The article is devoted to the consideration of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony in the context of the traditions of pastoral instrumental music and, more broadly, the genre of European pastoral, which manifested itself in almost all types and kinds of music. The main focus is on the intersection of retrospective and prospective paradigms of the genre, which makes it possible to highlight the “Pastoral” phenomenon in more detail. For the representativity of historical comparison, the author uses the generalized scheme “yesterday — today — tomorrow”, placing the opus by Vienna Classic in its center. This scheme is not thought of mechanically as an irreversible vector of time, but rather typologically, when “yesterday” can be present in “today” and even “tomorrow”. This scheme helps to accentuate significant moments in the counterpoint of such lines defining the genre “texture” of Beethoven’s work as the old tradition of the Christmas pastoral, the “naturalized” georgics of the Enlightenment, characteristic instrumental music with the transition occurring in it from a rhetorical depiction of nature to its sensory‑emotional experience. The significance of Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” in subsequent history is emphasized — both as an example of a genre, and as an ethical‑philosophical concept stimulating a cultural dialogue (Symphonie Fantastique by H. Berlioz), and as a recognizable musical topos of a classical pastoral, lost by the disharmonious world of the postmodern era (Sinfonia by L. Berio).
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