# Do you agree with Bernstein here?



## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

I just discovered this old video of Bernstein discussing Beethoven's 6th and 7th Symphonies. Starting about 6 mins in:





."There is no aspect of Beethoven in which you can say he was a great melodist, harmonist, contrapuntist, a tone painter, or orchestrater, if you take any of these elements separately, there's nobody"
."He spent his whole life trying to write a good fugue, and he himself, admitted he never succeeded".
."As far as his orchestration is concerned, it's bad"
."You can't really say he's a great melodist".
."The harmonies, any child could write".

What do you make these controversial opinions?


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

What I make of it is that Bernstein was trying to state opinions for the sake of being controversial.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

JAS said:


> What I make of it is that Bernstein was trying to state opinions for the sake of being controversial.


Agreed; I'm not sure that Bernstein would agree with Bernstein here. His recordings of Beethoven exhibit a keener and more nuanced understanding of the composer than what he's expressing in this video.


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

Your quote is taken out of context. If you had included what he said afterwards Bernstein’s point would be clear to everyone.


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## Ich muss Caligari werden (Jul 15, 2020)

Frankly, I agree with most of it. I think what Lenny ought to have said - though he certainly hints at this - was that LvB was a great composer through sheer force of will. In my view, his points about LvB's deficiencies are legitimate - just think he would have better served his purpose had he skipped the 'celestial connection' and stated simply that in LvB the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

"He spent his whole life trying to write a good fugue, and he himself, admitted he never succeeded"

Wagner and others thought very highly of his fugue in his 14th Quartet in C#m. It was way ahead of his time. It was one of Beethoven's own favourite works. I think Bernstein was clearly exaggerating to prove his point.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Taken out of context these statements appear to be critical of Beethoven. However, the point that I think Bernstein is making is, that despite the apparent meagerness of the materials Beethoven used - his skill of exploiting them to the fullest elevated them to the level of genius.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Ich muss Caligari werden said:


> Frankly, I agree with most of it. I think what Lenny ought to have said - though he certainly hints at this - was that LvB was a great composer through sheer force of will. In my view, his points about LvB's deficiencies are legitimate - just think he would have better served his purpose had he skipped the 'celestial connection' and stated simply that in LvB the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.


I agree with most of it too, and with much of what you say about it, the exception being your final point. I don't read Bernstein as trying to make a religious point there (not that it would have bothered me if he had) - AFAIC he's saying much the same as you say in your final words but adding a nod to the inexplicable wonder of it all.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> "He spent his whole life trying to write a good fugue, and he himself, admitted he never succeeded"
> Wagner and others thought very highly of his fugue in his 14th Quartet in C#m. It was way ahead of his time. It was one of Beethoven's own favourite works. I think Bernstein was clearly exaggerating to prove his point.


An expressive piece indeed, but in it, was Beethoven interested in utilizing fugal techniques, inversion, augmentation, strettos, etc, to their fullest as did his predecessors? Stravinsky thought highly of the Grosse fuge ,- just because it's a "stunning piece of art", it doesn't necessarily make it exemplary as a "fugue" (do you see the difference?). 
Beethoven is one of the first composers to conceive music not bounded by the rules of good taste, I think that alone is significant. I don't think his predecessors would have approved of certain works of his as "good". (I don't believe Mozart ever said of him "he will give the world something to talk about.") 
For example, the Tempest sonata first movement consists of long passages of hands in unison, long dragged-out chords, arpeggios, recitatives, and stuff Bernstein would have described as "unremarkable melodies":























But with its way to create a desolate mood, it still sounds unique from anything written previously. If Beethoven was a mere "counterpoint pedant", like Georg von Pasterwitz for example, he wouldn't have been considered as great as he is today. Beethoven's major predecessors,- though they were also great, - in certain aspects can come across the type MR once described:



millionrainbows said:


> I hope camus will seek out a flexible teacher, not someone who comes across as a nun, complete with guilt-tripping and knuckle-rapping.


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## Skakner (Oct 8, 2020)

I agree that Beethoven wasn't a great melodist.

Bernstein wasn't trying to "humiliate" Beethoven, not at all.
He also said:
"...in Beethoven's case it is always the right note as though he had some private telephone wire to heaven which told him what the next note had to be. No composer ever had thah, even Mozart...
...everything is so unpredictable and yet so right...''


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I would say all of the statements are wrong and that Bernstein was talking BS to make a rhetorical point.


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## EmperorOfIceCream (Jan 3, 2020)

Here's a response to that video from the OrchestrationOnline channel: 




I think Bernstein is just being hyperbolic. Beethoven doesn't use a lot of long melodies and they are often embedded in chords, but he does have good melodies: 2nd movement of Pastorale, second movement of 5th pc, sonata 24.


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

I would say: If there were somebody interviewing me and treating me like a demi-God, God news what nonsense would tumble from my mouth in that moment of supreme self-satisfaction and hubris.

I think Bernstein, considering his larger point, didn't do too badly.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

No, I don't.........


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Bernstein is full of shirt, and, worse, full of himself. No, I do not agree at all.

ETA: adding this pretentious rubbish to the pile of reasons of why I have less and less respect for Leonard Bernstein.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

If Beethoven isn't a great melodist, then neither are Mozart, Brahms, Schubert or Bach.

However, I can agree somewhat with Bernstein's reduction. I wrote this about what makes Beethoven sound like Beethoven. See point 2:

- Beethoven makes especial use of secondary dominants like V7/ IV, so his harmonic philosophy is one of strictness but where one often modulates to surrounding keys. I've noticed this trick in a lot of successful melodic composers
- Beethoven uses Classical form predominantly as a servant to make melodies more creative and countered. His priority often seems to be melodic structures > harmonic theory > counterpoint, not excluding either of these but where the second builds upon the first, the third builds upon the second etc. By melodic structures, I mean an obvious example like 3-4 or his 7-2. His other melodies are as simple enough to build the other above elements upon
- His symphonic orchestration especially, is about catchy and playful form and rhythms, with cross-countering instruments

*In summary,* I agree with Bernstein but for equating all these elements of Beethoven as equal. I think base melodic structure is the primary pillar of Beethoven's undecodable big picture, and this is how he differs from composers like Bach, Brahms and Schubert. It is the Classical era that seems obsessed with great melodic structures, beginning and ending a piece with it in mind.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Ravn said:


> Your quote is taken out of context. If you had included what he said afterwards Bernstein's point would be clear to everyone.


Yes! The sum is greater than the parts is what he was saying even if he was exaggerating and generalizing to make a point.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

BenG said:


> I just discovered this old video of Bernstein discussing Beethoven's 6th and 7th Symphonies. Starting about 6 mins in:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I was interested to hear Berstein say he was a bad orchestrator - tantamount to saying that Beethoven could not accurately imagine in his head what it would sound like. That's quite a statement.

It would be interesting to ponder how accurately any composer is able to assess all the nuances of such complexities. I think AbsolutelyBaching has mentioned Britten's abilites in this regard - eleven pages of full score without the need to check on the piano (apologies if I misremembered).


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Skakner said:


> I agree that Beethoven wasn't a great melodist.'


This is the silliest myth in all of classical music. Have you listened to his early Haydn-Mozartean works? They're overflowing with delicious melody!






Even later in his career, Beethoven could come up with a showstopping melody whenever he thought one was required






A singing, beautiful melody was well within his toolbox, it just wasn't often what he wanted to achieve in his mature style.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

Gallus said:


> A singing, beautiful melody was well within his toolbox, it just wasn't often what he wanted to achieve in his mature style.


I agree with this. Who wouldn't love the opening theme of the Archduke Trio and the Adagio of the 9th? However, because it wasn't often what he wanted to achieve, I can occasionally find some of his music more "bombastic" than moving (the 7th is a good example but also such works as the Missa Solemnis and some of the piano sonatas) since he seems to be going for pyrotechnic effects derived from tossing around little motifs rather than the long-breathed melodies that I tend to prefer.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Taken out of context these statements appear to be critical of Beethoven. However, the point that I think Bernstein is making is, that despite the apparent meagerness of the materials Beethoven used - his skill of exploiting them to the fullest elevated them to the level of genius.


I agree with this assessment, and I've always thought of Beethoven along the same lines. Tchaikovsky could invent countless beautiful melodies practically without trying. I even read that as a boy, Tchaikovsky would cry to his mother that he had "music in his head but couldn't get it out." Mozart had better sense of balance, form, technique, and organization, as everything with Mozart was seamless. Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss had better orchestration. But Beethoven's sense of creativity and imagination puts everything together in a way that practically places him in a category all his own as he pushes the limits of the symphony, the sonata, and string quartet to new levels not imagined or realized by others.

Beethoven's my favorite composer.

I've now come to recognize Leonard Bernstein as the greatest American musician of the 20th century; certainly the greatest born and bred American conductor; but also a very fine pianist, and a composer who, while not as innovative or original as, say, Ives and Copland; nor as lyrical as Barber; Bernstein is great because of the way that his compositions embrace so many aspects American musical life. In Bernstein's music I always hear some Ives, Gershwin, and Copland, some jazz, Broadway, Americana, the Jewish experience, the Christian experience, 20th Century American angst; hence Bernstein's _Age of Anxiety_. Apart from all this, if Bernstein had only done _West Side Story_ and nothing else, he'd still be hailed as one of America's greatest Broadway composers.

If all that wasn't enough; there's Bernstein the teacher, and his lectures exemplify what I think is the greatest thing a teacher who teaches anything related to the arts should do, and that is share a _love_ for the art. As Bernstein discusses his favorite composers, I think he has a tendency to read what he wants to read into the music. But he's always interesting because he brings forth the technical aspects of the music through a _narrative_, which I think is also a great aspect to teaching, which is that of being a great story-teller. Bernstein's personality while teaching comes off to me as pompous, pretentious, and sometimes even off the mark; but he's always interesting and engaging because of the _sincerity_, the deep _love_ for _music_ that he wants to share with the world.


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Coach G said:


> [Bernstein was] always interesting and engaging because of the _sincerity_, the deep _love_ for _music_ that he wants to share with the world.


I've seen this defense before on these message boards, for one David Hurwitz. I don't see any good reason why this is a compelling defense for anyone. Sincerity plus a love of music and $1.50 will buy you a Kit Kat from a vending machine.

I see Bernstein as a very mixed bag, in terms of his legacy. But his teaching had many problems: he created just as many false impressions as he did provide actual insights, maybe more. His pretense and ego _always_ got in the way. People are going to walk away from this thread believing, for example, that Beethoven was a poor orchestrator, and that is total unmitigated bullshirt.

The basic premise I agree with, that Beethoven's music is greater than the sum of its parts, but _that's not because or even despite any of the components being poor_. On the contrary, the individual components are fantastic! Everything Bernstein derides in that terrible video is something where Beethoven's genius has actually blown me away many times: melody, harmony, counterpoint, form, orchestration, etc.

Bernstein thereby totally misses out on teaching _how_ and _why_ the individual components add up to something greater, because he denigrates rather than appreciates and explains. So, what, it's just all ineffable? Inspired by some god or other? No, there _are_ concrete and explainable reasons, but Bernstein just blows them away with his pretentious judgment.

This video is an example of bad teaching. Period.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Beethoven was a harmonist, not a melodist. He was more concerned with root movemet.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

BenG said:


> Do you agree with Bernstein here?


No. ......................


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Ethereality said:


> Beethoven makes especial use of secondary dominants like V7/ IV


I'm not sure what examples you have in mind, but secondary dominants to IV are pretty common in 18th century music. In Mozart piano sonata in F major K.332/i, - V7 of IV in bar 2 resolves to IV6/4 in bar 3, over a tonic pedal.


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## Skakner (Oct 8, 2020)

Gallus said:


> This is the silliest myth in all of classical music. *Have you listened to his early Haydn-Mozartean works?* They're overflowing with delicious melody!
> Even later in his career, Beethoven could come up with a showstopping melody whenever he thought one was required
> 
> A singing, beautiful melody was well within his toolbox, it just wasn't often what he wanted to achieve in his mature style.


Please, Beethoven is my second favorite composer! Don't ask me what I've listened and what I haven't... I have listened almost everything Beethoven composed (to his pettiest Bagatelle) and I used to play a few pieces too.

Beethoven hadn't the gift of melody that Tchaikovsky (mentioned above) or Schubert and Mozart had.
That doesn't make him worse composer. Probably he could make melodies but his primary concern was to develop. He was able to construct, to "push music forward", using tiny patterns or simple melodies.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

Skakner said:


> Please, Beethoven is my second favorite composer! Don't ask me what I've listened and what I haven't... I have listened almost everything Beethoven composed (to his pettiest Bagatelle) and I used to play a few pieces too.
> 
> Beethoven hadn't the gift of melody that Tchaikovsky (mentioned above) or Schubert and Mozart had.
> That doesn't make him worse composer. Probably he could make melodies but his primary concern was to develop. He was able to construct, to "push music forward", using tiny patterns or simple melodies.


Like I said, I think that's more because of a stylistic choice than a lack of "gift". Some of the very, very most famous melodies in all of western music were written by Beethoven. Every woman on the street knows Ode to Joy and Fur Elise, how many could hum as many Schubert melodies, as great as they are?


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Gallus said:


> Like I said, I think that's more because of a stylistic choice than a lack of "gift". Some of the very, very most famous melodies in all of western music were written by him. Every woman on the street knows Ode to Joy and Fur Elise, how many could hum as many Schubert melodies, as great as they are?


I don't know that Beethoven invented the _Ode to Joy_ theme. I think I read somewhere that he took it from a folk song. Long before Ottorino Respighi and Olivier Messiaen were ripping bird songs, Beethoven was doing it and it's quite apparent in the _Symphony #6 "Pastorale_". In the famous _Moldau_ by Smetana. He may have taken it from an Italian folk song, incorporated to celebrate his Bohemian homeland, and now it's the national anthem of Israel; talk about a international journey.

I read that Tchaikovsky's penchant for melody was natural and constant, that even as a boy he would cry to his mother saying "There's music in my head and I can't get it out." But then again, Tchaikovsky also lifted the Russian folk song _Volga Boatmen_ in the slow movement of his _String Quartet_; and I read in the liner notes of one of the recordings I have of it, that the Russian author, Leo Tolstoy, had tears streaming down his face when he first heard it.

It would take some time to sort out which of the most popular melodies in classical music were originals and which were lifted from folk songs.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

*."He spent his whole life trying to write a good fugue, and he himself, admitted he never succeeded"*

But whenever people ask for their favorite fugues, Beethoven usually is one of the first names to appear. I prefer his fugues from Op. 106, Op. 110, Op. 120, Op. 123, Op. 125, Op. 130 and Op. 131 over any others I have heard by any composer other than J.S. Bach.

"By the 1920s, some string quartets were including the fugue [Beethoven's Grosse Fuge] in their programs. Since then, the fugue has steadily gained greatness in the eyes of musicians and performers. 'The Great Fugue ... now seems to me the most perfect miracle in music,' said Igor Stravinsky. 'It is also the most absolutely contemporary piece of music I know, and contemporary forever ... Hardly birthmarked by its age, the Great Fugue is, in rhythm alone, more subtle than any music of my own century ... I love it beyond everything.' Pianist Glenn Gould said, 'For me, the 'Grosse Fuge' is not only the greatest work Beethoven ever wrote but just about the most astonishing piece in musical literature.'" - Extracted from Wikipedia.

*."As far as his orchestration is concerned, it's bad"*

I disagree. For me Beethoven was a great orchestrator, capable of strikes of genius in the field such as the oboe solo in the first movement of his symphony No. 5, the orchestral exploration in the second movement of the same symphony, the flutes in the second movement of the _Pastoral_ symphony, the timpani in the second and third movements of the _Choral_ symphony etc. I think that Beethoven could make his violins "cry", something unusual for (what I know of) his time, like in the ending of the slow movements of Op. 132 and Op. 135.

The name "Beethoven" appears a lot in the Berlioz's _Grand Traité d'Instrumentation et d'Orchestration Modernes_, and here on TC the composer of Bonn did very well in a poll about orchestrators (only Wagner, Mahler and Ravel have more votes than him at this moment).

*."You can't really say he's a great melodist".*

I disagree. I think that Beethoven could compose remarkable melodies when he wished, for example in his violin romances, in the slow movements of his piano sonatas Nos. 8 and 14, in the piano sonata No. 24, in the second movement of his _Emperor_ piano concerto, in the second movement of the _Pastoral_ symphony (of course it's a melody) etc.

Here is a poll about favorite melodists here on TC. Beethoven did better than composers such as Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff or Wagner.

*."The harmonies, any child could write".*

I disagree.

"Above all, his [Beethoven's] works distinguish themselves from those of any prior composer through his creation of large, extended architectonic structures characterised by the extensive development of musical material, themes, and motifs, usually by means of 'modulation', that is, a change in the feeling of the home key, through a variety of keys or harmonic regions. Although Haydn's later works often showed a greater fluidity between distant keys, Beethoven's innovation was the ability to rapidly establish a solidity in juxtaposing different keys and unexpected notes to join them. This expanded harmonic realm creates a sense of a vast musical and experiential space through which the music moves and the development of musical material creates a sense of unfolding drama in this space." - Extracted from Wikipedia.

*."There is no aspect of Beethoven in which you can say he was a great melodist, harmonist, contrapuntist, a tone painter, or orchestrater, if you take any of these elements separately, there's nobody"*

I totally disagree. If the point was that in Beethoven the sum is greater than the parts then I can agree, but this does not mean that there's anything lacking with the parts.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Animal the Drummer said:


> I agree with most of it too, and with much of what you say about it, the exception being your final point. I don't read Bernstein as trying to make a religious point there (not that it would have bothered me if he had) - AFAIC he's saying much the same as you say in your final words but adding a nod to the inexplicable wonder of it all.


Yes, Bernstein is paying LvB the highest praise. Maybe he or the director thought it would be obvious on video (a new media).


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I agree with Bernstein to an extent. I agree with some members here that Bernstein exaggerates some of Beethoven's compositional weaknesses, but then I think they also exaggerate how much Bernstein exaggerates. Bernstein's final conclusion that Beethoven was perfect with form is in my opinion, also an exaggeration.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Allerius said:


> Extracted from Wikipedia.


This sort of obscure wikipedia pages tend to be not visited by many people, so they're not properly "peer-reviewed". The stuff (presumably written by biased fans, who are almost "cultists") only holds as much value as private fan-made websites or blog-posts. (btw, Beethoven is the only major classical music composer who has a fan wikipedia page dedicated solely to his "musical style".) 
I take this sort of "blog-posts" with as much a grain of salt as I do Bernstein's assessment of Beethoven. Look at the following excerpt from the page, for example. There's not even any proper explanation or citation of sources to support the claim:
"Similarly, the opening bars of his Eighth Symphony is used to derive motives to be used throughout the whole symphony. This device lends unity to a work or even a group of works (as some motives Beethoven used not only in one work but in many works) without repeating material exactly or turning to canonic devices."


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I think the problem is that people in this thread try too hard to see Beethoven's Op.131/i and Grosse fuge "fugues" rather than as simply "movements for string quartet". (I can see why Bernstein thought they were "not great as fugues". The rhythms of the voices go together for the most part)
A fugue is a simply form of strict counterpoint, - composers in Beethoven's time weren't necessarily judged by how well they could adhere to rules and logic like that. I don't think Beethoven's musical thoughts worked like his predecessors', but that doesn't objectively mean he has weaker "expression" than them.
"Every form of contrapuntal device is used" (Joseph Haydn and the String Quartet, Reginald Barrett-Ayres, Page 197) in the final movement of Mozart K.464, but the fact that it is not a fugue diminish the artistic value of the work? What if the Grosse fuge had a different title, "contrapuntal fantasia for string quartet", would it have affected our view on the value of the work?
As I said, typical pre-Romantic era craftsmen like Leopold Mozart, Pasterwitz could write real "good fugues", (because of the way music was taught back then) that doesn't mean they were better as expressive artists than Beethoven. I certainly think Beethoven Op.131/i has more "expression" than Cherubini's quadruple fugue in 8 voices:


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> This sort of obscure wikipedia pages tend to be not visited by many people, so they're not properly "peer-reviewed". The stuff (presumably written by biased fans, who are almost "cultists") only holds as much value as private fan-made websites or blog-posts. (btw, Beethoven is the only major classical music composer who has a fan wikipedia page dedicated solely to his "musical style".)
> I take this sort of "blog-posts" with as much a grain of salt as I do Bernstein's assessment of Beethoven. Look at the following excerpt from the page, for example. There's not even any proper explanation or citation of sources to support the claim:


Wikipedia usually uses several documented references and in my view it's often a solid source, but in this case I think you have a point. Mine was to show somehow that when Bernstein says "The [Beethoven] harmonies, any child could write" he is not being fair, at least in my opinion, so here are some quotes from an article from the Gramophone magazine (a better source, I suppose) discussing Beethoven and harmony:

"'In the first movement of the Eighth, where the harmony changes all the time, the tempo - his tempo - shows the instability of the harmony. Compare this to Haydn or Mozart: in the moment of harmonic change you jump with surprise; but Beethoven exists in a constant state of change.'

(...)

To love music can be to hate music, and that's fine. Stravinsky and Cage needed Beethoven - who drove the idea of functional, arrow-headed directional harmony beyond the sublime - as a conflict to be worked through as they found their art: Stravinsky's neo-classicism, Cage's so-called anarchic harmony, where sounds were allowed autonomy from narrative targets and the need to obey an internally consistent grammar. Great composers do more than refresh music; they create new contexts for harmony. Beethoven created his, Stravinsky and Cage theirs."



BenG said:


> ."There is no aspect of Beethoven in which you can say he was a great melodist, harmonist, contrapuntist, a tone painter, or orchestrater, if you take any of these elements separately, there's nobody"


Here is a brief analysis of Beethoven's symphony #8 by _The Guardian_ (I think it provides a counterpoint to Bernstein's position):

"What's brilliant about the Eighth's relatively small (time) scale is that it allows Beethoven to be more structurally radical than he could dare to be on the larger canvasses of his other symphonies. In the Eighth Symphony, there are holes that are left open after the final chord, questions that remain unanswered, loose ends that are deliberately not tied up. Most obviously, the Eighth Symphony has no slow movement (Beethoven did sketch one, but he abandoned it), but instead there's an impish Allegretto scherzando that comes second, a four-minute (or less) piece that was thought to be a homage to Johann Maelzel's metronome, but which is now recognised for what it is: an unprecedented intermezzo in place of an adagio. Except it isn't an 'intermezzo' in the sense of being 'incidental' to the music's argument, because this piece embodies the central and paradoxical substance of this symphony: this short movement, in its rhythmic obsessions, like the repeated staccato chords in the woodwind, or the demi-semiquaver chirrups of the first theme, and the bass-line that answers it; in its extremes of dynamic, often putting a fortissimo right next to a pianissimo, its hocketing textures of interlocking orchestral lines, and its warped musical mechanisms, sounds more like a proto-Stravinskian orchestral scherzo than an early romantic orchestral movement.

(...)

The first movement begins with a gesture of closure. The first two bars of the piece ought to be the end of a symphonic argument, not its beginning, and in fact the first movement ends with the very same music, now in its proper place. Continuing this inversion of common practice, the first movement soon finds weird keys, strange silences, and odd sounds - this solo bassoon, for example, or this ambiguous pianissimo. But it's the central section and the reprise of the first theme that should knock your symphonic socks off: over a strangely foreboding ticking mechanism in the violas - an alternating octave you've just heard at the end of the first section - Beethoven inexorably screws up the harmonic tension through a halting, uncertain sequence of variations on the first bar of the symphony, separated by gigantic walls of orchestral sound. That contrast catalyses a thrilling section of orchestral counterpoint, propelled by the tortuous transformation the cellos and basses visit on the main theme; Beethoven generates massive harmonic and rhythmic friction here which is at last released in a triple fff (forte-fortissimo!) restatement of the first theme in the bassoons, cellos, and basses. It's a moment when Beethoven gets rightly carried away with what he's done: that triple forte in the rest of the orchestra is so loud that it tends to obscure the tune in the bass line.
Charles Mackerras found an excellent solution in his performance; Colin Davis and Hans Pfitzner (Pfitzner with a theatrical change of tempo) get the balance better than anyone else in my list of recordings.

The third movement is Beethoven's only symphonic minuet: a stately antipode to the Allegretto second movement, people often say, but that's again only if you choose not to hear what Beethoven's doing under the surface of the music. The piece is called only "Tempo di menuetto" - in the "time of a minuet" rather than a real courtly dance, suggesting that Beethoven is playing with instead of inhabiting the genre of the minuet. He luxuriates in a different soundworld from the rest of the symphony - sensuous and lyrical rather than crystalline - and plays with your sense of pulse and metre.

The finale starts with an existential itch: a pianissimo aggravation in the violins that sounds like a scurrying upbeat to a tune that never comes. Instead, after subsiding to piano-pianissimo, there's an orchestral onslaught, built over those alternating octaves again, which you'll hear throughout this movement, marking time but fragmenting orchestral space, especially when the timpani have them with the bassoons. Beethoven starts his second theme in A flat major, he atomises his itching idea into its constituent elements and disperses it over the orchestra; he manages to wrench the music from F sharp minor and B minor back to F major in an astonishing sleight of ear. He creates a Klangfarbenmelodie, a melody of changing orchestral colour, a century before Schoenberg and Webern had the idea, he makes silence, dramatic pauses, integral to symphonic discourse in a way the symphony had never done before, and he creates a barnstorming coda that seems out of proportion to the rest of the movement, which makes you ask: what on earth just happened? Instead of resolution, the Eighth's fundamental musical questioning goes on long after the piece has finished. And it's quite possible it doesn't have an answer - and just as well, too: keep on listening, and keep on asking those questions!"


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

This Bernstein canard has been floating around for years. Simply stated, it's a rhetorical device on Bernstein's part: "See, he was bad at this and bad at that, but he still wrote the most glorious music we know."

Bernstein took some well-deserved flack over this and later published his remarks in a much attenuated form. There is a major and effective rebuttal of the whole thing that is posted somewhere on the Internet, if you can find it.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I would say all of the statements are wrong and that Bernstein was talking BS to make a rhetorical point.


Yes, he loved to be 'entertaining' to musical enthusiasts, students and audiences. You can see the depths of this 'style' when he's lecturing (on video). He has all the professorial mannerisms - which became habitual. I've found him to be an interesting speaker, but he does overdo it (he wants people to feel the way he does about various music). He knew that we knew he greatly admired LvB. 
The word primitive arises when I'm thinking about Beethoven the man and Beethoven the composer. That's why I'm surprised when I read his letters and read about what authors have surmised about his philosophical thoughts. That brings me back to reality, because I know I can't know any more than the many opinions, personal correspondence etc., which have had a long development. It's been fertile ground for opinions.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I would characterize Beethoven's music as rough around the edges. It lacks the elegance of Mozart, the sentimental beauty of Chopin etc.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Usually, Beethoven's ideas ("melodies") are the top voice of a series of chords. They have a rhythmic, declamatory effect and are so entwined with the chord and the rhythm that they are only "melodies" in a very basic, simple sense. This is why they appear as simple 3 or 4 note "motives."
They aren't separate, homophonic melodies like Mozart or Tchaikovsky. Beethoven was a harmonic, chordal composer, not homophonic. That's why he didn't write much opera. If Beethoven was such a great melodist, then why aren't his songs more highly touted? I don't believe I even have any of his songs in my collection.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I think Schubert is often just as concerned with little motifs as Beethoven, in works like the C major quintet slow movement , and I think all the ground-work in structuring the sonata-form and 'development on motifs' was finished by Mozart and Haydn.

K.497/i :
0:00 , 1:38 , 5:10 , 8:34

K.497/iii :
0:54 , 3:33 , 7:42










But practically everything Mozart and Haydn wrote adheres to good taste, whether it be a sonata, fantasy, fugue, etc. They all have compact, strict forms, and they never really go beyond that.
Mozart piano quartet K.478/i. The exposition takes about 3 minutes, and the development + recap + coda takes about 4.75 minutes in typical performance. 3 / (3+4.75) = 0.387. Again, the "golden ratio".

What makes Beethoven and Schubert special is their sense to "expand" space, - somehow their works are increased x2 in length and still convincing musically.*** 
For example, in the extended development sections of the 3rd symphony and Archduke trio (pizzicatos in the strings, and trills, scales in thirds in the piano)
Beethoven can seem to be "not doing anything very significant" in the way Bernstein described, - but is still interesting musically.

Beethoven may not have been the greatest melodist, but he has sense and skill to make things somehow less repetitious (in my view) than Schubert. Also, in certain extended works of Schubert, such as the masses and the "enigmatic" 15th string quartet (which I think is a Schubertian equivalent of Beethoven late quartets), I can't say Schubert is more concerned with melody than Beethoven. 
To me, they're all apples and oranges.

***
"... The rewriting of the main theme at the opening of the recapitulation, however, reveals that Schubert had Mozart's famous C major Quintet in mind all along. The recapitulation, in which the detached mounting arpeggio that is a principal element of Mozart's opening now appears (introduced at the end of Schubert's development and continued into the reprise), allows us to see that two other elements of Mozart's structure were already present in Schubert: the decorative and expressive turn is found in both works at the fourth bar of the opening phrase, and Mozart's eccentric five-bar rhythmic structure has been retained but adapted by Schubert to a ten-bar structure. The rhythm, and this is typical of Schubert, is basically similar to his classical model but stretched out to be twice as long. In addition, Mozart shortens a later appearance of his main theme in the exposition to the more orthodox four-bar groups (the fifth bar of each original phrase overlapping with the next), and Schubert obediently follows suit in the counter-statement of his main theme by shortening his ten bars to seven-bar groups (actually eight-bar overlapping phrases). Essentially, even in the last of his great instrumental works, we can see that Schubert retained the conventional Viennese models (Mozart's above all) and increased their size, giving them the greater sense of space that was Schubert's most extraordinary innovation, and which would have a signal effect on the future history of music in the work of both Brahms and Bruckner."
<Schubert the Progressive: History, Performance Practice, Analysis, Edited by Brian Newbould, Page 5>


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Gallus said:


> This is the silliest myth in all of classical music. Have you listened to his early Haydn-Mozartean works? They're overflowing with delicious melody!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


One of my father's favorites along with the violin concerto (to him, a poor melodist would be someone like Brahms):


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## BenG (Aug 28, 2018)

One of the greatest melodies in all of music was written by LVB.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Beethoven shows up in a lot of melody mash-ups:


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## Handelian (Nov 18, 2020)

Knorf said:


> I've seen this defense before on these message boards, for one David Hurwitz. I don't see any good reason why this is a compelling defense for anyone. Sincerity plus a love of music and $1.50 will buy you a Kit Kat from a vending machine.
> 
> .


Sincerity is no defence whatsoever if someone is sincerely wrong.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Bernstein says also this of Beethoven that I fully agree

"When one is dealing with a spirit as cosmic as that of Beethoven, whatever one says invites a counter statement or a contradiction. The answer to Beethoven phenomenon is not really expressible except in terms of the mysterious genius of a man who is capable of uniting all contradictions into one single perfect entity"


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Axter said:


> Bernstein says also this of Beethoven that I fully agree
> 
> "When one is dealing with a spirit as cosmic as that of Beethoven, whatever one says invites a counter statement or a contradiction. The answer to Beethoven phenomenon is not really expressible except in terms of the mysterious genius of a man who is capable of uniting all contradictions into one single perfect entity"


Yes, Ludwig had an unfair advantage. He was deaf.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> Beethoven was more concerned with root movement.


That makes sense, since the name means "beet farm," and beets are a root vegetable.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Luchesi said:


> Yes, Ludwig had an unfair advantage. He was deaf.


He was a genius as far as I am concerned.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> That makes sense, since the name means "beet farm," and beets are a root vegetable.


Now, finally, it all becomes clear.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

Axter said:


> He was a genius as far as I am concerned.


When we look at the 3 "geniuses", Newton, Einstein, and Beethoven, what did they have in common (from what we think we know about their personal lives)? They were highly focused (obsessed), somewhat anti-social, their childhoods were let's say unfortunate (but evidently no lasting damage). They went on to excel, past their contemporaries.

For years I've argued that I've never seen what people call talent or genius. It's all about the many hours spent, and many lucky happenstances (which are difficult to pin down, every case is slightly different).


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Luchesi said:


> When we look at the 3 "geniuses", Newton, Einstein, and Beethoven, what did they have in common (from what we think we know about their personal lives)? They were highly focused (obsessed), somewhat anti-social, their childhoods were let's say unfortunate (but evidently no lasting damage). They went on to excel, past their contemporaries.
> 
> For years I've argued that I've never seen what people call talent or genius. It's all about the many hours spent, and many lucky happenstances (which are difficult to pin down, every case is slightly different).


Granted one needs all factors you mentioned to be called a "genius", which is also a highly subjective topic.


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## Holden4th (Jul 14, 2017)

In contrapuntal writing, how often with Beethoven does the 'melody' appear in the lower registers? In some cases does the melody alternate between those registers?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> That makes sense, since the name means "beet farm," and beets are a root vegetable.


Woodducks are fond of roots, btw.
"They forage for acorns and aquatic plant seeds (wild oats and rice), roots, berries and insects."
https://70birds.com/bird-species/wood-duck/


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> Woodducks are fond of roots, btw.
> "They forage for acorns and aquatic plant seeds (wild oats and rice), roots, berries and insects."
> https://70birds.com/bird-species/wood-duck/


Wood ducks are radicals (_radix_ L. = "root"). They root out nonsense on music forums.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Wood ducks are radicals (_radix_ L. = "root"). They root out nonsense on music forums.


And are likely to over gorge on this at TC.


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