Chapter 21 -- Ludwig Van Beethoven

Chapter 21 -- Ludwig van Beethoven Illustration 1: Excerpt of manuscript of Symphony No 9 in d minor by Ludwig van Beethoven (courtesy of Petrucci Music Library) A dilemma: where does one properly put Beethoven? If we analyze and listen to his earliest music, it is as much a part of the Classical tradition as that of his famous teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn. His first compositions included the standard forms of sonatas, concerti, symphonies, string quartets, etc. And, at the end of his life, he was still composing sonatas, concerti, symphonies, string quartets, etc. However, if we try to pigeonhole his late music into the Classical style, it just doesn’t work. One of the most striking changes is that Beethoven's personality engulfs his music. Added to that, the harmonies, the technical difficulties, the unusual structures in his later compositions seem more appropriate to a much later era. During the 19th century, the Romantic Era splintered off into two directions: one inspired by the strict discipline of the Classical Era, focusing on time-honored structure and forms—the traditionalists. The other was a truly innovative Romantic style where formal structure took a back seat to freedom of expression—the music was the story of the artist's personal journey—the rebels. Not surprisingly, each side had contempt for the opposing viewpoint. And. both of them trace their origins and inspiration to Ludwig van Beethoven. How is it possible for one man to have that much influence on the next several generations of musicians? It's a remarkable story and stands alone in the history of music. and this is the reason that Beethoven deserves his own chapter. HIS STORY IN SYMPHONIES Illustration 2: Fourth Movement of Symphony No 5 in C minor by Ludwig van Beethoven It's not mandatory to know the story of a composer's life in order to listen to his music, but sometimes knowing his back story adds a depth that aids in understanding of why the composer did what he did. Unfortunately with Beethoven, this has difficulties. While a number of detailed biographies were written by Beethoven's contemporaries, modern research suggests that some of these authors were more than a little loose with the truth. Parts of the manuscripts are accurate, but we now know that some events have been fabricated wholesale. Generally, something that is inaccurate or inconsistent is worse than nothing at all—which is why many of the biographies of him are worse than useless. What do we have, then, that can tell us a true story of his life and put his enormous talents in perspective? One of them is a set of conversation books Beethoven used after he lost his hearing. If a visitor wanted to ask him questions, he would write his question in one of the books. Beethoven would read the question and then answer verbally. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, the material is quite one-sided and we’ll never know what his responses were. However, the best answer can be found in his music. Unlike the biographies, it tells no lies. It is his pure unfiltered voice. Through it, we can follow the trail of his development into one of the greatest and most influential minds in Western culture. In contrast to much of the music business today, his music was not arranged, padded out, corrected, or exaggerated. There was no collaboration, no producer or arranger to come along and flesh out ideas. Minus a few relatively minor copying errors here or there, his published work is the pure raw thoughts and emotions that Beethoven experienced—and communicated. Beethoven’s manuscripts are definitive primary sources. As we've seen earlier, notation is a storage device that preserves the meticulous detail of the parameters necessary to reconstruct the performance of a piece of music. However, it preserves much more. On a very basic level—and perhaps this is more relevant to the point of what music is all about—a piece of music itself is a storage device for emotions. The notes, the rests, the harmonies, melodies, dynamics are simply the delivery mechanism for the thoughts and feelings of a human being. It is similar to a computer program that executes a series of commands. However, instead of generating calculations, it generates a sequence of emotions that manipulate the listener through a pattern of feelings. As we've seen, we in the West tend to be very specific with this emotional program; we are obsessed with the great detail of musical notation and to perform it exactly as written (and then argue endlessly about those details). And, some psychologists and neurologists go even further. They argue that as motions can convey emotion (imagine someone walking into a room and slamming his briefcase down on the table—that's a very clear communication), it's perfectly logical that a wide variety of emotions are communicated in the motions a performer uses to play piano music. This is obviously something that only a performer would be able to experience. There are many layers to a musical composition, but the emotions may well be the most important one. It’s also not just music that does this--on a very basic level, plays, films, books, etc. are also programs of emotions. Beethoven composed in all of the common classical mediums during his life. It could just as easy to make the case to trace his life by way of his 17 string quartets or his 32 piano sonatas. This chapter will focus on his nine symphonies for a number of reasons. First, as a general body of music they are the most accessible of his major compositions, and the most popular (for example, an Amazon.com search for “Beethoven complete symphonies” gets almost 2,700 results). Second, as musical statements they represent a group of work he labored over very seriously. For Beethoven and those that followed him, the symphony is a parallel to a novel by a writer – a very complex and involved work of art. When Beethoven composed his first symphony, his work was very much in the classical model of his teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn. At his death in 1827, he had completely transformed the medium and had become the greatest innovator of his time. Nearly 200 years after his death, anyone who composes a piece of music called a symphony is still walking in the composer's footsteps. Two centuries after his death, his symphonies remain the most popular and most performed of any composer. Herbert von Karajan, the most recorded conductor of the 20th century, recorded the complete symphonies four times on audio recordings. In addition, he filmed two more complete performances of the nine. For orchestra conductors trying to establish a repuation, they are the gold standard upon which a performer’s reputation is measured. A recent published collection of Beethoven's music fills out 85 cds—that's a lot of music for someone who only lived to age 57. What might be surprising is that for being such an innovator and a prolific composer, Beethoven often had difficulty getting his ideas to a point where he was satisfied with them, unlike his contemporaries. Melodies seem to have flowed effortlessly out of Mozart—in every year of his adult life he singlehandedly composed more music than the Beatles did during their entire career. Haydn's assertion that he sometimes had to get down on his knees to pray for musical inspiration often gets a chuckle out of musicians who know his tremendous output and wonder how one person could compose such an amount of music in one lifetime regardless of him claiming that he needed divine help. We know from Beethoven's sketchbooks that he had no such luck. His music sometimes seems as if it had to be chiseled out of stone one note at a time. Beethoven worked intensely on pieces of music, sometimes taking years and revision after revision until he was satisfied with it. Living to age 77, Haydn composed nearly 110 symphonies. Mozart died at age 35 and composed over 40 of them. Beethoven died at age 57, composing only nine symphonies with sketches for a tenth left incomplete. Nine compared to 40 or 110? How is it that many consider this man to be the greatest symphonist who ever lived? Unlike his predecessors, his music was not created for the purpose of light entertainment for nobility. This was a new era demanding different works from its creative artists. His intense revision process, coupled with a brilliantly creative imagination, (and a stubborn personality as witnessed in his music) refined ideas to a peak never seen before. The early 19th century was a time when audiences were demanding a much more personal, individual vision. With composers now having the freedom—intellectual freedom as well as financial freedom—to compete with each other for the public's favor, all of those factors contributed to a somewhat smaller outputi. The musical era starting in the early 19th century is often described as “The celebration of the individual” and we can see this characteristic taking hold early in Beethoven's life and output. It was an intense era, an era full of promise and change. Economics had changed to where the middle class had enough clout to be a factor in the music market. Public concerts were common and now a venue for an artist to earn serious amounts of money staging them. Beethoven became quite well known during his lifetime and died a comfortably wealthy man, due in part to being a ruthless businessman.

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