# Beethoven: Classical Style, Romantic Style or Some Mix?



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I think there is enough emotion in the notes Beethoven provided, and a classical take on his works is welcome. I've always enjoyed Brendel's Beethoven Sonatas.


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## Tarneem (Jan 3, 2022)

bro.... Beethoven's music goes beyond being mere classical or romantic

the 2nd part of the 2nd movement of his 32 piano sonata feels like water drops digging deep in your heart till it reaches you essence and purify it!


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Tarneem said:


> bro.... Beethoven's music goes beyond being mere classical or romantic
> 
> the 2nd part of the 2nd movement of his 32 piano sonata feels like water drops digging deep in your heart till it reaches you essence and purify it!


Spoken like a Romantic.


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Spoken like a Romantic.


I would say a mix. Mostly classical but also a romantic touch, just listen to the eroica


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> I think there is enough emotion in the notes Beethoven provided, and a classical take on his works is welcome. I've always enjoyed Brendel's Beethoven Sonatas.



Me too but there are many more good player out there.
Levit/ Daniel-Ben Pienaar naming just two not old warhorses.


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## LKB (Jul 27, 2021)

Beethoven was ultimately a romantic composer with classical roots. Put another way, his musical aspirations were romantic, whereas his style evolved from Haydnesque roots into something unique. And he lead Western music into the future. Once he showed the way, all were obliged to follow, or be forgotten.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Some Classical, some Romantic, and some early Modern. He just does what he wants.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

My depth of exploration of classical is just beginning. I started on this site as a Mozart fanatic, now I'm moving into Beethoven.

I'm sure it will all come together at some point.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Are you asking whether Beethoven was a Classical or Romantic composer, or whether we prefer Classical or Romantic interpretations of his music?


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

ORigel said:


> Are you asking whether Beethoven was a Classical or Romantic composer, or whether we prefer Classical or Romantic interpretations of his music?


Interpretations.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Captainnumber36 said:


> My depth of exploration of classical is just beginning. I started on this site as a Mozart fanatic, now I'm moving into Beethoven.
> 
> I'm sure it will all come together at some point.


I find it fascinating that Beethoven started as one step beyond Mozart and Haydn, but quickly morphed into a Classic/Romantic hybrid.

You can hear that progression from Symphony No. 1 (1800) to Symphony No. 2 (1803) to Symphony No. 3 (1805).

You can also hear definitive evolution in style in the string quartets as well:

String Quartet No. 1 in F, Op. 18 No. 1 (1799)
String Quartet No. 7 in F ("Razumovsky No. 1"), Op. 59 No. 1 (1806)
String Quartet No. 12 in Eb, Op. 127 (1825)


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Interpretations.


Hmmm...I only have Kempff's Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle, so I can't comment on what approaches I like best for them. With symphonies, I prefer the moderate tempi large forces old school recordings. I guess they're "Romantic" since the newer approach is HIP-influenced? For string quartets, there seems to be a broad warm old school approach and a sharp, lean, rhythmic "modern" approach. On the whole, I prefer the latter.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I liked such debates 25 years ago but by now I am not sure if they are fruitful. I am not against using styles/periods, they are often helpful but they are also an "abstraction" and pigeonholing might not help to appreciate the individual style of some composers.
The closest I am comfortable with is that Beethoven started as a classical composer but developed this heritage into some individual style, so to some extent he "left classicism" (although I am not sure he really did) that had considerable influence on later romantic composers but is usually and in many respects rather different from the early romanticism (of e.g. Weber) that existed already during Beethoven's lifetime.

One point why I don't find the idea of Beethoven as an "early romantic" or "in between" composer plausible is that there are almost no works by Beethoven that could be considered "more primitive" versions of a style that came to "full maturity" later, like one could say about early Haydn symphonies or even earlier ones like Sammartinis or others fromt he 1730s-50s in relation to Haydn and Mozart in the 1780s, or about Field's vs. Chopin's Nocturnes.
Or, I wonder, what candidates for such Beethoven pieces are there?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I know I am in a minority here in seeing Beethoven as most definitely a Romantic composer. His voice and his aesthetic is nothing like CPE Bach's, Haydn's or Mozart's. Sure he had classical discipline and used (and developed) forms that had been introduced by Classical composers, but his ego is nearly always to the fore and he broke down those Classical forms to do new (and at the time unimaginable) things. His gruff almost angry voice would just have sounded ugly in the Classical period. The Eroica is not a Classical work. But even before that his music is filled with his character even as he borrows from the Classical. The Romantic after Beethoven certainly saw some composers developing new forms and structures (think Schumann, Wagner) while others continued with more classical forms and discipline (think Brahms) and my the end (Mahler, Debussy) we were ready for the transition to what we still call the Modern.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Of course, this always depends on a) how closely one looks and b) how much one abstracts from particular cases, but the forms and structures of Beethoven are classical throughout. (A movement that seems "free and fantastic" at first glance, like op.109,i is actually in (mostly) "regular" sonata form.) 
As you correctly say, classical forms also more or less are kept in a lot of music by Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak, even Bruckner, Mahler and later composers. So this again depends on a) and b)

But Beethoven composed rather little (or not as influential) in the forms that came to be the "new thing" in the romantic era, namely shortish piano pieces and cycles (unless one counts the Diabellis), lieder and tone poems (unless one counts ouvertures and the Pastoral).


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> The closest I am comfortable with is that Beethoven started as a classical composer but developed this heritage into some individual style, so to some extent he "left classicism" (although I am not sure he really did) that had considerable influence on later romantic composers but is usually and in many respects rather different from the early romanticism (of e.g. Weber) that existed already during Beethoven's lifetime.


I agree with Kreisler Jr. on all points and would like to add to the above. I believe the most important thing Beethoven shared with the romantics from his middle period on was the basic premise of romantic aesthetics, that music expresses and dramatizes internal life, but the way this premise informed and is reflected in his style had little to do with the way it was explored by the early romantics. And it was clearly manifested in only a portion of his work, while many works remained classical in form and substance. In Beethoven's most dramatic and innovative middle period works the coherence of his structures began to rely on and to become inseparable from their coherence as a kind of abstract expressive drama — what tends to be called musical narrative design in recent theory. But he achieved these effects in part by exploiting and exaggerating the standard tonal polarities and developmental processes of classical language in new ways rather than by any melodic or harmonic tendencies that anticipated romantic style.

IMO, no composers in the early romantic era fully understood, took up, or extended the most innovative aspects of Beethoven's middle period style, let alone the more radical and personal experiments of his late sonatas and quartets, which remain a kingdom of their own to this day. The romantics imitated some of Beethoven's innovations, of course, like cyclic unity, but I don't think his work was extended in any meaningful and successful way until the 20thc.

For the above and other reasons, I find the question of whether Beethoven was classical or romantic a mostly fruitless distraction that tends to obscure his singularity. I can't get inspired to stuff his work into neat boxes.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Isn't it such the case that many innovators are copied, in poor attempts, until the next innovator comes along?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Captainnumber36 said:


> Isn't it such the case that many innovators are copied, in poor attempts, until the next innovator comes along?


I'm not sure about that. Innovators can forge the way for greater talents to really do something great. Perhaps that is what happened with CPE Bach - a transitional composer, innovating much of what became Classical and was then built on by Haydn and Mozart. 

Sorry, I'm in a rush and should really check the dates on the above but it is how I have always seen the arrival of the Classical period in music.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm not sure about that. Innovators can forge the way for greater talents to really do something great. Perhaps that is what happened with CPE Bach - a transitional composer, innovating much of what became Classical and was then built on by Haydn and Mozart.
> 
> Sorry, I'm in a rush and should really check the dates on the above but it is how I have always seen the arrival of the Classical period in music.


My musical background is stronger for rock music, and in that genre, I'd say it's more true that innovators are poorly imitated until the next innovator comes along.

Perhaps it's different for classical music.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Perhaps Beethoven can be described in this way-
"In his 1983 book _The Musical Language of Berlioz_, Julian Rushton asks "where Berlioz comes in the history of musical forms and what is his progeny". Rushton's answers to these questions are "nowhere" and "none". He cites well-known studies of musical history in which Berlioz is mentioned only in passing or not at all, and suggests that this is partly because Berlioz had no models among his predecessors and was a model to none of his successors. "In his works, as in his life, Berlioz was a lone wolf"."



Enthusiast said:


> Perhaps that is what happened with CPE Bach - a transitional composer, innovating much of what became Classical and was then built on by Haydn and Mozart.


There was actually a lot of composers in CPE's time (born in the 1700s~1720s) writing in a similar idiom as him (something that's overlooked by many). Is there any first-hand account or evidence they "learned" the stuff from him?


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## Machiavel (Apr 12, 2010)

Beethoven : Romantic classicist.

Berlioz : Classical Romantism

Wagner:romantic Romantism

Mahler : Post romantism


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