# Did Beethoven rip off Mozart?



## Charlie Mac (May 23, 2015)

So, let's face it - the main Eroica theme, that we hear immediately after the iconic double salvo that opens the first movement, is _very_ similar to the Bastien und Bastienne overture by Mozart.

Coincidence? Copy? Something else?

Likewise, Beethoven's Ode to Joy wasn't going too far from something Mozart had already composed in Misericordias Domini.

Coincidence? Copy? Something else?

What are your thoughts on these similarities?


----------



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Beethoven had the greater imagination while Mozart had the greater creativity, so Beethoven didn't have to come up with every single note in order to reveal to us something new and beautiful. It all kind of surfaced from subconsciousness. I admire his version of composing.


----------



## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Don’t composers refer to other composers works in some of their own compositions? I see nothing wrong in that.


----------



## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal!"

Attributed to Pablo Picasso


----------



## La Passione (Oct 23, 2020)

Most likely either a coincidence or simply a subconscious thing, not a conscious decision to quote or reference or steal. Similarities of this kind aren't uncommon, its natural in any artistic field to absorb one's influences and transform and reinvent them. That's essentially what every artist does.1


----------



## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Everyone "stole" from everyone else. With thousands of composers in Vienna alone and only twelve chromatic pitches to deal with. It's bound to happen.

Other examples

Beethoven's 3rd PC and Mozart's 24th PC

Beethoven's first piano sonata and Mozart's Symphony 40 last movement.


----------



## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Almost certainly Beethoven had never heard of Bastienne. If anything, I'd say that the first movement of Mozart's K 543 might have been a far away (and more lyrical, different affect etc.) inspiration because this was a major work Beethoven would have known.
The search for such spurious similarities is one of the most popular and most useless pastimes among certain listeners. 
It's often like claiming that a poet rhyming "part" with "heart" must have been copying from another one. Or two authors writing a novel including a love triangle or a murder mystery...


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

The uniqueness in handling form and narrative in Beethoven symphonies nos. 3, 9 - was something only Beethoven could accomplish, in the whole history of Western classical music.
One could write a whole book about how much "melodic material" Mozart took from the Salzburg masters. 




(Not sure when this was composed, but Eberlin died in 1762)




(1775)





(1768)




(1773)


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

(before 1764)




(1771)





(1770s)




(1775; not quite sure which one of these two came first though)


----------



## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Charlie Mac said:


> So, let's face it - the main Eroica theme, that we hear immediately after the iconic double salvo that opens the first movement, is _very_ similar to the Bastien und Bastienne overture by Mozart.
> 
> Coincidence? Copy? Something else?
> 
> ...


None. I simply don't care where Beethoven got his ideas. One thing for sure, there is more to the Eroica Symphony, or any of his symphonies, than any one theme.


----------



## JohnP (May 27, 2014)

Examples abound, and I agree that it doesn't matter. Is the opening of Mahler's First arresting? Yes, even though it's already there in Brahms's Second. Everyone undoubtedly knows Stravinsky's famous bon mot: "Good composer's borrow, great ones steal."


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Charlie Mac said:


> So, let's face it - the main Eroica theme, that we hear immediately after the iconic double salvo that opens the first movement, is _very_ similar to the Bastien und Bastienne overture by Mozart.
> 
> Coincidence? Copy? Something else?


It's a freakin' arpeggio in one phrase of a 40 measure theme.  The similarity is trivial and the most important part of the Eroica's opening phrase, the dip down to C#, isn't in the Mozart. The Mozart doesn't have a contrasting phrase with duple accents and a dramatically transformed return of the opening phrase.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

No!xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

It kind of surprises me how easily it can be to do something somewhat similar to preexisting music even when you're trying to come up with original themes. You basically have to go out of your way sometimes to make it different.


----------



## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Some of the music that "Beethoven stole from Mozart" (!!!) might well be shades of melody Mozart stole from folk songs. Even a couple of progressively consecutive tones from an "old" tune might inspire something "new" from a creative composer.

I've long marveled at that odd-metered melody that appears beginning measure 42 in the Fourth Movement "Intermezzo Interrotto" of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. It remains one of my favorite melodies in all of music. I had listened to it for years never realizing it was not original to Bartok until, several years ago, I watched a video documenting Bartok's survey of Hungarian folk songs and one scene featured an elderly fellow in a small hut singing an ancient folk tune that mirrored that of the "Calmo" in Bartok's Intermezzo. I've since learned that much more of Bartok's Concerto, and fragments of other of his musical works, taps into the folk tradition, documenting and preserving melodies and rhythms that otherwise might be lost. Of course, one may "borrow" from folk sources consciously or subconsciously, but it likely doesn't matter either way when the results are as magnificent as those produced by Bartok.

Note -- more familiar, perhaps, is Bartok's borrowing of the first movement March theme from Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony beginning at measure 75 in that same Intermezzo of the Concerto for Orchestra. I was long puzzled by Bartok's appropriation of that theme and what it might mean until I became cognizant of the prior theme's folk origins. The movement made much more sense since I began to hear it as a sublime study in contrasts, with the deep, noble Hungarian "folk theme" pitted against the glib, superficial Soviet "march". In the context of the times when both works were written and the immense popularity Shostakovich enjoyed over Bartok (as well as the domination of the Soviet Russians over Hungary) it seems reasonable enough to interpret this music as Bartok's intellectual comeuppance of a rival composer and his State. I've since read several commentaries on the Shostakovich Seventh that seem to bear out my suspicions that perhaps Bartok was the first to really understand this symphony to be not a celebration of the greatness of the Russian war machine and its leaders but rather an irreverential mocking of it.


----------



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

I think Beethoven was government AI. Anyone who can compose absolute messes, and then Symphony 6, is suspect.


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Charlie Mac said:


> So, let's face it - the main Eroica theme, that we hear immediately after the iconic double salvo that opens the first movement, is _very_ similar to the Bastien und Bastienne overture by Mozart.
> 
> Coincidence? Copy? Something else?
> 
> ...


An idea invented by some Mozart fans to diss their rival, that's all.


----------



## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Forster said:


> An idea invented by some Mozart fans to diss their rival, that's all.


I haven't heard that diss(respect) being used before until this thread.


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

> Beethoven himself acknowledged more direct usurpations from his musical god. For example, on one of his musical sketches, for a work in C minor, Beethoven wrote, "This entire passage has been stolen from the Mozart symphony in C."


https://theimaginativeconservative....n-steal-melodies-music-stephen-klugewicz.html


----------



## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Ethereality said:


> I haven't heard that diss(respect) being used before until this thread.


Of course not. My thought is original, not plagiarised. :lol:


----------



## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

There are about 3 notes worth of similarity. But even if Beethoven had borrowed several bars in a row, what he did with them is vastly different than what Mozart did.

They're both great composers.


----------



## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

To quote or borrow thematic material from other composers is something usual in classical music; not only Beethoven, but also J.S. Bach, Mozart and many other great composers did it. I suggest the OP to take a look at *this thread about musical quotes* to see some examples of this.

Personally, I don't care if a composer uses secundary themes from other composers as long that he has his own original stylistic voice. This certainly is the case with Beethoven (and Mozart, and Bach, and others).


----------



## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

Ethereality said:


> I think Beethoven was government AI. Anyone who can compose absolute messes, and then Symphony 6, is suspect.


I don't know about messes, but Beethoven certainly could compose absolute masses, such as the Missa Solemnis


----------



## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

VoiceFromTheEther said:


> I don't know about messes, but Beethoven certainly could compose absolute masses, such as the *Missa Solemnis*


My second favorite mass of all, behind only the great Bach's in B minor.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

VoiceFromTheEther said:


> I don't know about messes, but Beethoven certainly could compose absolute masses, such as the Missa Solemnis


Messe is a German word meaning trade fair; a German and a French word meaning mass (liturgy) and mass (music).


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Beethoven used the funeral music from his Piano Sonata No. 12, composed 1801, in the second movement of Eroica from 1803 to show he also copied himself.

If you look at J.S. Bach's music he copied Vivaldi.

Dvorak's New World symphony copied "Swing Low Sweet Chariot."

Aaron Copland copied another spiritual for his song "Long Time Ago."

I'm sure today's composers copy those before them as well.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

VoiceFromTheEther said:


> I don't know about messes, but Beethoven certainly could compose absolute masses, such as the Missa Solemnis


Btw, in the Missa solemnis, a work completely composed of Beethoven's original voice, he also follows the practices of his predecessors; he uses different material in all cases, but in certain ideas and gestures, he respects their practices, such as the use of the:
1. repeated two-note motif "credo"
2. Gregorian mode in the Et incarnatus est
3. violin obbligato in the Benedictus
4. Classical through-composition


----------

