Ludwig van Beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven is arguably one of the most original composers who ever lived. His composing career began in the last decade of the 18th century and ended with his death in 1827, and thus spanned from the Classical to the Romantic period. In his youth, he studied under F. Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest Classical composers; in his maturity, he anticipated the Romantic style which was later fully realized in the works of Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz and Chopin, among others. Although Beethoven is rightfully acknowledged as a brilliant innovator, he was not without his influences. The goal of this research is to establish the influence of a particular composer, the Italian pianist and composer Muzio Clementi, on Beethoven's keyboard compositions. Clementi was Beethoven's contemporary; though he was born in 1852 and was therefore about a generation older than Beethoven, he outlived the younger man, dying in 1832. He moved to England at a young age and completed his musical education there in 1766 (Randel 107). For many years, he toured extensively throughout Europe and Russia, famous as both a pianist and composer (Randel 107). In addition, he established a music publishing company in England, which exists to the present day as Collard and Collard (Randel 107). Plantinga notes that "during [Clementi's] lifetime, he was certainly more famous than Mozart, and his reputation in European music was probably exceeded only by that of Haydn and Beethoven" (xi).
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Beethovenian" quality which can be found much earlier in the work of Clementi is one of the features most consistently associated with Beethoven: the drawn-out, extremely elaborate construction of dramatic climaxes. Similarly complicated climaxes can be found in Clementi as early as the middle of the 1780's, as in his Op. 13 no. 6, in which he "mobilizes all the forces at his command" (Plantinga 311-312).
One composition of Clementi's, Opus 7 no. 3 in G minor, written when Beethoven was a boy of twelve, is filled with pre-Beethoven "Beethovenesque" features. Plantinga says of the work that it is "stylistically precocious in 1782" (89). He also points out that a number of its distinctive features are normally acknowledged as "typically Beethoven", such as melodic progressions in octaves and thick, multi-fingered chords (Plantinga 89). Each of these will be discussed in turn.
Measures 100-109 of Clementi's Op. 7 no. 3 offer a clear example a "melodic progression in octaves" (Plantinga 89). In this section, the right hand plays the melody in octaves while the left hand plays triads. Plantinga refers to this as a "Beethoven-like keyboard texture" (89), and examples in Beethoven are easy to find: Beethoven's piano sonata n
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Approximate Word count = 3519
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)
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