# If Beethoven never lived...



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Or if Bach didn't, or Wagner, or Schoenberg, or Josquin...

How different would music be? Does erasing any one composer from history change everything, or does the world-spirit of music history carry on unperturbed?

Does it depend on the composer?

Just idle thoughts inspired by the "If Beethoven died young" thread.


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## Guest (Oct 2, 2019)

If Beethoven never lived...

...Brahms would have written a dozen symphonies.

Let's get a time machine, go back and convince Beethoven to become a painter! :devil:


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

We can't miss what we never knew. The evolution of music would certainly be different without things working out exactly as they have, and we would still be here discussing it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Captainnumber36 said:


> We can't miss what we never knew. The evolution of music would certainly be different without things working out exactly as they have, and we would still be here discussing it.


I am supremely confident that if Beethoven never lived, we wouldn't have a threat titled "If Beethoven never lived..."


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

KenOC said:


> I am supremely confident that if Beethoven never lived, we wouldn't have a threat titled "If Beethoven never lived..."


I meant the evolution of music, Ken!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

KenOC said:


> I am supremely confident that if Beethoven never lived, we wouldn't have a threat titled "If Beethoven never lived..."


Wow, the thread just self cancelled! :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> I am supremely confident that if Beethoven never lived, we wouldn't have a threat titled "If Beethoven never lived..."


Don't be too sure. We may yet have a thread titled "If Ignaz Ditterwitter von Lippenschmacher had never lived..."


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

... someone would have had to invenr him.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

How different?

This [-----------------------] different

In all seriousness, most art works by future artists taking what they like about previous artists and developing it and/or mixing it all together with their own sensibilities. Without any given composer, that influence would be lacking on the next generations so they would've focused on other composers and other aspects. However, like most chaotic systems it's impossible to precisely predict how that would've manifested. It's not like one can compose a work by Liszt or Brahms without the influence they took from Beethoven. Perhaps without Beethoven programme music doesn't become a thing so we don't have the Symphonie fantastique and later tone poems. Maybe we also don't have the Brahmsian focus on the kind of extensive motivic development within complex forms. Perhaps we don't have Liszt turning the piano into an almost percussive instrument. Or maybe we do because those composers found similar inspiration in different composers besides Beethoven.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

This thread got me thinking: If *I* never lived . . .

Way too depressing.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I may not be on this site. That would please some people. Even if I was I suspect my post count would be significantly lower.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> Don't be too sure. We may yet have a thread titled "If Ignaz Ditterwitter von Lippenschmacher had never lived..."


Don't you mean if Franklin Flabbergasted Fart never lived? Let's keep this old-school and classy.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Captainnumber36 said:


> We can't miss what we never knew. The evolution of music would certainly be different without things working out exactly as they have, and we would still be here discussing it.





Captainnumber36 said:


> I meant the evolution of music, Ken!


Oh, so music "evolves?" That gives me carte blanche to ask "What if Schoenberg had never lived?"


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, so music "evolves?"


No, it's devolved ever since gosh damn peace and quiet.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, so music "evolves?" That gives me carte blanche to ask "What if Schoenberg had never lived?"


The "change" in music over time, then.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Well, it's an interesting thought, if a similar figure would have emerged anyway, epitomizing more or less what Beethoven has become to symbolize and has been used for (the exact content of which I won't digress into now).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

joen_cph said:


> Well, it's an interesting thought, if a similar figure would have emerged anyway, epitomizing more or less what Beethoven has become to symbolize and has been used for (the exact content of which I won't digress into now).


From today's perspective, it's hard to identify just who such a "similar figure" might have been. There seem a precious few candidates.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I agree that there isn't much of a figure to point to among those we know. Possibly Schubert (would more support have gained him more lifetime?) or Schumann, but both later arrivals, of course. I guess Berlioz provided a glimpse of it too, but he didn't excel in chamber or piano music. Probably not Weber, and even less so Hummel, Chopin or Raff.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I suspect that if Beethoven had never lived, nothing like his late works would ever have been created.

Beyond that, I don't really have good answers to my own questions.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

If Beethoven never lived, then it would be necessary to invent him.


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## Texas Chain Saw Mazurka (Nov 1, 2009)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, so music "evolves?" That gives me carte blanche to ask "What if Schoenberg had never lived?"


Leaving the door wide open for unkind comments about Mr. Schoenberg


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> If Beethoven never lived, then it would be necessary to invent him.


Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in this case good luck finding a father.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> If Beethoven never lived, then it would be necessary to invent him.


I got that quote from "Easy Rider."


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

He clearly has had influence and one can only speculate how music would be different without him. That said his over all impact I do believe is less than what many of his fans often suggest, and on looking at his music closer even his impact on the Romantic era is less than what I used to think it was.

"The great harmonic innovations of the Romantics do not come from Beethoven at all, and have nothing to do either with his technique or his spirit. They arise from Hummel, Weber, Field and Schubert...and from Italian opera."

"A new conception of harmonic tension was later developed by Schumann, Mendelssohn, and, above all by Chopin, but they could not start from the classical style at its most highly organized, and Beethoven was of no use to them. The Romantic style did not come from Beethoven, in spite of the great admiration that was felt for him, but from his lesser contemporaries and from Bach."

-Charles Rosen


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

isorhythm said:


> Or if Bach didn't, or Wagner, or Schoenberg, or Josquin...
> 
> How different would music be? Does erasing any one composer from history change everything, or does the world-spirit of music history carry on unperturbed?
> 
> ...


For the most part, I think the differences would be superficial. Someone else would've been celebrated by the nineteenth century romantics.

Most of the history of music is technological development and social change. If Y had been the most famous composer rather than X, different particular works would have come down to us, but the broad sweep would be the same.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

amfortas said:


> This thread got me thinking: If *I* never lived . . .
> 
> Way too depressing.


Jimmy Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life. He wasn't too happy about it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

tdc said:


> He clearly has had influence and one can only speculate how music would be different without him. That said his over all impact I do believe is less than what many of his fans often suggest, and on looking at his music closer even his impact on the Romantic era is less than what I used to think it was...


I think that's quite true. But I also think Beethoven had a deeper influence, nothing to do with his technique or formal innovations or anything like that. Beethoven redefined the limits of music, what music can and should be. I'm not sure how thoroughly that message would have gotten across if he had died, say, in 1800.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> He clearly has had influence and one can only speculate how music would be different without him. That said his over all impact I do believe is less than what many of his fans often suggest, and on looking at his music closer even his impact on the Romantic era is less than what I used to think it was.
> 
> "The great harmonic innovations of the Romantics do not come from Beethoven at all, and have nothing to do either with his technique or his spirit. They arise from Hummel, Weber, Field and Schubert...and from Italian opera."
> 
> ...


I've been curious about this. We know what people always say about Beethoven's late works: "the late works are so hard to understand, they weren't fully appreciated until the 20th century." Or "Nobody tried to emulate them."

If the major post-Beethoven 19th composers did not appreciate certain late Beethoven works, and did not model their own works on those late Beethoven works, how can we say those late Beethoven works were influential and inspirational to the later composers in their creativity?

Were Beethoven's late works such as the Hammerklavier Sonata really more influential than the works of other greats throughout history, for example?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._29_(Beethoven)
_"Richard Wagner held reservations for what he perceived as a lack of succinctness in its composition."_

https://books.google.ca/books?id=QafEkYAEX8QC&pg=PA116
_"In 1857 open letter on Liszt's symphonic poems Wagner mentions having first truly appreciated the "Hammerklavier" and C-minor sonatas (opp. 106, 111) after hearing private performances of them by Liszt."_

Johann Nepomuk Hummel's influence on the Romantics is overlooked in comparison:
https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/files/EMagSummer07Hummel.pdf

In short, I'm saying - just because we consider some works "great" today, it doesn't necessarily mean they were "important" throughout history.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> He clearly has had influence and one can only speculate how music would be different without him. That said his over all impact I do believe is less than what many of his fans often suggest, and on looking at his music closer even his impact on the Romantic era is less than what I used to think it was.
> 
> "The great harmonic innovations of the Romantics do not come from Beethoven at all, and have nothing to do either with his technique or his spirit. They arise from Hummel, Weber, Field and Schubert...and from Italian opera."
> 
> ...


Every comment above concerns harmony, reflecting the myopic focus of mid-20thc theory. Beethoven's primary influence on the Romantics wasn't in harmony, although, contra Rosen, he had substantial influence there as well. His primary influence was on thematic processes, multimovement structure, and aesthetics.

After Beethoven's essays in the thematic unification of multimovement cycles (Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, Appassionata, some of the late sonatas and quartets) nearly every Romantic composer took up the practice: Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Franck, Liszt, Dvorak, Brahms occasionally, Rimsky-Korsakoff and countless minor figures. The practice was even more pervasive in the 20thc, especially among the Russians. After Beethoven, and influenced by his example, the majority of Romantic Era sonatas and symphonies beginning in the minor mode ended in the major mode. All of this reflected a new aesthetic ideal of imbuing large-scale works with a dramatic, quasi-narrative expressive continuity.

Beethoven changed the profile of first movement sonata forms in ways that were highly influential on Chopin and nearly every major Russian and Eastern European composer through Shostakovich.

And it's worth remembering that composers are not only influential for the paths they open, but for those they close or make perilous as well. Someone above mentioned Brahms's reluctance to compete in the symphonic genre, and I imagine many hearing Beethoven's late sonatas and quartets found the prospect of trying to extend or add something to that madness bewildering or daunting. That too is impact and influence on the future.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> Well, it's an interesting thought, if a similar figure would have emerged anyway, epitomizing more or less what Beethoven has become to symbolize and has been used for (the exact content of which I won't digress into now).


This is pretty much my feeling.

Beethoven, as the phrase goes, was "standing on the shoulders of giants". In other words, his work took into account everything that came before. If it wasn't him, someone else would have filled the same shoes. Not that the would have gone in the same direction as Beethoven, but their innovations would have been equally as huge.

You can't point at the exact person it would have been that would have taken Beethoven's place, or that it would have been the same years, but something would have happened. Artistic styles can't be static for too long without someone stepping up with major evolutionary changes.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Every comment above concerns harmony, reflecting the myopic focus of mid-20thc theory. Beethoven's primary influence on the Romantics wasn't in harmony, although, contra Rosen, he had substantial influence there as well. His primary influence was on thematic processes, multimovement structure, and aesthetics.
> 
> After Beethoven's essays in the thematic unification of multimovement cycles (Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, Appassionata, some of the late sonatas and quartets) nearly every Romantic composer took up the practice: Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Franck, Liszt, Dvorak, Brahms occasionally, Rimsky-Korsakoff and countless minor figures. The practice was even more pervasive in the 20thc, especially among the Russians. After Beethoven, and influenced by his example, the majority of Romantic Era sonatas and symphonies beginning in the minor mode ended in the major mode. All of this reflected a new aesthetic ideal of imbuing large-scale works with a dramatic, quasi-narrative expressive continuity.
> 
> ...


Sure there are similarities but the function of sonata form itself was altered in the Romantic era.

"...with all their harmonic daring and exploration in other forms, when it came to the 'sonata' they were far more conservative than Beethoven. Their greatest harmonic conceptions could not be applied to the sonata without making nonsense of it, whereas all of Beethoven's most startling innovations took place easily and comfortably within the sonata style."

Indeed the innovations of the Romantics are not closely related to Beethoven but:

"...made possible not by an aesthetic in which the tonic-dominant polarity has been expounded to the limits of its effective power, but one in which it has been loosened and weakened, where the orientation towards a powerful tonic area at the beginning and end has been threatened by a new and pervasive chromaticism, *and a more lyric and less dramatic conception of form*. It was for example Schubert who first wrote an exposition which went to the subdominant. In the early works of Schubert as in the music of Weber and Hummel, there is the first large development of a truly melodic form, one in which the classical harmonic tension is replaced by a relaxed and expansive succession of melodies."

This is what Beethoven was referring to when he claimed that Spohr's music was marred by his chromatic melodies. It had nothing to do with chromaticism itself as that is found throughout Beethoven's music, but the way it was used in terms of the alteration of the harmonic tension found in the classical forms.

In this sense we can see the Romantics as moving away from Beethoven's aesthetic rather than towards it. The truth is Chopin was not highly influenced by Beethoven, nor was the early and innovative Schubert (before his change of mind which coincided with his retreat late in life into more classical forms). Weber also had problems with Beethoven's music and considered it 'wilfully eccentric'.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> Sure there are similarities but the function of sonata form itself was altered in the Romantic era.
> 
> "...with all their harmonic daring and exploration in other forms, when it came to the 'sonata' they were far more conservative than Beethoven. Their greatest harmonic conceptions could not be applied to the sonata without making nonsense of it, whereas all of Beethoven's most startling innovations took place easily and comfortably within the sonata style."
> 
> ...


Once again, Rosen is focused only on tonal/harmonic factors, tonic-dominant polarity being the central principle in his conception of sonata form. He missed or downplayed everything else I mentioned in my post, so of course he didn't hear what the Romantics actually took from Beethoven. Moreover, the very codification of sonata form by Antoine Reicha in the 1830s (the textbook description with expo, development, and recap, two principal thematic areas, etc.) is as a schematic-thematic model based on Beethoven's best known opening movements. This model, employed by the Romantics and still taught today, emphasizes the succession of thematic areas and events over the tonal/harmonic polarity Rosen highlights. Did Reicha misunderstand or under-emphasize the true driving force behind Classical sonata form as Rosen describes it? Quite possibly. But the pattern he codified and the later Romantics imitated nevertheless derives directly from Beethoven, even if it is a Beethoven understood from a different angle.

Beethoven's influence on 20thc tonal music is at least as strong as that on the Romantics. Beethoven as digested by critics like A.B. Marx and Hoffman is virtually the sole basis of Socialist Realism in instrumental music as practiced in the USSR. Prokofiev, Shostakovich and others were judged and browbeaten according to values derived directly from Romantic Era criticism of Beethoven.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> Indeed the innovations of the Romantics are not closely related to Beethoven but:





tdc said:


> Beethoven was of no use to them. The Romantic style did not come from Beethoven, in spite of the great admiration that was felt for him, but from his lesser contemporaries and from Bach."


Although I'm skeptical about the historical significance of some of Beethoven's late works,
it can't be denied Beethoven was still an enormously influential figure in classical music, regarded highly by many of his "successors", Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky.

among these, surprisingly, Berlioz and Tchaikovsky actually did consider Beethoven greater than Bach:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=XHtUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1816
http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Johann_Sebastian_Bach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Romantics
_"Composers from both sides looked back on Beethoven as their spiritual and artistic hero; the conservatives seeing him as an unsurpassable peak, the progressives as a new beginning in music."_

both of you tdc and Edward have good points, my position is somewhere in between.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> Every comment above concerns harmony, reflecting the myopic focus of mid-20thc theory. Beethoven's primary influence on the Romantics wasn't in harmony, although, contra Rosen, he had substantial influence there as well. His primary influence was on thematic processes, multimovement structure, and aesthetics.


Then Beethoven's influence was not so much harmonic? Okay, I will agree, but the Romantics are seen as harmonic innovators, so I see nothing 'myopic' with focussing on that aspect. Personally, I think Beethoven, like Debussy, "just did what the hell he wanted to do."



> After Beethoven's essays in the thematic unification of multimovement cycles (Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, Appassionata, some of the late sonatas and quartets) nearly every Romantic composer took up the practice: Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Franck, Liszt, Dvorak, Brahms occasionally, Rimsky-Korsakoff and countless minor figures. The practice was even more pervasive in the 20thc, especially among the Russians. After Beethoven, and influenced by his example, the majority of Romantic Era sonatas and symphonies beginning in the minor mode ended in the major mode. All of this reflected a new aesthetic ideal of imbuing large-scale works with a dramatic, quasi-narrative expressive continuity.
> 
> Beethoven changed the profile of first movement sonata forms in ways that were highly influential on Chopin and nearly every major Russian and Eastern European composer through Shostakovich.


I think Chopin took Beethoven's cue, and "just did what the hell he wanted to do." Chopin strikes me, at his most adventurous, as 'stream of consciousness, whereas Beethoven's excursions seemed more classically restrained and logical.



> And it's worth remembering that composers are not only influential for the paths they open, but for those they close or make perilous as well. Someone above mentioned Brahms's reluctance to compete in the symphonic genre, and I imagine many hearing Beethoven's late sonatas and quartets found the prospect of trying to extend or add something to that madness bewildering or daunting. That too is impact and influence on the future.


I think Beethoven was following a path that was inevitable on a formal level; perhaps he was just the first one to see it. This includes root movement by thirds, use of diminished sevenths for their pivotal qualities, and other innovations. Once that door was opened, it was just a matter of exploiting the formal materials. I think too much credit is given to Beethoven for what was inevitable.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

^I think Rosen's claim that the Romantics were moving away from Beethoven's overall "aesthetic" was willful contrarianism because no one could really think that. In context it's clear he's only talking about harmony.



millionrainbows said:


> root movement by thirds, use of diminished sevenths for their pivotal qualities


That stuff didn't start with Beethoven, though.

Anyway this thread wasn't supposed to be about Beethoven specifically - see first post.

My feeling is that for the most part the general sweep of music history would be the same if you erase any one person, but there are also bodies of work that stand sort of outside the mainstream of that history and were not inevitable. Many of Beethoven's late works are in that category. Other examples might be found in Gesualdo and Messiaen.

If you can make an argument for a single figure actually determining the course of music history, such that it would have been different if he were gone, it might be Schoenberg. Highly chromatic atonality was inevitable but it's not clear that his 12-tone method was, and it gave rise to a whole way of thinking about composition.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> If you can make an argument for a single figure actually determining the course of music history, such that it would have been different if he were gone, it might be Schoenberg. Highly chromatic atonality was inevitable but it's not clear that his 12-tone method was, and it gave rise to a whole way of thinking about composition.


The irony here is that very few people, including musicians, can hear a difference between a serial atonal work and a freely atonal one. The serial method may have given rise to a new way of thinking, but not to a new way of listening. Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky and others made new sounds and/or created new forms which actually changed what people expected to hear and feel. Atonality itself was a new sound in music with a real impact on the listener. But how many listeners really care whether a piece is based on a tone row, or find it a rewarding exercise to try to detect the row's permutations?

If "the course of music history" is merely what happens inside the heads of academically trained "classical" composers, then Schoenberg's big idea may accord him the status you suggest. Or it may not.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

David C F Wright regards Beethoven the greatest of all time, but look what he says about the late works. (which I don't fully agree, as there are gems such as Op.131 in late Beethoven, but Wright does have a good point about Op.106 and Op.111)

_"There is probably no greater composer than Beethoven. He achieved in fifty six years and, under the most difficult circumstances for a creative musician, the problem of eventual total deafness, and may have suffered more than many other composers. I willingly accept that many will say that J S Bach is the greatest."_
https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/ludwig-van-beethoven.pdf

_"The final stage of Beethoven's life was marked by a new trend in his music. His final string quartets became introspective and lacking in vigour. It could be called mellowing or that he had become lazy or found that inspiration was lacking. There were more subdued and lacking in contrast and generally, without any real lively music of which to speak. Many people refer to these quartets are supreme masterpieces. The same is said of the late piano sonatas particularly the Hammerklavier, Opus 106, Sonata in C minor, Opus 111, has a magnificent full-blooded opening movement but the long finale is a set of variations often slow. For the perceptive musician, one variation is clearly jazz almost an hundred years before that word became known."_
https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/ludwig-van-beethoven.pdf#page=9


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> The irony here is that very few people, including musicians, can hear a difference between a serial atonal work and a freely atonal one. The serial method may have given rise to a new way of thinking, but not to a new way of listening. Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky and others made new sounds and/or created new forms which actually changed what people expected to hear and feel. Atonality itself was a new sound in music with a real impact on the listener. But how many listeners really care whether a piece is based on a tone row, or find it a rewarding exercise to try to detect the row's permutations?
> 
> If "the course of music history" is merely what happens inside the heads of academically trained "classical" composers, then Schoenberg's big idea may accord him the status you suggest. Or it may not.


Then the "net result" is that Schoenberg's method did not change the inevitability of chromaticism, so he can't be given credit.

Conversely, very few people, including musicians, can hear a difference between a classically composed tonal work and all the tonal works that exist throughout the spectrum of world music, including folk, ethnic, and popular forms.

CP Western tonality may the apotheosis of tonality and tone-centered music, but not to our basic way of listening, which existed before that.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

_'A work greater than his greatest symphonies, greater than anything he wrote, and consequently greater than anything ever produced by the art of music'_
(Berlioz on a performance by Mme Massart late in 1860 of Beethoven's Appassionata sonata (op. 57, in F Minor), reproduced in À travers chants in the chapter entitled 'Les temps sont proches')
https://books.google.ca/books?id=vfODCaKHSbMC&pg=PA200

_Liszt had returned from Switzerland an even greater player than when he left Paris the year before, wrote Berlioz in the Gazette after hearing him perform Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata at Erard's salons in May: "that sublime poem which had been till now, for practically all pianists, the riddle of the Sphinx" but which Liszt, like a "new Oedipus", had solved, giving "the ideal performance of a work reputed to be unperformable" and, in so doing, proving himself "the pianist of the future"._
https://books.google.ca/books?id=EwIskvIA5yQC&pg=PA126

It's interesting that Berlioz and Wagner both said something to the effect about Op.106: "only sounds good if played Liszt". It's more like they were praising Liszt's prowess as a performer rather than the quality of the Beethoven work itself. Similar to how Chopin praised the level of Liszt's performance rather than the quality of his own work by saying _"I should like to steal from him the way to play my own Etudes."_



hammeredklavier said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._29_(Beethoven)
> _"Richard Wagner held reservations for what he perceived as a lack of succinctness in its composition."_
> 
> https://books.google.ca/books?id=QafEkYAEX8QC&pg=PA116
> _"In 1857 open letter on Liszt's symphonic poems Wagner mentions having first truly appreciated the "Hammerklavier" and C-minor sonatas (opp. 106, 111) after hearing private performances of them by Liszt."_


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> David C F Wright regards Beethoven the greatest of all time, but look what he says about the late works. (which I don't fully agree, as there are gems such as Op.131 in late Beethoven, but Wright does have a good point about Op.106 and Op.111)
> 
> _"The final stage of Beethoven's life was marked by a new trend in his music. *His final string quartets* became introspective and *l**acking vigour.* It could be called mellowing or that *he had become lazy or found that inspiration was lacking.* There were more subdued and *lacking in contrast* and generally, *without any real lively music* of which to speak. Many people refer to these quartets are supreme masterpieces. The same is said of the late piano sonatas particularly the Hammerklavier, Opus 106, Sonata in C minor, Opus 111, has a magnificent full-blooded opening movement but the long finale is a set of variations often slow. *For the perceptive musician, one variation is clearly jazz *almost an hundred years before that word became known."_
> https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/ludwig-van-beethoven.pdf#page=9


Your infatuation with that charlatan David C. F. Wright is fascinating. He's entitled to his odd opinions, but can't we admit that they are indeed odd? Even perverse? To "perceptive musicians" (which Wright calls himself with a straight face) the idea that Beethoven's late quartets lack vigor, inspiration or contrast is just laughable. And no, a syncopated figure in Op. 111 doesn't constitute jazz.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Questions like this baffle me. It is a fact of history that LvB existed and you can’t unexist him. You might just as well ask if the Manhattan Project hadn’t happened. The fact is you cannot jndo history


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> _'A work greater than his greatest symphonies, greater than anything he wrote, and consequently greater than anything ever produced by the art of music'_
> (Berlioz on a performance by Mme Massart late in 1860 of Beethoven's Appassionata sonata (op. 57, in F Minor), reproduced in À travers chants in the chapter entitled 'Les temps sont proches')
> https://books.google.ca/books?id=vfODCaKHSbMC&pg=PA200
> 
> ...


The "Hammerklavier" was - and is - complex, difficult music. It isn't surprising that it took a Liszt to understand it and reveal its qualities at that time. Did Berlioz and Wagner actually say "something to the effect that" the piece couldn't sound good unless Liszt played it, or did they say something to the effect that Liszt was the first to reveal the work's qualities to them? Those are different statements.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

DavidA said:


> Questions like this baffle me. It is a fact of history that LvB existed and you can't unexist him. You might just as well ask if the Manhattan Project hadn't happened. The fact is you cannot jndo history


1000000000+

Threads like this one, despite are interesting, are crazy. I agree with Woodduck's opinions as they are written here. I will add only one comment: There is no human being on this planet, who can make critic to Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Liszt, etc. To make critic means that you know music in a similar level with these guys. Brahms made critic to Tschaikowsky and the second to Brahms, because BOTH they knew FFFFFFFn lot of music. Journalists, weekend music specialists, faked experts etc. they don't have word for such titans and I don't bother to read their FFFFn opinion.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> If "the course of music history" is merely what happens inside the heads of academically trained "classical" composers, then Schoenberg's big idea may accord him the status you suggest. Or it may not.


I agree that the free atonal and serial works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern aren't immediately distinguishable. What I was thinking of was a whole strand of later music that might not have existed if the 12-tone method hadn't trained composers to think about music in this peculiar way. Early Boulez, Babbitt, Wuorinen, Carter, etc.

I'm not making a value judgment here, positive or negative, about that music or about Schoenberg.


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## Bluecrab (Jun 24, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Y...the idea that Beethoven's late quartets lack vigor, inspiration or contrast is just laughable.


Yeah, I was thinking exactly the same thing when I read that nonsense. So the Grosse Fuge lacks vigor?

What a jackass.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Then Beethoven's influence was not so much harmonic? Okay, I will agree, but the Romantics are seen as harmonic innovators, so I see nothing 'myopic' with focussing on that aspect. Personally, I think Beethoven, like Debussy, "just did what the hell he wanted to do."


You are being myopic about the Romantics in the same way Rosen was about the Classical composers.



millionrainbows said:


> I think Beethoven was following a path that was inevitable on a formal level; perhaps he was just the first one to see it. This includes root movement by thirds, use of diminished sevenths for their pivotal qualities, and other innovations. Once that door was opened, it was just a matter of exploiting the formal materials. I think too much credit is given to Beethoven for what was inevitable.


You have only addressed harmony with any specificity. Same myopia. One can only guess what the vague statement "exploiting the formal materials" is supposed to mean.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> ...the idea that Beethoven's late quartets lack vigor, inspiration or contrast is just laughable.


There's an echo of that from Beethoven's time. One contemporary review of a late quartet claimed it showed that Beethoven was written out, comparing the music to a bird, old and exhausted, weakly beating its wings against the bars of its cage.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> I think Rosen's claim that the Romantics were moving away from Beethoven's overall "aesthetic" was willful contrarianism because *no one could really think that*. In context it's clear he's only talking about harmony.


Except I've thought that, and discussed similar ideas on this forum before reading Rosen. Chopin, Brahms and Wagner sound worlds away from Beethoven to me. Just completely different aesthetics and approaches to harmony. I don't think harmony is a myopic focus either because it is directly related to the change in aesthetic. You cannot really separate form - thematic transition, and unified narratives etc. from harmony itself, they are connected.

This said I don't disagree with Ed's claim that Beethoven has had lasting influence on the Romantic era and beyond, only that the influence has been to a considerable extent misunderstood and exaggerated. I think Rosen's work is further evidence of this.

I've been reading Rosen's book slowly, because it is densely packed with ideas and I am reading it to understand it. I'm in the last Beethoven chapters now and it is clear that Rosen has a tremendous respect for Beethoven and is now discussing how characteristic and unique so many of his works are.

Another thing I've learned from this book is that Beethoven took more ideas (in terms of structuring his works) from Mozart than I realized, this is not to say Beethoven didn't expand on those ideas in brilliant ways, but there is heavy Mozart influence. But because Beethoven's harmonic language sounds very different from Mozart, those influences were not apparent to me.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> There's an echo of that from Beethoven's time. One contemporary review of a late quartet claimed it showed that Beethoven was written out, comparing the music to a bird, old and exhausted, weakly beating its wings against the bars of its cage.


You probably have at your fingertips an immense trove of quotes demonstrating that Beethoven's late works were and are baffling to many people. The image of the middle-period "revolutionary" composer of heroic, strenuous, headlong, tragedy-to-triumph drama, scowling and shaking his fist at the heavens, is still the dominant notion of what he's about. The 9th symphony intentionally puts that Beethoven into perspective.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> You probably have at your fingertips an immense trove of quotes demonstrating that Beethoven's late works were and are baffling to many people.


Actually not all that many. But Ludwig Spohr, possibly the Dr. David Wright of his time, called the quartets "indecipherable, uncorrected horrors."

However, since he also invented the violin chinrest, we'll give him a pass on that one.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think Beethoven's influence is pretty clear on the whole Romantic Era. He was the first composer to put more emphasis on expression over form. In Mozart, Bach and others, the two are inextricably linked.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Phil loves classical said:


> I think Beethoven's influence is pretty clear on the whole Romantic Era. He was the first composer to put* more emphasis on expression over form*. In Mozart, Bach and others, the two are inextricably linked.


This might seem sensible at first glance, but when looked at closer actually Beethoven emphasized form probably more than any composer. As discussed earlier in this thread Beethoven's biggest contribution to music was form. 'Expression' is a vague and hard to define term in music, but if you are talking about using music as a vehicle for personal expression, then I don't think there was more or less of this post-Beethoven. It is actually not a very accurate way to describe the compositional process for most composers. Chopin apparently did not approve of people looking at his compositions as being personal expressions. I think your idea about Beethoven's music emphasizing 'expression over form' is a good example of one of the myths surrounding Beethoven.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> This might seem sensible at first glance, but when looked at closer actually Beethoven emphasized form probably more than any composer. As discussed earlier in this thread Beethoven's biggest contribution to music was form. 'Expression' is a vague and hard to define term in music, but if you are talking about *using music as a vehicle for personal expression, then I don't think there was more or less of this post-Beethoven.* It is actually not a very accurate way to describe the compositional process for most composers. Chopin apparently did not approve of people looking at his compositions as being personal expressions. I think your idea about Beethoven's music emphasizing 'expression over form' is a good example of one of the myths surrounding Beethoven.


Quite wrong. Expressive aesthetics is the very essence of musical romanticism. In the Classical Era imitative aesthetics ruled, which was why music was considered a lowly art form throughout the lives of Mozart and Haydn. It could only imitate bird songs, storms, the back and forth of conversations, babbling brooks, the wind, and so on - none of the important forms, actions, or ideas of human life. With the Romantics music began to be regarded as perhaps the highest of the arts, for it's ability to express inner life directly unmediated by words, a condition toward which poetry aspired but couldn't reach

With respect to the relationship of form and expression, I think both you and Phil have missed the mark from different sides. In the music of Beethoven it's not form over expression or expression over form, it's musical form whose continuity and coherence derives from the logic of its expressive patterns - form animated by expression.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Quite wrong. Expressive aesthetics is the very essence of musical romanticism. In the Classical Era imitative aesthetics ruled, which was why music was considered a lowly art form throughout the lives of Mozart and Haydn. It could only imitate bird songs, storms, the back and forth of conversations, babbling brooks, the wind, and so on - none of the important forms, actions, or ideas of human life. With the Romantics music began to be regarded as perhaps the highest of the arts, for it's ability to express inner life directly unmediated by words, a condition toward which poetry aspired but couldn't reach
> 
> With respect to the relationship of form and expression, I think both you and Phil have missed the mark from different sides. In the music of Beethoven it's not form over expression or expression over form, it's musical form whose continuity and coherence derives from the logic of its expressive patterns - form animated by expression.


I find these ideas problematic because I don't think music pre-Beethoven can be reduced to 'imitative aesthetics'. You are trying to over simplify music's function based on something someone wrote in a treatise. I don't believe that any of the big composers ever wrote a treatise on 'imitative aesthetics'. Even if this was the case it wouldn't imply that the ability to imitate certain sounds is the sum total of music's function as if it is completely fenced in by these ideas and cannot transcend limitations placed on it.

Tonal theory textbooks today state that the compositional process is not fully understood, if it is not fully understood now, it was also not fully understood then. It is in fact not possible to sum up in words exactly how music affects a listener, so all of these descriptive concepts do not fully hit the mark. Major composers tend to express themselves with sound, not with programs of descriptions of how to interpret those sounds. The point is the sound speaks where the words fail. Further Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were _all_ considered romantic composers during the period we now consider 'Romantic', and now they are all considered classical era composers. How do you reconcile that fact? Where does 'expressive aesthetics' actually begin?

History is filled with examples of great artists being misunderstood in their time, Beethoven is one of them, Van Gogh another, to some degree this lack of understanding impacts the majority of great artists in their own time.

What you are doing is pointing towards the misunderstanding of art in it's time, and then trying to limit and define that art by the lack of comprehension.

The idea that pre-Beethoven music can only imitate literal sounds, while in Beethoven and beyond music can now express important human actions and thoughts of human life, is from my perspective laughably simplistic, and in fact absurd.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Quite wrong. Expressive aesthetics is the very essence of musical romanticism. In the Classical Era imitative aesthetics ruled, which was why music was considered a lowly art form throughout the lives of Mozart and Haydn. It could only imitate bird songs, storms, the back and forth of conversations, babbling brooks, the wind, and so on - none of the important forms, actions, or ideas of human life. With the Romantics music began to be regarded as perhaps the highest of the arts, for it's ability to express inner life directly unmediated by words, a condition toward which poetry aspired but couldn't reach


The classical age was also the last great period to freely depict "supernatural/divine intervention" in music. Haydn's depiction of "let there be light" in the beginning of The Creation, the final earthquake of The Seven Last Words of Christ. (which inspired Beethoven in writing the late works such as Op.131.)
And Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Requiem-
after this, we have Verdi, Faure, Brahms who seems to be interested in expressing death and afterlife in a more conciliatory manner. Even Beethoven is reported to have said _"zu wild und furchtbar"_ about Mozart's Requiem, wished Cherubini's Requiem be played at his own funeral instead. https://books.google.ca/books?id=nY54DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT241

_"The main "Requiem" theme, the DNA of which permeates the entire work, is, in fact, a quote. This melody (d-c#-d-e-f) is from a Lutheran hymn, "When My Final Hour is At Hand." If you're trying to figure out how much truth there is to the stories of Mozart's reportedly saying that he was writing "my own Requiem," the fact that the main theme of the entire piece is attached to the words "My Final Hour" rather than his, hers, ours or theirs is worth knowing.
Then, figure in the fact that Mozart was not the first to use that theme- Handel's "The Way's of Zion do Mourn" (which you can hear a short excerpt of here), written 54 years earlier. Mozart knew his Handel- he even made his own performing version of Messiah. Handel's text (all taken from Lamentations) depicts a whole world overcome with sadness- "The ways of Zion do mourn and she is in bitterness; all her people sigh and hang down their heads to the ground."
So, in this opening, Mozart is already combing the personal with the universal- the terror of the one facing "my final hour" with the grief of the nation in the face of incalculable loss."_
https://kennethwoods.net/blog1/2009/04/08/mozart-requiem-quotation-and-meaning/


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Our colloquy began with your statement that

if you are talking about using music as a vehicle for personal expression, then I don't think there was more or less of this post-Beethoven.

My response was meant to refute this statement, which is simply wrong. There was definitely more of this post-Beethoven. If you doubt this, I would recommend reading Chapter 6 of Edward Lippman's _A History of Western Musical Aesthetics_, ("Imitation and Expression.")



tdc said:


> The idea that pre-Beethoven music can only imitate literal sounds, while in Beethoven and beyond music can now express important human actions and thoughts of human life, is from my perspective laughably simplistic, and in fact absurd.


You've misunderstood what I wrote. I described how Classical Era music was received by those steeped in imitative aesthetics, the dominant theory of the late 18thc. My purpose was to explain why, among other things, Haydn had to wear a monkey suit and enjoy the social status of a cook for much of his life, whereas Beethoven was often hailed as a quasi-divine practitioner of the highest of the fine arts by his contemporaries. The reason was a paradigm shift in aesthetic theory and a general change in the status of music in the pantheon of the arts, not the abilities of the respective artists of different eras.



tdc said:


> I find these ideas problematic because I don't think music pre-Beethoven can be reduced to 'imitative aesthetics'. You are trying to over simplify music's function based on something someone wrote in a treatise. I don't believe that any of the big composers ever wrote a treatise on 'imitative aesthetics'. Even if this was the case it wouldn't imply that the ability to imitate certain sounds is the sum total of music's function as if it is completely fenced in by these ideas and cannot transcend limitations placed on it.


Once again, you misread what I wrote. No one is reducing pre-Beethoven music "to imitative aesthetics," whatever that's supposed to mean. Classical instrumental music was largely focused on abstract form and sensual beauty, downplaying expression relative to music of both the Baroque and Romantic Eras.



tdc said:


> Tonal theory textbooks today state that the compositional process is not fully understood, if it is not fully understood now, it was also not fully understood then. It is in fact not possible to sum up in words exactly how music affects a listener, so all of these descriptive concepts do not fully hit the mark. Major composers tend to express themselves with sound, not with programs of descriptions of how to interpret those sounds. The point is the sound speaks where the words fail. *Further Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were all considered romantic composers during the period we now consider 'Romantic', and now they are all considered classical era composers. How do you reconcile that fact?* Where does 'expressive aesthetics' actually begin?


How do I reconcile that fact (which is, in fact, partially mistaken*)? People were listening from a new aesthetic perspective. Expressive aesthetics became dominant in literature and poetry decades earlier than it did in music.

*Beethoven's work isn't comfortably shoehorned into the Classical category.

If you want to better understand the aesthetic issues involved in this discussion, I would recommend reading Chapter 6 ("Imitation and Expression) of Edward Lippman's _A history of Western Musical Aesthetics_.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Our colloquy began with your statement that
> 
> if you are talking about using music as a vehicle for personal expression, then I don't think there was more or less of this post-Beethoven.
> 
> My response was meant to refute this statement, which is simply wrong. There was definitely more of this post-Beethoven. If you doubt this, I would recommend reading Chapter 6 of Edward Lippman's _A History of Western Musical Aesthetics_, ("Imitation and Expression.")


Well, thank you for the reading recommendation.

I've already pointed to evidence that the early Romantics were not highly inspired by Beethoven, as well as that Chopin had problems with people looking at his works as highly personal expressions, so I don't think this is area of music as 'personal expression' is quite as simple as people think. Each composer that has something to say I think will leave fingerprints of his/her musical personality in their compositions in their own way. I do think different styles of music tend towards different aspects of the human experience, and this is something I would like to research more.

My feeling is that Beethoven's musical personality was eccentric and highly extroverted and that he brought to more surface levels (as Rosen called his music a 'naked attack') expressive qualities that were to a large extent already present in earlier music in more subtle ways. This is not to suggest Beethoven's unique contributions were not valuable and impactful (or that he could not also be subtle) but I still feel his impact has often been over stated and misunderstood.

I think pointing to things like raising music higher in the 'pantheon of arts' and Haydn's cook suit is essentially just an appeal to popularity. There are plenty of highly skilled composers today largely unknown and living in poverty, while many lesser talents are treated as semi-divine. While interesting I don't think this line of argument is very useful in clarifying longer term influence or specific characteristics of the music itself.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I have tried. I have read and discussed. But I can't come to see middle-period Beethoven as Classical music. For me it is early but completely Romantic music. I can accept that early Beethoven is Classical but even that sounds transitional to me.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

tdc said:


> Well, thank you for the reading recommendation.
> 
> I've already pointed to evidence that the early Romantics were not highly inspired by Beethoven, as well as that *Chopin had problems with people looking at his works as highly personal expressions*, so I don't think this is area of music as 'personal expression' is quite as simple as people think. Each composer that has something to say I think will leave fingerprints of his/her musical personality in their compositions in their own way. I do think different styles of music tend towards different aspects of the human experience, and this is something I would like to research more.
> 
> ...


Chopin's view was shared by many composers, but your interpretation of its significance likely misconstrues what "personal expression" means in this context. The everyday meaning of personal (of or pertaining to a particular individual, e.g. Frederic, Hector, or Ludwig) is not the one commonly understood to be in force in musical aesthetics and poetics. Here the more apt definition is "pertaining to or characteristic of a person or self-conscious being," meaning not a particular individual, but personal (adj.) as distinguished from collective, rhetorical or abstract. In modern poetic criticism, for example, one doesn't assume that the feelings expressed in a particular poem are those of the author. The words might express personal feelings to be sure, but one attributes them to the speaker of the poem, not the poet (unless their is compelling biographical or testimonial evidence to the contrary). Likewise in music one should never assume that the personal expression of a musical work is that of the composer. Personal in this context means the expression of a unified human voice (without specifying whose) as opposed to expressive qualities inherent in the materials, piecemeal in particular passages, or attributable to the music in a rhetorical or abstract sense. It's not Frederic's versus Ludwig's voice, it's some unspecified but coherent individual voice versus abstract or disembodied rhetorical expression - the expression of a fictional or unspecified character the composer creates through music.

The best exposition of this issue is Edward T. Cone's _The Composer's Voice_, in which Cone suggests adopting a term that serves the same function as "the speaker of the poem" does in poetic criticism, a term to distinguish the work's expression from that of its composer. The term Cone adopts is "the musical persona."


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