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I was just studying Leonore Overture No. 3 by Beethoven. This is a piece I never seem to get tired of. (Much in the same way as Egmont, I might add). It's one of those pieces you can study and study and study, but you always find something new. Talk about a brilliant composer!

When we were in Bonn at the BeethovenHaus, we heard one of the researchers talk about the opening.

There is an odd marking in the fifth measure of the piece. The strings all have a dotted half note, but the bassoon enters on beat two with a quarter note tied to an eighth note. They all have a crescendo and diminuendo underneath the measure. I've heard all manner of interpretation to this. Should the strings crescendo and diminuendo over the entire measure, and then the bassoon does the same when (s)he enters? This would sound like two swells one reaching the climax earlier than the other. Should the bassoon enter at the dynamic of the strings and just diminuendo? Should the strings wait until the bassoon enters to crescendo/diminuendo? All are interesting questions.

This is one of the things conductors do. We try to figure out exactly what the markings mean. Even those of us who feel like we are "literalists" (in other words, we do "what's written on the page") are coming to a personal interpretation because so many of these decisions can go either way and can be justified by a number of factors. (That's why literalists like Gardiner, Muti, and Masur can sound so incredibly different).

Well, back to Leonore. This piece was one of the many overtures that Beethoven wrote for his opera Fidelio. I think the reason that this didn't work with the opera is that it is a complete tone-poem (sonic story) that basically gives you the entire story line of the opera. In other words, for an overture, it gave too much away too soon - destroying the drama.

Back to the crescendo/diminuendo: (By the way - crescendo means to get louder and diminuendo means to get softer). When we were at the BeethovenHaus seminar, we had the opportunity to see a recently rediscovered autograph of the first page of Leonore no. 3. What was interesting was that Beethoven, very clearly, in his own hand, wrote that crescendo and diminuendo under the bassoon all the way down the page. It was so obvious that he meant for the first beat of the measure to not crescendo and then everyone would play the cresc/dim together. It was truly incredible to see that! A mystery solved!

Ok, I admit to being a music-dork.