"Coriolan" Overture
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
In 1807 Beethoven wrote an overture to Heinrich von Collin's Coriolan, a play that had been premiered a full five years earlier. Beyond its connection to the drama, however, the overture became a useful concert piece for the composer to open programs of his music. Its premiere took place at the palace of Beethoven's patron Prince Lobkowicz, along with the premieres of his Symphony No. 4 and Piano Concerto No. 4.
Collin's play, like Shakespeare's Coriolanus and the account in Plutarch, tells the story of the Roman general Coriolanus, who was banished from Rome and in revenge led an enemy army to threaten the city. Eventually the Romans sent his mother Volumnia out to meet with him, and she managed to dissuade him from destroying the city. In Shakespeare and Plutarch, he is then assassinated by the enemies of Rome for his betrayal, but in Collin's play he takes his own life.
Beethoven's overture shares much of the dramatic spirit and nervous energy of his Fifth Symphony, a piece that is also in the dark key of C minor and that he was working on at the time. It is impossible to know just how closely Beethoven intended for the music to tell the story of the play, but the powerful opening chords and energetic first theme are often associated with Coriolanus himself, while the more lyrical second theme is often heard as representing his mother's appeals for mercy. The work ends not in violence but with the gradual disintegration of the "Coriolanus theme" as the music fades away to a whispered pizzicato in the strings.