The Myth behind Beethoven - Case Study Example

Full Ludwig Van Beethoven: The Myth behind the Man Ludwig Van Beethoven is a well-known in music. His compositions continue to be regarded as exceptional masterpieces by both critics and the general public alike. There is no iota of doubt that he has contributed greatly to the Classic and Romantic period of musicology through his works. To date, his works remain one of the most critically-acclaimed pieces of music and continue to influence musicians and composers throughout the world. There is increasing debate amongst music composers and scholars about the type of music that he composed. As mentioned above, Beethoven was a leading figure during the Romantic era of European art music. However many experts argue that he was not a Romantic composer and they refute any opposite claims made by other scholars. In order to understand the origins of this debate, and the various sides of arguments that have stemmed from it, one needs to explore the Romantic era and the influences it has had on Enlightenment and aesthetics. This paper provides a comprehensive insight into these arguments and discusses if Beethoven’s partiality towards Romanticism is essentially a myth or has some substance. The first half of the paper would explore the works of Beethoven and trace how his virtuosity brought him at par with the most notable musicians and composers of history. In the later part of the essay, the myth behind Beethoven is explored, followed with a conclusion. Beethoven is regarded as a transitional composer from the Classical to the Romantic period. The Classical time period extends from 1730 to 1820. The Romantic period followed the Classical period, and lasted from 1815 to 1910. Beethoven lived most of his life in the Classical period; however, he spent the last years of his life in the Romantic era. Chronologically speaking, Beethoven composed mainly in the Classical era, and his works are depictive of the traits that are typical of music produced in that time period. This was primarily due to the influences of Mozart and Haydn, as discussed later. Nevertheless, Beethoven became more passionate and intense in the later part of his life and his works are synonymous to the Romantic type of music. Therefore, Beethoven is not purely a Classic or a Romantic. He shows gradual transition from the production of symphonies, concertos, sonatas to string quartets towards the end of his life. Therefore, this paper contains Beethoven’s biography and works both from the Classical and Romantic era. Beethoven was a German music composer and pianist. Born in 1770 in Bonn, Germany, he was the second child of his family. He had six other brothers and sisters, of whom four died in their childhood. Although Ludwig Beethoven survived, his childhood was marked with a dysfunctional and poor family life. His relations with his family members were not very pleasant. However, it was early in his childhood that he began to manifest his talents. His father was his first music teacher, who taught him how to play the piano. He was a child prodigy, and his father tried exploiting this to his advantage. He was aware of the popularity of Mozart as a child prodigy, and it has been rumored that he treated Beethoven harshly and pressurized him a lot to compete with Mozart. At the age of nine, Beethoven came under the tutorage of Christian Gottlob Neefe, who taught him how to write composition. With the guidance and mentorship of Neefe, Beethoven wrote his first published composition, and was soon employed by Neefe. His works are classified into Early, Middle and Late periods. The works he produced during his stay in Bonn are generally classed under the Early period. By the age of seventeen, Beethoven was the sole breadwinner of his family and after the death of his mother, the responsibility of raising his two younger brothers fell on his shoulders. With the increasing support of arts and education by Maximilian Franz, Beethoven was relieved of some of his responsibilities. He also met Mozart in 1787 in Vienna. During his lifetime, Beethoven experienced three musical rebirths and this was his first. During this period of time, he composed effectively. He then moved to Vienna to study with Joseph Haydn. It was here in Vienna that he was greatly appreciated and lauded as a virtuoso pianist. As Greenberg notes, Beethoven was living in Vienna with a reputation of an excellent pianist in a city that was mad for pianists (The Teaching Company). During his time with Haydn, Beethoven learnt the art of motivic development. He also learnt how to use tones to make procedures in sonatas. He also picked up aesthetic disposition from Haydn; this helped him master the art of delivering his music to the audience in order to achieve the most impact. Although his popularity spread far and wide, in the very early 1800s, he was suffering from progressive worsening health, with marked problems in hearing. His despondency on his ill-health accrued overtime; it came out as his second musical rebirth. He took to Napoleon Bonaparte for inspiration. This period of his life is also referred to as the Heroic period. It was also during this time that he composed works that were interlaced with deep emotions and attested to his musical and artistic genius. The audience would be captivated by his personal emotions and be drawn into a more sublime experience. Symphony no. 3 in E-flat Major, op. 55 is an example of the melodramatic emotional storm that was wreaking havoc inside him. The works that he composed during this time include the Eroica Symphony, the Fifth Symphony, and his opera Fidelio. In Eroica Symphony, Beethoven uses both motivic and formal techniques to structure a symphony whose theme and harmonies are intricately woven together, generating one of his best oeuvres. This period is marked by music compositions that illustrate Beethoven’s struggle and the heights of his feelings, his persistence to outwit his peers and to set a name for himself in the annals of history. The Fifth Symphony is also remarkable in its uniqueness and the combination of musical elements that Beethoven brought together. The Symphony can be referred to as the teleology of revolution, as said by Novalis, a philosopher of German Romanticism. According to this teleological definition, Beethoven was able to use dissonant crisis to produce large trajectories that culminated in a harmonic theme. For the French, the Symphony represented their revolution, but for Beethoven, it represented his fight against his failing health. The Fifth Symphony has been regarded as a Romantic piece of work by the likes of many experts including E. T. A. Hoffman. Hoffman notes that the Symphony depicts both the inner struggles of Beethoven as well as his tendency toward partiality. Beethoven played an integral role in Romanticism. The Fifth Symphony reaffirms the Romantic notion of music by portraying Romantic aspect of music that says volumes about the unspeakable and provides allusion to the absolute. Romanticism and the musical characteristics that it entails were not given much importance during the 1800s; however over time, it gained impetus and is now regarded as a metaphysical sign. It has transcended from mediocre and less important music to a more significant one, imbued by spiritualism. Beethoven’s works create and lay the foundations of instrumental music as a more Romantic genre. He uses poetry and romanticizes the world through it. As mentioned above, Beethoven had become rather adept at formal tones, and his use of poetry and Romantic elements in his works, he referred himself as the tone poet (Murray 2004). In Pastoral Symphony, he uses pictures and the voices of birds. However, according to Beethoven, even this symphony was more about the emotions than the portrayed pictures. The Romantic nature of his utter music is significant to his life, and helps substantiate the claim that he was a Romantic. His life was used by him as the main symbol is his works. He used his life and the ironies that it put across to produce exceptional compositions. His gradual recession from staging his own works due to his deafness helped him redefine what music meant to him. Instead of abandoning music, he made his mind more attuned to it, and since he could not hear it properly, he ascertained that music continued to inspire him. Like deafness had robbed him of the ability to listen, he made the music imperceptive and irresponsive to the depravation of materialistic truths. Beethoven saw music as untainted, perfect, independent and spiritual. His deafness was so catastrophic that it drove Beethoven to find succor in expressing his feelings in a more frank and personal way than any other composer had dared to do so earlier (Bauer 201). Wellingtons’s Victory marked the end of, what scholars call, the Middle period of his works. In the Late period, Beethoven adopts a more obscure tone. His works are marked by an increasing degree of esotericism that was new to the type of music that he composed. The Late period started in 1816 and lasted up till his death. The Late works are notably famous for their rational details and their passionate, personal details. He experienced his third and final rebirth during this time period. He composed music on events that had affected him. One of the works that he composed during this time is the Ninth Symphony. The Symphony is considered to be one of the finest pieces of music produced during the nineteenth century and gives out a message to the humanity. The works that he composed in the years leading to his demise are characteristic of unconventional techniques. He broke away from the traditional distinctions; rather his works were centered on his personal lamentations and perceptions. One of such works, Missa Solemnis, are difficult to understand and show the complicated meshwork of turmoil and emotions that Beethoven had been subject to through out his life. Due to their esoteric tone, the works produced towards the end of his life were not given much credence; it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that these works started being acknowledged for their spiritual and personal messages. Beethoven died in the year 1827. The works that Beethoven produced in the later part of his life are increasingly relevant to the Romantic era. The Early Romantic era is characterized by Romantics who wrote song cycles, and employed chromaticism in the melody. Beethoven is attributed by many as the first person to write the song cycle. If the Romantic era is thought of as an aesthetic period in both arts and literature, Beethoven works fall in the literary Romanticism produced by the work of his contemporaries like Percy Shelley and Friedrich Schiller. As mentioned earlier, the German Romantic author, E. T. A. Hoffman regarded Beethoven as a Romantic; Louis Spohr, a German composer, also regarded his works as Romantic in nature. Beethoven was directly impacted by indigenous Romantic metaphors and used them in his works, as exemplified by his usage of the works of the poet, Robert Burns. He gave music to a melee of folk poems. Where he ventured far from the conventional modes of Classical music, he never crossed the boundaries, and thus can not be classed as an absolute Romantic. Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann and many other experts accepted him as the springboard for the Romantic era in Europe. The Piana Sonata No.8 in C. Minor, Op. 13, famous as the Sonata Pathétique, was amongst the first of his works to show a strong resemblance to Romantic works for its rich expression of personal feelings. It relates the account of a hero, i.e. the composer, who wages a battle against his certain destiny (Cunningham and Reich 431; ch.17). Beethoven also embraced many beliefs like a love for nature, freedom of the individual and aggressive temperament- elements that are typically Romantic- and can be regarded as an example of the Romantic artist (Cunningham and Reich 430; ch.17). Studying music from a scholarly perspective, experts argue that Romanticism started from a very late period in the life of Beethoven and could not have influenced him significantly as he could only experience a minor part of the brunt of the musical shift it had had on composers during the Romantic era. Scholars who see Enlightenment as a shift towards Modernity, Beethoven’s works are more Classical in nature; on the other hand, scholars who regard Romanticism as a seminal movement towards aesthetics as we know today, Beethoven was a Romantic. However, there are variations in the opinions, where many regarding him as a transitional figure rather than a pure Classic or Romantic. Beethoven can not be dismissed as a purely Classical composer. No one before him expressed their personal emotions and feelings with such vividness as Beethoven did. His reluctances, sudden changes of volumes and the dawning of his thoughts and emotions to him are characteristic of the Romantic era that the European music was entering. Works Cited Bauer, Marion. Music Through the Ages. READ BOOKS, 2008. Print. Cunningham, Lawrence S. and John J. Reich. Culture & Values, Volume II: A Survey of the Humanities with Readings. 7th ed. Massachusetts: Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Murray, Christopher John. Encyclopedia of the romantic era, 1760-1850, Volume 1. Taylor & Francis, 2004. Print. The Teaching Company. The Teaching Company. The Teaching Company, LLC, n.d. Web. 3 June 2010. Read More