Beethoven

German Music

Course 1 · Chapter 3 · Classical Germany & Beethoven

The late eighteenth century is the age of the symphony, the string quartet and the piano sonata, and its centre was Vienna, which was not in Germany in the modern sense. This chapter looks at the German contribution to the Classical style, the Viennese setting that included Mozart and Haydn, and Beethoven, who was born in Bonn and worked in Vienna. It ends with the Ninth Symphony, a work that has been used for many purposes since it was first performed. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Classical Setting

Mannheim

The court orchestra at Mannheim, in the mid-eighteenth century, was famous for its discipline and its effects, such as gradual crescendos, and is often credited with helping to shape the early symphony (check the claims and the composers, such as Johann Stamitz).

Vienna

The capital of the Habsburg monarchy drew composers from many lands. Haydn and Mozart worked there; both were Austrian-born, so they appear in this course only as context for Beethoven (Chapter 1).

The sons of Bach

Several of J. S. Bach's sons, notably Carl Philipp Emanuel in Berlin and Hamburg, were leading figures in the transition from Baroque to Classical style (check).

The word "Classical" here names a style and a period, roughly 1750 to 1820, not the whole tradition of concert music (check). Its features include clear forms such as sonata form, balanced phrases and an orchestra with a standard core.

Beethoven's Life

Period (check each)	Events
1770	Born in Bonn, into a family of court musicians; his father was a singer at the Elector's court.
1780s	Studies and plays in Bonn; a visit to Vienna in 1787 is reported but uncertain.
1792	Moves to Vienna, where he studies with Haydn and others and soon becomes known as a pianist.
1790s to 1802	Early symphonies, sonatas and quartets. Signs of deafness appear; he writes the Heiligenstadt Testament in 1802, a private letter about his despair (check).
1803 to 1812	The "heroic" period, including the Third (Eroica) and Fifth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and Fidelio.
1812 to 1824	Fewer, more inward works, the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony (first performed in 1824), in the years of near-complete deafness.
1827	Dies in Vienna; reports say a very large crowd attended the funeral (check the figure).

Patrons and income. Beethoven relied on aristocratic patrons, publishers and concerts. He was among the first major composers to make a living largely outside a single court (check how far).
The Eroica story. A well-known account says he withdrew a dedication to Napoleon after Napoleon became emperor (check, since the details come from later reports).
The Beethoven image. The stormy, heroic, deaf genius is partly Beethoven and partly a picture shaped by Romantic writers afterward.

The Ninth Symphony

A work with many lives The Ninth Symphony (1824) is the first by a major composer to add voices to the finale, setting Friedrich Schiller's poem "An die Freude" (Ode to Joy) (check). Since then it has been performed at national and political moments: Wagner conducted it at the foundation-stone ceremony of the Bayreuth festival theatre in 1872, and it has been played at ceremonies from the Olympic Games to the Berlin Wall's fall (check which). Its tune, in an arrangement, is the anthem of the European Union (check). Each use reads the work differently.

Berlin, 1989. After the Wall opened, Leonard Bernstein conducted the Ninth in Berlin at Christmas 1989, with the word "Freude" (joy) changed to "Freiheit" (freedom) in the text (check the details).
Other uses. The work was also used by the Nazi regime for state occasions, and its tune was used in place of an anthem for the joint German Olympic team between 1956 and 1964 (check both claims).
The lesson. A great work can be claimed by very different causes, so the question is what each use does with it, not what the work "really" stands for.

A British comparison The Philharmonic Society of London commissioned the Ninth Symphony (check), and British audiences were important supporters of Beethoven during his life and after. The Last Night of the Proms uses Elgar and Parry, not Beethoven, but is an example of how a piece of music becomes a national ritual (check).

Check the details Many stories about Beethoven come from later biographers, and some, such as the Napoleon dedication and the details of the Berlin 1989 performance, are repeated with variations. Verify dates, quotations and figures against a modern biography.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why Beethoven can be called both a German and a Viennese composer, and what that says about the label "German music".

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Exercise 2

Choose two uses of the Ninth Symphony and compare what each use does with the work.

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Exercise 3

Pick one well-known story about Beethoven and say what you would check to find out how much of it is documented.

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Quick Reference

Style: Mannheim orchestra, Viennese Classical style, c. 1750 to 1820 (check)
Beethoven: born Bonn 1770, Vienna from 1792, died 1827 (check)
The Ninth: 1824, Schiller's Ode to Joy in the finale (check)
Berlin 1989: Bernstein's Christmas performance after the fall of the Wall (check)
The caution: the heroic-genius image is partly a later construction