Beethoven: Life and Works

1. Beethoven: Life and Works An Overview

2. First Period: 1792-ca. 1802 • Early works for fortepiano • First three sonatas reminiscent of works by Joseph Haydn • Four movements rather than (more normal) three • Beginning with second Sonata ff, Beethoven replaced the more traditional “Minuet” with the “Scherzo” • Extensive use of minor mode, bold modulations • Sonata in E-flat, Op. 7: eloquent pauses in the slow movement (Largo con gran espressione) • Sonata in C minor, Op. 13: stormy, passionate character of outer movements; frequent use of octaves and full, thick textures, showing influence of Clementi and Dussek

3. First Period: 1792-ca. 1802 • Chamber music • Quartets, Op. 18, show indebtedness to Haydn • Beethoven’s contributions: • motivic character of the themes • unexpected turns • unconventional modulations • subtleties of formal structure

4. First Period: 1792-ca. 1802 • First Symphony • Slow introduction, which approaches main key from both subdominant and dominant directions • Unusual prominence given to winds • Long and important codas, esp. first and last movements • Second Symphony • Long Adagio foreshadows a work of unprecedented scale; esp. the Larghetto, with its many themes and rich, singing style

5. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • Beethoven was acknowledged to be the foremost pianist and composer for piano of his time, especially known for his improvisations; and a symphonist equal to Haydn and Mozart. • He was befriended by noble families, who became his patrons. “It is well to mingle with aristocrats, but one must know how to impress them.”

6. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • Third Symphony (“Eroica”) • “Heroic Symphony…composed to celebrate the memory of a great man” (Sinfonia Eroica…composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand Uomo) • Unprecedented length, but also difficult for audiences to understand. • First movement built from small motives (all heard in first 36 measures), grows by avoiding obvious cadences, filled with peculiarities (e.g., “new” theme in development, expansive coda, premature horn entrance), dramatic and insistent syncopations • Second movement: Funeral march in C minor, full of tragic grandeur and pathos. At opening, thirty-second notes of strings suggest muffled drums of Revolutionary burial processions.

7. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • Fidelio • Shares Revolutionary character with Symphony 3 • Glorification of Leonore’s heroism, and of great humanitarian ideals of Revolution

8. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • “Rasumovsky” Quartets, Op. 59 • Dedicated to Count Rasumovsky, Russian ambassador to court at Vienna and an excellent amateur violinist • Russian melodies in first and second quartets • Rasumovsky’s quartet first thought Beethoven was playing a joke on them with this music • Clementi to Beethoven: “Surely you do not consider these works to be music?” Beethoven’s response: “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.” • Use of pedal points, frequent changes of texture, extreme ranges of instruments, unison passages, fugal textures.

9. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • Beethoven worked on Fourth and Fifth Symphonies at same time, contrasting joviality of Fourth with expression of fate in Fifth. • Fifth Symphony • Insistent use of four-note motive in first movement, and recurring in 2nd and 3rd movements • Noteworthy: use of timpani, playing rhythm of opening motive, as transition to last movement • C major “triumph” of last movement, with piccolo, trombones, and contrabassoon added

10. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • Sixth Symphony (“Pastoral”) • Hector Berlioz on the “storm” movement: “Storm, lightning. I despair of trying to give an idea of this prodigious piece. You have to hear it to conceive the degree of truth and sublimity that musical painting can reach at the hands of a man like Beethoven. Listen, listen to these gusts of wind charged with rain, these deaf growlings of the basses, the high whistling of the piccolos that announce a terrible tempest about to unleash. The storm approaches, it spreads; an immense chromatic stroke starting in the higher instruments rummages down to the last depths of the orchestra, hitches on to the basses and drags them with it and climbs up again, shuddering like a whirlwind that overturns everything in its path. Then the trombones burst forth, as the thunder of the tympani redoubles in violence. This is no longer rain and wind; it is an appalling cataclysm, the great flood, the end of the world”

11. Second (“Heroic”) Period: ca. 1802-ca. 1815 • This period dominated by orchestral works • Symphonies 3-8 • Piano Concertos 4 and 5, Op. 58 and Op. 73 • Violin Concerto, Op. 61 • Works from this period display an increasingly individual character. • Beethoven’s innovations were bolder and more radical than in early works. • Beethoven responded to criticism by saying that future generations would understand his music—the first indication that a composer realized that his works would be performed by future generations.

12. Third Period: ca. 1815-1827 • Generosity of patrons and steady demand for new works from publishers • Deafness became more of a trial; communicates with “Conversation Books” • Beethoven retreated more and more into himself, became morose, irascible, and suspicious of others. • Family problems, ill health, and unfounded fear of poverty plagued him. • Characteristics of late works • Compositions become more meditative. Urgent and intensely passionate character of middle-period works becomes more tranquil and calm. • Development of thematic material until seemingly all its potential is exhausted • Increased use of counterpoint • Blurring of demarcations between sections of a movement, and between movements

13. Third Period: ca. 1815-1827 • Last five piano sonatas, 1816-1821 • Missa solemnis, 1822 • Indebted to Handel • Written to celebrate the elevation of Archduke Rudolph to Archbishop of Olmütz • Ninth Symphony, 1824 • Last string quartets, 1825-26 • These works show increasing use of variation technique, counterpoint (esp. fugue) and continuity.

14. Posthumous assessments of Beethoven:E.T.A. Hoffmann: “Beethoven’s music sets in motion the lever of fear, awe, of horror, of suffering, and awakens just that infinite longing which is the essence of romanticism. He is accordingly a completely romantic composer….”Richard Wagner, after hearing the Seventh Symphony: “The effect on me was indescribable. To this must be added the impression produced on me by Beethoven’s features, which I saw in the lithographs that were circulated everywhere at that time….I soon conceived an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique supernatural being…”

15. Wagner believed that in the Fifth Symphony Beethoven had succeeded in intensifying the expression of music almost to the point of moral resolve; and that with the Ninth Symphony he had released music from its own unique language into the realm of universal art. And for Wagner, the necessity of adding voices to the Finale of the Ninth Symphony confirmed [for Wagner] the supremacy of vocal music.For Brahms and Bruckner, Beethoven’s symphonies were models of the greatest type of pure instrumental music. Brahms’ First Symphony is often nicknamed “Beethoven’s Tenth.”

16. The poetic and especially the programmatic character of other works by Beethoven, especially the Sixth Symphony, served as a model for the “symphonic poems” of Liszt and Richard Strauss, and the programmatic symphonies of Berlioz and Tchaikovsky and others.Beethoven thus stands as a bridge between Classical and Romantic composers, and between the worlds of absolute and programmatic music.

17. Films available on-line, for review: Click here for a film on Beethoven Click here for a film on nationalism and revolution in music, including Beethoven Click here for a film on Beethoven as a revolutionary composer Click here for a Film about Mozart and Vienna

18. Films, continued Click here for a film on Mozart, Beethoven’s predecessor Click here for a film on Romantic composers who followed Beethoven Click here for a film on Haydn, Beethoven’s predecessor