Ludwig van Beethoven

1770-1827
How did Beethoven’s career
reflect changes in Viennese
musical culture?
What were Beethoven’s
major compositional
innovations?
Beethoven’s Compositional Innovations

- Importance of instrumental music: instrumental sonatas elevated to the

same scale and “seriousness” as symphonies. Expanded length of
instrumental works.
- Constant experiments with novel sonorities
- Contrapuntal textures
- Transgresses normal limits of overall formal plans (3-movement sonatas,
4-movement symphonies) and of the internal “fixed” forms (Sonata,
Minuet, Rondo)
How do Beethoven’s middle
and late periods anticipate
Romanticism?
Beethoven’s “Heroic” Period: 1803-13
“I must confess that I am living a miserable life. Symphonies no. 3-8
For almost two years I have ceased to attend
any social functions, just because I find it Fidelio (opera)
impossible to say to people: I am deaf.” (June
1801) Piano Concertos no. 4-5, Violin Concerto

“But little more and I would have put an end to Five String Quartets
my life -- only art is what held me back: ah! It
seemed impossible to leave the world until I had Piano Sonatas (through op. 90)
produced all that I felt called upon to produce.”
- The Heiligenstadt Testament (1802)
Beethoven’s Romantic Ideals
- Wordless instrumental music can be a viable medium for the expression of
abstract ideas.
(Liberté, fraternité, égalité: The French Revolution)

- Moral value of artwork: art must ennoble and purify the audience
Having been granted powers greater than those afforded to others, it was his duty
to exercise these powers and compose for the betterment of mankind

- Balance between traditional discipline/framework and the freedom that comes

with outbursts of emotional expression or inner serenity
Symphony no. 3, “Eroica”, op. 55 (1803)
String Quartet in C-sharp Minor,
op. 131

How is this work representative

of Beethoven’s late style?
Beethoven’s Late Period: 1813-27

Beethoven’s production fell off markedly. Last 5 Piano Sonatas

Incredible popularity around the time of the Diabelli Variations

Congress of Vienna (Wellington’s Victory),
recedes soon after. Symphony No. 9

Late music is difficult to play and to hear - shows Missa solemnis

the split between “popular” and “elite” musical
Last String Quartets
culture in Vienna
Beethoven’s Compositional Innovations:
Late Period
- Importance of instrumental music: instrumental sonatas elevated to the
same scale and “seriousness” as symphonies. Expanded length of
instrumental works. - pieces grew to gigantic proportions
- Constant experiments with novel sonorities - explored and exceeded
extreme ranges of voices and instruments
- Contrapuntal textures - fugues appear with regularity
- Transgresses normal limits of overall formal plans (3-movement sonatas,
4-movement symphonies) and of the internal “fixed” forms (Sonata,
Minuet, Rondo) - challenges basic premises of these conventions
String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, op. 131
(1826)
String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, op. 131
String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, op. 131
 How was Beethoven’s
Romanticism described and
received in his time?
E. T. A. Hoffmann
Poet, critic, composer, theatre manager, public servant.

Linked Beethoven’s music to the aesthetics of German Idealism (Platonic

Idealism, Neo Plationism)

“Beethoven’s instrumental music opens to us also the realm of the

monumental and immeasurable.”

“Beethoven’s music sets in motion the levers of fear, awe, horror, suffering,
and wakens just that infinite longing which is the essence of Romanticism.”
Romantic Irony

“Irony is the form paradox takes. Everything that is at once great and good is
paradoxical.” - Friedrich Schlegel

- Aims at something more than mere jest: a series of reversals and

incongruities, leading beyond the mundane to the unresolved infinite
“Beethoven’s Shadow”
- Few of Beethoven’s successors produced many string quartets.
- Piano sonatas became the main focus of new theoretical systems:
Schenker, Schoenberg.
- Symphonies and overtures are considered touchstones of the orchestral
literature. Schumann, Hoffmann and others compared Beethoven’s
importance to orchestral music to Shakespeare’s significance to drama.
- Insistent motivic working, expansion of sonic possibilities, manipulation
of structure ripple through instrumental music and opera.
- Assertions about music as profound and sacred, and about the divine
creativity of artists shape how music and musicians are regarded.