Beethoven & Mozart (the music and the mind)

[Amalie]

We perhaps know what the effect of music is on ourselves and we can to a certain extent gauge this. But I often wonder what the effect of great music was on the people that wrote it.
Berlioz was probably half mad anyway before he met the Irish actress who inspired the dramatic 'Symphonie Fantastique'.

But what was the effect on Beethoven and Mozart personally of their own music?

Would we agree that Mozart's music is more artifice and Beethoven is more trying to do something about 'being', trying to elevate man's being and substance?
Mozart's music did not seem to affect him personally. Beethoven's music is always heart felt, whereas with Mozart there is always a distance between the creator and the created thing. With Beethoven it is one and the same.
It astonishes me that Mozart's fabulous music seems to have no affect on him as an individual and cerainly never matured in emotional terms.
Beethoven was fully mature in his music and his first essays in music, and when he had to take on the leadership of the household.

[Steppenwolf]

Beethoven was the first true romantic composer, and romanticism focuses, among other things, on the personal expression of emotion and feelings.

Mozart was typical of every composer up until the time of Beethoven, who changed everything. It would never have occured to Haydn, Gluck, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Teleman, Monterverdi, Purcell, etc. that music was meant to involve a very personal outpouring of emotion and feeling. Music was something that was merely written, on a commercial basis, to satisfy demand for entertainment. Certainly great personal emotion was expressed in the works of these masters, but it is always incidental - it is never, as in Beethoven, the primary aim and purpose of the music.

The idea of a composer as a solitary individual, removed from the commercial contraints and pressures of the mundane world, pursuing with single-minded will the advancement of the human race is a very romantic ideal, that began with Beethoven.

To that extent, the idea of music deeply moving the composer himself was alien to all composers before Beethoven - the idea is quite introverted and very typical of romanticism.

However, I wouldn't say that Mozart's music is in any way superficial, which some people have suggested. Listen carefully. There is great subtlety there - there is an enormous depth of feeling, but it is subtle and doesn't jump out of the score and seize you by the throat, as Beethoven's music does. Mozart's music is superficially elegant and polished like a diamond, but underneath the surface there is a depth of melancholy and sweet sadness which many (myself included) feel to be just as profound as Beethoven.

[v russo]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Beethoven was the first true romantic composer, and romanticism focuses, among other things, on the personal expression of emotion and feelings.

Mozart was typical of every composer up until the time of Beethoven, who changed everything. It would never have occured to Haydn, Gluck, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Teleman, Monterverdi, Purcell, etc. that music was meant to involve a very personal outpouring of emotion and feeling. Music was something that was merely written, on a commercial basis, to satisfy demand for entertainment. Certainly great personal emotion was expressed in the works of these masters, but it is always incidental - it is never, as in Beethoven, the primary aim and purpose of the music.

The idea of a composer as a solitary individual, removed from the commercial contraints and pressures of the mundane world, pursuing with single-minded will the advancement of the human race is a very romantic ideal, that began with Beethoven.

To that extent, the idea of music deeply moving the composer himself was alien to all composers before Beethoven - the idea is quite introverted and very typical of romanticism.

However, I wouldn't say that Mozart's music is in any way superficial, which some people have suggested. Listen carefully. There is great subtlety there - there is an enormous depth of feeling, but it is subtle and doesn't jump out of the score and seize you by the throat, as Beethoven's music does. Mozart's music is superficially elegant and polished like a diamond, but underneath the surface there is a depth of melancholy and sweet sadness which many (myself included) feel to be just as profound as Beethoven.

I agree, but pre-classical/ romantic music was written for religious purposes (Bach, Monteverdi etc...)It was for the 'greater glory of god', Beethoven turned things inward. He is also the first true 'modern' composer in this way....


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v russo

[Rod]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Beethoven was the first true romantic composer, and romanticism focuses, among other things, on the personal expression of emotion and feelings.

Mozart was typical of every composer up until the time of Beethoven, who changed everything. It would never have occured to Haydn, Gluck, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Teleman, Monterverdi, Purcell, etc. that music was meant to involve a very personal outpouring of emotion and feeling. Music was something that was merely written, on a commercial basis, to satisfy demand for entertainment. Certainly great personal emotion was expressed in the works of these masters, but it is always incidental - it is never, as in Beethoven, the primary aim and purpose of the music.

The idea of a composer as a solitary individual, removed from the commercial contraints and pressures of the mundane world, pursuing with single-minded will the advancement of the human race is a very romantic ideal, that began with Beethoven.

To that extent, the idea of music deeply moving the composer himself was alien to all composers before Beethoven - the idea is quite introverted and very typical of romanticism.

However, I wouldn't say that Mozart's music is in any way superficial, which some people have suggested. Listen carefully. There is great subtlety there - there is an enormous depth of feeling, but it is subtle and doesn't jump out of the score and seize you by the throat, as Beethoven's music does. Mozart's music is superficially elegant and polished like a diamond, but underneath the surface there is a depth of melancholy and sweet sadness which many (myself included) feel to be just as profound as Beethoven.

The Romantic picture you paint of Beethoven is that from a post-Beethovenian Romantic perception of the man. If beethoven was a Romantic then he was a totally unique one, because his mindset i believe was rather different to all of those composers we associate generally with Romantisism. I suggest there was deep emotional involvement in music before Beethoven, certainly from Handel amongst the composers in your list!

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Opus131]

I don't subscribe to this notion at all, just the usual Romantic drivel.

First of all, why do Romantics always assume 'emotion' can only be defined with a state of sadness ?!? I don't get this, is Haydn music, which is filled with joy and serenity (even nobility) all of a sudden superficial ?!? Isn't joy just as much an emotion as sadness ?!?

It's true, composers before Beethoven saw composition as a craft, because that's exactly what it is. Nothing changed during the Romantic era, musical composition simply moved to 'different' aestetical demands, the process of composition and the emotional token necessary was still the same.

When Haydn composed a symphony to surprise a guest on the court, don't you think the music affected him as well as the listener ?!? If not, how did he manage to write the music ?!? Did he just sat down on a table and crammed various notes randomnly togheter ?!? How do you write music without getting 'personally' involved ?!? I don't understand.

Because i mean, left face it, if pre-romantic music was so artificial, why do we all listen to it today ?!? If Baroque music was only meant for worship, how can an half atheist like myself find emotional satisfaction in it ?!?

Furtheremore, why does anybody always consider music from it's emotional connotations and nothing else ?!? What about intelligence, wit, humor, complexity, originality ?!? If none of those elements mattered why do we even bother with classical at all ?!? We might as well listen to pop music.

The truth is, Romantics turned music into a big melodrama, and that's about it, all the emotion was and is still up to the individual who makes it...



[This message has been edited by Opus131 (edited February 07, 2004).]

[Rod]

Originally posted by Opus131:
[B]
...The truth is, Romantics turned music into a big melodrama...
[B]

I agree, this is the essence of Romantisism as I see it. With Beethoven drama is natural and spontaneous, but never overrides the basic purely musical argument. With the later composers such considerations went out of the window and the music sounds contrived by comparison, and thus this is why I am convinced by none of it. On the other hand I do not feel that any of the earlier Classical composers managed to find the ideal dramatic formula either until Beethoven arrived on the scene. As I have said before in my opinion we have to look back to Handel for another such composer who could fully understand the nature of dramatic expression in music. Perhaps this is why Beethoven rated him so highly.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin




[This message has been edited by Rod (edited February 07, 2004).]

[Amalie]

In my view, romanticism it is a bit like the difference in literature between the age of Dr.Johnson and the age of Wordsworth.
Wordsworth was writing the lyrical ballads only a few years after the great Dr. Johnson's death, but what a change!
Dr. Johnson is the epitomy of 18th century classicism, profoundly learned and trenchent and with emotion firmly subordinated to style and delivery.
Wordsworth had no less a grasp of blank verse than Dr. Johnson, but we are suddenly in a new world with the lyrical ballads, a world of lonliness, exile, tagedy, suffering and death, we cannot say that one writer is greater than the other, but we can say that a door was opened by Wordsworth into an immesurably vaster universe of human emotion and feeling than professionally at least was acknowledged by Dr. Johnson.
Wordsworth spoke to the marginalised people in his native lake district that he met on the roads, discharged prisoners, disabled veterans from the wars, lunatics, wronged women and the destitute. He shows up to us close and personal these desparate people who are of course only images of ourselves. He does not show us the typical classical concerns of English poetry hitherto, with Gods and hero's and nymphs disporting themselves. I greatly admire and enjoy classical English poetry and prose, but it has to be said that Wordsworth's world was an immensely more profound and moving experience and we are all in a sense still the heirs of that today, for good or ill. There is of course parallels between the worlds of Haydn and Beethoven, which are similarly contiguous but profoundly different.
A point I would make of course is that Beethoven was the first composer really to go out into the open air and celebrate the natural world like Wordsworth did.
The trouble with Haydn and Dr. Johnson was that though they both had a profound understanding of life professionally their work is strictly indoor or of the chamber and one often feels that it is a bit too cloistered and lack fresh air.

So we could say classicism equals indoors, and romanticism equals outdoors, Take for instance 'Folk Music' which is the archetypal outdoor music spurned by classical composers on the whole, but incorporated by Beethoven in his symphonic works and elsewhere.



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 07, 2004).]

[kenneth]

Beethoven was the first composer that used the music to create a personal figth. That is , in my opinon, the beginning of the romantic era.

The idea that beethoven is a dramatic change comes from Hayden himself. He wrote: "You will never sacrifice an idea for a tyrannic rule and in that you'll be right. But you will sacrifice you rules for your moods. For you seem to bee a man with many heads and hearts."

That is the differens in composition before and after beethoven. In my opinion you can't see him as the composer that changed the words of music. He changed the plot.

Mozart invented many musical tools. Beethovem used those and created something different. A darker side of music. None had the ideas as he had.

But there is also happyness in his music. But becorse beethoven had a "dark" side the harmonies seemes so clear when he feeles happy.

[Peter]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Beethoven was the first true romantic composer, and romanticism focuses, among other things, on the personal expression of emotion and feelings.


Really the terms Romantic and classical should be abolished as they are so misleading and elements of both can be found in earlier composers - Mozart and Haydn were in their day referred to as 'Romantic composers' because of the emotions expressed in the music. With Sturm and Drang and emfindsamerstil you have music of the utmost personal expression.

In strictly musical terms Beethoven is a classical composer in technique - his forms and use of material are classical, even more so in the late than the early works. This is why the late works were not appreciated by the early Romantic composers - Weber (the first truly 'Romantic composer' musically speaking) was quite unappreciative of late Beethoven, who was himself equally unappreciative of the emerging Romantic movement.

On another level though Beethoven does have things in common with Romanticism - his idealism and revolutionary zeal (which again though stem from his first and middle periods, rather than the late) - the mere fact of his deafness and heroic struggle with fate are Romanticism personified. But Beethoven gave us a very salutory warning about reading our own emotions, (or trying to interpret his) into the music when he commented how it amused him and how ridiculous he considered it when his playing reduced ladies to tears!


The idea of a composer as a solitary individual, removed from the commercial contraints and pressures of the mundane world, pursuing with single-minded will the advancement of the human race is a very romantic ideal, that began with Beethoven.

To that extent, the idea of music deeply moving the composer himself was alien to all composers before Beethoven - the idea is quite introverted and very typical of romanticism.


I think the Romantics liked to see it that way, Beethoven though still relied on patronage and considered official positions several times in his career. Though reasonably well off he always worried about money.

Handel had been very successful as a freelance (far more so than Beethoven). Haydn in his later years also enjoyed complete financial security and independence (again far more so than Beethoven), and was moved to tears by a peformance of his 'Creation' - I don't think we can say composers before Beethoven were not moved by their own music.


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'Man know thyself'



[This message has been edited by Peter (edited February 08, 2004).]

[Amalie]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Peter:
[b][QUOTE]Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Beethoven was the first true romantic composer, and romanticism focuses, among other things, on the personal expression of emotion and feelings.


Really the terms Romantic and classical should be abolished as they are so misleading and elements of both can be found in earlier composers - Mozart and Haydn were in their day referred to as 'Romantic composers' because of the emotions expressed in the music. With Sturm and Drang and emfindsamerstil you have music of the utmost personal expression.

In strictly musical terms Beethoven is a classical composer in technique - his forms and use of material are classical, even more so in the late than the early works. This is why the late works were not appreciated by the early Romantic composers - Weber (the first truly 'Romantic composer' musically speaking) was quite unappreciative of late Beethoven, who was himself equally unappreciative of the emerging Romantic movement.

On another level though Beethoven does have things in common with Romanticism - his idealism and revolutionary zeal (which again though stem from his first and middle periods, rather than the late) - the mere fact of his deafness and heroic struggle
e with fate are Romanticism personified.


But Beethoven gave us a very salutory warning about reading our own emotions, (or trying to interpret his) into the music when he commented how it amused him and how ridiculous he considered it when his playing reduced ladies to tears!

****

But Peter,
What about Beethoven's quote, that "Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of women"?

We all know that our Beethoven had a puckish and contrary spirit, and didn't he love to deflate people's conceptions.
No one can surely doubt that he was a person of great tender and emotional depth and that he was always very pleased when people were moved by his music. Remember he consoled a female friend, Dorothea von Ertmann tenderly playing to her when she was greiving for the loss of her child.
His only words to his bereaved friend were,
"we will talk to each other in tones". He played for more than a hour until she said, "he told me everything, and in the end even brought me comfort. She began to sob and thus her grief found expression and refief. When Beethoven finished he pressed my hand sadly and went away silently.



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 08, 2004).]

[urtextmeister]

Excellent topic and excellent discussion.

Thank you, Peter, for laying out the most "correct" definition of classic and romantic composer. I think the textbooks tell us that how a composer approaches the structure and form is the important ingredient.
However, I believe there are many qualities associated with the romantic movement. The indoor/outdoor is right on target. Nature was very important to the romantic movement. A move away from mythological topics and towards more human situations is also part of this whole movement in general.
Emotions have almost always been a big part of music's intent. Much early music was designed to create religious fervor. Or courtly love. Baroque music had the Affects--every piece and every key had a certain emotional quality attached to it. Every age had a different way of speaking of the connection between music and emotion, but the only time is really brought into question is in the twentieth century.
Do composers experience emotions from their own music? (I guess that was the original topic). In a way this is hard to know and maybe irrelevant. When you create a thing and it belongs to the world at large, does your relationship to it really matter? This is actually a fascinating philosophical point.
That might be getting to deep, but I think that composers often have a more callous approach to their craft then we like to think. Mozart and many others saw composing as a chore, but they knew how to do it.
I remember an interview with James Levine (not a composer, but I think this is telling). He said that he can't conduct Boheme every night with tears streaming down his face, because that isn't his job. The one who understands how to manipulate our emotions is not necessarily one who is having the emotions.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Amalie:

But Peter,
What about Beethoven's quote, that "Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of women"?

We all know that our Beethoven had a puckish and contrary spirit, and didn't he love to deflate people's conceptions.
No one can surely doubt that he was a person of great tender and emotional depth and that he was always very pleased when people were moved by his music.

I don't doubt Beethoven was a person of great emotional depth, but why doubt it in Mozart, Handel or Bach? The idea that music prior to Romanticism is emotionless is nonsense. As for Beethoven expressing his inner feelings, we all know that the sunny 2nd symphony was composed during his darkest hour - not exactly his 'Pathetique' symphony.

Really we have been struggling in the 20th century with a 19th century perception of music and we should move on from this and see music as a whole (especially the period from Bach to Mahler which uses the same basic raw ingredients) instead of these ridiculous groupings which are only of technical meaning.



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'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited February 08, 2004).]

[Amalie]

Originally posted by Peter:
I don't doubt Beethoven was a person of great emotional depth, but why doubt it in Mozart, Handel or Bach? The idea that music prior to Romanticism is emotionless is nonsense. As for Beethoven expressing his inner feelings, we all know that the sunny 2nd symphony was composed during his darkest hour - not exactly his 'Pathetique' symphony.

Really we have been struggling in the 20th century with a 19th century perception of music and we should move on from this and see music as a whole (especially the period from Bach to Mahler which uses the same basic raw ingredients) instead of these ridiculous groupings which are only of technical meaning.

Peter,
Not for a moment did I suggest that the great 'classical composers' wrote emotionless music, prior to romanticism, in fact I never anywhere implied that.

Bach's cantatas especially are the most exquisitely emotional outpourings, yet framed in a strict classical form.
What I did say about romaticism, is that romanticism introduced something new and extremely important into music. Very simply that was, the world of nature or God in nature, or what one might call the great outdoors, which is sinurlarly lacking in the cloistered compositions of the chamber oriented 'indoor' music of pre-Beethoven composers.
Effectively it was a whole new world of emotional experience and depth. Of course, Haydn, Handel, Bach knew of the natural world,but it is not reflected or a part of their professional music careers, because with them, we are still very much a part of the 18th century. ie. the devout worshipper in the chapel or church or the court centered composer.
Beethoven was of course trying to struggle free in a sense from the partonage of the nobility, whose bread he was obliged to acccept of course, and he was only really at the start of the great period ofconcert going publics and the mass market for music.
We musn't forget that romanticism was the mode of expression of classical music in Europe after Beethoven all the way up to the death of Richards Strauss, and it was the predominant school. though of course the classical symhonic form was often found suitable for the purpose.
Liszt was a very important figure in this movement, I think. He really eschewed the symphonic form in favour of tone poems which reflected musical and thematic transformations in a very loose structure. Here we have an instance of a very romanticly inspired composer who also largely dispensed with the classical structure to give himself the widest possible fluid scope for his thoughts and feelings.
The romantic movement has therefore both a technical and thematic aspect.
IMHO >>



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 08, 2004).]

[Rod]

Originally posted by Peter:
[B - the mere fact of his deafness and heroic struggle with fate are Romanticism personified.
[/B]

The question here is whether Beethoven saw himself as a 'hero' in this Romantic context. I personally doubt it. If I was arrested for being a vagrant the last thing I would feel would be heroic. Did Handel see himself as a hero when he became blind?

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Peter]

Originally posted by Amalie:
Peter,
Not for a moment did I suggest that the great 'classical composers' wrote emotionless music, prior to romanticism, in fact I never anywhere implied that.

Bach's cantatas especially are the most exquisitely emotional outpourings, yet framed in a strict classical form.
What I did say about romaticism, is that romanticism introduced something new and extremely important into music. Very simply that was, the world of nature or God in nature, or what one might call the great outdoors, which is sinurlarly lacking in the cloistered compositions of the chamber oriented 'indoor' music of pre-Beethoven composers.
Effectively it was a whole new world of emotional experience and depth. Of course, Haydn, Handel, Bach knew of the natural world,but it is not reflected or a part of their professional music careers, because with them, we are still very much a part of the 18th century.

Yes my comments with regard to emotion in pre-classical composers were more a general remark in response to other posts on this rather than your vown views Amalie - sorry!

With regards to Beethoven's attitude to nature, this was not new. The idea that
by knowing nature, one could know God was popular in art since the time of ancient Greece through to the French Enlightenment. Kircher has a page of Nightingale music in his Musurgia Universalis (1650). The Goldfinch by Vivaldi, The Hen by Rameau and The Cuckoo and the Nightingale by Handel are familiar early examples of musical compositions incorporating bird sounds. Rameau also writes orchestral music that includes thunder, 'Hippolyte' and even an earthquake in 'Les Indes galantes'

The idea of a pastoral composition was not new either, we have from Haydn 'The Seasons', pastoral sinfonias are to be found in the oratarios of Bach and Handel. Then of course there is Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons.' Justin Knecht (1752-1817) had also written a symphony titled 'The musical portrait of nature' which served many years later as a model for Beethoven's Pastoral symphony.



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'Man know thyself'

[This message has been edited by Peter (edited February 08, 2004).]