifth above or a fifth below—is a stronger attractive force than the general tonal tendency for chords to fall by fifths. But we only feel that once the key is established. The two chords that open Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony don’t yet have the context for the key. That is why they produce both a feeling of release (plagal cadence) and, if not tension, at least expectation for more to follow (half cadence).  

Normally, all chords that go clockwise create tension. The exception is the plagal cadence. Because it lies directly beneath the home key, the pull from the home key is stronger and makes for a feeling of release instead of tension. *

Of course, Beethoven was not only entirely aware of this ambiguity, he had discovered a remarkable way to clarify it. And here is the point of this short essay. Because many recordings leave out the repeat of the exposition of this first movement, Beethoven’s solution gets left out. And of all Beethoven symphonies, this is the one where the repeat is absolutely essential. Why? In emotional terms, the opening feelsvery different the second time, coming after the end of the exposition. With the repeat, the ambiguity is gone. The first chord, the F major, now feels like the tonic, the chord of release. The second chord, the C major, now feels like a half cadence, a chord of some tension and expectation. In other words, the end of the exposition makes a critical difference. A long drone on C major, gives way to the violins climbing up the scale, outlining a clear dominant chord (a C major 9th chord in fact). And the repeat to the opening resolves this chord. We feelthat F major is the home chord, a point of stability, instead of being the first chord in a plagal “amen” cadence leading to C major. That’s why the repeat is essential. The first time we hear the opening, it seems to be a sigh towards C major. The second time we hear it, our “sigh” comes right at the beginning, with the first F major chord, and the C major chord that follows opens the conversation that follows. To use a grammatical analogy, the first time we hear the opening phrase it seems to end with a period, the second time, with a comma.

How important was this to Beethoven? One might argue it’s among the most powerful ideas in the entire symphony. The plagal cadence forms its emotional high points. The second movement, the gorgeous scene by the brook, is set in the “plagal” key of F major, B flat major.  Everyone remembers the ending with the unmistakable bird calls. But the truly great moment occurs right before them, when a huge swell of melody and harmony repeats twice. Both of those swells are plagal cadences.

In the finale, the orchestra swells in a magnificent rainbow of harmony. As the rainbow travels from its peak downward, the harmony moves into the plagal harmony (the subdominant) before subsiding to the final prayer in the movement. All of these moments reveal Beethoven’s intention to wed the plagal motion—a sinking down to a chord 5 notes below the tonic—to the glorious idea of this nature symphony—a psychological sinking into the earth, with the feeling of all its beauty. As Beethoven carefully remarked, “more an expression of feeling than painting.”

*******************************************

*one of the innumerable confusions in music theory terminology is that the chord built five steps below the home key is called a IV chord. That is because the labels refer to notes of a scale that climb above the tonic instead of chords that surround the tonic. If our tonic is C, then F is both five notes below it (C-B-A-G-F) and four notes above it (C-D-E-F). And that is the subject for another essay.