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Building on the genres, styles and conventions of the classical period, Beethoven’s compositions were created to such a high standard of individualism, that it brought him unprecedented success compared to that of his contemporise; and with that success his music became models for later composers. In this assignment I intend to discuss some of the features of Beethoven’s musical style, which contribute to what we all would identify as being ‘Beethoven’s music’. Beethoven wrote a prolific amount of music, 9 symphonies, 7 concertos (5 for piano), 32 piano sonatas etc throughout his musical career, a career that is traditionally divided into three periods. I intend therefore to discuss his musical style by selecting examples of his compositions from each of the three periods and identify how those composition developed/was influenced through that period of his life. It was Beethoven’s biographer Wilhelm von Lenz, who first divided Beethoven's musical career into three periods. Despite the fact that Beethoven had been composing music from the age of four, recognition of the first period only began when he completed ‘Three Trios for Piano, Violin and Cello, Opus 1’, in 1794, and ends about 1802, the year of the first public performance of the First Symphony and the Septet. In November 1792, Beethoven arrives in Vienna and starts taking lessons in counterpoint from the master himself, Haydn. The themes contained in his first three piano sonatas contained the musical tradition of Haydn to whom these pieces were dedicated; that of broken-chord patterns, excessive jumps, combinations of scales and turns, and rushing fingers, however, (Schmid-Gorg and Schmidt (ed), 1969, p. 17), state that, Beethoven ‘soon noticed that Haydn, who was extremely busy, had overlooked various mistakes in his pupil’s work’. This led Beethoven to go behind Haydn’s back and seek his learning from another composer, Johann Schenk. This being the case, it is quite feasible that Beethoven’s compositions were more likened to the musical style of that time as apposed to being directly influenced by Haydn who showed very little interest in his pupil. Despite his three piano sonatas being reminiscent of haydn’s work, Beethoven was able to, even at this early stage of his career, start to carve his individualism in to his music; instead of the usual three movements, Beethoven’s sonatas had four, and in his second and third sonatas, he changed the customary ‘Minuet’ to a more dynamic ‘Scherzo’, a change which would be reflected in all future compositions. Another individual feature to appear in his first three sonatas was the extensive use of the minor mode as well as bold modulations. ‘In the first movement of the second sonata, for example, the second theme begins in the dominant minor, E, and immediately modulates, over a rising bass line, through G major and Bb major before settling down into the “proper” key of E major for the closing part of the exposition’ (Grout and Palisca, 2001, p. 517). In a later sonata, that of Op. 7 in Eb (1797), Beethoven makes great use of eloquent pauses in the Largo section, contrasting that with repeated arpeggiations in the third movement. Below is an example from Beethoven’s sonata Op. 13 which was published in 1799. You can see from this example some of the harmonic characteristics of his early compositions, as well as his frequent use of octaves.
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