Beethoven Symphony 9Tempo. Beethoven's marking of crotchet = 88 or thereabouts gives a fantastic
mix of power and drive. Why play it slower?
It is worth knowing that the opening section is in four phrases of four
bars each. The violins therefore play onto the 3rd bar of the phrase, the violas and basses
onto the 1st.
 2. 1st Movement: Bars 17f
Beethoven has become much more prescriptive with his notation than composers
from just a generation before. Here I believe he wants sustain through
the double dotted notes. Later on (439ff) he inserts a rest when
he wants the common 18th century effect of a gap between the notes.
 3. 1st Movement: Bars 63f
Beethoven loves throwing in syncopations. That's is what he does here
by slurring across the beat. Here it is just the second violin part, but
sometimes the whole orchestra does it resulting in a complete void of on the beat
accentuation.
 4. 1st Movement: Bars 66f
Beethoven's use of the markings f and sf is not at all
straightforward. Often a row of f markings indicates a row of accents,
although in other places it is a row of sf markings. And sometimes, as
here, you get the two simultaneously, surely meaning the same in each part.
 5. 1st Movement: Bar 81
Often this quaver is played short disturbing the lyrical nature of the
intertwining woodwind solos. If played long - i.e. leaned on rather than hit -
the melodic line is preserved.
 6. 1st Movement: Bars 194-6
Each time this woodwind phrase comes the ritard is clearly
marked only on the final beat, and the a tempo on the next
downbeat. No need to make a meal out of it!
 7. 1st Movement: Bars 515f
The funeral march like coda is often played quite a bit
slower than the rest of the movement, with no good reason that I can see.
Also it juxtaposes semiquavers and demisemiquavers. There is no need to
align these as there is sometimes in earlier music.
 Tempo. This movement is often taken in the vicinity of Beethoven's
marking, giving the lie to suggestions that his metronome was faulty (more
of this in the 4th movement).
This movement is in phrases predominantly of 4 bars length.
It's worth thinking in these phrases, so that in the following (the bass and
timpani parts for the first two phrases) the two blank bars are counted as a "3, 4"
into the next phrase. This is also the clue to safely counting the empty bars
at 147ff - the woodwind end on bar 1 of a phrase and then we need to count "2, 3, 4".
Note also Beethoven's unusual timpani tuning of Fs an octave apart. And a comment on the rhythm. It's worth practising it without the quaver to clearly hear the bar in the fast 3/4 tempo, and then adding the quaver back in without disturbing the position of the crotchet. Try it!  Here there is potential problem of balance between the strings (all playing the lower
part) and the woodwind (upper part). Some conductors have 'solved' this
by writing the woodwind part into the horns. But providing the strings make their fortissimo
one of precise rhythm and less of sheer volume, and that the woodwind play they're
loudest, it should be fine.
 Use of f as an accent. Often these bars sound no different to the
ones that precede, so these accents need working at! Occurs in a number of
other places.
 11. 2nd Movement: Bar 404-414
A real tempo problem. The stringendo begins at dotted minim = 116 and lasts for
8 bars. The tempo marking at 412 is unclear. It is minim 116 again.
But the brakes will suddenly have to go on and the stringendo will seem somewhat pointless!
If (as has been suggested) the unit should be the semibreve then the stringendo
will have to be very extreme to fit. Neither works. Jonathan del Mar's suggestion
that Beethoven intended the mark to be minim at 160 (116 and 160 sound very similar in
German too) is the best solution I've come across.
 12. 2nd Movement: Bar 503-506
Sometimes Beethoven marks something like two minims of the same pitch in
a bar with a tie where it appears he wants a semibreve. Here, however, it seems
clear he wants to hear pulsed minims.
 Tempo. Norman Del Mar said of this movement "Crotchet = 60 makes
no kind of sense, being almost exactly twice too fast". Leonard Bernstein
would have taken issue with this, as he only manages crotchet = 25 in his
famous concert after the fall of the Berlin Wall! At these sorts of speeds
the music virtually ceases to move - and the pulse has to change from crotchet
to quaver. Why do so many revere this symphony yet utterly disregard Beethoven's
instructions? I wouldn't advocate a slavish following of the metronome marks under
all circumstances (see my introduction for further thoughts on that), but differences
of this order create an almost different piece of music.
Because this is a familiar tune it's easy to miss the unexpected hairpins in the final
bar. This happens in the second phrase also.
 14. 3rd Movement: Bars 25-27
The beginning of each bar should here sound like an appogiatura and resolution (i.e.
with a little weight on the quaver and a little less on the crotchet). But the length
of the crotchet needs maintaining or the melodic line is lost.
 15. 3rd Movement: 150f
Ritardandos are done in many places in this movement, some rather unnecessarily
interrupting the flow. Here however it seems necessary both to give the coda some
extra poignancy, but also to get the 1st violins triplets together. So I suggest
a rit at the end of the first bar and then from the second bar a steady, but slower, tempo.
 After the arresting opening fanfare we get the following outburst from the
cello and bass sections (there are six such sections in all):
 Usually this is done at a considerably slower tempo. But I want to suggest the Beethoven
intended the speed to remain pretty much the same.
One reason this last movement often seems hard to get to grips with is its fragmentary nature. A by-product of not pulling the tempo around is that the music 'hangs together' better for the listener - at least to my ears it does! 17. 4th Movement: Bars 331ff
In this section in Bb with the tenor solo there is again a question as to
speed Beethoven intended. The marking of 84 has been ascribed to a dotted crotchet
until recently when further research has suggested it should be to a dotted minim.
Whilst this seems the most likely, it does make it very fast and very difficult, so I
intend to take it as fast as is practical in the circumstances! In the long fugal
section after the voices have finished the main theme needs to be brought out:
 18. 4th Movement: Bars 655ff
Again a tempo issue. Here most people play considerably faster than the marking
(again showing that Beethoven's metronome wasn't wonky - you can't suggest it was too
slow some of the time and too fast some of the time ...). If done at around the marked
speed it becomes possible for the strings to play all their notes (and for some of the
cello/bass ones to be heard!). However this will add to the strain on the high notes
in the choir (especially the sopranos) and so a compromise on the tempo may be necessary.
 19. 4th Movement: Bars 916-919
Even a conductor professing to be totally urtext
such as Zinman doesn't attempt Beethoven's marking here (crotchet = 60). Why?
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