Beethoven Hearing Loss May Have Shaped Transition in His Musical Styles - Essay Example

? Beethoven Hearing Loss may have shaped transition in his Musical Styles A composer of Romanticand Classical Periods, Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 in Bonn, Germany. Until today, he is known as the composer of Romantic and classical periods. His most important works include 6 String quarters, 1 Sonata for piano and violin, 2 Piano sonatas, 8 symphonies, 1 piano concerto and 1 Violin concerto. His genres include Piano concertos, Piano sonatas, String quartets and Symphonies. He is viewed as a midway figure between the Classical and Romantic periods in the history of music. His works are different than any of the previous composers of his time via the formation of extended, architectonic, large forms differentiated by the exclusive development of motifs, themes, and musical materials, particularly by way of “modulation”, that is, an alteration in the sensation of home key, via a diversification of harmonic or keys regions. A great musician, an expert of almost anything, Beethoven composed thirty two sonatas in only just the years between 1792 and 1822. This time period was a time when Classical period was moving towards Romantic period. Beethoven’s music paralleled the concurrent development of the new idea in the literature, a form of literary emphasized on the expansion of one or more individuals through complicated circumstances of life, and of the contemporary nature of the idealism of Germans’ philosophy, spirit, mind that unfolds via an intricate procedure of challenges between the objective and subjective up till a synthesis or resolution happens in the scenario when all of these challenges and expansion phases have been included in a advanced harmony. (Mann, 2011) He was sent by his instructor to Vienna where he took lessons from Mozart. Mozart was an inspirer of Beethoven’s talent and abilities. He studied under Haydn, Mozart and Antonio Salieri (Mozart’s rival) in Vienna for sometime where he became famous as a pianist and as a teacher. The major change in his life came when he started losing his sense of hearing in 1801. During the time span of 1792-1822, his piano sonatas have shown an immense modification in structure and form and this might be due to the fact that he begins to get deaf. There are three periods of his life: the first Vienna period (1792-1802), the middle period from 1802 to 1814, and the last period which was after 1815 until his death in 1827. Each period depicts a diverse musical style which was profoundly affected by his hearing disabilities, a study proclaims. Even though later works of Haydn reflected a superior variability between remote keys. The innovation of Beethoven was his capability to refurbish a solidity in contrasting varying keys and unanticipated noted to unite them. This explicit extension of realm of harmonic music makes a sense of experiential and vast musical space via the moves of music, and the expansion of materials of music makes a sense of restating drama in this room. (Mann, 2011) According to a research in British Medical Journal, there is dissimilarity between the music from the early life of Beethoven to the period when his hearing loss began in 1801 to the time period when he became completely deaf in 1825. The study was made by a team of researchers at Amsterdam University in Netherlands on use of high notes in Beethoven’s composing career. The piano sonatas, which were composed by Beethoven in the period of transition from the Classic time period to Romantic (heroic) time period to Creative era, comprises of the elements of music that Beethoven took from his predecessors and shaped it in a genuinely novel form. Still, those sonatas evidently depicted the transition in his style of music and life, and this music of Beethoven became the antecedent to many of the great composers after his time and to current age. Beethoven is well known for most of his famous works which include the Emperor Concerto, Fifth symphony, the Eroica, his only one opera Fidelio, and Pastoral symphonies. He produced a totally genuine musical style which portrays his own joys and sufferings as he became deaf. His works formulate a climax in the enlargement of tonal music and is one of the avid developments in the science and history of music. Before him, composers were keenly interested in composing music only for religious or spiritual purposes, for just for mere entertainment. But Beethoven’s music was one in its own kind; his music was autonomous of religious or social purposes. (CBC News, 2011) The first decade that Beethoven spent in Vienna was an extension of the work of Mozart and Haydn. This was the time of development in which Beethoven’s music was a reflection of the then era of Classical music. His composition was based on the eighteen-century composers (Haydn and Mozart) and was an era of imitation of their work. He extended both the substance and length of the instrumental music spectacularly. Beethoven looked forward to Mozart and Haydn for their formal, integrated and harmonic pieces of work which were a source of inspiration for him. His music in the first period of his musical life was robust but coarse as compared to his early predecessors. Mozart and Haydn were more inclined towards the enormous weight of movement of music in the account of ideas known as the “exposition” while Beethoven made sonata his heart of the work. Beethoven not only made sonata expansion a long phenomena but also a much more organized and structured one. His former piano sonatas demonstrate properties of string quartets (or symphonies) in spite of the piano sonatas because of Mannheim rocks (an abrupt huge rise over a big range in tremolo or broken chord), minuet movement, symphonic slow initialization, and harmonization of quartet. For instance the very lengthy section of Symphony of Eroica is further divided into roughly four sections of identical sections, making it, in genuine, a form of sonata within a sonata form. This first movement of this symphony itself is as long as a whole archetypal Italian –style 1770 Mozart symphony. His first thirty-two compositions of piano sonatas were op.2 three sonatas (for his teacher Haydn). He showed his mastery and achievement that illustrated the diverse characters of sonatas, the energetic element in the first sonata in F minor, the A major in the more lyric nature of second sonata, and the C major in concert-type and intelligence in the third sonata. Beethoven’s focus on the advancement of music would later set a trend that other composers would follow later. (Rosen, 1997) The second phase in the life of this German composer was called the middle period (this era was also called as heroic era). This clearly showed the Romantic approach of that time period. This was the time when Beethoven first lost his hearing capabilities for notes of high frequency in the age of 30. According to a study by author Edoardo Saccenti, his compositions relied on low and middle frequency notes which reflected the Romantic period. An augmentation in the degree of differentiation that inspired the dynamics and scoring gave a speckled charisma to the music. Furthermore, the movements of scherzo reformed the minuets of the four-movement Classic sonata plan in various cases. Some famous compositions of this time period included Opus 95 and Opus 74 quartets. These notes consisted of notes of low-frequency as found by researchers. Beethoven started to endure from tinnitus and was not able to hear the voices of singer and woodwinds so he begin composing works in the range that he was pretty much able to hear. The music of Beethoven in this period stated a lot of inconsistencies in tonal fashion, harmonic, and rhythm. The resolution and climax inclined to be delayed, and the progress became extensively huge. Most of the well known works of Beethoven fall under this period. According to researchers, important milestones in loss of hearing in this time period, comprising the use of an ear trumpet, alongside many of the works of Beethoven. (Plantinga, 1984) The third phase of Beethoven’s musical life was when he entirely lost his sense of hearing and became an introvert as he focused his attention to his inner world of passion and made music just in his head. Researchers have found out that this was the period of his life when he was inclined towards high notes. According to Saccenti, in his book BMJ, when Beethoven relied highly on his inner ear, he was not able to make music as he used to because he could not hear what he played so he retreated to his inside world of music and also earlier experiences of music. Creative era, as the name suggest, depicts the last period of Beethoven’s life in which he was tally deaf and lived in solitude than he ever had in his life. As a result, the final five sonatas composed by Beethoven in his last period seemed that there was more communication between the music (art) and the composer (artist) rather than the usual communications between the public audience and the composer. Some instances of composition of this time period include op.111 in C major, op.110 in flat major, and op.109 in E major. But he achieved his full potential in the field of compositions, non-standard form of music (of that time) and experimented musical structure, tonal plan, and musical form in the final period. He also wrote Opus 127 to 135 string quartets, which showed tremendous high notes as the research depicts. The research only outlined some of the preferred compositions of the researchers, so that their study was not able to take into account the full range of the work of Beethoven. The worst part of the research was to find out that Beethoven had a very minute form of loss in hearing that could easily be corrected by digital hearing assistants. His works in this time period are individuated, highly evolved, sometimes unorthodox, disjointed and sometimes differentiated as “sublime” and “transcendent”, where he endeavored to unite the baroque prophecies of Bach and Handel with of his teachers Haydn and Mozart. In the later years, he spoke of Handel as his “grand master”. Beethoven died on March 26, 1827 because of pneumonia. (Mann, 2011) As music is a divine and spiritual entity, Beethoven laid the foundation for its original spirituality by playing it with his own soul and heart. It was a God gifted talent in him on which only a few people will question or argue upon. Endeavoring to evaluate whether his loss of hearing was the reason for moving from low note to high note and by giving arguments in favor do not take away the greatness of the musical empowerment he was. He wrote many charming melodies, another sudden innovation of his composition, I comparison to Mozart and Haydn. His immense use of marked, forceful, and rough rhythmic patterns all the way in his compositions, in particular, in motifs and themes, were rather rhythmic than melodic. Most of his popular themes including the Fifth, Third, and Ninth symphonies, are basically non-melodic rhythmic instances comprising of notes of a single chord, and also the themes of the final movements of the Seventh and Third symphonies could more precisely be defined as rhythms except as melodies. This music is very nicely be suited to the primacy of development in the music of Beethoven, until a single rhythmic pattern could more easily be taken from a succession of even remote, different, harmonic and keys regions rather than melody while retaining and pertaining an underlying merger. This was the idea that inspired him to amalgamate varying features of his themes in a huge variety of ways, growing the developmental techniques of Haydn. Music was his natural embody and he breathed music, knew every word of it. Let me conclude my essay on the instance that world had only a few of these renowned musical entities who were a source of communication via world and divine through their music and we should always cherish them. (Mai, 2007) Works cited: CBC News. Beethoven's hearing loss may have shaped musical style. CBC News| Arts and Entertainment. December 22, 2011 [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/12/22/beethoven-hearing-loss.html Beethoven Web. Beethoven: Biography; Music Styles and Innovations. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.beethoven.ws/musical_style_and_innovations.html Mann, Denise. Did Beethoven's Hearing Loss Shape His Compositions? Health Day News| Health Day Reporter. December 21, 2011 [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.philly.com/philly/health/136014058.html?c=r Mai, Franc?ois M. Diagnosing Genius: The Life and Death of Beethoven. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007. Print. Plantinga, Leon. Romantic Music: A History of Musical Style in Nineteenth-Century Europe. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984. Print. Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Print. Read More