rs (Matthews 216). Though it may not have been the universal nature of Beethoven's expression that appealed to the Romantics, it was the formal strength of his work that made that expression available to them. The fact that they may have chosen to interpret it as, primarily, subjective expression was one of the points that distinguished romantic from classical composers.
None of the types of Beethoven's influence operated in complete independence from the others--though they sometimes worked against each other. In some cases, their interdependence was of minor importance. The Beethoven mystique, for example, may have been compounded of "gross exaggeration in all ways," but, it still had its own reality, and met "a distinct aesthetic need" among Romantically influenced audiences whose experience of the music was strongly affected by such "subjective and associative factors" as were part of the Beethoven myth (Newman 386). In other cases, the relationship between types of influence produced undesirable results. Some argue, for example, that, because Beethoven always remained a classical composer, even though he expanded the limits of classical style considerably, his enormous prestige led Romantic composers into "an emulation which led, and could have led, only to disaster" (Rosen 379).
But, the tension between personal expression and classical structure produced positive results. Kerman and Tyson (386), Kinderman (11), and Rosen (380) have all noted that Beethoven's adherence to classical form was stronger than ever at the close of his career. By his late period, his work was the closest it ever was "to the forms and proportions of Haydn and Mozart" (Rosen 380). Yet, the late works include some of the most deeply personal music Beethoven ever wrote. Beethoven himself said of his last string quartets, "thank God there is less lack of fantasy than ever before" (quoted in Kinderman 11). But, as Kinderman notes, there was ...