Transcript Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven
1770-1827
German composer and pianist
Life Overview
• The crucial figure in the transition between the
Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he
remains one of the most famous and influential
composers of all time.
• Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of
Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation in present-day Germany
• Beethoven moved to Vienna in his early 20s (in 1792),
studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a
reputation as a virtuoso pianist.
• His hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet
he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even
after becoming completely deaf.
Beethoven’s Music
• Composed in several musical genres, and for a variety
of instrument combinations.
• His works for symphony orchestra include nine
symphonies (the Ninth Symphony includes a chorus),
and about a dozen pieces of "occasional" music.
• He wrote seven concerti for one or more soloists and
orchestra, as well as four shorter works that include
soloists accompanied by orchestra.
• His only opera is Fidelio; other vocal works with
orchestral accompaniment include two masses and a
number of shorter works.
• His large body of compositions for piano includes
32 piano sonatas and numerous shorter pieces,
including arrangements of some of his other
works.
• Works with piano accompaniment include 10
violin sonatas, 5 cello sonatas, and a sonata for
French horn, as well as numerous lieder.
• a significant quantity of chamber music. In
addition to 16 string quartets, he wrote five
works for string quintet, seven for piano trio, five
for string trio, and more than a dozen works for
various combinations of wind instruments.
The Three Periods
• Beethoven's compositional career is usually
divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods.
• In this scheme, his early period is taken to last
until about 1802, the middle period from
about 1803 to about 1814, and the late period
from about 1815.
• In his Early period, Beethoven's work was
strongly influenced by his predecessors Haydn
and Mozart. He also explored new directions
and gradually expanded the scope and
ambition of his work.
• Some important pieces from the Early period
are the first and second symphonies, the set
of six string quartets Opus 18, the first two
piano concertos, and the first dozen or so
piano sonatas, including the famous
Pathétique sonata, Op. 13.
• His Middle (Heroic) period began shortly after
Beethoven's personal crisis brought on by his
recognition of encroaching deafness. It
includes large-scale works that express
heroism and struggle.
• Middle-period works include six symphonies
(Nos. 3–8), the last three piano concertos, the
Triple Concerto and violin concerto, five string
quartets (Nos. 7–11), several piano sonatas
(including the Moonlight, Waldstein and
Appassionata sonatas), the Kreutzer violin
sonata and Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio.
• Beethoven's Late period began around 1815.
Works from this period are characterised by their
intellectual depth, their formal innovations, and
their intense, highly personal expression.
• The String Quartet, Op. 131 has seven linked
movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral
forces to the orchestra in the last movement.
• Other compositions from this period include the
Missa Solemnis, the last five string quartets
(including the massive Große Fuge) and the last
five piano sonatas.
Franz Schubert
1797-1828
• Austrian composer, Schubert was tremendously prolific
• Wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including
the famous "Unfinished Symphony"), liturgical music,
operas, some incidental music, and a large body of
chamber and solo piano music.
• Appreciation of his music during his lifetime was
limited, but interest in Schubert's work increased
dramatically in the decades following his death at the
age of 31. Today, Schubert is admired as one of the
leading exponents of the early Romantic era in music
and he remains one of the most frequently performed
composers.
Music
• Schubert wrote almost 1000 works in a remarkably
short career.
• The largest number (over 600) of these are songs.
• He wrote seven complete symphonies, as well as the
two movements of the "Unfinished" Symphony, a
complete sketch (with partial orchestration) of a ninth,
and arguable fragments of a 10th.
• There is a large body of music for solo piano, including
21 complete sonatas and many short dances, and a
relatively large set of works for piano duet.
• There are nearly 30 chamber works, including some
fragmentary works. His choral output includes six
masses. He wrote only five operas, and no concertos.
Style and reception
• While he was clearly influenced by the Classical
sonata forms of Beethoven and Mozart (his early
works, among them notably the 5th Symphony,
are particularly Mozartean), his formal structures
and his developments tend to give the impression
more of melodic development than of harmonic
drama.
• This combination of Classical form and longbreathed Romantic melody sometimes lends
them a discursive style: his 9th Symphony was
described by Robert Schumann as running to
"heavenly lengths".
• His harmonic innovations include movements
in which the first section ends in the key of the
subdominant rather than the dominant (as in
the last movement of the Trout Quintet).
• Schubert's practice here was a forerunner of
the common Romantic technique of relaxing,
rather than raising, tension in the middle of a
movement, with final resolution postponed to
the very end.
Songs
• Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a
strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the
folksong qualities burgeoned by the stirrings of
Romantic nationalism.
• Among Schubert's treatments of the poetry of Goethe,
his settings of Gretchen am Spinnrade and Der Erlkönig
are particularly striking for their dramatic content,
forward-looking uses of harmony, and their use of
eloquent pictorial keyboard figurations, such as the
depiction of the spinning wheel and treadle in the
piano in Gretchen and the furious and ceaseless gallop
in Erlkönig