Beethoven and the Classical style...

[Peter]

I think where Beethoven does have a foot in the Romantic camp is in the 'poetics' of the movement. Again, I am relying here on Solomon (Late Beethoven : Music, Thought Imagination, 2003) :

a) The Talking Trees : we know Beethoven loved nature, as did the Romantic poets of his time, concerning themselves also with describing extreme opposites such as death and resurrection, freedom and necessity, Arcadia and Elysium, the individual and the cosmos...;
b) The Correspondent Breeze : An die ferne Geliebte, Fidelio ...;
c) The Starry Skies : he told Carl Czerny that the idea of the Molto adagio in string quartet op. 59/2 came to him when contemplating the starry skies, the Abendlied unterm gestirntem Himmel, WoO 150 ...;
d) The Romantic Solitary (or indeed, the "hero"?) : Florestan, Christ on the Mount of Olives, the Pastoral and Eroica symphonies...;
e) The Convalescent Soul : the Molto adagio of the String Quartet op. 132 (Holy song of thanks...),
f) The Peasant Hut : letter to Wegeler, the Tagebuch entry of 1815...;
g) The Distant Beloved : you know the work, see above!;
h) The Veil of Isis : Schiller's The Veiled Statue at Sais (1795) which Beethoven surely read, as well as the framed copy of Egyptian/Orphic inscriptions about the Veil of Isis he kept on his desk in his later years.
i) That's all, folks !

And I would say be wary of Solomon's over reliance on psycho-analytical methodology and dodgy scholarship which has also led him in my view to an erroneous case for the Immortal beloved. I think that Rosen draws the correct conclusions in his anaylsis of the music.

[Sorrano]

It would seem to me that those who favor Romanticism favor Beethoven as the first of the Romantics while the Classicists claim him as the pinnacle of that period. When I play his music or listen to his music I can hear elements of both but there is too much force and power, driving from one idea to another in a logical and emotional sense. Whereas neither Beethoven nor his contemporaries were likely involved with debates on the current styles and the coming thing (as we do today, looking back) there can be no definite boundaries to separate the periods. We see the sturm und drang of the earlier Classicists as well as the form and balance obsession in the late 19th Century Bruckner. There is no argument that Beethoven had complete mastery of architectural skills with the forms of the day. There is no argument that his music also employs a dynamic line that becomes as emotional, if you will, as it does logically, to arrive at the final home conclusion and does this in a way that his predecessors did not. So what period does he belong to? To me he is simply Beethoven and defies definition and labels.

[Preston]

To me he is simply Beethoven and defies definition and labels.

Rosen, if I remember correctly, states that even though, while he considers Beethoven a Classicist, he is not saying that Beethoven was not a style of his own.

Now tell me that isn't something! Either way, I do believe that a composer of Beethoven's magnitude pretty much defies definition and labels, especially labels, although there is a Classical style and a Baroque, so Beethoven could probably be classified to some sort of great stylistic theory- not to say that he wasn't in a style of his own, that I do not know, .

[Preston]

I think the best approach for Preston would be to read the Charles Rosen books Peter has mentioned (The Classical Style, and Sonata Forms). Be wary though, Preston (and Peter) of Rosen's at times oversimplifications, for example where he defines classical form as "the symmetrical resolution of opposing forces" or the "reconciliation of dynamic opposites", definitions which are, in his own words, "so broad as to be definitions of artistic form in general".

Patience is a virtue- I think it would be best to wait and learn some more, and understand Classical music better, before trying to read one of the great books on style. Although "Sonata Forms" might not be a bad idea, and some books like it. A good teacher is what I would eventually like. Thanks again for the help Philip. Anyway, back to the post, in a little while. It is quite late here.

The concert was great! It still amazes me how well the musicians can play, probably always will. The symphony, was taken somewhat faster then I have heard it before, but by no means am I complaining.

[Peter]

Indeed labels are rather a distraction but if we are going to use them then they should be properly understood and in the right context. What do Baroque, Empfindsamer Stil, Classical, Romantic actually mean in musical terms, not the great variety of meanings to be found in art, history and literature? The problem in differentiating between Classical and Romantic lies in that the majority of music written between 1770 and 1900 has so much in common - Grout states "the continuity in the the two styles is more fundamental than the contrast".

The word Romantic first began to be used in the 17th century to describe something fanciful, legendary and fantastic in contrast to reality. In this broad sense according to Curt Sachs there have been in history alternations of Classicism and Romanticism, cycles of ethos and pathos; thus ars nova may be considered Romantic in comparison with ars antiqua or the Baroque in comparison to the Renaissance. The 19th century Romantics believed that all music had trans-musical content, thus in the 19th century, writers on music projected inner meanings not only to Beethoven, but Mozart, Haydn and Bach, and it is here I think that much of the confusion lies. When referring to Beethoven as a Romantic composer it is in this very general sense that some truth lies, but within the purely musical context of the styles Beethoven is clearly in the Classical school.

Let's look at Beethoven the virtuoso pianist - none of Beethoven's solo piano works were written with the public concert hall in mind and only one of the sonatas was ever performed publicly in his lifetime and he wasn't even the soloist! Contrast this with Dussek or Liszt the true Romantic virtuosi whose 'recitals' were designed purely to put them centre stage.

I have dealt at some length before with tonality and harmony and these are the benchmarks of the approach to the two styles. Then there is the use of melody - this to Beethoven as a classical composer is not of the greatest importance - to him it is structure and form. He is not what we would think of as one of the great melodists such as Schubert, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak - to them melody was all important.

So to sum up I think we can only look at this issue keeping in mind exactly what we mean by the terms we are using.

[Preston]

The 19th century Romantics believed that all music had trans-musical content, thus in the 19th century, writers on music projected inner meanings not only to Beethoven, but Mozart, Haydn and Bach, and it is here I think that much of the confusion lies.

Peter, would you mind explaining a little more about trans-musical content? I do not understand what this is. Thanks.

[Peter]

Peter, would you mind explaining a little more about trans-musical content? I do not understand what this is. Thanks.

Essentially it means providing the music with a programme - an example of this is the second movement of the 4th piano concerto described by Adolph Bernard Marx in his 1859 biography of Beethoven as "Orpheus taming the Furies at the gates to Hades".

[Preston]

So trans-musical has to do not with absolute, but programme? I am assuming that the 4th movement of Beethoven's Pastoral could also be considered trans-musical?

[Peter]

So trans-musical has to do not with absolute, but programme? I am assuming that the 4th movement of Beethoven's Pastoral could also be considered trans-musical?

Yes trans-musical means reading a story into the music beyond the actual notes. The point is that in the 19th century writers and musicians would read a programme into almost any piece of music and often this could be very fanciful indeed - try reading some of Berlioz's comments on music! The Pastoral symphony is a rare example in Beethoven where he himself did actually provide suggestions but he probably worried that too much would be made of this and published the work with a disclaimer that it was "more an expression of feeling than painting" - there is no story line. If there is a connection with the Romantic mind in this work it is the love of Nature, excepting that the pastoral was an established genre in art and literature since ancient times. Beethoven had actually based his 6th symphony on a much earlier work by the composer Justin Knecht (1752-1817) who had written a symphony titled 'The musical portrait of nature' which has a five movement plan with a first movement describing a beautiful sunlit countryside, a storm in the 3rd movement and the finale titled 'Nature raises her voice towards heaven offering to the creator sweet and agreable songs.' Vivaldi's concerto-cycle The Four Seasons is another example of this type as is Haydn's oratorio 'The seasons'. The representations of storms, bird-calls, shepherds piping etc., are references to this pre-existing genre, not to the Program Music of the early Romantic era.

[Preston]

I still think what I said in the thread Philip made about colors and the 7th symphony. I do feel that most feeling is color, in a sense, and that Beethoven was a master of color through music. Am I wrong for saying this?

I imagine that this is something quite rare. For instance, when I hear the 1st movement of the 5th symphony, it is a dark feeling, but nothing to precise for me. I would think that as good as Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, etc., were, they could understand colors of feelings through music. I still think Beethoven the rarest of all the masters, is this wrong?

[Peter]

There is nothing "psycho-analytical" in Solomon's perception of Romantic tendencies in Beethoven as enunciated above : they are merely common traits in the movement. Rosen certainly makes insightful comments, I agree. As to "dodgy scholarship", what would be your benchmark reference?

The Immortal beloved which we have dealt with before and are still awaiting your illuminations regarding the translations.

[Black Dog]

Regarding Beethoven's use of 'substitute dominants' let me try to explain further. The strongest relationship in music is between the Tonic (home key) and it's dominant (the 5th of the scale). A piece of music in sonata form it will pass through different keys (straying away from the Tonic home key) and modulate to the Dominant for its secondary tonality (2nd theme). Beethoven often (but not always) substitutes the mediant (3rd of the scale) or the submediant (6th of the scale) for his secondary tonality - the point is that he creates the same increase in tension as is implied by the Dominant. The subdominant (4th of the scale) is a weaker modulation and results in a decrease in tension which Beethoven never does, but the early Romantic composers do, Schubert in the Trout quintet and Schumann and Chopin in several of their major works.

I was just curious, is this use of "substitute dominants" for the second theme something you can readily hear and "feel" when listening to a piece, or is it more something you'd only know by reading the score? You already mentioned Schubert's piano quintet as an example of the 4th, but what would be a prime example of pieces that use the 3rd, 5th, and 6th respectively? I know a bit about harmony from playing guitar, but must confess it's nowhere near my comprehension of classical structure. Thanks.

[Chris]

I was just curious, is this use of "substitute dominants" for the second theme something you can readily hear and "feel" when listening to a piece, or is it more something you'd only know by reading the score? You already mentioned Schubert's piano quintet as an example of the 4th, but what would be a prime example of pieces that use the 3rd, 5th, and 6th respectively? I know a bit about harmony from playing guitar, but must confess it's nowhere near my comprehension of classical structure. Thanks.

It's something you can hear if you have studied music. Here is a prime example of using the mediant (3rd) for the secondary theme, the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 21, Op. 53 "Waldstein":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9r36hX_KCg

The piece starts in its home key of C major, but when then secondary theme begins at 0:54, Beethoven has moved to E major.

[Peter]

I was just curious, is this use of "substitute dominants" for the second theme something you can readily hear and "feel" when listening to a piece, or is it more something you'd only know by reading the score? You already mentioned Schubert's piano quintet as an example of the 4th, but what would be a prime example of pieces that use the 3rd, 5th, and 6th respectively? I know a bit about harmony from playing guitar, but must confess it's nowhere near my comprehension of classical structure. Thanks.

Well yes you can and should hear them! It was perhaps easier for an early 19th century audience in that their ears had not been 'contaminated' by the harmonic changes that were to occur later - we have to look back and forget about most of the 19th and 20th centuries! Now virtually every Mozart or Haydn sonata form work establishes the dominant as its secondary tonality. Early on Beethoven sought ways to get away from this but without changing the effect produced by the modulation to the dominant - i.e maintaining the increase in tension implied in this. After the Waldstein sonata Beethoven is just as likely to use the more remote mediant and submediant keys as to employ the more straight forward dominant. Well known examples of the use of mediant and submediant can be found in the 9th symphony, Hammerklavier sonata, quartets Op.127 and Op.130.

[Sorrano]

Listen, particularly to the 3rd movement of the 9th Symphony. The modulations go to both mediant and submediant. I think it is quite obvious in listening to it, as well.