Beethoven's Role as a Transitional Figure

Beethoven's role as a transitional figure between the classical and romantic periods took several forms. In one sense, it was the composer's mystique, based on nineteenth-century perceptions of Beethoven as "the very type of the artist," that influenced other musicians, and the general reception of his works (Kerman and Tyson 392). In another sense, it was the increased freedom of personal expression in Beethoven's music that exerted the greatest appeal for later musicians. Beethoven, for example, often wrote music that was openly autobiographical "in a way that is unthinkable before 1790," but which struck a positive chord among the Romantics (Rosen 385). And, in a third sense, Beethoven's influence had a purely musical side, as very few musicians of the Romantic era "escaped his influence in technical respects" (Kerman and Tyson 392). Thus, though most scholars agree that Beethoven was a key figure in the development of romantic music, few agree on the precise nature of his contributions to the new musical aesthetic.

The answer may lie in considering at least the last two types of influence in conjunction. For, although Beethoven was not a proto-Romantic composer in a technical sense, his decision to use the classical framework in "startlingly radical and original ways" was, very often, part of his attempt to increase the dramatic expressiveness of his music (Rosen 384). In an era that prized personal expression so highly, it is not, therefore, surprising that Bee

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ards, "incomplete" (Sisman 186-87). For Beethoven, the simple application the sonata form to single movements of the symphony did not suffice. In his first two symphonies, Beethoven retained the lengths and relative weights of the movements that was to be found in much of Haydn's and Mozart's symphonic works. But, the 1805 Eroica was "gigantically conceived" and the size of the movements was altered dramatically (Sisman 288). The Eroica symphony was far longer than any that preceded it, and, combined with its complexity, this had the effect of turning audiences against the work. Unused to the amount of work that Beethoven was imposing on his listeners, "critics complained of its inordinate length, and protested against the lack of unity in this most unified of works" (Rosen 392-93). One example will suffice. The C# in the seventh measure, for instance, does not find its full meaning until much later in the opening of the recapitulation, "when it becomes a Db and leads to an F major horn solo" (Rosen 393-94). The sheer extension in time of the range of hearing that was required by such a device was far beyond any demands that had been placed on listeners before. What happened in the Eroica was that Beethoven increased t

Category: Arts - B