Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his Egmont music in 1810 as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play of the same name, a play about the struggle between freedom and tyranny, and a work that contains expressions of both tragedy and great triumph.
The true historian was Count Egmont, a nobleman of Flanders, who had faithfully served Philip II, King of Spain, in the previous wars, and who had taken over the administration of Brussels and other parts of Spain and the Netherlands. Egmont, although a devout Catholic, believed in religious tolerance and openly rejected it at the Council of Trent. The persecution of the Protestants by Philip the Dutch.
In fact, in the year 1888, Philip sent troops into Belgium under the cruel and tyrannical Alban, who, by the edict of Egmont, was arrested and executed without trial or evidence of any injury to his majesty. Egmont’s heroic last words for the ideals of freedom and religious tolerance, as well as the efforts of Egmont’s friend, William of Aurea, to resist the Duke of Alban in gathering the Dutch, incited the great revolt against Spanish rule that eventually led to it. the independence of the Netherlands.
Goethe wrote a play in honor of Egmont between 1775 and 1787, in which he transferred much of his philosophy and personality to Egmont’s behavior, in which he particularly excelled in his desire for individual freedom, the joy of life, and hatred. arbitrary power Goethe also made his Egmont twenty years younger than the historical one in order to bring the character even closer to the status of the young people.
Beethoven went on to write incidental music for his first public performance at Egmont in 1810, in collaboration with Goethe, with whom Beethoven shared the highest ideals of individualism, tolerance, and the rule of freedom. Although the stories are characterized by fatal deaths and brutal Spanish oppression, the themes of the inevitable and future triumph of freedom and justice pervade.
The death of Egmont did not dampen the force of the advocates of the principles, and did not prevent the defeat of the Albans. So Goethe insisted that Egmont was the “Symphony of Victory,” and Beethoven delivered the same.
The Egmont Overture, itself a microcosm of the events of the play, has a constant conflict between two themes, the sad and proud minor who dominates at the beginning, symbolic of the Spanish tyranny, and the powerful and brilliant major, demonstrating the power of Egmont. resisting the Spanish government. Towards the end of the world, a few notes of severe violin indicate Egmont’s dismemberment, but not the death of the principles for which he stands. The decollete follows the most beautiful ambition of the whole work, and perhaps the most beautiful highlight of Beethoven’s musical creation. The remaining musical incidents are intended to be performed together with the recitation of Goethe’s play itself.
Egmont has a special meaning because of its ability to capture the melody of the ideas of individualism, tolerance, freedom of conscience, and limited government. Beethoven’s music clearly demonstrates in a dynamic, heroic, triumphant form the possibilities of a world built on such principles, the spirit of magnificence, dignity and magnificence that the modern world urgently needs to be restored in its art and common sense of life.
