Originally posted by Peter:
I really think too much is being read into this 9 number in an almost superstitious 19th century melodramatic manner, after all Beethoven was working on a 10th and even projected an 11th at the time of his premature death. OK you haven't heard of Havergal Brian and I admit he is pretty obscure - but what about Shostakovich's 15? Mahler nearly completed 11 massive symphonies (Das Lied von der erde really is a symphony in Mahlerian terms) and would have written more had he not been compelled to compose in his spare time and had he also not died prematurely. The same goes for Schubert who most certainly would have clocked up many more symphonies had he lived as long as Beethoven. The dominant form of the 19th century was opera - just look at the number of Wagner or Verdi operas (all on a much grander scale than any symphony) to see that this argument is meaningless.
I really think too much is being read into this 9 number in an almost superstitious 19th century melodramatic manner, after all Beethoven was working on a 10th and even projected an 11th at the time of his premature death. OK you haven't heard of Havergal Brian and I admit he is pretty obscure - but what about Shostakovich's 15? Mahler nearly completed 11 massive symphonies (Das Lied von der erde really is a symphony in Mahlerian terms) and would have written more had he not been compelled to compose in his spare time and had he also not died prematurely. The same goes for Schubert who most certainly would have clocked up many more symphonies had he lived as long as Beethoven. The dominant form of the 19th century was opera - just look at the number of Wagner or Verdi operas (all on a much grander scale than any symphony) to see that this argument is meaningless.
There is still my other contention, which I now invite response to, that if you speak about classical with a small 'c', in general terms, and put romantic with a small 'r', on the other side, generic also, and open up the whole history of the arts, there is little doubt where Beethoven belongs. It's difficult to find parallels in music outside the 19th century, because we don't know enough about how music actually sounded before 1600 or 1700, and the scale of forces was always smaller. But if you step outside music for a moment, and look at the passage from formal classical to more romantic, directly emotional art that took place in ancient Greece, from the classical to the Hellenistic period; and in Italy, between the Renaissance to the Mannerist and then Baruqoe periods, the issue is pretty plain. Beethoven bears almost exactly the same relation to Mozart and Haydn, as does the Laocoon or the Altar of Zeus at Pergamon to the Parthenon, and as does Michelangelo to the classicism of Raphael and Bramante. Nobody would call Michelangelo or the Laocoon classical. And Beethoven's spirit is much closer to theirs than to pure classicism.
And in neither case, Michelangelo or early Hellentistic art, were classical vocaularies abandoned, they were modified and enlarged. Michelangelo enlarged the column and pilaster to giant proportions in architecture exactly as Beethoven enlarged sonata form. And in Baroque art and later Hellenistic art forms were loosened further or abandoned as they were in later Romantic music. But it can't be denied that Michelangelo, while holding onto these forms and enlarging them, was the primary impetus for Baroque painting, architecture and sculpture. And Beethoven had a similar effect on the 19th century.
So in specific 19th century musical terms there is an argument, but in the wider polarity which reappears in the arts again and again between these two tendencies, the situation is pretty plain.
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