Beethoven: Classic or Romantic?

There has been longstanding debate amongst musicologists as to the classification of

Beethovens musical style as either classical or romantic because his lifetime spans the
two periods. This is further complicated by the fact that Beethovens music does not fit
comfortably into either period; elements of both classicism and romanticism are evident in
his works. This question, however, is generally ill-defined as the labels classical and
romantic are vague terms which have been applied to periods of time by modern
musicologists. This essay will first attempt to define these terms and then to explore the
elements of both classicism and romanticism in the music of Beethoven.

The Classical Period of western music is generally accepted as running from 1750-1820.
Classicism in architecture, literature and the arts sought to emulate the ideals of classical
antiquity, particularly that of Ancient Greece. This new style placed emphasis on order,
hierarchy and contrast. It was this new taste for greater structural clarity that affected the
music of the mid-eighteenth century; composers started to move away from the complex
polyphony of the baroque towards a cleaner, more homophonic style.1 Consequently,
chordal accompaniments became a more prevalent feature of western classical music, in
turn making the tonal structure more audible. As to which composers actually fall into the
classical period is a contentious issue. For example, Friedrich Blume extended the
boundaries of this supposed period back to the middle of the eighteenth century and
forward to include all Schuberts works,2 whereas Charles Rosen restricted what he called
the classical style mainly to the instrumental works of the mature Haydn and Mozart, and

1
2

Roger Kamien, Music: An Appreciation. 6th (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2008)

Friedrich Blume, Classic and Romantic Music: A Comprehensive Survey (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1970)

of Beethoven.3 The fact that there are stylistic similarities between the works of Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven is more easily justified than the existence of a classical period.4

The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that began to
emerge in the second half of the eighteenth century in Europe. In part, it was a revolt
against social and political norms and the rationalisation of nature.5 Musical Romanticism
was marked by emphasis on originality and individuality, personal emotional expression,
and freedom and experimentation of form.6 One of Romanticism's most enduring legacies
is the assertion of nationalism, which became a crucial part of the Romantic arts and
political philosophy.7 The fact that there was a Romantic movement is rarely disputed.8
However, the existence of a distinct Romantic period, however, is open to discussion.
Friedrich Blume writes that the classicism and romanticism are two aspects of the same
musical phenomena just as the are two aspects of one and the same historical period.9

Born into the Classical period in 1770, Beethoven was surrounded by the music of Haydn
and Mozart and was inevitably influenced by their refined, ordered style. The main features
of Beethovens music, the through composed symphony, motivic unity between
movements and rhetorical music, were all present and even originated in the music of

Charles Rosen,The Classical Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972)

Daniel Heartz and Bruce Alan Brown. Classical. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press. Web. 14 Mar. 2013. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/
05889>.
4

5Romanticism,

Encyclopdia Britannica Online (Encyclopdia Britannica Inc., 2013) <http://

www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508675/Romanticism/8417/Visual-arts> (16 Mar. 2013)
6

Ibid.

Jim Samson, Romanticism Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press. <http://
www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/23751> (16 Mar. 2013)
8
9

Ibid.

Friedrich Blume, Classic and Romantic Music: A Comprehensive Survey (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 1970)

Haydn.10 Throughout his life, Beethoven adhered to classical structures in his music, such
as sonata and ritornello forms, though his work was highly innovative from the start.
Beethovens Eroica symphony, written in 1804, can be seen as his first real expansion of
the classical form.11 Firstly, this work is much longer than any of Beethovens preceding
works, being almost twice as long as any of the symphonies by Haydn or Mozart. It also is
structurally different from Beethovens two previous symphonies. The exposition is made
up of a number of varied episodes which is an expansion on the simple classical sonata
form, showing Beethovens originality and ability to develop styles.12

Beethovens works not only distinguish themselves from those of any prior composer
through his developments of the classical structure to create large, extended structures
with vast development of musical material, but his use of harmony is also innovative.13
Although Haydn's later works often showed a greater fluidity between distant keys,
Beethoven developed this to rapidly establish stability in distant keys using new
techniques for modulation.14 This larger harmonic vocabulary creates a sense of a more
vast musical space, and the development of musical material creates a sense of unfolding
drama in this space, which implies a more Romantic style.

Beethovens frequent evasion of tonic-dominant relations in a single movement may make

his musical style appear to be closer to that of Chopin or Liszt. In the music of Haydn and
Mozart, the tonic-dominant relationship is a prevalent feature; their music nearly always
resolves to the tonic through the dominant. This is much less fundamental in romantic
10

Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) p.64

11

Charles Rosen,The Classical Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972) p.392

12

Ibid., p.392

13

Joseph Kerman, et al. Beethoven, Ludwig van. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40026>. (17 Mar. 2013)
14

Charles Rosen,The Classical Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972) p.392

works: Chopins A flat ballade never uses E-flat major. From early on Beethoven attempted
to find substitutes for the dominant.15 For example, in the first movement of his piano
sonata in C major (Op.2, No.3), Beethoven experiments with establishing the more remote
key of the dominant minor before finally modulating to the dominant at the end of the
exposition.16 Despite seeming startlingly modern for its time, Beethovens harmonic
freedom is of a different nature to that of the Romantic composers. His secondary
tonalities add to an increasing tension with an imperative need for resolution, unlike the
diminishing tension implied by the more romantic harmonies of Chopin and Liszt.17 Rosen
writes: [Beethovens] expansion of the large-scale harmonic range took place within the
limits of the classical language and never infringed upon the tonic-dominant polarity.18
This shows that Beethovens harmonic language, and the drama it helps to build, is merely
a development of the tension and release found in the music of Haydn and Mozart.

Critics have long drawn links between Beethovens troubled life and his music, claiming
that his music, and the drama depicted by it, is a product of deeper feelings and that it is
this feature alone that distinguishes his music form that of Haydn and Mozart.19 E. T. A.
Hoffmann writes that Beethovens music is different because deep within his music dwells
the romanticism of his heart20 Beethovens pastoral symphony (No.6) shows aspects of
this emotional romanticism. Although it is fundamentally a classical symphony in form
(actually in five movements, though the fourth is treated as an expanded introduction to

15

Ibid., p.382

16

Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata in C Major, Op.2, No.3 (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co, 1876)

17

Charles Rosen,The Classical Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972) p.383

18

Ibid.

19

K. M. Knittel, Discussions of Beethovens style.

20

E. T. A. Hoffmann, in Forbes (ed.), Symphony No.5 in C Minor (London: Chappell, 1971) pp.152-3

the finale)21 it highly influenced by the fashionable doctrine of art as the painting of
feelings and sentiments.22 Beethoven uses musical imagery to portray nature in his
Pastoral Symphony, for example the representation of birdcalls in the solo cadenza.23
These features all point to a much more emotionally involved, Romantic style of
composition than that of Haydn and Mozart, implying Beethoven was a Romantic
composer.

The emergence of German nationalism as a byproduct of the Romantic movement in the

early nineteenth century also had a profound effect on the view of Beethoven as a
Romantic composer. As Knittel writes: Beethoven appealed to the nationalists because he
represented unarguable greatness that could easily be mapped onto Germany itself.24
The nationalists believed that Beethovens music portrayed a strong, powerful, masculine
image which links to the emotional and representative nature of the romantic movement.
Czerny writes that Beethovens music is serious, strong, noble [and] extremely full of
feeling.25 This personification of music for use as a nationalistic symbol coupled with
assigning these seemingly male attributes to the music of Beethoven reveals more about
the philosophy of the time than that of Beethovens actual music. However, this inevitably
influenced how Beethoven was seen in his own time: as a national hero, the embodiment
of the burgeoning Romanticism.26

21

Charles Rosen,The Classical Style (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972) p.401

22

Ibid.

23

Ibid.

24

K. M. Knittel

25

Carl Czerny, Die Kunst des Vortrags, Supplement zur grossen Pianoforte-Schule, Op. 500 (Vienna, 1844)
p.50
26

Richard Taruskin, Oxford History of Western Music Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

In conclusion, Beethoven bridged the Classical and Romantic periods. While his formal
musical techniques were fundamentally Classical, his musics intensely personal feeling
and use of programmatic elements provided an important model for 19th-century Romantic
composers.27 As Paul Henry Lang wrote: What he did was to make a new synthesis of
classicism and hand it down to the next century.28 However, the question of whether
Beethoven was a classic or romantic is altogether meaningless in the context of his time,
when such a boundary between classic and romantic did not exist. These clear cut periods
are an artificial modern creation used to simplistically categorise music. No musical period
is able to stand alone: influences from the past and predictions of the future inevitably
influence the present which leads to a flowing, continuous scale of time. It is therefore
impossible to dissect and bound historical time by dates. Only one fact is of importance in
this debate: Beethoven undoubtedly transformed the musical culture he was born into,
regardless of the label we assign to it.

27

Kathleen Kuiper, et al. Romanticism, Encyclopdia Britannica Online (Encyclopdia Britannica Inc.,
2013) <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508675/Romanticism/8417/Visual-arts> (16 Mar. 2013)
28

Paul Henry Lang, The Creative World of Beethoven (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971)

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