Ella Nagy

BA Instrumental, Year 2, Semester 2

History of Music Essay

The Effects of society in music making

A study of Vienna

The outlook for artists living and working in Vienna in the Classical era was not so
profitable for all. For travelling artists, the scene was even less fruitful. Wealthy
households that once had their own orchestras, dismissed their players and now the
instrumentalists relied on income from their job as players of theater orchestras. Their
expected salary ranged from 200 to 300 gulden. At this time, realistically only pianoforte
players earned a decent income from performing. Public concerts were not regular in the
eighteen-hundreds, except for the four of the scheduled charity concerts for the ‘Fund for
the Musicians’ Widows’. Haydn’s The Creation was performed at one of these concerts,
with an orchestra with a two-hundred member orchestra consisting of the most skilled
musicians. It’s the work that brings in the most amount of money, with a piece that is
precisely calculated to impress and please. Haydn no doubt had the intentions of causing
great effects. During the eighteen-hundreds, there was not such a vibrant scene in music
performing as one would assume so when thinking of Vienna. It had no devoted orchestra
as the pay was not appealing enough and most of the musicians bailed out if an
opportunity arose to earn more money with another musical engagement. Composers and
performers often had to rent theatres at high costs, this resulted in very rare instances of
international artists performing in Vienna. Beethoven hired the Burgtheater in April of
1800 to premier Symphony no.1, his Septet one of his piano concerti, as well as these
works, he also included some works by Mozart and Haydn. This concert was extremely
well received although much criticism was made about the lack of respect for the soloist
during the concerto. During the years of 1800 and 1802 Beethoven composed many
works such as the Moonlight Sonata, and a ballet called The Creatures of Prometheus
which received many performances and Beethoven seeing an opportunity to appeal to the
Viennese, quickly composed a piano version too. Beethoven at this point was a very
important profile in the Viennese society, he was appointed the composer in residence in
the Theater an der Wien and one of the many performances put on by the composer was
the premier of his Second Symphony, Third Piano Concerto and the oratorio; Christ on
the Mount of Olives. He was so popular that ticket prices cost three times more than
typical concert tickets of the time and the event was still well attended. Patrons played an
important role in how and what Beethoven composed. While earning his income from
performing, publishing, Beethoven heavily depended on the financial assistance of his
patrons. The generous support was reciprocated by private performances and
commissioned compositions. His most important patron being the Archduke Rudolph
studied piano and composition with the maestro. In an attempt to keep Beethoven in
Vienna, a group of aristocrats agreed to pay 4000 flores to Beethoven and only Archduke
Rudolph paid his share of this sum. During the middle period or the heroic period,
Beethoven took a new approach to composing. His Eroica Symphony, no. 3 was the
largest symphony to date, some listeners celebrated it to be a masterpiece and some
complained about its length and its ambiguous structure. Works such as symphonies from
the third through to the eight, the Waldstein and the Appassionata piano sonatas, and the
Fidelio opera are some of the compositions written in this period. Beethoven’s late
period spanned from the year of 1812 until his death in 1827.

With the beginning of the industrial revolution and the bourgeoisie state leadership, there
were changes taking place at this time. The social change saw the replacement of the
maestro di cappella, now being the independent musician. The old maestro di cappella
was pretty much a servant to a wealthy family. He had to compose and conduct
performances, purchase instruments, maintain their conditions and to also upkeep the
musical library. Compositions were not possessions of the composer himself, but
possessions of the head of family. Compositions could not be published without the
consent of the master, and so the maestro di cappella had no way of making money
independently. Even Beethoven had to agree to exclusive rights lasting from half-a-year
to one full year and only after this time has passed was he able to publish his works.
Many a times works were written for the master’s private orchestras such as Lobkowitz
and Prince Esterhazy. Once a composer or musician was assigned to and employed by a
family, they could not agree to engagements offered outside of the family, or at least not
without authorisation. The numbers of employees of the absolute patronage fell in decline
in the second half of the eighteenth-century. The final blow which abolished the absolute
patronage was as a result of wars and revolutions. By eighteen-fifteen, musicians became
independent in almost all of Europe. The source of income for these now independent
musicians were from three main areas: publishing their own works, teaching music
lessons to wealthy families and public performances. The aristocracy played an important
role in creating the tradition for concerts as there was close correspondence between the
aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. They organised concerts open to the public in their
homes such as in Prince Lichnowsky’s house where both amateurs and professionals
could play. As this worked so well, there was not an immediate need for establishing the
kind of large-scale concert experience that was taking place in other cities, in London and
Paris as an example. The visitation of an English man changed this for the better, Philipp
Martin, who upon his visit to Vienna, organised a concert and featured Mozart in it. Now
musicians could hire theatres such as the Burghtheater and collect their own profits from
their performances. As the printing business flourished and composers were putting
music out at astonishing speed. New printing techniques made this possible, the new
method which employed a special type of limestone allowed for a less costly and faster
way of printing. Music lovers of the upper class wanted to get insight to compositions by
taking lessons with the composers and this created ample work as tutors of the
contemporary composers of Vienna. Advancement of piano-production took place by the
Heyne and Stein families of Vienna, achieving better strength in volume and a more
pleasing tone than before.
The French Revolution which lasted from 1789 to 1813 caused great upheavals in both
social and political sense. As a result, the values and rights of man, the importance of
virtue and expressing feelings were much explored themes. Beethoven’s music features
feelings of depression and a lack of self-control when it comes to expressing emotions,
mainly negative ones. He was said to be an untamed person with an eruptive character.
Beethoven was not always on good terms with Vienna. He complained about its ‘poor’
orchestras and the worsening conditions for musicians. Beethoven as a composer chose
not to dwell on the past and concentrated on his fellow contemporaries more than his
predecessors. He also took great interest in the development of instruments. Amongst his
works, one can often see annotations discussing the problems that he ran into with
instruments due to their under-development states. His favourite instrument being the
pianoforte – he preferred this instrument, due to its ability to sing melodies and the ability
to produce sounds of two or three octaves in distance. It also fascinated him to be able to
play legato or staccato. Beethoven succeeded like no one before with creating
momentum and holding interest. He regarded the weakest point in his sonatas, the
transition between the development and the recapitulation. Beethoven made unusual
advancements to his version of sonata form, often opening with an adagio section which
then, in an unrelating way jumps to the allegro section – the speed that is otherwise
expected to be followed. This can be seen in the Sonate pathetique op. 13. Beethoven
followed the standard rate of harmonic change and altered the skeletal sonata traits
mainly in his late years of composing. He was different from Mozart and Haydn by his
frequent modulations to related and unrelated keys, the use of added ninths in chords,
unprepared dissonances (suspensions), frequent use of the bass register and most
importantly, the slowing down of harmonic rhythm. Beethoven used syncopated rhythms
emphasised by sforzandi, and off-beat accents. Beethoven, a deep-thinker is a challenge
to understand when it comes to trying to fulfill his wishes when playing his works. There
has always been great debate about the right tempi and characters, due to Beethoven’s
colorful way of writing and lack of explanation for his often mood changes in the music.
In 1809, Vienna was invaded for the second time. Beethoven remained in the city and
continued to compose. He severely criticised the war which was interrupting his life as a
musician and the flourishing music scene in general. One could say that Beethoven
ventured out on the Romantic music feel from this point on. He employed smoother
thematic material and writes in a Viennese style – now in a sympathetic way. One can
hear elements of Schubert and elements of a ballade like style. Beethoven considered the
idea of magic as boring and wished not to get involved in the worlds of die zauberflöte. It
is no doubt that with the effects of the industrial revolution of the time, Beethoven was
able to write more compelling compositions due to the increasing abilities of instruments.
The main effects of the industrial revolution being the improvement of resources to
produce instruments made the production faster and thus easier to access.
The impact of the industrial revolution saw the improvement of instrument making due to
more available technical abilities and of course this in turn influenced the way composers
wrote and how the composed. The range of the piano extended and the piano became
iron-framed with strings that were cross-stringed which all contributed to a much bigger
and fuller sound. Leading on to the next era, the start of Romanticism, Liszt was known
to experiment with playing Beethoven symphonies on the piano, achieving an impressive
and entertaining sound. The double escapement concept which was invented in 1812 by
Sébastien Erard largely influenced future composers. This system of repetition which
incorporates a spring and a lever to allow for rapid repetition on an upright piano. Of
course, one must not forget about the addition of valves to brass instruments especially
the improvements made to trumpets. The brass parts became much more interesting, and
also, woodwind instruments became in-tune, well-pitched instruments due to the key and
the rod mechanisms. Prior to this extension to production, woodwind instruments were
often out of tune and alternative fingering had to be considered with such awkward
passages to combat this issue. With the current mass production of instruments,
instrument buying and playing became much more accessible to all. Now music playing
was possible to the entire population and it was no longer reserved for the rich and the
intellectual.
Bibliography:
http://www.pianos.fr/en/double-echappement-piano-373.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
The Age of Mozart and Beethoven by Giorgio Pestelli, Cambridge University Press
The Growth of Music by H. C. Colles
Music in the Western World, A History in Documents, selected and annotated by Piero
Weiss and Richard Taruskin, Second Edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vienna
https://www.coursera.org/lecture/introclassicalmusic/21-2-musical-instruments-and-the-
industrial-revolution-YQ8o8
https://www.quora.com/What-major-influences-did-the-Industrial-Revolution-have-on-
music
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/amcm/hd_amcm.htm