Beethoven too passionate

[Megan]

I caught this conversation on a classical music station stating that
Joseph Haydn feared Beethoven's work relied too much on passion rather than the mathematically precise nature consistent with the classical style of the age.
Any thoughts on this?

[Peter]

I caught this conversation on a classical music station stating that
Joseph Haydn feared Beethoven's work relied too much on passion rather than the mathematically precise nature consistent with the classical style of the age.
Any thoughts on this?

I don't believe those were Haydn's thoughts at all - this was the man who had written a symphony entitled 'La Passione' and who admired Mozart's Don Giovanni!

[Bonn1827]

"Mathematically precise nature" of music??!!! It isn't machinery. Musical harmonic theory generally FOLLOWS practice, not the reverse. Original composers broke new ground often by challenging accepted conventions, not by writing from some treatise written by Rameau and others. So, I doubt Joseph Haydn would have made that remark about LvB. He did make some comments which were negative about LvB, but I can't remember what these were.

The "classical" period of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven were synonymous with style, elegance, symmetry, restraint and refinement. Perhaps some of those qualities which were soon to be discarded by LvB, was something which upset Haydn?

[Peter]

"Mathematically precise nature" of music??!!! It isn't machinery. Musical harmonic theory generally FOLLOWS practice, not the reverse. Original composers broke new ground often by challenging accepted conventions, not by writing from some treatise written by Rameau and others. So, I doubt Joseph Haydn would have made that remark about LvB. He did make some comments which were negative about LvB, but I can't remember what these were.

The "classical" period of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven were synonymous with style, elegance, symmetry, restraint and refinement. Perhaps some of those qualities which were soon to be discarded by LvB, was something which upset Haydn?

I think the qualities you mention for the classical period are more fitting for the earlier 'style galant' with the music of composers such as J.C.Bach, Boccherini and Gossec. In their own time Mozart and Haydn were regarded as 'romantic' composers because of the expressive qualities in their music. Haydn advised Beethoven not to publish the last of his Op.1 trios because he felt it would alienate the public - this advice was (allegedly) misinterpreted by Beethoven and taken as jealousy. I don't see anything in the pre 1800 Beethoven works that could have caused Haydn any real problems - it would have been interesting to have had his views on later works. The film 'Eroica' suggests some negative comments but I'm not sure about the authenticity of the remarks.

[Bonn1827]

No, I wasn't referring to anything other than classicism. The "style galante" was quite out of date by the time of Haydn and Mozart. I think the essence of classicism is that refinement and timeless sense of structure and elegance. The word itself tells us what it means. Why else would we refer to objects today as "classic", eg. cars, films, antiques, if they didn't represent an archetype of beauty and exemplary form etc. Within that framework Mozart wrote the most sublime work, overtaking anything achieved in the "style galante".

But I think the whole question of audience response, which you raise at the end of your comment, is also an interesting one and could be the subject of a separate thread. That audiences were shocked by Mozart's operas being written in German ("too brutal your majesty") or LvB and his "Eroica", to name just two examples, provides a lesson today about our own music and whether we really are good judges of what is good and what is not. Very many composers could talk about audiences failing to respond to their works - the list is huge. It is really fascinating too, to discover just how educated and "knowing" some audiences can be.