Time, Morality, and Humanity in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

Abstract

While Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony exhibits the underlying four-movement framework and other familiar hallmarks of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century symphonies, in other respects it more closely resembles programmatic symphonies of the same period, particularly in the continuity between its concluding movements and the unusual structure of its storm. Its mixture of symphonic and programmatic practices serves to dramatize the effects of time on pastoral idylls and the role of morality therein. The work can be interpreted as a confrontation with these fundamentally human issues rather than-as many twentieth-century commentators have assumed-the representation of a mythical or prelapsarian paradise.