.....with the Kreutzer Beethoven launched a new kind of music that lies at the heart of his genius. The Kreutzer was a personal watershed, marking Beethoven’s leap from a gifted, occasionally edgy, often innovative composer to the revolutionary activist who rewrote the essential rules of musical art.
The Kreutzer also marked a cosmic cultural shift, although there had been ample prior hints. His piano sonatas began with the stylized drama of Mozart but added a new sense of architectural space, thickening texture and deepening gravity.
Their mood, too, began to push the bounds of convention – the 1798 “Pathetique” is broody and stormy, and his 1801 “Moonlight” is contemplative but ends in a burst of energy. Among his eight prior violin sonatas, the fourth is rather grim and acerbic and the eighth rumbles with an undercurrent of nervous energy. But all these solo or duet works were intended for personal gratification or private pleasure.
The Kreutzer is the very first work for such reduced forces that bursts the accustomed modest bounds of chamber music with the weighty emotional gestures that formerly were the province of opera, oratorio, concerti and symphonies for massive ensembles. Through the Kreutzer, Beethoven raised chamber music out of the salons of royalty into the public arena.
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http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics2/kreutzer.html
The Kreutzer also marked a cosmic cultural shift, although there had been ample prior hints. His piano sonatas began with the stylized drama of Mozart but added a new sense of architectural space, thickening texture and deepening gravity.
Their mood, too, began to push the bounds of convention – the 1798 “Pathetique” is broody and stormy, and his 1801 “Moonlight” is contemplative but ends in a burst of energy. Among his eight prior violin sonatas, the fourth is rather grim and acerbic and the eighth rumbles with an undercurrent of nervous energy. But all these solo or duet works were intended for personal gratification or private pleasure.
The Kreutzer is the very first work for such reduced forces that bursts the accustomed modest bounds of chamber music with the weighty emotional gestures that formerly were the province of opera, oratorio, concerti and symphonies for massive ensembles. Through the Kreutzer, Beethoven raised chamber music out of the salons of royalty into the public arena.
For more...
http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics2/kreutzer.html