# Did Beethoven write good fugues?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Some of his contemporaries didn't think so and were quite critical of his efforts. But...what do *you* think? Beethoven fugues and fugatos that you love? Ones that you hate?


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

if the only fugue he wrote was the first movement of Op. 131, I'd consider him a master.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I see his fugues and like them


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I think he wrote excellent fugues but they were written at a time when fugues were getting a bit dull. Was anyone really pushing boundaries at the time? To me it feels that the same bog-standard fugues were being cranked out...a bit like the top-40 pop charts, today.
I think the Grosse fugue was my introduction to his later works and it was a shock to the system. On the first listening, I didn't enjoy the first couple of minutes but really latched onto it by the end. It was a quick turn-around but unlike it's first audience, I had 20th century music to help buffer the shock. It's a very contemporary piece and I suspect many wouldn't believe it was Beethoven if they were unfamiliar with his later work.
The question is - why did he do it?
I think of it as abstract music in the same way I think of abstract painting. Why did Picasso paint abstracts? Probably because he had already mastered everything else and was bored, thus prompting him to explore new directions in painting.
I think Beethoven's doing the same thing with music. Why he chose to explore this specifically is a discussion for more knowledgeable folks.


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## Il_Penseroso (Nov 20, 2010)

"an absolutely *contemporary* piece of music that will be *contemporary* forever."
Stravinsky on Große Fuge!

Which *contemporaries* did believe that it's not good? Some scholars who had written a couple of books on Fugue before? They were looking for something routine, formulated and predefined as they're still doing!


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

The finale of the ninth symphony has some fugal parts and they are very good.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

_Missa Solemnis_ leaves little space for argument.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

As Tovey wrote when talking about people who complained that Beethoven "couldn't write a fugue," Beethoven certainly didn't write Bach fugues very well, but he could write a Beethoven fugue better than anyone. 

Complaining about his fugues is like complaining about Henry James' long sentences. So?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I remember a radio program where Peter Schikele played the fugue from the Hammerklavier sonata. His only comment, "Wow." I'll trust his judgment.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a good fugue. The concept is cold, dry intellectualism, similar to inversions. Canons are an exception, but only because of the rowing.

[Beethoven's Great Fugue, in it's proper place at the end of Op. 130, is friggin' awesome.]


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

There's a wondrous fugal outburst in the slow movement from his third symphony. Absolutely blew me away when I was a teen; nowadays I find much of his music a bit too passionate to my taste.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

brianvds said:


> There's a wondrous fugal outburst in the slow movement from his third symphony. Absolutely blew me away when I was a teen; nowadays I find much of his music a bit too passionate to my taste.


Yes, you could say age is not on your side when you stop being mad about Beethoven.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Beethoven wrote some of the most beloved and the klunkiest of fugues still in circulation: they are fugues, like in much of his other work, in which we hear the composer's personal struggle with the musical material itself.

I think It is the fact that struggle is audible, and too, the fact that the battle -- no matter how awkwardly fought -- left the composer victor over those materials, which endears Beethoven to many.

Whether it is the Missa Solemnis, those handful of piano sonatas, or the Große Fuge, I find them all crazily awkward, lumpy gravy, klunky, and I'm sure though the intent was otherwise, each sounds to me like the most grotesque of _attempts_ "to write a fugue."

The Große Fuge, touted as still a very modern work, may be quite so still, but I think it a near accidental result of Beethoven's push pull of his being such a harmonist while having a stab at fugal writing, and still thinking that way when he wrote a fugue -- this fugue has more the struggle with the musical materials than the others, the struggle is audible, and again, many find that effect "heroic."

It seems to me those fugal movements especially are somewhat indiscriminately enshrined by musicologists and Beethoven fans -- "Look, my Harmonist Hero composed _a fugue!_.

I can not hear a one of them to date without still, after many years, hearing them as some of the most unsuccessful stuff Luigi put to paper.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Beethoven didn't write any good fugue... because he didn't write any fugue in the first place!.
In Beethoven's time, the strict bachian fugue was quite out of fashion as far as I know.
Of course, composers had to study it and were interested nevertheless.
Beethoven was actually trying to "transcend" the mere fugue. His fugues are actually his personal interpretation and adaptation of the fugue. In the strict sense, even the Grosse Fugue is not a fugue, it's only a piece with a lot of fugatum passages as well as other passages that have nothing to do with a fugue.
But that was his intention. Beethoven's fugues are not fugues, they are other thing, inspired by fugues, yes, but a different thing.

Also, I find the idea that Beethoven was trying to write a fugue but he couldn't as quite absurd...


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

aleazk said:


> Beethoven's fugues are not fugues, they are other thing, inspired by fugues, yes, but a different thing.


It's true that Beethoven integrated--well or badly, depending on one's view!--fugal textures and forms into his evolving sense of the sonata style. Especially towards the end, when the inspiration of Bach may have been direct rather than filtered through the fugal writing of classical predecessors (to speculate wildly). PetrB admits this, of course, in basically saying that Beethoven tried to have it both ways in being both a harmonist and a writer of fugues. One isn't necessarily wrong if one doesn't like what one understands perfectly well.

The Grosse Fuge has always been controversial, of course--but some of the unpleasant harshness or clunkiness (again, if it is that!) is explicable in its dramatic context--what else would one want after the Cavatina?! I, at least, wouldn't have it any other way!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Blancrocher said:


> It's true that Beethoven integrated--well or badly, depending on one's view!--fugal textures and forms into his evolving sense of the sonata style. Especially towards the end, when the inspiration of Bach may have been direct rather than filtered through the fugal writing of classical predecessors (to speculate wildly). PetrB admits this, of course, in basically saying that Beethoven tried to have it both ways in being both a harmonist and a writer of fugues. One isn't necessarily wrong if one doesn't like what one understands perfectly well.
> 
> The Grosse Fuge has always been controversial, of course--but some of the unpleasant harshness or clunkiness (again, if it is that!) is explicable in its dramatic context--what else would one want after the Cavatina?! I, at least, wouldn't have it any other way!


I was never under the delusion that Beethoven was trying to emulate Bach to the letter. Beethoven was out to do what he was out to do, as you say, and in that I think we all have to agree what he did there was "mostly successful."

That push-pull harmonist fugal passage thingy is one helluva mighty sort of contest, and not all contests are at all attractive. I recognize them for what they are, just do not care for them. I also think the entire Hammerklavier Sonata excessively ugly (and I have no trouble with works the intention of which was anything but "pretty") -- I mean ugly as in unattractive _and not successful for me as a listener_ -- the failure is either in the composer or the listener, always -- yet for many, the Hammerklavier is yet another of Beethoven's crowned "glories."


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

the great fugue is one of my favourite pieces of music of all time. I guess so, then!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

As a non-specialist, I haven't any idea as to how 'good' Beethoven's fugues are from a musicological point of view. All I can say is the effect they have personally, which is tremendous. To say Beethoven couldn't write a fugue is like saying he couldn't write opera! Of course there are musicologists (so called) who like to despise this immense genius. But then there are people who can read music but cannot hear it!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

DavidA said:


> As a non-specialist, I haven't any idea as to how 'good' Beethoven's fugues are from a musicological point of view. All I can say is the effect they have personally, which is tremendous. To say Beethoven couldn't write a fugue is like saying he couldn't write opera! Of course there are musicologists (so called) who like to despise this immense genius. But then there are people who can read music but cannot hear it!


If the only proper way to write a fugue was in the manner of Bach, Bach wouldn't have written any fugues either 

I don't think there is a legitimate question, even, as to "Could Beethoven compose a fugue."

As someone pointed out, Beethoven wrote his kind of fugues. To expect any and all fugues to be à la manière de "what J.S. Bach did" is either patently naive, or patently petty academic at an ultimate degree of smallness of mind.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I pretty much gave up piano after attempting the Hammerklavier fugue. It is a nightmare designed to showcase every flaw of a pianist's technique. Bach's fugues on the other hand are a joy to play. The hammerklavier destroyed any notion I had of ever being good enough.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Couchie said:


> I pretty much gave up piano after attempting the Hammerklavier fugue. It is a nightmare designed to showcase every flaw of a pianist's technique. Bach's fugues on the other hand are a joy to play. The hammerklavier destroyed any notion I had of ever being good enough.


I thought you were playing wagner tuba, not piano? We're disappointed. Now give back your heavyweight wagnerian champion belt.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Couchie said:


> I pretty much gave up piano after attempting the Hammerklavier fugue. It is a nightmare designed to showcase every flaw of a pianist's technique. Bach's fugues on the other hand are a joy to play. The hammerklavier destroyed any notion I had of ever being good enough.


Got hammered into submission, huh? 

But why give up because you are "not good enough"? Good enough for what? There is a whole universe of music beyond the Hammerklavier, that has brought joy to listeners and performers alike.


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## Dustin (Mar 30, 2012)

Agreed Brianvds! As a pianist myself, it's easy to get down on your self or discouraged become you can't play certain things, yet if you just accept it and realize there are thousands of wonderful genius things that ARE within reach, it makes everything alright.

Anyway, about the thread topic, I don't know if Bach wrote "good" fugues since I'm not qualified to say, but I love love love the Gross Fugue(after about the 15th listen). His others are great to my ears as well!


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

^ Good points Dustin and Brianvds, and as another member pointed out in the keyboard forum, a lot of times when you move onto something else for a while, you can come back later to the more difficult work and it becomes easier.

As far as Beethoven's fugues, he had his own style and I respect that.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven had a good chuckle over the fugue from the Hammerklavier, saying "That'll give pianists something to do 50 years from now." An underestimate, since we're going on 200 years now and it still gives pianists "something to do"!


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

One of the first recitals I went to at the public library, the pianist played the Waldsteins and Kreutzer sonata flawlessly, then started on the Hammerklavier and after the initial opening chords, apologized and said he felt he needed more practice on it. Then he played a bunch of other pieces on request from the audience; but it was all for free, anyways.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

trazom said:


> One of the first recitals I went to at the public library, the pianist played the Waldsteins and Kreutzer sonata flawlessly, then started on the Hammerklavier and after the initial opening chords, apologized and said he felt he needed more practice on it. Then he played a bunch of other pieces on request from the audience; but it was all for free, anyways.


At least the man was honest!

When my wife was a schoolgirl it was her turn to provide the music in the school assembly as the girls went out. She decided to play the last movement of Beethpven's Moonlight - from memory. Only problem is she had a memory lapse and had to start again, after which her memory went at the same point! Thankfully, by this time most of the girls had exited when she gave up in confusion! She got a right telling off from her music teacher for trying to be too clever!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> I pretty much gave up piano after attempting the Hammerklavier fugue. It is a nightmare designed to showcase every flaw of a pianist's technique. Bach's fugues on the other hand are a joy to play. The hammerklavier destroyed any notion I had of ever being good enough.


I must confess to having come to the conclusion that the only way of hearing great music like this played properly is to put a CD of Richter, Solomon, et al on. Just the look of the music score frightens me!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'm certain Beethoven could write perfectly Bach-like fugues when he took a notion, as in this little known example. At least it starts out that way before getting a little "clunky" toward the end. Thankfully he seldom wasted his vast skills on these exercises.






I like his clunkier fugues or fughetta segments of larger works. When I want Bach, there are plenty of Bach works to enjoy -- too many to memorize or grow tired of. Beethoven used the fugue as just another tool in leading us, often by the nose as well as the ear, down paths we would not have tread without him.


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