Fidelio

Politics has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
(Henry Brook Adams, Education of Henry Adams)

I was listening to Fidelio on the train this morning and the thought that occurred to me, as ever, was this – what was it that inspired Beethoven to lavish so much time and effort, and to produce such extraordinary music – around a plot that has more holes in it than an old sock and characters who, shorn of their music, are little more than ciphers? To me, the answer must be that Beethoven believed that the underlying subject matter was important. Whether we call it politics or not is in one sense irrelevant, but it’s difficult to conceive that it was not a response to what was going on at the time (some of which impinged quite directly on Beethoven’s Vienna). This may be a personal reaction, but I for one can’t hear the work in any other context.

Beethoven – like most true artists – was always deeply affected by human conditions and situations. This has been the same throughout history. Often these conditions have been the innocent result of politics. But responding to human conditions is very different from merely “commenting upon” (artistically) Politics.

If, through the Eroica, we perceive resonances of the Revolution (as most intelligent listeners might), these resonances surely link more with the spirit than with the politics of the Revolution. Composers who end up writing what they do merely because of their “political persuasion” are – in my view – less likely to produce output that lasts by virtue of its intrinsic artistic merits alone (which is, I think, what explains why most artistic output that stands the test of time does).

Conversely, it might be said that artistic work which touches on “political” topics – repression, imprisonment, torture – retains a universality which ensures its currency and relevance – and thus popularity also – for successive generations. The USSR banned Fidelio, and From the House of the Dead, the regime feared the content implicit in these works. Enver Hoxha’s Albania (one of the few regimes to have outdone Stalin’s USSR in its ferocity) even banned The Sound of Music whilst elevating Norman Wisdom to the status of national hero.

By the way, Britain banned Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin until the late 1950s, on the basis of its content – so it works both ways.

Tags: albania, beethoven, communism, enver hoxha, fidelio, norman wisdom, ussr