The art of music, Vol. 02 (of 14) : $b Classicism and Romanticism
History
The art of music, Vol. 02 (of 14) : $b Classicism and Romanticism
Music -- History and criticism; Musicians
Beethoven’s works extend to every field of composition. They include
five concertos for piano and orchestra, one concerto for violin and
orchestra, sixteen quartets for strings, ten sonatas for piano and
violin, thirty-eight sonatas for piano, one opera, two masses, nine
overtures and nine symphonies--about forty vocal and less than two
hundred instrumental compositions in all. The division of the work into
three periods, made by von Lenz in 1852 is, on the whole, a useful
and just classification, when due allowance is made for the periods
overlapping and merging into each other according to the different
species of composition. The ideas of his mature life expressed
themselves earlier in the sonatas than in the symphonies; therefore the
first period, so far as the sonatas are concerned, ends with opus 22
(1801), while it includes the Second Symphony, composed, as has been
noted, in 1802. Individual exceptions to the classification also occur,
as, for example, the Quartet in F minor, which, though composed during
the first period, shows strongly many of the characteristics of the
second. In general, however, the early works may be said to spring from
the pattern set by Haydn and Mozart. In regard to this Grove says: ‘He
began, as it was natural and inevitable he should, with, the best style
of his day--the style of Mozart and Haydn, with melodies and passages
that might be almost mistaken for theirs, with compositions apparently
molded in intention on them. And yet even during this Mozartian epoch
we meet with works or single movements which are not Mozart, which
Mozart perhaps could not have written, and which very fully reveal the
future Beethoven.’
In spite of being fully conscious of himself and knowing the power
that was in him, Beethoven never was an iconoclast or radical. He was
rather a builder whose architectural traditions came from ancient,
well-accredited sources, in kinship probably somewhat closer to Haydn
than to Mozart, though traces of Mozart are clearly evident. ‘The
topics are different, the eloquence is more vivid, more nervous, more
full-blooded--there is far greater use of rhythmic gesture, a far
more intimate and telling appeal to emotion, but in point of actual
phraseology there is little that could not have been written by an
unusually adult, virile, and self-willed follower of the accepted
school. It is eighteenth century music raised to a higher power.’[61]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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