The siege of Vienna of May 10-13, 1809, saw the Austrian capital fall to Napoleon for the second time in four years and Beethoven was forced into an uncomfortable sort of seclusion. Though he chose to stay behind, many of the Viennese elite had fled to safety.

Convinced that the Austrian Empire was the major stumbling-block to his domination of Europe, Napoleon immediately instituted censorship of literature, of the press, and of the theater. The months until the French departed in October were bitter ones for the Viennese. The value of the national currency dwindled, food was in short supply, and freedoms were limited. Soon after the first of the year, with Napoleon’s forces gone, the director of the Hoftheater, Josef Härtel, arranged for the production of a series of revivals of dramas by Schiller and Goethe, the great figures of the German stage. Appropriately, two plays that he chose dealt with the oppression of a noble people by a foreign tyrant, and of the eventual freedom the patriots won for themselves — Schiller’s William Tell and Goethe’s Egmont.

Beethoven was commissioned to write the music for Goethe’s play and Adalbert Gyrowetz was assigned William Tell. (Rossini’s setting of the tale was still two decades in the future.) Egmont, based on an incident from 1567, depicts the subjugation of the Netherlands to the tyrannical Spanish rulers, the agony of the people, and their growing defiance and dreams of liberty.
Count of Egmont
In the play, Count Egmont is a Dutch resistance fighter bent on the liberation of his country from Spanish occupation. He dies heroically while making his stand. It is impossible not to draw a parallel between the character of the Spanish Duke of Alva and the real-life “Emperor” of France.

Beethoven had long since lost his admiration for Napoleon and the bombardment of Vienna would certainly have confirmed his worst fears about the man. Goethe’s play, and the honor of providing it with some powerful incidental music, was perfect medicine for the composer after such dark, lonely months. Beethoven’s incidental music begins with a powerful, strikingly original overture that summarizes the course of the drama, from its ominous slow introduction (suggesting the oppressive tread of Spain with the rhythm of the sarabande) to the transformation of tragedy into triumph in a brilliant coda, which Beethoven echoed at the end of the play as a Victory Symphony.