Beethoven’s audacious acts of musical risk-taking
spectator.co.uk
spectator.co.uk
I'm not a musician, so I don't grasp it at the level of the author, but wow. They are dreamy, sublime, mesmerizing. I've been listening to them for 15 years and they are still a favorite. (Review: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/beethoven-late-piano-son...)
If I remember aright, it's this book that describes the nerves of the performer preparing to hit the fortissimo opening interval of the Hammerklavier sonata, knowing that half the audience is secretly hoping they'll miss.
I would highly recommend "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" for anyone with the perseverance: https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Anguish-Triumph-Jan-Swaffor...
On a musical note (heh), it's also interesting to learn that he was one of the first people to play and compose for a proper piano. I guess that's what makes his piano works "richer" than those of the older composers (Bach notwithstanding).
".. Goethe and Beethoven, who were together at a spa resort when they unexpectedly met a party of German royalty on the street. Goethe deferentially stood aside and removed his hat, while Beethoven kept his hat firmly on his head and plowed through the royal group, forcing them to make way—which they did, while offering the composer friendly greetings."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/design-for-liv...
Beethoven also led the way in piano technology, demanding that manufacturers increase the loudness and range. He would publish music that required more and more range, which would encourage musicians to buy new pianos. As such, Beethoven had very good relations with the manufacturers who often sent him pianos to try out. Jan Swafford's book "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" (recommended above) has many more wonderful stories, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Similarly, the syncopated harmonic rhythm in the final movement of the last Sonata #32 (opus 111) doesn't throw you off as much when you are reading the score and have the bar lines to reinforce where the measure boundaries fall.
I speculate that if Beethoven had been able to hear those pieces played aloud, he would have made adjustments to them. I hear similar glitches in much of late Beethoven, but those two sections from those two sonatas are the ones that stay with me the most.
> I don't know any other piece of music that has such a thick layer of false tradition on it like this one.
As well as taking issue with the name - deriving from the poet Ludwig Rellstab which has "stuck like glue" - he notes that the manuscript for the slow first movement, adagio sostenuto (slowly and sustained), is marked alla breve[2] meaning "count two in a bar" so that each beat counts for a pair of the famous triplets[3] - effectively doubling the tempo:
> If you would play it in this tempo that is usually played [plays a bar at conventional speed] you can have breakfast and lunch and dinner and the poor pianist is still playing this first ...
Not content with this disruption of "Moonlight" convention, he relates that the manuscript writes senza sordino, instructing the player to play the whole first movement "without the dampers".
Despite the protestations of his colleagues that "you cannot do it on the modern piano":
> I beg to differ. Why can't you do it on the modern piano? Have you tried it? They said "No I haven't tried it. But you cannot do it!"
> It's an argument just not good enough. Beethoven is a great great enough composer that you have to take him very seriously. [...] He wanted a very special sound, that the harmonies swim together like in a wash and the overtones are strengthening each other.
His solution to the "modern piano" problem is simple: just partially raise the dampers by pressing the pedal down "about a third".
All this might sound like a recipe for disaster, but his interpretation sounds wonderful!
A lot more follows, and I can also recommend his "Moonlight" masterclass[4] as a demonstration of the cogency of his position on the piece.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_Dv_GNQAo
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_breve
Also bear in mind that Beethoven was obsessed with the idea of variation: he took a theme and knew how to run with it. So in his later years, I expect he was also open to much more experimentation. One of his great themes is in the opening of the 2nd movement of the symphony #7, which one of my favourites of all my many favourites of this exquisite human being.
Does anyone know of similar biographies of other famous composers? Ones that tell stories of the composer's lives as well as give detailed analyses of their works?
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yFp02cwPHkqHnUeZCLjR5?si=...
This might also be said of the John Eliot Gardiner version[1] Performed on period instruments, which seems to expose detail, it flies through the first movement at the hard rockin' tempo of 108 bpm as per Beethoven's score - a refreshing change of pace if you're more used to lugubrious conventional performances.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNtb-ly1I_k (full performance)
If "achievement" is to be read as influence, that's most likely due to Beethoven's compositional process being tractable and, therefore, imitable by mid- to late-period Romantic composers (and later, 20th century composers).
A young composer can be taught to take a motive (short pattern of intervals and rhythms) and transform it to accumulate a phrase of music that is greater than the sum of its parts. If you add to that the possibility to interrupt the flow with related melodic fragments so that the melody seems to "comment" upon itself, you already have a rich set of tools from which to create a dynamic section of music. It's unlikely it will sound anything as sophisticated as what Beethoven wrote. But it will likely be coherent.
Now compare that to this:
* learn to read, remember, improvise upon, and mash up all the musics of continental Europe
* when asked to write a piece, think of the most fitting styles and textures from what you learned (and sometimes, mash them up to make new ones), improvise some new content for that, and then write it down
* if you know your musicians, tailor the music specifically to any special skills or limitations (including yourself)
* put in various types of musical jokes to amuse yourself and the performers
So suppose you are a budding composer and want to express your support for universal human solidarity. Do you chose as your model music from a composer who masterfully employs Romantic irony for the singer to interrupt the symphony that was previously in progress (Beethoven's 9th) to sing about universal brotherhood?
Or do you choose the composer who masterfully mashed up three dances in three disparate time signatures showing how three different social classes could all make merry together in agreeable harmony (Mozart's Don Giovanni)?
Keep in mind that if you choose the latter you need to conduct and cue three different groups from the orchestra so they know when to start and can remain synchronized.
Given hundreds of years the musical legacy tends toward Beethoven more than Mozart for this reason. Still, I'd bet if you measured 9th Symphony references to Mozart's Requiem, the latter wouldn't be too far behind. Heck, Mozart died after writing only eight measures of the Lacrimosa and I've heard that in at least 4 different Netflix shows this year.
The risk payed off grandly. Moonlight Sonata could easily be a soundtrack for a 2020 movie (if everyone hadn't already known it).
It says on Wikipedia that the piece was popular already at the time, so maybe it was not such a big risk, but I have to say it sounds like (or maybe it inspired) contemporary piano music.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_(Beethoven...