Michael Sochynsky

Birth of Modern Europe

Mr. Meyers March 12, 2000

Beethoven

            When the phrase classical music is heard, often the first name that comes to mind is Beethoven. Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most innovative and influential composers of all time. Beethoven was so significant and revolutionary because he was among the first composer who made music for the sole purpose of making music. Before his time composers wrote works for religious services, to teach, or to entertain people at social functions. But people went to hear Beethoven play the piano for the sole purpose of hearing it. As a result of this, he helped music become recognized as an art form of its own, not just something to accompany other things, such as religious services or social functions. He also represents the bridge between classical and romantic composers. In the first period of his life, he mastered the classical form, and as a result, in combination with his gradually going completely deaf, throughout the second half of his composing career he began to develop new styles, which would lead to romantic composition (romantic composition being an extension of classical music with a larger emphasis on lyrical expression and organic unity). Also, along with helping music become recognized as an art form, Beethoven changed the composer’s role in Viennese culture. He made himself equal to the aristocrats that were often his patrons, instead of being inferior to them. Lastly, although this did not contribute to his fame, perhaps to his legacy: Beethoven had a bizarre personal life and was extremely eccentric.

            Beethoven was born December 16, 1770, in the small city of Bonn, Germany. During the late 18^th century the city of Bonn was attempting to mimic the cultural accomplishments of Vienna, and as a result it was the perfect city for Beethoven to grow up in. His father, an alcohol, wanted his son more than anything to become a child prodigy, a second Mozart. He forced his son to practice for hours, and made him perform in front of his friends, often lying about Beethoven’s age to make him seem more impressive. Beethoven was, in fact, exceptionally talented for his age, and by the age of 13 he was playing piano at the opera house in Bonn.

            All aspiring musicians dreamed of going to Vienna, the musical center of Europe. Several famous composers lived or had lived there, including Wolfgang Mozart, Joseph Hadyn, and Franz Shubert. Music was every in Vienna. There were four or five orchestras, several theatres, and two opera houses. All families with money, whether noble or of the bourgeoisie, embraced chamber music. When Beethoven was 17, Maximilian Franz, the man who gave him jobs as a musician in Bonn, granted Beethoven a trip to Vienna where he could study with Mozart. But after 14 days in Vienna, and perhaps two or three lessons with Mozart, Beethoven had to return to Bonn to attend to his dying mother. In 1792, when Beethoven was 22, Franz again allowed Beethoven to go to Vienna, but this time to study with Hadyn. It was during these early years of Beethoven’s life that he mastered the form of classical music. He had mastered the important concept of counterpoint, developed by J.S. Bach. This is the concept of having more than one melody occurring at the same time, either by each hand of the piano player, or by different instruments. This style of traditional music, is considered to be Beethoven’s first of three periods. During this time his most important pieces were his first two symphonies, his first three piano concertos, and several sonatas.

As beautiful as the music Beethoven wrote during this time, it was not very original. It wasn’t until around 1800, the time when he began to go deaf, that Beethoven began to create his own definitive style. Before Beethoven classical music pieces generally had a main theme, which reoccurred constantly throughout the piece. Composers contemporary to Beethoven were trying a new style in which each section of a piece was completely different from the last. Beethoven mixed these two styles by “varying his musical motifs, to rework them, accentuating their characteristics one after the next, to give them different shadings and to bring them into contrasting relations with one another until he had created the sense of development.”[1] This was the beginning of creating something new, something that had never been done before. As Beethoven became more and more deaf, his music became more and more different, breaking barriers. This is believed to be because he could not actually hear his compositions, so he could only imagine what they sounded like, and as a result they came out very different sounding, but beautiful none the less. Several of his major pieces of his second period, were not received well by the citizens of Vienna because they were so different sounding. It wasn’t until later in his life that these pieces were appreciated.

Beethoven not only created a new style of music, but also created a new relationship between the musician and the aristocracy. Before Beethoven, a musician of such excellence almost always held an office or position in the royal court of the city he was living in. He would have to write music by the request of the aristocracy and nobles. While several princes and upper class citizens sponsored Beethoven, he received their money only if it was clear that they were equals. In 1806, Prince Lichnowsky, one of Beethoven’s oldest patrons, wanted Beethoven to play for his friends. Beethoven refused to play. The next day he wrote to the prince, “Prince! What you are, you are by chance and by birth. What I am, I am by myself. There have been, there will be, thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven.”[2] (This quote also reflects the time in which Beethoven was living in. He was celebrating his individuality, just as the philosophes had a half-century before him.) As a result of this letter Prince Lichnowsky fired Beethoven, and he went through a period of financial instability. But he didn’t seem to even care. Beethoven continued to write the music for himself, for the sake of the music, art for the sake of art, not because of the demands of his patrons. Beethoven constantly stressed the fact that he was equal to the aristocracy. Once he was walking along with the poet Goethe when the Empress and several dukes were approaching. He said to Goethe, “Keep hold of my arm. They must make room for us, not we for them.”[3] Goethe stepped aside but Beethoven walked right through the procession. Still, he was always being invited to stay at his noble patron’s houses. But he did what he felt like doing, and ended up spending most of his time alone, writing music, or going on long walks.

As he aged, Beethoven experimented more and more with new types of melodies and styles. He refused to listen to, and when he was deaf, look at, the music of other composers, for fear it would impair his originality. He never let his deafness defeat him. In his famous letter to his brothers, now known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” he wrote he would, “seize fate by the throat” and continue working, no matter what his handicaps were. His deafness became so bad that he could no longer perform publicly or attend dinner parties of his patrons. During this time he wrote some of his most important work. His third symphony, originally was entitled Bonaparte, a tribute to Napoleon, who Beethoven admired greatly. But when Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven was disgusted, he cried out, “Then he too is nothing but an ordinary mortal! Now he too will trample on the rights of man and indulge only in his ambition. He will raise himself above all others and become a tyrant!” Beethoven renamed the symphony, Eroica, which means heroic. During this time he also wrote the Moonlight Sonata.

After 1820, the year he became completely deaf, Beethoven’s music continued to become more and more abstract. Some of it was so difficult that it couldn’t even be played, and as a result wasn’t too popular with the people of Vienna. During this time he also changed the definitions of several forms of music. His Ninth Symphony was over fifty minutes long, the longest in history. Much of the music of his third and final period can’t even be described, a sign of its innovative and inventive quality. Of this period, one scholar wrote:

“Lacking the superrefined harmonic sense of Mozart, he could and did bring something different to music- a propulsive kind of rhythm, a broadening of all musical structures, a kind of development that wrings everything out of the material, a kind of accentuation, often off the beat, that throws the music into uneasy and unexpected metrical patterns, a sheer independence. Beethoven’s music is not polite. What he presented, as no composer before or since, was a feeling of drama, of conflict and resolution. But this is conflict expressed purely in musical terms.”[4]

The music had evolved from something that was just a supplement to other things such as religion or social events, to something that can be interpreted, dissected, and loved for what it is. This is what made Beethoven modern for his time. He helped transform music into art.

Although Beethoven is most famous for his music, is also remembered for his bizarre personal life. This can be contributed to two things. His harsh childhood and abuse he took from his father, and his deafness. Beethoven lived almost solely for creating music. His apartments (I make this word plural because he was forced to move by his landlords as much as three times per year because of complaints from the neighbors and the condition he allowed to apartments to reach.) are a good example of this. Here is a description of his apartment:

“Picture to yourself the darkest, most disorderly place imaginable- blotches of moisture covered the ceiling; and oldish grand piano, on which the dust disputed the place with various pieces of engraved and manuscript music; under the piano (I do not exaggerate) an unemptied chamber pot; beside it a small walnut table accustomed to the frequent overturning of the secretary placed on it; a quantity of pens encrusted with ink, compared with which the proverbial tavern pens would shine; then more music. The chairs mostly cane-seated, were covered with plates bearing the remains of last night’s supper; and with wearing apparel.”[5]

                Beethoven was unpredictable. A story goes that instead of firing the maid who used one of his scores to clean his boot, he burst into laughter. But then he fired one housekeeper because she was telling very flattering, but untrue stories about him. He said, “Anyone who tells a lie, has not a pure heart, and cannot make pure soup.”[6] Beethoven’s deafness caused him to be easily irritable. He once wrote a song for an overweight violinist and titled it, “Praise to the Fat One.” In a restaurant he dumped a plate of stew on the waiter’s head because it wasn’t what he ordered. His deafness, along with a collection of unhappy ending love affairs, Beethoven was depressed for the latter half of his life. He often wrote about considering suicide, but music prevented him. He wrote, “Only Art held back; for, ah, it seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce.”[7] He believed he was extremely ugly, and was, in fact, extremely clumsy when away from the piano. He once described himself as a man who did everything badly except compose music.

            Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 57. Over 20,000 people came to pay their respects, one of out of every ten citizens of Vienna. One of his pallbearers was the famous pianist Hummel. One of his torchbearers was Franz Shubert. Austria’s greatest living writer, Franz Grillparzer, wrote the eulogy, and Mozart’s Requiem was played. Beethoven changed music’s role in Viennese culture, upgraded the status of the musician, and built the bridge from classical music to new styles, including romantic, and even the beginnings of modern composition.