# What makes Mozart's Jupiter symphony sound so much like Beethoven?



## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

Every time I catch this on the radio I think it's Beethoven. I've listened to other late Mozart symphonies with this in mind and not so much. Can any one address this with great specificity? For example (and these examples are off the top of my head... NO suggestion that they really apply to the question):

EDIT - Well, almost every reply so far thought I was saying the examples below are true. Let me just repeat that these are random statements to illustrate more specificity than "it's the harmony" or "it's the instrumentation." I am NOT suggesting that the comparisons below are true.

1 - Instrumentation: 
Beethoven uses lots of horns and cellos in octaves, whereas Mozart almost never does until the Jupiter.

2 - Harmony:
Beethoven uses lots of diminshed 7th chords. Mozart doesn't until the Jupiter.

Mozart drops his dependence on long passages of violin "trills" (when strings go back and forth very fast between two notes.)

I know almost nothing about harmony, but if someone will give me specifics in an answer I'll go study up on the referenced items.

3 - Phrasing:
Beethoven repeats short phrases over and over. Mozart begins doing this in the Jupiter.

And then, if you can point to locations in the Jupiter and some Beethoven piece that would be wonderful.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I don't think it sounds like Beethoven. It has very strong passion in it which makes us think of Beethoven and not Mozart, but the work is still very Mozartian sounding to my ears.

The similarities you mentioned I can't really note on due to lack of knowledge.

But to my ears, it still sounds very much like an impassioned Mozart making music from the heart like the Requiem.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

It sounds nothing like Beethoven to me. Not sure why you think it's Beethoven. Perhaps not enough exposure to the latter's music?


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## Yornlig (Mar 4, 2019)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I don't think it sounds like Beethoven. It has very strong passion in it which makes us think of Beethoven and not Mozart, but the work is still very Mozartian sounding to my ears.
> 
> The similarities you mentioned I can't really note on due to lack of knowledge.
> 
> But to my ears, it still sounds very much like an impassioned Mozart making music from the heart like the Requiem.


Agree


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I hate to join the chorus of naysayers, but... Nay. If the Jupiter actually resembles Beethoven in the ways you mention, then it resembles Beethoven in those ways, but it still doesn't sound like Beethoven.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The "similarities" you note may indeed exist, but to me they all seem to be done in a Mozart way -- not a Beethoven one. Beethoven would never have composed a minuet so minuet-ish (except maybe the one in the Eighth symphony). Beethoven's use of fughatto was far different than Mozart's in the last movement. Even Beethoven's more Mozartean early works (the wind quintet, some of early piano sonatas) were Beethoven through and through.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

> 2 - Harmony:
> Beethoven uses lots of diminshed 7th chords. Mozart doesn't until the Jupiter.


Are you sure about that? I hear diminished sevenths in Mozart quite often. PC #21, 2nd mvt uses them quite a bit, for example.


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

Captainnumber36 said:


> The similarities you mentioned I can't really note on due to lack of knowledge.


Those weren't similarities. They were examples of the kind of response I was looking for. When I ask this type of question I tend to get answers like "it's the harmony," or "it's the instrumentation," with no specificity. I'll edit it to try to be clearer.


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

Torkelburger said:


> Are you sure about that? I hear diminished sevenths in Mozart quite often. PC #21, 2nd mvt uses them quite a bit, for example.


Thnks, but that was only an example of the kind of response I was looking for. I have no idea what role diminished 7ths play in either composer's work. When I ask this type of question I tend to get answers like "it's the harmony," or "it's the instrumentation," with no specificity. I'll edit it to try to be clearer.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

LAS said:


> Those weren't similarities. They were examples of the kind of response I was looking for. When I ask this type of question I tend to get answers like "it's the harmony," or "it's the instrumentation," with no specificity. I'll edit it to try to be clearer.


Got it, thanks for the clarification! You aren't completely off, though, Beethoven was very passionate and the 41st by Mozart is his most passionate symphony.


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

Thanks! Just the kind of answer I was looking for. Now I'll go study up on fughatto.

Please note that I wasn't saying that those similarities actually exist. They were examples of the kind of response I was looking for. When I ask this type of question I tend to get answers like "it's the harmony," or "it's the instrumentation," with no specificity. I'll edit it to try to be clearer.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I would compare the 41st to Beethoven's finale of his 9th in terms of grandiosity and spirituality felt.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I’m not sure how Mozart can sound like Beethoven when Mozart was first. Beethoven can only sound like Mozart and I hear very little similarity between the two. I would listen to more Mozart symphonies to become more familiar with his style.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

I've always found the opening of the 38th to be the only Mozart symphony that I might mistake for a beethoven one. I'm not sure what you find in the Jupiter.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

> I have no idea what role diminished 7ths play in either composer's work.


Well, just looking at the first couple of minutes in the example I gave (link below), at 0:38 the chord B-D-F-Ab appears to be functioning as what theorists call a "Common Tone Diminished Seventh". The F is in the Bb Triad in the preceding bar, in the diminished seventh, and also in the F minor triad in the bar after (F major triad when the piano repeats at 2:09). As far as I know, this was pretty cutting edge for the time and was utilized more in the Romantic period (the most famous example of the CT dim7 is opening of Brahms 3rd Sym).

The E-G-Bb-C# at 2:25 just functions as an incomplete dominate 7 flat 9 chord (A7(b9)) or viidim7 in D minor; the A eventually is filled in and it resolves to D minor.

The F#-A-C-Eb (over the G pedal) at 3:12 seems to be acting as an incomplete secondary dominant 7 flat 9 chord (D7(b9)) or viidim7 in G and resolves to G7.

At 3:44 the F#-A-C-Eb seems to be a viidim7 in G minor, resolves to the iv, then V7, then i.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

I'm not sure I've ever listened to any symphony more than Mozart's 41st, or any composer in general more than Beethoven, and I must say that I never thought the former sounded like the latter at all. Perhaps the only similarity I can think of is Mozart's heavy usage of short(er) melodic motifs and how the symphony, especially the last movement, is built from that.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

nothing, because it doesn't....


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

Torkelburger said:


> Well, just looking at the first couple of minutes in the example I gave (link below), at 0:38 the chord B-D-F-Ab appears to be functioning as what theorists call a "Common Tone Diminished Seventh". The F is in the Bb Triad in the preceding bar, in the diminished seventh, and also in the F minor triad in the bar after (F major triad when the piano repeats at 2:09). As far as I know, this was pretty cutting edge for the time and was utilized more in the Romantic period (the most famous example of the CT dim7 is opening of Brahms 3rd Sym).


Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! I'm going to research this stuff (first see if it's in the coursera.org course I subscribed to.

This is just the sort of info I hoped I'd get.


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

BachIsBest said:


> I've always found the opening of the 38th to be the only Mozart symphony that I might mistake for a beethoven one. I'm not sure what you find in the Jupiter.


Thanks. I'll definitely check out #38. I wish I had the language to tell you why Jupiter sounds like Beethoven to me.


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## LAS (Dec 12, 2014)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I would compare the 41st to Beethoven's finale of his 9th in terms of grandiosity and spirituality felt.


Thanks. I'll check it out. Another reply suggested 38. Would you agree??


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

LAS said:


> Thanks. I'll check it out. Another reply suggested 38. Would you agree??


The 41st is the Jupiter by Mozart and the 9th by Beethoven is Ode to Joy.


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## Euler (Dec 3, 2017)

LAS said:


> Every time I catch this on the radio I think it's Beethoven. I've listened to other late Mozart symphonies with this in mind and not so much. Can any one address this with great specificity?


I think the Jupiter is a unique masterpiece only Mozart could have written, just as Beethoven's music bears the unmistakable footprints of _his_ unique genius. Take the Jupiter's "insertion aria" at the end of the first movement's exposition (here) -- does Beethoven ever sound like this?

But I'll indulge you with a few attempts to draw parallels, some quite tenuous, some very tenuous!

In the opening movement of Beethoven's 1st symphony, the harmonic plan of the development section is suspiciously similar to that of the Jupiter's first movement. The way the winds usher in the development and recapitulation in these two movements is also similar. Listening to Beethoven's 1st piano concerto (another C major work) leaves little doubt he knew the Jupiter well.

The Jupiter also has some general features, mostly of scale, closer to Beethoven's early music than a typical Mozart symphony. The development section of the Jupiter's first movement is lengthy for Mozart. His developments are usually shorter than Haydn's and much shorter than Beethoven's; but here a false recapitulation leads to further expansion. In the Jupiter's andante, a secondary development pops up in the recapitulation: rare in Haydn, common in Beethoven.

Now this is a stretch but, compare the melodies of the Jupiter's andante (here) with the bridge in the finale of Beethoven's 5th (here)....


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 reminds me, in mood and somewhat in sound, of the first movement of Mozart's Jupiter. That was a fairly common sort of thing in the classical period. Other than that, no, not much parallelism between the two composers that I can hear.

BUT...the mood of the Jupiter's finale was surely in Beethoven's mind when he wrote his own faux-fugal finale for the Razumovsky Quartet #3!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Of course when people discuss their similarities, I take it they mean 'similarities within boundaries of Viennese school classicism'. They were individuals with different personalities and values, they won't 'sound the same'. Anyway I feel there's some connection between the ending of scherzo from Eroica (



) and the ending of Die Zauberflote Overture (



).



Captainnumber36 said:


> Got it, thanks for the clarification! You aren't completely off, though, Beethoven was very passionate and the 41st by Mozart is his most passionate symphony.


I think the 39th is often overlooked in this regard, 





and Maurerische Trauermusik is one of those works that, while not sounding like Beethoven per se, still seem to have inspired Beethoven in his slow movements to a degree.







Euler said:


> In the Jupiter's andante, a secondary development pops up in the recapitulation: rare in Haydn, common in Beethoven.


It's also interesting to compare Mozart's 24th concerto with Beethoven's 3rd on how they go about development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._24_(Mozart)#I._Allegro
_"The solo exposition follows its orchestral counterpart, and it is here that convention is discarded from the outset: the piano does not enter with the principal theme. Instead, it has an 18-measure solo passage. It is only after this passage that the principal theme appears, carried by the orchestra. The piano then picks up the theme from its seventh measure. Another departure from convention is that the solo exposition does not re-state the secondary theme from the orchestral exposition. Instead, a succession of new secondary thematic material appears. Musicologist Donald Tovey considered this introduction of new material to be "utterly subversive of the doctrine that the function of the opening tutti [the orchestral exposition] was to predict what the solo had to say."
One hundred measures into the solo exposition, which is now in the relative major of E♭, the piano plays a cadential trill, leading the orchestra from the dominant seventh to the tonic. This suggests to the listener that the solo exposition has reached an end, but Mozart instead gives the woodwinds a new theme. The exposition continues for another 60 or so measures, before another cadential trill brings about the real conclusion, prompting a ritornello that connects the exposition with the development. The pianist and musicologist Charles Rosen argues that Mozart thus created a "double exposition". Rosen also suggests that this explains why Mozart made substantial elongations to the orchestral exposition during the composition process; he needed a longer orchestral exposition to balance its "double" solo counterpart."_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._3_(Beethoven)#I._Allegro_con_br io
_"This movement is known to make forceful use of the theme (direct and indirect) throughout.
Orchestral exposition: In the orchestral exposition, the theme is introduced by the strings, and used throughout the movement. It is developed several times. In the third section (second subject), the clarinet and violin 1 introduce the second main theme which is initially in the relative key, E-flat major, and then in the tonic major, C major, finally back to C minor.
Second exposition: The piano enters with an ascending scale motif. The structure of the exposition in the piano solo is similar to that of the orchestral exposition.
Development: The piano enters, playing similar scales used in the beginning of the second exposition, this time in D major rather than C minor. The music is generally quiet.
Recapitulation: The orchestra restates the theme in fortissimo, with the wind instruments responding by building up a minor ninth chord as in the exposition. For the return of the second subject, Beethoven modulates to the tonic major, C major. A dark transition to the cadenza occurs, immediately switching from C major to C minor."_


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Every time I catch this on the radio I think it's Beethoven._

I think more the opposite -- early Beethoven, such as the Symphony 1 and/or first two piano concertos -- are Mozartian. Later Beethoven, especially the romantic middle period, is characterized by driving rhythms. I don't hear that in the Jupiter symphony. I think some earlier Mozart symphonies more like that, possibly the Symphonies 29, 35 or 36. There's also the issue of counterpoint in the Jupiter that doesn't resemble much in Beethoven.

It's clear Beethoven was influenced by Mozart and Haydn but quickly moved away from them once he adopted his own style as early as the second symphony.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Like many others I dont hear any similarity. Mozart was Mozart. Bethoven was Beethoven.


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## newyorkconversation (Dec 6, 2017)

I think when we say the "Jupiter" is like Beethoven, we're mainly talking about the finale. I lack the technical vocabulary to describe the exact parallels but if you listen to the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 I do think you can hear some echoes. Mozart uses repeated note figures ("ostinato"?) with horns, alternating with chord changes by the strings, that create a very dramatic, almost furious, effect, which I do think is suggestive of Beethoven to some extent.

This video is very interesting on the Jupiter's Finale:


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Euler said:


> Now this is a stretch but, compare the melodies of the Jupiter's andante (here) with the bridge in the finale of Beethoven's 5th (here)....


That's not too much of a stretch, actually! Thanks


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## AeolianStrains (Apr 4, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Got it, thanks for the clarification! You aren't completely off, though, Beethoven was very passionate and the 41st by Mozart is his most passionate symphony.


I dunno, the 40th is up there, too.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Joining the chorus, but yes, I don't hear much Beethoven in the Jupiter. A little bit though, I guess. When I was first getting into classical music last year I remember I'd told my girlfriend I like Beethoven's symphonies the first thing she recommended I check out were Mozart's symphonies 40 and 25. (Not 41, but I suppose that recommendation wouldn't have been far off). Of course I recognized them both immediately, the 25th since we'd just seen Amadeus and the 40th from childhood or whenever else, ubiquitous that one is. And of course since then, the 41st has come to be my favorite. Pretty easy to see that it's his best achievement in the form. He really elevated the last movement on that one in a way we don't see in any previous classical symphonies (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!) which is something that would go on to hugely influence Beethoven.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

No I don't hear any similarity.

I dont even think the opening of the Prague sounds like Beethoven - it sounds monumental - but still, for me - does not sound like Beethoven. Besides - correct me if I am wrong - but I dont think Beethoven ever wrote a slow introduction to a symphony and did not reuse any of the motifs after the intro. Mozart did the same in the Linz.

But it interests me that some people, not many - think there is some similarity.


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