Favourite Beethoven work

[Edelberto Neto]

First of all, I want to greet and salute every one here (something like 'Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!'): I just drop here very occasionally and after all, I send almost no messages, so I'm entirely unknown at this place. However, even so I'll give my opinion:

What about the Choral Fantasy (Fantasy for piano, choral & orchestra, Op.80)? Nobody remember it? After the almost hors-concours Op.125, this is probably my favourite one. I really love all those shivery, uproarious, powerful noises full of strength, at the climax of both Choral's!

[Gurn Blanston]

Originally posted by lysander:


Music scholars have documented Clementi's remarkable influence on Beethoven's early piano sonata's

Many of the characteristics of the Beethoven style were anticipated in the Clementi sonatas. One of the many examples of this stylistic similarity can be heard in the opening Lento of Opus 6 no.1, the intensity of which forshadows the style of the Great Beethoven.

Indeed, one could argue Beethoven "borrowed" the theme from the Presto movement of Clementi's Opus 13 no.6 for the famous final movement of his Eroica Symphony.

Lysander,
I regret that I cannot give personal reaction to Clementi due to never having heard his sonatas, although I have certainly heard OF them, particularly in his early career when he had followers who pitted him against Mozart, rather presumptiously I think, given his limited scope (only piano). According to Rosen (Classical Style, pp 22-23), "Clementi stands somewhat apart, both in his fusion of Italian and French tradition and in his development of the virtuoso passagework so esssential to the post-classical style of Hummel and Weber. It is significant that this kind of passagework, which was to be given artistic importance by Liszt and Chopin, was emphatically rejected by Beethoven in most of his piano music; in his remarks on fingering and the position of the hand, he opposes the style of playing most suited to it. Although he recommended Clementi's music for the use of piano students, he disliked a piano technique of the "pearly" manner, and criticized even Mozart's playing as "much too choppy (!)".
Not a musician I, but I believe the correct term for what B wants is "legato", and Clementi was apparently unfamiliar with it.
Regards, Gurn

[Peter]

Originally posted by Gurn Blanston:
Lysander,
I regret that I cannot give personal reaction to Clementi due to never having heard his sonatas, although I have certainly heard OF them, particularly in his early career when he had followers who pitted him against Mozart, rather presumptiously I think, given his limited scope (only piano). According to Rosen (Classical Style, pp 22-23), "Clementi stands somewhat apart, both in his fusion of Italian and French tradition and in his development of the virtuoso passagework so esssential to the post-classical style of Hummel and Weber. It is significant that this kind of passagework, which was to be given artistic importance by Liszt and Chopin, was emphatically rejected by Beethoven in most of his piano music; in his remarks on fingering and the position of the hand, he opposes the style of playing most suited to it. Although he recommended Clementi's music for the use of piano students, he disliked a piano technique of the "pearly" manner, and criticized even Mozart's playing as "much too choppy (!)".
Not a musician I, but I believe the correct term for what B wants is "legato", and Clementi was apparently unfamiliar with it.
Regards, Gurn

Mozart is regarded as the first great pianist, Clementi the first of the great virtuosos. The two were rivals and neither really had a good word to say about the other - when they encountered each other in 1781, Mozart was used to the Viennese pianos and Clementi the English. After this encounter Clementi adapted his style of playing to a more cantabile and legato style. His music was the first to really exploit the piano in a truly pianistic style and it was this that appealed to Beethoven - according to Beethoven "those who study Clementi make themselves acquainted with Mozart and other composers, but the converse is not the fact." He wrote over 20 symphonies and 100 sonatas and one of the most important sets of studies before Chopin, Gradus ad Parnassum.

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'Man know thyself'

[Happymelody]

piano sonata #10 in G maj

piano sonata #23 in F min, appassionata

consecration of the house, but only to be played very loudly upon moving in a new apartment.

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Peter:

But he didn't embrace the new! He was critical of the new generation - Spohr he regarded as too chromatic (Rosen points out that "Beethoven was just as chromatic as any composer before Wagner, but that the chromaticism is alays resolved and blended into a background which ends by leaving the tonic triad absolute master"), Weber nothing but diminshed 7ths, Rossini was virtually beneath contempt. When asked who was the greatest living composer after himself, his answer was Cherubini - the most conservative of them all!

As I've said before in one of the threads on Beethoven as classical or romantic, in the technical sense he was classical, but emotionally he exhibited a very strong romantic sensibility in the wider sense of the term, as embracing all the arts of his period. I know you will come back and say that Haydn and Mozart also exhibited this in some works, but in Beethoven the romantic emotions are present to a more consistent degree in so many of his mature works, and give the works their emotional content in many ways, if not their form.

As regards his not liking the composers, he heard only the earliest and not the greatest ones. Schubert was just barely known to him. Had he heard some of the ones in mid- and late century, do you not think he would have been moved? I mean not only Wagner but the full Schubert, Schumann, some of Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, Tchaikowsky, Sibelius (though he is later)?




[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited May 02, 2003).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
As I've said before in one of the threads on Beethoven as classical or romantic, in the technical sense he was classical, but emotionally he exhibited a very strong romantic sensibility in the wider sense of the term, as embracing all the arts of his period. I know you will come back and say that Haydn and Mozart also exhibited this in some works, but in Beethoven the romantic emotions are present to a more consistent degree in so many of his mature works, and give the works their emotional content in many ways, if not their form.

As regards his not liking the composers, he heard only the earliest and not the greatest ones. Schubert was just barely known to him. Had he heard some of the ones in mid- and late century, do you not think he would have been moved? I mean not only Wagner but the full Schubert, Schumann, some of Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, Tchaikowsky, Sibelius (though he is later)?

I agree with you, but it is impossible to say what Beethoven may or may not have liked - My instinct is that of the composers you mention, Schubert, Brahms and Sibelius would have met with some approval but I doubt he would have cared for Liszt, Bruckner or Tchaikovsky.

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'Man know thyself'

[Gurn Blanston]

Originally posted by Peter:
I agree with you, but it is impossible to say what Beethoven may or may not have liked - My instinct is that of the composers you mention, Schubert, Brahms and Sibelius would have met with some approval but I doubt he would have cared for Liszt, Bruckner or Tchaikovsky.

I would suppose that you are correct, but who could know? To YOUR list I would add Dvorak from chaszz's, he was never one to display virtuosity for its own sake, which B also avoided, and in the second half of his career he also became quite concise in his composing, unlike in his earlier efforts (His 72 minute SQ #2 stands out in my mind here!!). I also think he may have liked Tchaikovsky's chamber music, but certainly not the orchestral.
It just seems that there is such an stylistic antithesis that retrospectively we have to say "well, he never heard music like that, how can we know that he wouldn't have liked it?". It is even difficult to assert that he would have liked the music that most closely attempted to emulate his own, although I suppose that is what we have to go with.
Regards, Gurn