Unrequited Love | Beethoven & Romanticism

Matthew Guerrieri, speaker
Randy Scarlata, baritone 
Tanya Blaich, piano 

BEETHOVEN An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98

Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (“To the Distant Beloved”) remains a bit of a mystery. On its surface, it’s straightforward enough: a song cycle—one of the first of its kind—in which the composer seems to state his own thwarted hopes and longings, his memories of his “Immortal Beloved,” with poignant honesty. But Beethoven is a cagey witness. His famous letter to the Immortal Beloved was never sent and never seen by anyone but the composer until after his death. The style of An die ferne Geliebte, harmonically simple and plain-spoken in ways derived from folk song, conceals as much as it reveals both musically and poetically. The cycle’s apparent closed circle, its patterns of self-reference and reminiscence, are an illusion of looking back through an art that can only move forward. What did Beethoven want us to hear in An die ferne Geliebte?