New article on Beethoven in the New Yorker

[Chaszz]

Beethoven's too-strong influence? Whether this is so or not, he sets out some fascinating facts about Beethoven's effect on music I was unaware of.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...deus-ex-musica

What do you think of his opinion that classical music became sort of frozen in place after Beethoven's achievements? Personally, I can see what he is saying, but I love late Romantic music, especially Brahms and Wagner, so much that I can't see any real issue. I wish I could like the moderns as much (apart from Sibelius and Strauss, who are tonalists unlike most of the moderns), but that is hardly Beethoven's doing.

Liszt set the standard for piano solo presentation, with his dramatic profile seating. Did this cramp anyone's style or rather open up a rich vein of great performances? Did Beethoven's expansion of the orchestra limit it or open the way for the even larger orchestras, and great lush or dramatic orchestrations, of many later composers?

(Michelangelo, who IMO is similar to Beethoven in many ways, had a similar effect on art, practically singlehandedly creating the Baroque style in sculpture and painting while still himself staying within certain classical limits. Not too sure we'd want to have had that whole development not happen.)

[AeolianHarp]

Very interesting and so is the novel mentioned. Thanks Chazz.

[Belle]

Beethoven's too-strong influence? Whether this is so or not, he sets out some fascinating facts about Beethoven's effect on music I was unaware of.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...deus-ex-musica

What do you think of his opinion that classical music became sort of frozen in place after Beethoven's achievements? Personally, I can see what he is saying, but I love late Romantic music, especially Brahms and Wagner, so much that I can't see any real issue. I wish I could like the moderns as much (apart from Sibelius and Strauss, who are tonalists unlike most of the moderns), but that is hardly Beethoven's doing.

Liszt set the standard for piano solo presentation, with his dramatic profile seating. Did this cramp anyone's style or rather open up a rich vein of great performances? Did Beethoven's expansion of the orchestra limit it or open the way for the even larger orchestras, and great lush or dramatic orchestrations, of many later composers?

(Michelangelo, who IMO is similar to Beethoven in many ways, had a similar effect on art, practically singlehandedly creating the Baroque style in sculpture and painting while still himself staying within certain classical limits. Not too sure we'd want to have had that whole development not happen.)

This is a very good article and quite thought-provoking, so I felt it incumbent upon myself to offer some thoughts. I particularly liked this comment:

“To follow Beethoven’s dense, driving narratives, one had to lean forward and pay close attention. The musicians’ platform became the stage of an invisible drama, the temple of a sonic revelation”. I very much appreciate the idea of music being ‘narrative’ and have long subscribed to this view.

It wasn’t Beethoven’s “job” to set the trajectory for composers who came afterwards, no more than he himself felt under any obligation to follow the well-worn paths of Haydn or Mozart. Every genius must find his/her own voice. So I don't think that argument can be sustained. I'm listening, as I write this, to the Bach/Busoni Chaconne in D because I'm preparing a lecture for Thursday on Polyphony and I've started from the Gothic Era. All through the adventure with polyphony (indeed, all music) composers have struck out in an original way finding 'solutions' to problems and creating new possibilities. My discoveries have left me in no doubt that great music will continue in perpetuity.

The numinous quality of Beethoven’s music (post Symphony No. 3), as well as its muscularity, intimacy, complexity and grandeur, simply cannot be explained away no matter how many books are written. The writings of the bien pensant and/or the creation of mythologies through extravagant hyperbole can never etiolate the image of Beethoven. That’s the glory of it; he was a flawed man. A human being.

[AeolianHarp]

It wasn’t Beethoven’s “job” to set the trajectory for composers who came afterwards, no more than he himself felt under any obligation to follow the well-worn paths of Haydn or Mozart. Every genius must find his/her own voice

I think the point is not that Beethoven set out to do anything but just create what was inside of him; and his mastery of music was just so vast, so staggeringly brilliant, that words cannot do his work justice.

For example his late piano sonatas are just monumental as are his string quartets- no music that came after those could come close to such atmosphere, depth of feeling, sanctity.

His work is just the greatest musical achievements the world has ever seen and this will always be.

[Chaszz]

I think the point is not that Beethoven set out to do anything but just create what was inside of him; and his mastery of music was just so vast, so staggeringly brilliant, that words cannot do his work justice.

For example his late piano sonatas are just monumental as are his string quartets- no music that came after those could come close to such atmosphere, depth of feeling, sanctity.

His work is just the greatest musical achievements the world has ever seen and this will always be.

It's interesting that his huge edifice grew without his intending it to; as the writer notes, he thought posterity would be interested in him, but did not plan to found an institution as overpowering as he has become. Reminds me a little of Jesus, who was turned by Paul into perhaps what he would not have wanted to become. Of course, Beethoven's Paul was not a person but his compositions.

Not to suggest undue comparisons with the sublime late quartets and piano sonatas, but two bodies of work have also seemed to me to contain music so elevated as to be from the "other side:" Bach's Musical Offering and Strauss' Four Last Songs.

[hal9000]

I think the point is not that Beethoven set out to do anything but just create what was inside of him; and his mastery of music was just so vast, so staggeringly brilliant, that words cannot do his work justice.

For example his late piano sonatas are just monumental as are his string quartets- no music that came after those could come close to such atmosphere, depth of feeling, sanctity.

His work is just the greatest musical achievements the world has ever seen and this will always be.

How much of the entire art of music have you listened to? If I said no music has as much depth of feeling as Schubert's string quintet, or that no music reaches the spirituality and sanctity of Bach's fugue in E major, how would you refute that?

I do think, as far as my listening has taken me, that Beethoven is sui generis, and his ability to render in music his ideas, feelings and beliefs in the most direct and pure way is unique, and the reason he is perhaps the most universal composer to have ever lived, but he's just one voice in a choir filled with great voices. As great as Beethoven was, he didn't say everything there is to say in music, as clearly demonstrated by all of the great composers after him who found their own voice. Let's do away with the unnecessary hyperbole (something that I am admittedly also sometimes guilty of)

Edit - Reading this back, the tone of my post does read a little confrontational. That wasn't my intention.

[AeolianHarp]

Guys, of course other composers have done some great works like Bach's The Art of Fugue, but noone moves me like Beethoven's.

The Ninth Symphony
The late piano sonatas
His late String Quartets
Appassionata sonata
7th Symphony

I don't think he inadvertently started an "institution" his music just speaks to us in a way no one else's does.It is something indefinable.

[Harvey]

Fascinating article. Particularly interesting is this (the "First Four Notes" of course being the opening to the Fifth):

And, in harnessing their power to our own dreams and passions, we are in danger of wearing them out, turning them into hollow signifiers. There is a “perpetual risk of emptiness.” More than a risk: the final chapter of Guerrieri’s “The First Four Notes” chronicles E. T. A. Hoffmann’s vehicle of awe and terror being turned into a meaningless blur of disco beats, hip-hop samples, jingles, and ringtones.

As much as I think it would be wonderful to put a clip of my favorite music on my phone for a ringer, it could ruin that piece of music.

[Michael]

One of the best articles on Beethoven I have read in a long while.
Thanks, Chaszz.