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The greatest of all instrumental composers began his career as a
pianoforte virtuoso, and his earlier compositions are chiefly for that
instrument. During the first years of Beethoven in Vienna, he was more
conspicuous as a virtuoso than as a composer, and it is said that Haydn
prophesied greater things of him as a performer than a creator of music.
The older master could not foresee that Beethoven's influence was destined
to live in his epoch-making concertos, trios and sonatas, rather than
in his wonderful piano playing. His superiority at Bonn as at Vienna
was not so much in display of technical proficiency as in the power and
originality of improvisation. When he was only eleven years of age Carl
Ludwig Junker heard the boy play, and wrote in most enthusiastic terms of
the inexhaustible wealth of his ideas; he also compared him with older
players of distinction and preferred Beethoven on account of his more
expressive, passionate performance, that spoke directly to the heart. And
so Czerny described his improvisation as "most brilliant and striking; in
whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an
effect upon every hearer, that frequently not an eye remained dry, and
listeners would break out into loud sobs; for in addition to the beauty
and the originality of his ideas, and his spirited style of rendering
them, there was something in his expression wonderfully impressive." Ries
and many others bear similar testimony. There were other pianists of great
parts who lived in Vienna or were heard there: Steibelt, Wölffl, and
especially Hummel. But whenever Beethoven met them in friendly or fierce
rivalry, he conquered by richness of ideas, by variety of treatment and by
intense musical individuality, although he extemporized in regular "form."
Hummel excelled him undoubtedly in purity and elegance, and Wölffl had
extraordinary mechanism. They excited lively admiration, but Beethoven
moved the hearts of his hearers. This power was greater than even his
feats of transposing, his skill in reading scores, or such tricks as
turning the 'cello part of a quintet upside down and then extemporizing
from the curious theme formed thereby. We are told that he was very
particular as to the mode of holding the hands and placing the fingers,
in which he followed Emanuel Bach; his attitude at the pianoforte was
quiet and dignified, but as his deafness increased he bent more and
more toward the keys. He was, when he played, first of all a composer,
and in his maturity, the "composer's touch," distinguished his playing.
Czerny said that he produced wonderful effects by the use of the _legato
cantabile_. He was, as a rule, persuaded easily to improvise--at least in
his younger days--but he did not like to play his own compositions, and
only yielded to an expressed wish when they were unpublished. It is also
said that he interpreted his own compositions with freedom, although he
observed rigorously the beat. And he made often a profound impression in a
_crescendo_ by retarding the movement and not accelerating it.
The compositions of Beethoven have been divided by many writers into
three periods, and this division has been followed with absurd precision
and has been as unjustly ridiculed. There were three periods, however,
but they are not to be sharply defined; they correspond in general to
the life-periods of youth, maturity, and old age. In his earlier works,
he followed in some degree the path laid out by Haydn and Mozart; in
his middle period, he appeared in the full strength and maturity of his
wonderful originality; finally, in his last period, he revealed himself as
a prophet and dreamer of unearthly things. But it is not strange that the
style of a man of genius is modified by his age and his experience; that
he thinks otherwise at forty than he thought at twenty; that his ideas are
not rigid, immovable from youth to old age. In his earlier period, and in
the first of his symphonies, he shows the influence of his predecessors,
and yet in his sixteenth work, three trios, known as Op. 1, striking
originality and independence are asserted on every page.
It was his independence of character as much as his great musical gift
that impelled him on the path of progress. He was five years old when at
Concord
... "the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."
He was the child of his time, and he lived to witness the great movement
for freedom and humanity in America and Europe. Although he had warm
friends and admirers among the nobility he would not bow down to rank and
wealth. The prince held no higher position in his estimation than the
private citizen. "It is good to be with the aristocracy," he said; "but
one must be able to impress them." "A trace of heroic freedom pervades
all his creations," says Ferdinand Hiller. The expression "Im Freien,"
which in German means both the open air and liberty, might serve as an
inscription of a temple devoted to his genius. It was this lofty spirit
that impelled him to find new methods of musical expression in the older
forms of the symphony, sonata, string quartet, etc., which have the same
general outlines of formal construction. These classical forms consist
of a cycle or group of three or four movements related to each other by
contrast in tempo, rhythm, key, and æsthetic character. These movements
are combined so as to constitute an organic whole; complex and highly
developed, like a great architectural building. Madame de Stael called
architecture "frozen music." This fanciful idea, so often quoted, suggests
a different conception, perhaps as near the truth, that music may be
considered as a kind of rhythmical architecture. Such architectural music
appeals to the æsthetic sense of form and proportion through the ear by
the stream of melody and harmony that flows in a rhythmical mass, whereas
the "frozen music" appeals to us through the eye, which is able to take in
the great outlines of proportion and form at once; so that the element of
time is not considered. So far as form and construction are concerned, a
Beethoven symphony might well be compared with a Gothic cathedral in its
grand outlines of beauty and strength, complexity, relation of the parts
to the whole, sense of proportion, and unity in variety. But in music, as
in all true art, form is but the means to an end: which is to move the
soul through the æsthetic sense of beauty. This ideal structure of tones
was not the invention of one musician; it was built up gradually, in the
course of a century and a half, by various composers until it reached its
culmination in the works of Beethoven. There are two distinct sources
from which cyclical instrumental music is derived. First, the sonatas
for violins and bass which sprang up in the 17th century under Corelli,
Biber, Purcell and others. Subsequently the sonata was applied to the
solo clavichord by Kuhnau, Sebastian and Emanuel Bach. Second, the Italian
opera overture, which came into vogue as separate instrumental music early
in the 18th century under the names of symphony and concerto. The Italian
overture consisted of three short, related movements--_allegro_, _adagio_,
_allegro_,--a slow movement between two fast ones. Sammartini, Emanuel
Bach and a few others were the first to cultivate this three-movement
form: but it was not until the advent of Haydn that its modern character
was acquired. Under his genius first came classical models. The sonatas
of Emanuel Bach were the starting point of Haydn's music. He worked out
gradually the so-called art of free thematic treatment. Compared with
the older style its chief features are greater freedom in developing the
themes; the parts are not bound down to the rules of strict counterpoint;
the melody is given chiefly to one voice, generally the upper. Free
passages are introduced between the several melodic groups that make up
the contrasted themes. A general air of lightness, grace, elegance and
pleasantness is the result of this freedom of treatment. A whole movement
is evolved out of little rhythmical motives or germs, which recur again
and again, under ever changing conditions of melody, harmony, key,
position or range, and instrumentation. By such kaleidoscopic changes
the motives express constantly new meaning and beauty without abandoning
the central idea of the piece. Then, too, each movement is polythematic
instead of monothematic. Haydn in these and other respects prepared the
way for Mozart and Beethoven, and neither of the three can be considered
without the other. Mozart and Beethoven obtained the structural form
and basis of instrumentation from Haydn; on the other hand, Haydn in
his old age and Beethoven in his youth learned from Mozart a richer art
of instrumental color and expressiveness, especially in the use of wind
instruments. While Mozart did not enlarge the cyclical forms beyond the
general outlines laid down by Haydn, he beautified and enriched them in
all their details. In his last three symphonies and famous six quartets
the beauty is more refined, the pathos more thrilling and profound, the
dissonances and modulations more daring and fascinating. His music is
conceived in a more serious vein.
[Illustration: BEETHOVEN'S MONUMENT IN VIENNA.