Part 3 (1/2)

Beethoven was the son of a very dissipated tenor singer of the chapel of the Elector of Cologne, and the faenerations 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 hiood part of Bach's ”Well-tempered Clavier” by heart While still but a lad he succeeded informally to the post of assistant conductor of the orchestra, and it was his duty to prepare the ht be advisable to adapt old ained, 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 ether in the absence of the head director, Neefe

[Illustration: 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 enty 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 faer 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 ti 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 thistoo 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 cos they sooner or later commended themselves to the critics as well as to the public; but by the time this had come to pass with the works of a certain period, he had advanced and coe 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 contereatly overrated He enjoyed a fairly co themost of his career he was estee

As compared with the works of Handel or Bach, those of Beethoven do not reat 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 mass of chamber music of other sorts There are two enerally stated, the characteristic point of difference bete call the classical and the ro 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, thea , or more sonorous than previous works; or, perhaps, the ood as previous works The purely musical (conceived fro 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 drath the expression of intense individuality--the working of strong individualities under the clash of tragic situations

Along with the invention and develop the period here mentioned, the reat results to the art of elo 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 kindmean e speak of ”bel canto”--the type ofThis impassioned, sustained, and expressive melody took onderful rapidity and was almost iinning 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 fro the voice all the stops, interruptions, shocks, and variations of intensity requisite for effective delivery But by the tih art (it seeh we have no precise indications upon the subject) the ical intoning, no longer satisfied the derehat 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 so more impassioned, but at the same time more distinctively musical, than thethat delivery ht be ation of a single moment of the dra time later, had very feords, 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 e 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 ht to the attention of the hearer by means of the lines and then enforced by the aria, which the singer of greatestThat these arias very soon degenerated into show pieces for virtuoso singers was an accident due to the popularity of the operatic stage, the developht 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 triedout in their s of the leading individuals in the play; hence the art of expressive reatly developed, and the ears of the public learned gradually to feel after and enjoy the human heart-beat in thefor itself as a development of musical forms or science of construction, and became more and more, in opera, the expression of individualities andforthe public tended also in the opposite direction of pleasing the hearer by htful symmetries of tone-forms, and the like So at the very ti in opera for the develop no less effectually for ht operas dealing with shallow situations--co e, where, after all, the question of amusement will always prevail

All of these different tendencies came later on to their expression in ed to compose truly expressivehly humoristic and fanciful Then Haydn and Mozart introduced various types of pleasing and simply expressive melody, but it is only in occasional s 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 iven

In Beethoven we find this quality for the first ti with this occasional accent of intensity, we have also a great and inexhaustible variety ofto the different sides of thewith this variety of arded as representing different facets of individuality, we have also in Beethoven a certain cos soer whole is the entire hly gifted person, which, while lasting perhaps for only a few limpse 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 fore and peculiar beauty of his music, we have to learn his enius; and then to see how he combines these widely different moods into a whole--as he does in his sonatas and syins with several pieces, co 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 surpassed only by Schubert and Schumann later The latter, it may be anticipated, is the most humoristic of all composers of instrueness in a piece ofwithout words, and to work up to an iive it a different for 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 le tonality--remain in one key or revolve around one key in such aHence 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, disjointedait as to impress some one idea as central, and at the saoal, can a serious instrumental movement becolike the unity of those of Beethoven A beautiful variety prevails, and the main ideas are repeated a sufficient nu 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 ishis 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 retto 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 Appassionata Opus 57

Humoristic Variations and Moods; Theme and Variations Opus 26

Scherzo in C, Sonata in C Opus 2, No 3

Allegretto froht Sonata” Opus 27, No 2

Scherzo in A-flat, Sonata Opus 31, No 2