# Beethoven the contrapuntist



## Doctuses (Jun 11, 2018)

I recently finished "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" by Jan Swafford. He makes it a point to say a couple of times that Beethoven "never achieved a full faculty at counterpoint". Having read a lot about Beethoven in my life, I have never heard anyone make this point before. From the op.2 piano sonatas to the Grand Fugue, Beethoven has always seemed to me to have achieved a full faculty and ease at the medium. Perhaps counterpoint didn't come to him with the same fluidity as J.S. or Palestrina, but that's not a knock against Beethoven. 

I was wondering what anyone else thought about this?


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

1) I would love to hear your take on the Swafford book. I have been eyeing that on Amazon.

2) I don't quite see how Swafford can make such a claim considering how much Beethoven was influenced by Bach. His late works especially contain HUGE amounts of counterpoint. Just off the top of my head: 9th Symphony, Missa Solemnis, Hammerklavier Sonata, Late String Quartets, Grosse Fugue. Does Swafford back up this claim with examples or evidence because I would tend to disagree with him on this.

GRANTED, the use of counterpoint was not as huge a priority for composers of the Classical period as it was in the Baroque (maybe that's what the author is trying to say). However, part of the genius of Beethoven's late works was the incorporation of contrapunctal material to create a more complex structure within the framework of the Classical style.

I think I'm with you on this one.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I read Swafford a while back but don't remember those statements. In any event, I recommend the book very highly.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Of course Beethoven "achieved a full faculty at counterpoint", any conservatory graduate does. After all, it isn't rocket science.

Just because Beethoven didn't ever really write a truly "proper fugue" doesn't mean he couldn't. He was busy revolutionizing music.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

KenOC said:


> I read Swafford a while back but don't remember those statements. In any event, I recommend the book very highly.


Thank you! :tiphat:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Someone said that a Bach fugue is composed by an angel and a Beethoven fugue is composed by a demon.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

lextune said:


> Just because Beethoven didn't ever really write a truly "proper fugue"


What do you mean by that?


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

While I don't always agree with Swafford's musical analysis (the counterpoint statement being one of them), he is unparalleled at creating a picture of the thought of the time and making it clearer what Beethoven's world view was. No other biography I've found does a better job of explaining what was going on in Beethoven's head and why. He makes a pretty convincing case.

Here's my review from when the book was newer:

https://unheardbeethoven.org/beethovens-life-re-examined-in-a-new-biography/

As well as a fairly hostile criticism from John E. Klapporoth:

https://unheardbeethoven.org/in-defence-of-josephine/

And Swafford's rather testy response to Klapporoth:

https://unheardbeethoven.org/jan-swafford-reply-to-john-e-klapproth-2/


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> What do you mean by that?


Read this page to save me from examples:

https://unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=hess64

...but like I said, it doesn't matter. His pen was churning out eternal masterpieces, why would he alter what he heard in his mind, to stay within some, to him, completely anachronistic set of rules.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

It's quite an old trope actually. "Beethoven couldn't write a proper fugue" ...I thought people long ago learned what nonsense that is. Sad to see it is still presented as such in new Biographies.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I don’t own the book so I can’t check the context or the accuracy of the citation “never achieved a full faculty at counterpoint" Maybe Doctuse could give some page numbers and say a bit more about the context. 

Just thinking of Beethoven’s last period, there is a lot of extended fugal music. For one thing there are stand alone fugues like Op. 102 no.2 (III), Op. 106 (IV), Op. 110 (III), Op. 120 (var. 32), Op. 133 and Op. 131 (I). And there are many incidental fugues like one I’m listening to right now, about two thirds of the way through Op. 132 (III). What I’m curious about is the idea that these pieces are somehow flawed. Jan Swafford know this music very well I am sure, better than I do, and I’m sure he knows more about counterpoint than I do, hence I take the idea seriously . . .


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

A: For people who only intend to read one Beethoven biography, I recommend Louis Lockwood's.

B: Tovey, in the notes for his unfinished book about Beethoven (published as a thin paperback titled _Beethoven_), addressed the common at the time opinion that "Beethoven couldn't write a fugue," by saying: "Beethoven couldn't write a Bach fugue, but he could write a Beethoven fugue better than anyone." ;-)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Might be useful to read what LvB himself had to say: "In my student days I wrote dozens of fugues. But the fancy also wishes to exert its privileges and today a new and really practical element must be introduced into the old and traditional forms."

The article where I found this also has some fun with the _Grosse Fuge_: "It starts reasonably enough with a few slashes on the strings and the introduction of a melody line - standard fare for a string quartet - and then it's like he's suddenly behind the wheel of a lorry with 18 gears. He rams the gearstick into 18th and bombs down the motorway, flattening chickens, children, cars, until he smashes into a bridge five minutes later and comes to, out of his mind, but with enough of his mental powers left to pick up the scraps of his melody lines, glue them back together and, bam, he's off again - for another 10 minutes of absolute agony or pure ecstasy, depending on your threshold for pain."

http://thequietus.com/articles/25333-beethoven-grosse-fuge-review-junk-shop-classical


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

MarkW said:


> A: For people who only intend to read one Beethoven biography, I recommend Louis Lockwood's.
> 
> B: Tovey, in the notes for his unfinished book about Beethoven (published as a thin paperback titled _Beethoven_), addressed the common at the time opinion that "Beethoven couldn't write a fugue," by saying: "Beethoven couldn't write a Bach fugue, but he could write a Beethoven fugue better than anyone." ;-)


If the opinion was really common then surely someone elaborated it, explained it.

As it stands it sounds as strange as saying something like "Bruckner couldn't write a proper melody"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Fugue" is not so much a form as a procedure. Even the initial statement of the main subject can vary, and as the material unfolds all sorts of extensions and permutations can occur. Bach's fugues differ greatly in their formal outlines and in the contrapuntal devices they employ. if there's such a thing as a "proper" fugue, I'd like to know what it looks like.


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## Pantonal (Oct 11, 2018)

Newbie to this forum. LvB could certainly compose a fugue. I believe his focus was more on emotional expression than Bach would have thought proper. Hence fugues such as in Op 106 or the Grosse Fuge. LvB even included one in Op 110 (IIRC) that inverted the theme on the second go round. While LvB's fugues don't have the elegance nor sophistication of Bach they do have dramatic arc and are effective musical statements. The whole idea that LvB couldn't write a fugue is a misunderstanding of what he was trying to achieve.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

We could probably argue that Bach's development sections of his sonata-allegro forms were quite lame in comparison to those of Beethoven, or Bruckner for that matter. But sometimes such argument itself is the lame issue. Is that what's going on here with the Swafford comment?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Pantonal said:


> Newbie to this forum.


Welcome



Pantonal said:


> I believe his focus was more on emotional expression than Bach would have thought proper.


I don't agree with this, think of the closing fugue in the St Matthew Passion for example, or fugues like BWV 869, BWV 686, BWV 661, the fugal BWV 529 (II) . . . .


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I wonder if anybody can confirm that Swafford did indeed write that Beethoven "never achieved a full faculty at counterpoint". If anybody (the OP perhaps?) knows where in Swafford's massive tome this idea appears, I'd appreciate a page number reference so I can check out the context. Thanks!​


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Might be useful to read what LvB himself had to say: "In my student days I wrote dozens of fugues. But the fancy also wishes to exert its privileges and today a new and really practical element must be introduced into the old and traditional forms."
> 
> The article where I found this also has some fun with the _Grosse Fuge_: "It starts reasonably enough with a few slashes on the strings and the introduction of a melody line - standard fare for a string quartet - and then it's like he's suddenly behind the wheel of a lorry with 18 gears. He rams the gearstick into 18th and bombs down the motorway, flattening chickens, children, cars, until he smashes into a bridge five minutes later and comes to, out of his mind, but with enough of his mental powers left to pick up the scraps of his melody lines, glue them back together and, bam, he's off again - for another 10 minutes of absolute agony or pure ecstasy, depending on your threshold for pain." Imo, a natural fugue meister he was decidedly not.
> 
> http://thequietus.com/articles/25333-beethoven-grosse-fuge-review-junk-shop-classical


Great description of the Grosse Fuge. I've had similar feelings. But ultimately, I've also had the feeling that he may have been trying to express the ecstasy of music and the universe.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

This post has been removed by order of the Imperial Censor.


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## Doctuses (Jun 11, 2018)

OP here, when I get around to it ill try to find page numbers; it's a 900+ page book (I promise you that he said it)... but here's what I'm sure of:

1) Never once did Swafford say anything about Beethoven "not being able to write a proper _fugue_. He said he never achieved a full faculty at counterpoint. The implications of those two statements are very different.

2) IIRC Swafford usually made the statement in the contexts of either: a) Beethoven taking an unusually long amount of time (for him) to write _complex_ counterpoint (rather than two or three point simple inventions or something) or b) counterpoint not coming easily to him (as opposed to any manner of homophonic improvisation which he could easily do for hours.)

Still, to me, Beethoven's counterpoint is exceptionally, exceptionally learned, and even when he wasn't busy writing the Grand Fugue and the Hammerklavier et cetera, you can tell that Beethoven had a full grasp on counterpoint going all the way back to his op. 1 piano trios (and very probably way before that going back to court organist at Bonn).

Anyway, Swafford's book is very good and I would recommend it to anyone. Cheers.


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## Doctuses (Jun 11, 2018)

Larkenfield said:


> I'm more inclined to believe he was at war with counterpoint and was trying to bend it to his will unlike Bach, who wrote fugues that sounded effortless as a reflection of the divine order and beauty of the universe: the highest expression of the music of the spheres.


I think this might be a reflection of what Swafford was getting at. Beethoven's big fugues obviously came at a tremendous cost full of the composer's blood, sweat, and tears. Bach on the other hand kind of just churned fugues out like it was second nature. This, of course, doesn't mean Beethoven didn't have a full faculty at counterpoint or fugue. That statement applies much, much, more so to those who came _after_ Beethoven rather than with the man himself.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The radio is now playing Beethoven's Op. 101 piano sonata - the one with the big fugue as the development section of the final movement. Seems he had very little trouble with this one. It's a bit angular, but VERY impressive!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Larkenfield said:


> Great description of the Grosse Fuge. I've often felt that way after hearing, please forgive me, its neanderthal crudeness bludgeoned energetically by some earnest string quartet. I've also gotten the same feeling from the fugue in the 4th movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata. It's like experiencing a new level of pain when it comes to fugues, completely unrelated it seems, though it sounds somewhat Bach-like, to the pinnacle of organized expression that Bach was capable of. Instead, it was like Beethoven trying to force all the parts to work together with a sledgehammer and a crowbar, and the struggle was monumental and, quite frankly, exhausting to hear.












Those fugues are indeed exhausting - that's exactly the right word. I don't know if that means they're bad. But I would have listened to the Hammerklavier much more often had it not been for that final fugue. Especially after the quiet intensity of the slow movement! Some of his last period work truly sounds like it might have been written by some 20th century avant gardist. And once again I don't know if that means it is great or not.

Have to say, Gould seems to take the rough edge off it a bit...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> ...Some of his last period work truly sounds like it might have been written by some 20th century avant gardist. And once again I don't know if that means it is great or not.


Beethoven was not in the habit of writing elevator music! Though the reason may have been, partly, that Vienna had no elevators at the time.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The last sentence in Lark’s quotation of my post in his post #20 was not in my post at all! I didn’t write “Imo, a natural fugue meister he was decidedly not.” Where did that come from? See my original in post #13.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Doctuses said:


> OP here, when I get around to it ill try to find page numbers; it's a 900+ page book (I promise you that he said it)... but here's what I'm sure of:
> 
> 1)
> 
> ...


So this is not something you can hear in the music, you might be able to see it in his notebooks, but didn't Beethoven go through many draft and tries with all aspects of composing, not just counterpoint?

I don't know about his improvisations. Did he do it a lot? Was he well known for doing it well?


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## Doctuses (Jun 11, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> So this is not something you can hear in the music, you might be able to see it in his notebooks, but didn't Beethoven go through many draft and tries with all aspects of composing, not just counterpoint?
> 
> I don't know about his improvisations. Did he do it a lot? Was he well known for doing it well?


Beethoven's improvisation skills were legendary, and they were his main inspiration for his compositions.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> So this is not something you can hear in the music, you might be able to see it in his notebooks, but didn't Beethoven go through many draft and tries with all aspects of composing, not just counterpoint?
> 
> I don't know about his improvisations. Did he do it a lot? Was he well known for doing it well?


Yes, Beethoven first came to notice in Vienna for his improvisational ability, well before he was known as a composer. For a sense of what his improvisations must have been like, check out the Fantasia op.77.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> ...I don't know about his improvisations. Did he do it a lot? Was he well known for doing it well?


From a 1799 account of a piano duel with Wölffl: "Beethoven' s play is exceedingly brilliant, but less delicate and at times somewhat unclear. He shows himself to best advantage in free improvisation. And here the lightness and at the same time firmness in the sequence of his ideas is really quite extraordinary. B. instantly varies every theme, and not only in its figures. Since the death of Mozart who will always remain the _non plus ultra_ in this, I have never found this kind of pleasure to the degree with which B. provides it."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Counterpoint came first, then harmony. I see Beethoven not as a melodist, but as a harmonic thinker, and rhythmic. 
Counterpoint is the coincidence of separate melodies, whereas harmonic thinking is more block-like, as in "where is the root of the chord going, how is it moving."

There was a lot to be explored in terms of root movement, which paved the way for later nineteenth century harmonists like Liszt and Wagner.

Listen to the so-called "development" sections in the Ninth, a series of root movements by thirds (both major and minor thirds), and the way they subsequently outline other triads with the roots. 

In the late Quartet in F, he turns diminished seventh chords into dominant flat-nines by changing the roots. 

These are harmonic ideas, not melodic.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Beethoven's counterpoint studies with Haydn: 
https://unheardbeethoven.org/beethovens-counterpoint-studies-with-haydn/

"Be warned that these aren't the most fascinating for the casual listener-they're pedantic exercises based on ancient church modes. But they laid the groundwork for Beethoven's lifelong obsession with the fugue and counterpoint, and as such, they are important to understanding the Master's compositional evolution."

The basic definition of counterpoint is "the art or technique of setting, writing, or playing a melody or melodies in conjunction with another, according to fixed rules." So there can be counterpoint in a variety of ways without it necessarily being written as a Fugue. Other than writing Fugues, which I felt could often be exhausting and turbulent to hear, I never felt that Beethoven was poor at counterpoint, and he certainly studied hard enough. He was determined. To get lost in the writing of a great Fugue was like being carried away with the ecstasy of the universe, and I think Beethoven was trying to do that in his Grosse Fuge and in the 4th movement of his Hammerkavier Piano Sonata. Some people feel that it worked and others that it didn't. But I felt that he was at least striving for that even if I didn't exactly care for his seemingly labored and sometimes clangorous, strident results.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Counterpoint came first, then harmony.


This is exactly what critics held against JS Bach's music in his lifetime, they accused him of writing ugly music because he refused to compromise his contrapuntal ideas to avoid unpleasant dissonances.

I'd always assumed that this counterpoint first policy became a dead style after 1750, so what you say is interesting. As if Beethoven style, or late Beethoven style, is a look back. It's not that there aren't fugues after 1750: it's that they're not like The Wedge!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Thanks for all the information about Beethoven’s improvisations,


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Since the death of Bach, how many composers have tackled fugal writing as conspicuously and repeatedly as late Beethoven? This line seems to me to condemn Beethoven for doing something which no other composer has dared to attempt, the integration of an ancient contrapuntal form into the core of his style.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Gallus said:


> the integration of an ancient contrapuntal form into the core of his style.


This describes Brahms music well.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> This describes Brahms music well.


When I think of Brahms, I don't think of "ancient contrapuntal form," despite his occasional forays into archaism. He wrote fugues, but to my ears he didn't make that sort of sustained counterpoint into something peculiarly personal as Beethoven did. Can you point to a fugue in his music that says "Brahms" in the way that Beethoven's late fugal writing could not possibly be by anyone else?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> When I think of Brahms, I don't think of "ancient contrapuntal form," despite his occasional forays into archaism. He wrote fugues, but to my ears he didn't make that sort of sustained counterpoint into something _peculiarly _personal as Beethoven did. Can you point to a fugue in his music that says "Brahms" in the way that Beethoven's late fugal writing could not possibly be by anyone else?


Words like 'peculiar' and 'idiomatic' could certainly be good descriptors of Beethoven's fugal writing, but for me aren't necessarily really indicators of _mastery_. I think Brahms absorbed "ancient contrapuntal form" into the essence of his compositional style more so than Beethoven. To me your phrase "occasional forays" describes Beethoven's approach to ancient counterpoint much more so than Brahms whose entire style sounds more draped in it.

How about the fugue from his Handel Variations? I quite like that.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

If Beethoven had played football, he might have been a great contrapuntalist.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Gallus said:


> Since the death of Bach, how many composers have tackled fugal writing as conspicuously and repeatedly as late Beethoven? This line seems to me to condemn Beethoven for doing something which no other composer has dared to attempt, the integration of an ancient contrapuntal form into the core of his style.


At least one for sure: Max Reger...and he exceeded Beethoven in the number of fugues he composed. Check out how many here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Max_Reger#Table_of_compositions


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ArsMusica said:


> At least one for sure: Max Reger...and he exceeded Beethoven in the number of fugues he composed. Check out how many here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Max_Reger#Table_of_compositions


And Shostakovich! He wrote 24 fugues in his Op. 87 alone. How many did Ludwig write again?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> This is exactly what critics held against JS Bach's music in his lifetime, they accused him of writing ugly music because he refused to compromise his contrapuntal ideas to avoid unpleasant dissonances.
> 
> I'd always assumed that this counterpoint first policy became a dead style after 1750, so what you say is interesting. As if Beethoven style, or late Beethoven style, is a look back. It's not that there aren't fugues after 1750: it's that they're not like The Wedge!


I'm not talking about style per se; I mean that harmonic thinking developed out of counterpoint. Composers didn't think in terms of "chord functions" and "root movement" until harmonic practices had been developed. The only way I see Beethoven as "contrapuntal" is the way he uses motives, but those have just as much rhythmic identity as they do "melodic" identity. I've always said rhythmic identity of a melody is most important. I can bang out "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with my fists on a piano, and it is still recognizable.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

So many inaccurate comments about counterpoint on this thread.

Anyone here who believes Bach was not thinking harmonically when he composed his counterpoint is WRONG.

As a music major I had to take a semester (a 20-week semester) of tonal, i.e., 18th-century, i.e., Bachian counterpoint. And since that class I have studied it deeply and composed contrapuntal pieces in that style. *Bach's counterpoint is harmonically based. *

One of the prime challenges is composing counterpoint in that style is to combine good contrapuntal writing (and all that entails such as the shape and the logic of each voice in the contrapuntal texture, adherence to the rules regarding the combination of all voices, avoidance of forbidden parallelism, and many more concepts/rules) with good harmonic writing (and all that entails including logical chord progressions, uses of inversions and many more concepts/rules).

Bach (or Handel or Telemann or Corelli or Vivaldi) did not follow a "counterpoint first" policy. That was not the nature of 18th-century counterpoint.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> Words like 'peculiar' and 'idiomatic' could certainly be good descriptors of Beethoven's fugal writing, but for me aren't necessarily really indicators of _mastery_. I think Brahms absorbed "ancient contrapuntal form" into the essence of his compositional style more so than Beethoven. To me your phrase "occasional forays" describes Beethoven's approach to ancient counterpoint much more so than Brahms whose entire style sounds more draped in it.
> 
> How about the fugue from his Handel Variations? I quite like that.


I think we're wandering now. Gallus was referring to fugue in particular, not counterpoint in general, when he spoke of "the integration of an ancient contrapuntal form into the core of [Beethoven's] style." I don't see Brahms's forays into fugue being near the "core" of his style, which was that of a rhapsodic Romantic rather sternly, but far from fully, contained by Classical precedent. The fugue in the Handel variations is irreproachable as a piece of neo-baroqueism, but I find his fugues, like those of most 19th-century composers, either deliberate exercises in archaism having no essential relationship to a Romantic sensibility, or else dramatic devices used to build tension. Beethoven's late style is peculiar in almost every way, and his fugues don't evoke precedent but are really a new kind of music. Listening to the "Hammerklavier" alongside the Handel Variations makes the difference clear.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ArsMusica said:


> So many inaccurate comments about counterpoint on this thread.
> 
> Anyone here who believes Bach was not thinking harmonically when he composed his counterpoint is WRONG.
> 
> ...


No one is saying that Bach wasn't aware of the harmonic consequences of his canonic writing, it's just that he was prepared, happy, to accept dissonance if the logic suggested it. My favourite example of this - it's one of the most "interesting" pieces of music Bach wrote in a way - is the central section of Duetti II from Clavier Ubung III. That piece is like a study in galant counterpoint versus an older style.

I don't know anything about the other C18 composers you mentioned like Handel and Vivaldi. I once heard it said by someone that Beethoven's fugues had Handel as an inspiration, not Bach.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bach: Contrapuntalist or harmonist? Beethoven wrote in a letter, "That you are going to publish Sebastian Bach's works is something that does good to my heart, which beats in love of the great and lofty art of this ancestral father of harmony; I want to see them soon." (1801)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

ArsMusica said:


> So many inaccurate comments about counterpoint on this thread.
> 
> Anyone here who believes Bach was not thinking harmonically when he composed his counterpoint is WRONG.
> 
> ...


The statement in bold is misleading for two reasons. First, Bach followed the same principles of voice-leading and dissonance treatment that had been practiced for two hundred years. This was the basis of his contrapuntal style. His writing simply included the additional constraint of tonal grammar. I don't see how tonally/harmonically constrained becomes "harmonically based." The second way the statement is misleading is that it suggests that Bach's harmonic thinking in any way resembled our own. For example, I don't think there is any reason to believe Bach accepted any form of inversional equivalence in the modern sense. In C major, the configurations (read from bottom up) A-C-E and C-E-A were for him not two forms of the same (vi) chord. They were different entities with different contrapuntal implications. In short, Bach's harmonic thinking was contrapuntally defined and constrained in a way ours is not - at least if one takes modern harmonic theory at face value.


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## Doctuses (Jun 11, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Bach: Contrapuntalist or harmonist? Beethoven wrote in a letter, "That you are going to publish Sebastian Bach's works is something that does good to my heart, which beats in love of the great and lofty art of this ancestral father of harmony; I want to see them soon." (1801)


Very cool quote!


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> No one is saying that Bach wasn't aware of the harmonic consequences of his canonic writing, it's just that he was prepared, happy, to accept dissonance if the logic suggested it. My favourite example of this - it's one of the most "interesting" pieces of music Bach wrote in a way - is the central section of Duetti II from Clavier Ubung III. That piece is like a study in galant counterpoint versus an older style.
> 
> I don't know anything about the other C18 composers you mentioned like Handel and Vivaldi. I once heard it said by someone that Beethoven's fugues had Handel as an inspiration, not Bach.


I'd say he had both Handel and Bach as inspirations. He is known to have studied both closely, arranging some of their fugues for string quartet, for instance.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

gardibolt said:


> I'd say he had both Handel and Bach as inspirations. He is known to have studied both closely, arranging some of their fugues for string quartet, for instance.


Could you be thinking of Mozart perhaps? He arranged five fugues from Bach's WTC for string quartet that are cataloged as K.405.


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## J Swafford (Oct 16, 2018)

I think this thread has proceeded under false premises because it involves a typo. The Swafford bio quote is not that Beethoven lacked "faculty" at counterpoint, which actually makes no sense. The line is that he lacked *facility* at counterpoint, which is simply to say that it did not come easy to him as it did, say, to Bach. He struggled with counterpoint all his life--and partly for that reason, wrote it all the time. To cite another quote, from Beethoven himself: "What is hard is good." Whether he ever wrote a "good" fugue I'm not sure is worth debating. Did he ever write one as good as Bach's better ones? Possibly not, and neither did anybody else. But he turned fugue to his own purposes. The one that opens the C# Minor Quartet is incomparable, and debating whether it's as "good" as Bach's is beside the point.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

J Swafford said:


> I think this thread has proceeded under false premises because it involves a typo. The Swafford bio quote is not that Beethoven lacked "faculty" at counterpoint, which actually makes no sense. The line is that he lacked *facility* at counterpoint, which is simply to say that it did not come easy to him as it did, say, to Bach.


Many thanks for that. Finally, it makes sense!



J Swafford said:


> He struggled with counterpoint all his life--and partly for that reason, wrote it all the time. To cite another quote, from Beethoven himself: "What is hard is good."


It's amusing to read Beethoven's original quote, from a jocular letter to the publisher Steiner after his Op. 101 sonata (which ends with a big fugue) was criticized for being difficult to play. "What is difficult is also beautiful, good, great, etc, every man thus realizes that this is the fattest praise that one can give, for the difficult makes one sweat."​


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

J Swafford said:


> I think this thread has proceeded under false premises because it involves a typo.


How amusing. Nevertheless the discussion here has been, for me, quite valuable because it made me really see the extent, and indeed the quality, of Beethoven's fugal writing in his final period.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

J Swafford said:


> I think this thread has proceeded under false premises *because it involves a typo. The Swafford bio quote is not that Beethoven lacked "faculty" at counterpoint, which actually makes no sense. The line is that he lacked *facility** at counterpoint, which is simply to say that it did not come easy to him as it did, say, to Bach. He struggled with counterpoint all his life--and partly for that reason, wrote it all the time. To cite another quote, from Beethoven himself: "What is hard is good." Whether he ever wrote a "good" fugue I'm not sure is worth debating. Did he ever write one as good as Bach's better ones? Possibly not, and neither did anybody else. But he turned fugue to his own purposes. The one that opens the C# Minor Quartet is incomparable, and debating whether it's as "good" as Bach's is beside the point.


That's funny, because I guess when I read the OP I either just misread what was written as "facility" or assumed that faculty was an automatic spell-checker error. In any case I was going on the assumption that the intended word was facility.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Here's a good example of harmonic thinking, root movement by thirds, occurring at 17:16-17:35.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> The statement in bold is misleading for two reasons. First, Bach followed the same principles of voice-leading and dissonance treatment that had been practiced for two hundred years. This was the basis of his contrapuntal style. His writing simply included the additional constraint of tonal grammar. I don't see how tonally/harmonically constrained becomes "harmonically based." The second way the statement is misleading is that it suggests that Bach's harmonic thinking in any way resembled our own. For example, I don't think there is any reason to believe Bach accepted any form of inversional equivalence in the modern sense. In C major, the configurations (read from bottom up) A-C-E and C-E-A were for him not two forms of the same (vi) chord. They were different entities with different contrapuntal implications. In short, Bach's harmonic thinking was contrapuntally defined and constrained in a way ours is not - at least if one takes modern harmonic theory at face value.


Yet, you can look at Bach in a harmonic sense, and all sorts of "out-of-the-box" things occur harmonically. From the Sinfonia Nr. 9 in F minor, at 1:28 and again at 3:01 we hear a major seventh sonority, albeit arrived at by melodic means, but nonetheless creating the harmonic sense of a major seventh chord, which didn't really exist back then. At 4:03 we hear a minor chord with a major seventh and a ninth, even more unusual, although the "seventh" is a leading tone. But many of these harmonic effects are "hangover" effects of preceding chords, and are very subtle. I know what I'm talking about, and I also know what I hear.Those are just a couple of examples..So Bach was aware of the harmonic consequences of his counterpoint, and exploited that. So why not view him as a "harmonic thinker" if that's how we hear it? It seems like academic hair-splitting to say otherwise.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2018)

J Swafford said:


> I think this thread has proceeded under false premises because it involves a typo. The Swafford bio quote is not that Beethoven lacked "faculty" at counterpoint, which actually makes no sense. The line is that he lacked *facility* at counterpoint, which is simply to say that it did not come easy to him as it did, say, to Bach. He struggled with counterpoint all his life--and partly for that reason, wrote it all the time. To cite another quote, from Beethoven himself: "What is hard is good." Whether he ever wrote a "good" fugue I'm not sure is worth debating. Did he ever write one as good as Bach's better ones? Possibly not, and neither did anybody else. But he turned fugue to his own purposes. The one that opens the C# Minor Quartet is incomparable, and debating whether it's as "good" as Bach's is beside the point.


Are you, as your username implies, Jan Swafford, himself?

As to whether it is a typo or not, I do not know. But the quote cannot be declared a typographical error based on usage of the word "faculty." Nowadays the word is most frequently used to refer to the staff of an academic institution. But another definition is "an inherent mental or physical power."

My own feeling is that Beethoven didn't have the patience to write a proper fugue, although his use of counterpoint is brilliant. His genius was incorporating counterpoint in a dramatic context, in which he further developed the innovations introduced by Mozart, Haydn and others. Compare the fugal passage that comes out of the Turkish march in the 9th finale with the beginning of the development section of Mozart Symphony No 41, 1st movement, or the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Baron Scarpia said:


> My own feeling is that Beethoven didn't have the patience to write a proper fugue...


A "proper fugue" sounds like something academic, dry and dusty - something a composer would be eager to get away from after passing his counterpoint exam. I wouldn't say that Beethoven's highly original fugues are evidence of a lack of patience, or that a lack of patience was characteristic of a composer who went to the trouble of writing four different overtures for his only opera. I'll bet he could have churned out a "proper fugue" any day before breakfast if he'd been too impatient to write an interesting one.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I studied counterpoint in theory class, and it's definitely not an exact science. It uses intuition as much as anything. They try to make it into something exact, with all the "first species" and such, but it's a seat-of-your pants type of thing.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Could you be thinking of Mozart perhaps? He arranged five fugues from Bach's WTC for string quartet that are cataloged as K.405.


Beethoven arrangements of Bach WTC:

https://unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=hess35

https://unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=hess38

I believe premiere recordings of both of these are contained in the forthcoming Bach 333 megabox.

Handel:


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Yet, you can look at Bach in a harmonic sense, and all sorts of "out-of-the-box" things occur harmonically. From the Sinfonia Nr. 9 in F minor, at 1:28 and again at 3:01 we hear a major seventh sonority, albeit arrived at by melodic means, but nonetheless creating the harmonic sense of a major seventh chord, which didn't really exist back then. At 4:03 we hear a minor chord with a major seventh and a ninth, even more unusual, although the "seventh" is a leading tone. But many of these harmonic effects are "hangover" effects of preceding chords, and are very subtle. I know what I'm talking about, and I also know what I hear.Those are just a couple of examples..So Bach was aware of the harmonic consequences of his counterpoint, and exploited that. So why not view him as a "harmonic thinker" if that's how we hear it? It seems like academic hair-splitting to say otherwise.


Maintaining a distinction between harmony and counterpoint is not academic hairsplitting. It's basic music theory.

"Hangover effects?" - You mean suspensions?

"albeit arrived at by melodic means, but nonetheless creating the harmonic sense of a major seventh chord?" Do you really think it makes sense to use 17 words instead of "passing tone?"

So why not view him as a "harmonic thinker" if that's how we hear it?

If you don't care how Bach understood it or how music theorists have understood it for centuries, by all means view it as harmonic thinking.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> A "proper fugue" sounds like something academic, dry and dusty - something a composer would be eager to get away from after passing his counterpoint exam. I wouldn't say that Beethoven's highly original fugues are evidence of a lack of patience, or that a lack of patience was characteristic of a composer who went to the trouble of writing four different overtures for his only opera. I'll bet he could have churned out a "proper fugue" any day before breakfast if he'd been too impatient to write an interesting one.


Beethoven wrote exactly what he wanted to write and thought was adequate to write at his moment in music history. All these theories that the music he wrote and the particular directions he took were a consequence of his supposed almost amateurish limitations are laughable. He took the directions he took due to his amazing musical vision and conception. Conception that all these actual amateurs, who call his counterpoint mediocre because he supposedly 'couldn't write a good ordinary, proper fugue', lack. Thank god he didn't waste time in trying to do so and he instead left us his amazing experimental and visionary contrapunctal works.

It's like that myth that Einstein "wasn't good at math". Also based on some letter he wrote to the mathematician who invented the math he was using for his theories and which contained some remarks which were modesty more that anything (what else he could say? "I'm better at your math than you"?, something which was probably true in any case), and also that he had some help from a mathematician friend when he was learning it. But after all that, he surpassed them all.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> A "proper fugue" sounds like something academic, dry and dusty - something a composer would be eager to get away from after passing his counterpoint exam. I wouldn't say that Beethoven's highly original fugues are evidence of a lack of patience, or that a lack of patience was characteristic of a composer who went to the trouble of writing four different overtures for his only opera. I'll bet he could have churned out a "proper fugue" any day before breakfast if he'd been too impatient to write an interesting one.


By proper fuge I don't mean anything dry or academic. I am just thinking of a piece where the musical argument is conveyed entirely by counterpoint, the conflict between melody and harmony. In the great fugal writing of Beethoven other elements are invariably deployed, dramatic homogeneous passages, dramatic orchestration, startling effects that are something other than the working out of counterpoint. I don't doubt that Beethoven could have written a perfectly executed fugue in the style of Bach, but Bach's intangible genius was somehow infused into that counterpoint but Beethoven's intangible genius came from a different direction. Just my impression, of course.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

gardibolt said:


> Beethoven arrangements of Bach WTC:
> 
> https://unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=hess35
> 
> ...


Thanks! There are several fugues in the Hess series. They're here, but without adequate descriptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...eethoven#Selected_works_with_Hess_(H)_numbers


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> Maintaining a distinction between harmony and counterpoint is not academic hairsplitting. It's basic music theory.


I just care how it sounds.




> "Hangover effects?"





> - You mean suspensions?


No, I mean short-term memory effects. The moment in question is influenced by what just happened. It could be a suspension, but not always.




> "albeit arrived at by melodic means, but nonetheless creating the harmonic sense of a major seventh chord?"





> Do you really think it makes sense to use 17 words instead of "passing tone?"


The only thing that matters to me is if you hear it as a harmonic effect. And you do, probably.




> So why not view him as a "harmonic thinker" if that's how we hear it?





> If you don't care how Bach understood it or how music theorists have understood it for centuries, by all means view it as harmonic thinking.


I'm saying something more radical than that. I'm saying Bach understood the harmonic implications of what he was doing, and even exploited that.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I just care how it sounds.


No, that's not all you care about. You clearly care to write about it. In doing so it helps to demonstrate an awareness of basic terminological distinctions like that between counterpoint and harmony.



millionrainbows said:


> No, I mean short-term memory effects. The moment in question is influenced by what just happened. It could be a suspension, but not always.


Yeah, it could be other things that also have names in the vocabulary of linear counterpoint.



millionrainbows said:


> The only thing that matters to me is if you hear it as a harmonic effect. And you do, probably.


I tend to hear it as Bach wrote it: as dissonant counterpoint.



millionrainbows said:


> I'm saying something more radical than that. I'm saying Bach understood the harmonic implications of what he was doing, and even exploited that.


Then offer some evidence. The burden of proof is on you and the evidence you need to provide is obvious. For example, you need to show where Bach uses the sonorities you describe (like M7 and 9th chords) as stand alone harmonies rather than as linear events conforming to traditional contrapuntal practices.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Back to Beethoven as contrapuntist: While much attention is lavished on his full-fledged fugues, he inserted very effective fugatos in much of his music, often to impressive dramatic effect. Two examples are the fugato in the Funeral March from the Eroica, which rises to a climax of anguish and then fades to the musical equivalent of sobs; and the fugato in the Allegretto of the 7th, which has its own sense of strict inevitability. Also, of course, the extensive and windswept orchestral fugato in the finale of the 9th.

Bach provides the background for all of these; but the music is put to aesthetic purposes that Bach could not have envisioned. To simply say that Beethoven wasn't good at counterpoint is absurd.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Back to Beethoven as contrapuntist: While much attention is lavished on his full-fledged fugues, he inserted very effective fugatos in much of his music, often to impressive dramatic effect. Two examples are the fugato in the Funeral March from the Eroica, which rises to a climax of anguish and then fades to the musical equivalent of sobs; and the fugato in the Allegretto of the 7th, which has its own sense of strict inevitability. Also, of course, the extensive and windswept orchestral fugato in the finale of the 9th.
> 
> Bach provides the background for all of these; but the music is put to aesthetic purposes that Bach could not have envisioned. To simply say that Beethoven wasn't good at counterpoint is absurd.


Yes to the above. But why all this fuss (in the thread in general, not your post specifically Ken) about fugues? Fugal writing is just one narrow variety of contrapuntal writing and there is counterpoint all over in Beethoven.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes to the above. But why all this fuss (in the thread in general, not your post specifically Ken) about fugues? Fugal writing is just one narrow variety of contrapuntal writing and there is counterpoint all over in Beethoven.


Let me answer that. Certainly Beethoven was a quite contrapuntal composer. He was noted as a "learned" composer, and sometimes criticized for it, from early in his career. But when he announces (usually quite clearly) that he's launching into a fugue or fugato, and sounding very strict about it, you know that something special is about to happen - special even within the context of the surrounding music, which is usually pretty special to begin with.

Whose ears don't perk up when he begins that fugato in the Funeral March of the Eroica, or the full fugue in the finale of the Op. 101 piano sonata, or the slow fugue opening the Op. 131 string quartet? Or even the imitation fugue that serves as the finale of the third Razumovsky Quartet, possibly the most exciting music ever written for that combination of instruments?

His fugues, and their variants, served Beethoven as a way to make very special statements and to amplify the emotional and aesthetic messages set forth in the works they appear in.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes to the above. But why all this fuss (in the thread in general, not your post specifically Ken) about fugues? Fugal writing is just one narrow variety of contrapuntal writing and there is counterpoint all over in Beethoven.


Indeed. I saw the same argument recently, but applied to Chopin (that he wasn't good at counterpoint because he didn't write great baroque fugues between his Polonaises, Preludes and Ballades). I think neophytes tend to identify counterpoint with fugues since it's in the latter when the former is so obvious that even them can see it. And if Beethoven or Chopin challenge their notions, do they change them? Of course not! They, Beethoven and Chopin, must be, sure, they ones that have no clue!


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## Doctuses (Jun 11, 2018)

J Swafford said:


> I think this thread has proceeded under false premises because it involves a typo. The Swafford bio quote is not that Beethoven lacked "faculty" at counterpoint, which actually makes no sense. The line is that he lacked *facility* at counterpoint, which is simply to say that it did not come easy to him as it did, say, to Bach. He struggled with counterpoint all his life--and partly for that reason, wrote it all the time. To cite another quote, from Beethoven himself: "What is hard is good." Whether he ever wrote a "good" fugue I'm not sure is worth debating. Did he ever write one as good as Bach's better ones? Possibly not, and neither did anybody else. But he turned fugue to his own purposes. The one that opens the C# Minor Quartet is incomparable, and debating whether it's as "good" as Bach's is beside the point.


LOL omg... I checked and I was so wrong. Wow. Well hey, looks like this turned into a decent discussion anyway!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

aleazk said:


> Indeed. I saw the same argument recently, but applied to Chopin (that he wasn't good at counterpoint because he didn't write great baroque fugues between his Polonaises, Preludes and Ballades).


I think there is a difference between "trying something more original in an area you're already good at" (Beethoven) and "staying at rudimentary level in an area you need to improve" (Chopin). Not only did Chopin essentially 'fail' 



 writing a fugue at the most basic academic level. Much of the bassline in his output, for example, (Waltzes and Mazurkas) are repetitions of ta-da-da, ta-da-da accompaniment. In the last few Mazurkas, like Op.68 No.4 in F minor, Chopin does try some canonic devices, but honestly, Johann Strauss II's Nordseebilder Op.390 has richer, advanced counterpoint. Counterpoint in Etude Op.10 No.4 in C sharp minor or Nocturne Op.55 No.2 in E flat is rudimentary level compared to Beethoven. Beethoven even shows certain craftsmanship in lesser works, and could have written far better 'academic fugues' than Chopin if he wanted to. Whereas Chopin had hard time just writing one at the most basic academic level. However, I also agree (as some people pointed out) that Chopin would have developed it further (like Liszt and Mendelssohn) had he lived longer.

I think the first movement from Beethoven's Op.131 is one of the most beautiful pieces of contrapuntal music ever written, ("After this, what is left for us to write?" -Schubert) Beethoven's contrapuntal prowess is overlooked in some quarters considering the fact he's one of the very few composers after JS Bach who had enough skills and aptitude to attempt a "double fugue" to create a masterpiece.






Many other composers 'attempted' writing them and produced 'academic' ones: Shostakovich (Op.87 No.4 & No.24), Brahms (German Requiem), Verdi (Requiem, Sanctus), Max Reger, Grieg, etc etc, most of which are not very memorable or striking compared to Beethoven's Grosse Fuge. Stravinsky famously remarked, "an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will remain contemporary forever."


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