Part 3 (1/2)
Beethoven was the son of a very dissipated tenor singer of the chapel of the Elector of Cologne, and the family had been musical for several generations. The boy learned to play the viola and violin as well as the piano while he was still very young indeed, and by the age of eleven was regularly engaged as viola player in the orchestra and had gained such proficiency upon the piano that it was popularly said of him that he could have played a good part of Bach's ”Well-tempered Clavier” by heart. While still but a lad he succeeded informally to the post of a.s.sistant conductor of the orchestra, and it was his duty to prepare the music for the men, making the abridgments, emendations, and rearrangements that might be advisable to adapt old music to the then modern orchestra. In this way he gained, no doubt, much of his marvelous acquaintance with orchestral effect. When he was fifteen he was regularly appointed organist to the private chapel of the Elector, and he was left in charge of the orchestra for months together in the absence of the head director, Neefe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ludwig van Beethoven]
He began to compose by the time he was ten, but he did not manifest any especial precocity in this direction: his published compositions with opus number contain only one movement, it is believed, which he wrote before he was twenty or twenty-one years of age. After the death of his father he was left, as he had been practically for some years before, the responsible head of the family, with the care of his mother and his younger brothers. He remained in Bonn, with one visit to Vienna in 1787, until he was about twenty-two years of age, when he left Bonn definitely and took up his abode in Vienna. Here he studied with the best masters attainable--Haydn, then in his prime, Salieri, and others. His first published compositions with opus numbers--three trios--date from the Vienna time.
In Vienna he lived all the remainder of his life--about thirty-five years. In the earlier part of this period he was considered one of the great pianoforte virtuosi of his time; his playing was distinguished for force, strong contrasts, musical quality, and, above all, pathetic expression. Czerny states that it was not unusual for a company of the Viennese aristocracy to be affected to tears by the playing of this master. His published works were generally criticized as being too bold and unconventional.
As Beethoven had the fortune to live to quite a good age, he gradually established his position with regard to the earlier compositions, inasmuch as by repeated hearings they sooner or later commended themselves to the critics as well as to the public; but by the time this had come to pa.s.s with the works of a certain period, he had advanced and composed others, which now in turn succeeded to the charge of being too advanced and forced. These in turn were later on accepted, only to leave a still later stratum of his compositions under the same condemnation which had been the portion of the earlier works.
Nevertheless, the want of recognition of Beethoven by his contemporaries has been greatly overrated. He enjoyed a fairly comfortable income, as such things went among the middle-cla.s.s Viennese of his time, and during most of his career he was esteemed to be probably the most eminent composer living.
As compared with the works of Handel or Bach, those of Beethoven do not make a great display in volume. Nevertheless, there are thirty-two piano sonatas, ten violin sonatas, nine symphonies for full orchestra, five pianoforte concertos, twenty-one sets of variations for piano alone, sixteen string quartets, and a very large ma.s.s of chamber music of other sorts. There are two ma.s.ses, one opera, and above one hundred songs.
As generally stated, the characteristic point of difference between what we call the cla.s.sical and the romantic in the art of music lies in the feeling actuating the composer, and consequently embodied more or less successfully in his music. In the older practice, especially that of the Netherlandish contrapuntal composers of the sixteenth century, the motive of composition was that of producing a musical piece more elaborate, more imposing, or more sonorous than previous works; or, perhaps, the more commonplace conception of producing a piece as good as previous works. The purely musical (conceived from a technical standpoint) remained the moving principle with the composer. With the invention of opera, about 1597, A. D., and the active development which followed for a century after, a new principle came into operation, namely, the expression of dramatic contrasts and situations, and so at length the expression of intense individuality--the working of strong individualities under the clash of tragic situations.
Along with the invention and development of opera, during the period here mentioned, the mastery of the violin was carried forward with great results to the art of music. About 1685, Archangelo Corelli published his first collection of pieces for the violin, and in these are found what are practically about the first examples of a well-developed lyric melody, of the kind we now mean when we speak of ”bel canto”--the type of melody made the very crux of the art of Italian singing. This impa.s.sioned, sustained, and expressive melody took with wonderful rapidity and was almost immediately adopted into opera, the ideal of which in the beginning had been that of an artistic and dramatically expressive delivery of the text. Now, melody as such has little to do with the dramatic delivery of the text. In a sustained melody--as in ”Home, Sweet Home,” to quote a simple type--it is first of all a question of sustained sentiment; whereas in a well-determined declamation it is first of all a matter of effective delivery of the words and phrases from an elocutionary standpoint, allowing the voice all the stops, interruptions, shocks, and variations of intensity requisite for effective delivery. But by the time this sustained melody had been introduced into high art (it seems to have made a beginning earlier in folk-song, although we have no precise indications upon the subject) the mere delivery of a text, somewhat after the manner of a liturgical intoning, no longer satisfied the demands of opera.
Music grew by what it fed upon. The violin, which Monteverde had placed in the position of honor at the head of the orchestra in 1608, had grown upon the ears of the people; and there was a need felt for something more impa.s.sioned, but at the same time more distinctively musical, than the mere declamation of the first opera, no matter how sing-song that delivery might be made. Hence arose the aria, which practically is a prolongation of a single moment of the dramatic situation. The Arias, at first and for quite a long time later, had very few words, and these were repeated over and over, as we find still in the well-known arias from Handel's ”Messiah.” Thus opera came into possession of a simple and sustained melody, patterned after the cantilena of the violin; and it was employed for marking the successive points of the dramatic action. That is to say, as the drama unfolded, one new situation after another developed itself. Each new entrance of a dramatic person made a new complication and a new situation, brought to the attention of the hearer by means of the lines and then enforced by the aria, which the singer of greatest momentary importance had to sing. That these arias very soon degenerated into show pieces for virtuoso singers was an accident due to the popularity of the operatic stage, the development of the new art of singing, and a delight in the human voice as a musical instrument. It has no concern with our present subject.
Moreover, it inevitably happened that as composers multiplied and competed for the favor of the public, they tried more and more to bring out in their music the very innermost pa.s.sions and pa.s.sing feelings of the leading individuals in the play; hence the art of expressive music was greatly developed, and the ears of the public learned gradually to feel after and enjoy the human heart-beat in the music. Thus music pa.s.sed beyond the stage of working for itself as a development of musical forms or science of construction, and became more and more, in opera, the expression of individualities and moods. At the same time that this tendency was working for making the music more expressive, the necessity of pleasing the public tended also in the opposite direction of pleasing the hearer by means of agreeable combinations of tone-colors, delightful symmetries of tone-forms, and the like. So at the very time when composers of one cla.s.s were laboring in opera for the development of deep expression, those of another cla.s.s were working no less effectually for making the music merely shallow and pleasing.
Light operas dealing with shallow situations--comedy, farce, expressed by means of light and pleasing music--came to occupy more and more the operatic stage, where, after all, the question of amus.e.m.e.nt will always prevail.
All of these different tendencies came later on to their expression in music purely instrumental. We have seen already how Bach managed to compose truly expressive music which, nevertheless, is first of all strong music, yet highly humoristic and fanciful. Then Haydn and Mozart introduced various types of pleasing and simply expressive melody, but it is only in occasional moments that their music touches the deeper feelings of the heart. It is music to admire for its cleverness, to enjoy at times for its sweetness and tenderness, and its fresh melodic symmetry; but it is only in very rare moments that the accent of emotional individuality is given.
In Beethoven we find this quality for the first time ill.u.s.trated in instrumental music; and, along with this occasional accent of intensity, we have also a great and inexhaustible variety of moods and manners appertaining to the different sides of the mighty individuality of this great tone-poet. Along with this variety of moods, which in their inner nature must be regarded as representing different facets of individuality, we have also in Beethoven a certain comprehensive element. Everything that he says to us belongs somehow to a larger whole, and that larger whole is the entire man of the composer. It is like the conversation of some highly gifted person, which, while lasting perhaps for only a few minutes, nevertheless affords us a glimpse into a remarkable personality, and appears in our memory as a chapter accidentally revealed out of the entire soul of the talker.
Hence in trying to form an idea of the individuality of Beethoven and of the range and peculiar beauty of his music, we have to learn his most characteristic moods in order to get the range of his genius; and then to see how he combines these widely different moods into a whole--as he does in his sonatas and symphonies. Accordingly, this first program begins with several pieces, comparatively small in compa.s.s, but directly ill.u.s.trating the variety of his humoristic tendencies. All of these little pieces, moreover, have that accent of intense individuality mentioned above--an accent very much more observable in Beethoven than in any of his predecessors, and surpa.s.sed only by Schubert and Schumann later. The latter, it may be antic.i.p.ated, is the most humoristic of all composers of instrumental music.
There are certain conditions of largeness in a piece of music intended to say something without words, and to work up to an imposing climax, which give it a different form from what is practicable in pieces having a text for doing a part of the talking. In order to reach a great effect, an instrumental music piece has to last for some time, and to continue quite a while in the same movement, as to rate of pulsation and frequency of measure accent. It has to work within a single tonality--remain in one key or revolve around one key in such a manner as to preserve its own unity as a single being. Hence arise the long movements of the sonata and symphony. It is not possible to arrive at similar impressions upon hearers by the use of shorter, disjointed movements. Only by carrying a movement on for some time, and so developing it as to impress some one idea as central, and at the same time to arrive eventually at some kind of a climax or goal, can a serious instrumental movement become expressive and effective.
In Mozart these long movements have nothing like the unity of those of Beethoven. A beautiful variety prevails, and the main ideas are repeated a sufficient number of times; but it is for beauty rather than for completing a cycle of moods or a cycle of soul-experiences. Or if a cycle, then a cycle of pleasant and youthful experiences. In Beethoven this is not the case. When he is much in earnest he takes plenty of time for saying his say, and says it so thoroughly that you are quite sure of what he is at. This will be shown in the present program by means of the Sonate Pathetique, and phases of the manner will appear in all the selections.
PROGRAM.
Selections of a quasi-lyric character: Menuetto in E-flat. Opus 31, No. 3.
Menuetto in D major. Opus 10, No. 3.
Subject from Allegretto from Sonata, opus 90. Thirty-two measures.
Andante from Sonata, opus 27, No. 1.
Formal Variations: Andante and Variations. Sonata in G major. Opus 14, No. 2.
Andante, from Sonata Appa.s.sionata. Opus 57.
Humoristic Variations and Moods; Theme and Variations. Opus 26.
Scherzo in C, Sonata in C. Opus 2, No. 3.
Allegretto from ”Moonlight Sonata.” Opus 27, No. 2.
Scherzo in A-flat, Sonata. Opus 31, No. 2.
Sonata-piece: Allegro (first movement), from Sonata in G. Opus 14, No. 2.