Beethoven 1770 – 1827

Música  |  Compositors i intèrprets

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1770 – 1786 Infantesa a Bonn   |   1787 – 1802 Viena 1  |   1802 – 1812 Viena 2, progressiva sordesa  |   1813 – 1827 Darrers anys

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Neix en una família d’origen flamenc. Tant el seu pare com al seu avi  tenien feina com a músics a la cort del príncep arquebisbe de Colònia, amb seu a Bonn. El pare era un personatge mesquí, addicte a la beguda que intentà explotar el talent del seu fill com a concertista de piano fins i tot falsificant la seva edat per tal que semblés més un infant prodigi.

(Groove)The comparative brevity of Beethoven’s formal education, combined with the fact that most of his out-of-school hours must have been devoted to music, explains some of the gaps in his academic equipment, such as his blindness to orthography and punctuation and his inability to carry out the simplest multiplication sum.

Christian Gottlob Neefe, organista de la cort no només el formarà musicalment sinó culturalment, donant-li a conèixer l’obra de pensadors i escriptors.

El 1783 és contractat com a músic a la cort. Amplia el seu cercle d’amistats amb famílies cultes com els Ries, von Breuning, Karl Amenda i el doctor Franz Gerhard Wegeler.

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Fa un primer viatge a Viena per conèixer Mozart (Gr però només s’hi estarà dues setmanes). Mor la seva mare. El seu pare entra en depressió i augmenta el seu alcoholisme. Ludwig s’haurà de fer càrrec de la família tocant el violí i donant classes.  Té el suport de la família Brening i del comte Waldstein. El pare morirà el 1792.

G. From 1789, when the musical life of the town under the new elector was fully resumed, Beethoven played the viola in the orchestras both of the court chapel and of the theatre, alongside such fine musicians as Franz Ries and Andreas Romberg (violins), Bernhard Romberg (cello), Nikolaus Simrock (horn) and Antoine Reicha (flute); some of these were to remain almost lifelong friends. […] But for Beethoven the chief excitements of this year may have been outside Bonn itself. As Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, the elector had to preside for many weeks over its sessions at Mergentheim, and he saw to it that he had his orchestra with him. The players’ journey up the Rhine was accompanied by much revelry and clowning; in later years Beethoven retained many happy memories of this, as well as one curious memento (a mock diploma). An ambitious series of concerts was given at Mergentheim, and Beethoven also seized the opportunity of going with friends to Aschaffenburg, a summer palace of the Electors of Mainz, to visit the famous pianist Sterkel. It is said that Sterkel’s light touch and graceful, fastidious style were a revelation to Beethoven. But when Sterkel challenged him to play his own Righini variations, doubting his ability to do so, it was Beethoven’s turn to cause amazement, particularly since he improvised extra variations in a style that imitated Sterkel’s.

Es trasllada a Viena. Coneix Haydn amb qui farà classe però la relació no és fàcil. Es formarà amb Albrechtsberger, expert en contrapunt. Beethoven deia admirar Händel. Guanya fama com a concertista. S’enfronta en un duel musical amb Steibelt interpretant i millorant a vista les seves obres. Entre els concerts i clases a famílies acomodades, millora la seva posició econòmica i el 1801 té resolts els problemes econòmics i viu còmodament amb servei.

G. His entry into Viennese circles was unobtrusive, and the sporadic entries in the little diary that he had started on his journey and kept at least until 1794 are the best guide to his immediate preoccupations. They show him looking for a piano and for a wig-maker, buying clothes, noting the address of a dancing-master, and the like. […] When Haydn left for England in 1794, he passed Beethoven on to another tutor, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, the Kapellmeister at the Stephansdom and the best-known teacher of counterpoint in Vienna.[…] A third name is often linked with Haydn’s and Albrechtsberger’s: that of the imperial Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri. It was Salieri’s genial custom to offer free tuition to impecunious musicians, especially in the setting of Italian words to music; and it is usually stated that Beethoven availed himself of this informal help soon after his arrival in Vienna. […] The aristocracy based on the Austrian capital surpassed all others of Europe in its devotion to music, and much of its time and a considerable part of its fortunes – a ruinous amount in some cases – was spent in the conspicuous indulgence of this taste. Not only did these aristocrats welcome virtuosos to their town palaces and country estates, but some of them, such as Prince Lobkowitz, kept private orchestras and even – like the Esterházys – opera companies as well. If their support was not on quite so lavish a scale, at least they employed a wind band or, like Prince Karl Lichnowsky and the Russian Count Rasumovsky, a quartet of string players. The Court Councillor von Kees was among the many who organized private concerts; a large library of music was assembled by the Baron van Swieten, a patriarch whose distinction it was to cultivate the music of Bach and Handel and introduce it to Viennese audiences. [….] t in the salons the stunning effect of Beethoven’s solo playing, and particularly perhaps of his improvising, was immediately recognized. […] It is tempting to draw a connection between the selfconsciousness of this undertaking and a change in his working methods which coincided with it. Beethoven had always made sketches of the compositions that he was engaged in writing, and as time went on they became more voluminous. But hitherto they had been written on loose single leaves or bifolia of music paper. From the middle of 1798 he began to make his sketches in books of music paper. The first two of the sketchbooks contain sketches for four of the quartets that he was now writing, as well as for a considerable number of other works that he completed, revised or attempted to write in the same months.[…] Other friendships formed around this time were ultimately more fateful for Beethoven. In May 1799 the Countesses Therese and Josephine von Brunsvik, then 24 and 20, came to Vienna from Hungary on a short visit with their widowed mother, who wished them to take lessons from Beethoven.[…] On 2 April 1800 Beethoven gave his first concert for his own benefit, in the Burgtheater. The music included, besides a Mozart symphony and numbers from Haydn’s Creation, two new works by Beethoven, the Septet (op.20) and the First Symphony. The former soon became one of his most popular works; the reception of the latter was appreciative, although the heavy scoring for the wind was remarked on.

“Sotmetiment a les formes clàssiques. Fins al 1800, les seves obres no es distingeixen, formalment, de les de Haydn i de Mozart, però tenen trets originals molt característics; les obres més destacables són les primeres sonates per a piano, els dos primers concerts per a piano i orquestra, la primera simfonia, els quartets opus 18, i el cèlebre Septet opus 20. Cap a la fi d’aquesta època se li manifestà la sordesa, que acabà esdevenint total.”

Then from 1800 to 1802 he produced at high speed a series of increasingly experimental pieces which must be seen in retrospect as a transition to the middle period. It is in this sub-period that the relative effects of genre and familiarity are especially clear. In 1798 and 1799 the piano sonatas are fluid and visionary but the earliest string quartets are relatively stiff. By 1800 the quartet writing moves more easily but the first of his symphonies is still decidedly conservative. /// Cminor. As has been mentioned above, when Haydn heard the op.1 trios he praised them but thought the public would not understand or accept the third, in C minor. One suspects that Haydn himself may have been put off by the extremes of tempo, dynamics, texture and local chromatic action in this piece, and still more by the resulting emotional aura. He would not have been the last listener to find something callow and stagey, which is to say essentially impersonal, in these insistent gestures of pathos and high drama. Beethoven of course paid no attention to his advice and published increasingly sophisticated C minor items in nearly every one of his composite sets of works over the next eight years (opp.9, 10, 18, 30). In these years C minor was practically the only minor key he used for full-length pieces (though D minor is used for the impressive slow movements of op.10 no.3 and op.18 no.1, as well as for the ‘Tempest’ Sonata op.31 no.2). The most successful early embodiments of Beethoven’s ‘C minor mood’ are no doubt the Sonate pathétique op.13 (1797–8) and the Third Piano Concerto (?1800–03). Still to come were the 32 Variations on an Original Theme, for piano, the Coriolan Overture, the Fifth Symphony and the last piano sonata. /// Novelties of conception can be detected all along. They are multiplied in the Sonate pathétique of 1798 – the integration of the introduction into the first movement proper, the perfectly managed bold modulations in the second group, the prophetic breakdown on the dominant in the middle of the rondo; not to speak of the overall coherence of mood which has made the Pathétique the most famous piece in Beethoven’s early output. Another famous early piece, the first movement of the Quartet in F op.18 no.1, is his first exhaustive study in motivic saturation. The turn-motif of bars 1–2 forces its way into every available nook and cranny of the second group, the transitions, the development and coda. (When Beethoven revised op.18 no.1, after having given a fair copy of it to Amenda, he reduced the appearances of the turn-motif by nearly a quarter.) /// The last two quartets of op.18, composed around 1800, show a rather new treatment of the traditional four-movement form (one that had recently been essayed by Haydn in several of his op.76 quartets). The first movements are not extensive and decisive but instead swift, bland and symmetrical, so that the later movements all seem (and were surely meant to seem) weightier or more arresting. The most visionary of these later movements is the composite finale of the Quartet in B op.18 no.6, where a slow, strange-sounding chromatic labyrinth entitled ‘La malinconia’ alternates with a swift, limpid little dance evocative of the Viennese ballrooms. /// It is perhaps at this time that one first begins to be aware of the striking individuality of all Beethoven’s pieces, a characteristic that has often been noted. Prime examples are the so-called ‘Pastoral’ Sonata in D op.28 (also the locus classicus for successive thematic fragmentation in a development section), the Sonata in E op.31 no.3, and those great and deserving favourites of the Romantic era, the Pathétique, the ‘Moonlight’ and the D minor op.31 no.2. /// The opening reverie of the ‘Moonlight’ is such a startling conception, even today, that Beethoven’s very careful plotting of the sequence of the movements in this sonata seems to pale by comparison. Unprecedented for a sonata opening is the half-improvisatory texture, the unity of mood, and especially the mood itself – that romantic mestizia which will have overwhelmed all but the stoniest of listeners by the end of the melody’s first phrase. An equally bold and emotional, but also more intellectual, experiment marks the opening of op.31 no.2. Here the first theme in a sonata form movement consists of antecedent and consequent phrases of radically different characters: a slow improvisatory arpeggio and a fast, highly motivic agitato. Both of these ideas can be heard echoing in the later movements of the sonata.

SONATES DE PIANO

• Opus 2: Three Piano Sonatas (1795): Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Piano Sonata No. 2 in A major, Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major
• Opus 7: Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat major (“Grand Sonata”) (1797)
• Opus 10: Three Piano Sonatas (1798):
  
  Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor [és una marxa lenta amb un obstinato que de sobte es dispara amunt com si voléssim amb la imaginació], Piano Sonata No. 6 in F major, Piano Sonata No. 7 in D major
• Opus 13: Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor (“Pathétique”) (1798)
• Opus 14: Two Piano Sonatas (1799): Piano Sonata No. 9 in E major (Also arranged by the composer for String Quartet in F major (H 34) in 1801, Piano Sonata No. 10 in G major
• Opus 22: Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat major (1800)
• Opus 26: Piano Sonata No. 12 in A-flat major (“Funeral March”) (1801)
• Opus 27: Two Piano Sonatas (1801): Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat major ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’ (“Moonlight”)
• Opus 28: Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major (“Pastoral”) (1801)
• Opus 49: Two Piano Sonatas (composed 1795–6, published 1805): Piano Sonata No. 19 in G minor, Piano Sonata No. 20 in G major

La sonata 13, Op.27 no1 en Eb és la que m’agrada més. El primer moviment ple de variacions.El segon no és un temps lent sinó una mena de giga melencòlica. El lent serà el tercer, una marxa meditativa. Un final feliç 4/4 que frena just abans d’acabar per retrobar la meditació del tercer.

SONATES PER VIOLÍ, CELLO

• Opus 5, 1796 Sonata per a cello No. 1 in F major, No. 2 in G minor
• Opus 12: Tres sonates per a violí (1798): núm. 1: Sonata per a violí núm. 1 en re major, núm. 2: Sonata per a violí núm. 2 en la major, núm. 3: Sonata per a violí núm. 3 en mi bemoll major
• Opus 23: Sonata per a violí núm. 4 en la menor (1801)
• Opus 24: Sonata per a violí núm. 5 en fa major “Primavera” (1801)

TRIOS per PIANO

• Wo38, 1790, Piano Trio, WoO. 38 (Beethoven)
• Op.1  (1795):  Op. 1 No. 1 –  E-flat major, No. 2 in G major, No. 3 in C minor
• Op.11 (1797), in B-flat major
• Op.44, Variations on an original theme in E-flat major (1792 publicat 1804)

QUARTETS

• Op.18, (1801) un encàrrec del Príncep Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz, que tenia empleat a l’amic de Beethoven el violinista  Karl Amenda: String Quartet No. 1 in F major, String Quartet No. 2 in G major, String Quartet No. 3 in D major, String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, String Quartet No. 5 in A major, String Quartet No. 6 in B♭ major.
• Op. 20, 1802, Septet Eb

OBRES ORQUESTRALS

• Op. 19 (1798), Piano Concerto No. 2, B♭
• Op. 15 (1800), Piano Concerto No. 1, C
• Op. 21, (1800), Symphony No. 1, C
• Op. 36, 1801, Symphony No. 2, D

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Es trasllada a les afores de Viena a Heiligenstadt. Solia passar els estius en contacte amb la natura, a les afores de Viena, Oberdöbling, Unterdöbling, Mödlinq, Hetzemdorf o Nussdorf. En una carta a Wegeler de 19 de juny de 1800 escrivia: “la meva orella ha començat a debilitar-se de tres anys ençà, i la causa primera d’aquesta malaltia deu venir de les meves entranyes … Puc dir amb tota franquesa que la meva vida és ben miserable. Durant  aquests darrers dos anys, he defugit tota societat, perquè m’és impossible de dir a la gent: ‘sóc sord'”. El 1802 s’adona que la vida que podia esperar, no serà possible. La sordesa l’aïlla socialment en no poder admetre què li passa. Arriba a considerar el suïcidi però alhora sent que té moltes coses a dir musicalment. Escriu el seu estat d’ànim en una carta que no arribarà a enviar i que es trobarà al seu escriptori quan morirà, l’anomenat testament de Heiligenstadt .

Carta a Breitkops i Härtel de 1809: Per aquesta raó em plauria que em féssiu arribar, per etapes, les partitures dels mestres que tingueu, com per exemple, el Rèquiem de Mozart, les misses de Haydn, especialment totes les partitures de Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Joahnn Sebastian Bach, Emanuel.

Enamorament de la comtessa Giuletta Guicciardi. The ‘dear charming girl’ who was brightening Beethoven’s days was no doubt the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. She was now not quite 17: too young, and perhaps too spoilt, to take Beethoven’s devotion very seriously, though no doubt she was flattered for a time by the attentions of a famous composer, a man much admired by her cousins. Much, probably too much, has been made of the fact that it was to her that he dedicated the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata (op.27 no.2), written in 1801.

S’enamora de Josephine Brunsvick, jove vídua, però el caràcter complilcat de Beethoven i la diferència de classe social l’impedeixen tenir una relació plena. Acaba Fidelio, escriu els quartets Rasumovsky que seran molt admirats. Però a banda dels donatius dels amics aristòcrates i ingressos per obres publicades, no té uns ingressos fixos. Fent servir una oferta de Kassel aconsegueix un contracte a Viena: “A document dated 1 March 1809 guaranteed that its three signatories would provide Beethoven with an annuity for as long as he remained domiciled in Vienna; since it covered accidents and old age it also amounted to an insurance policy and a pension. The signatories were the Archduke Rudolph (1500 florins) and the Princes Lobkowitz (700 florins) and Kinsky (1800 florins). There were, as will be seen, difficulties in ensuring the regularity and the full value of the payments, but once those problems were overcome Beethoven was relieved from any rational grounds for financial worry.”

El 1812 fa una estada al balneari de de Teplice a Txèquia. Allà va escriure la carta a “l’estimada immortal“. [ a l’edició de les cartes és a la p.45, atribuida a 1801 a Giulietta Guicciardi, però recera més recent mostra que correspondria a Antonie Brentano, an aristocratic Viennese lady ten years younger than Beethoven who at 18 had married a Frankfurt businessman, Franz Brentano ] . La impossibilitat de consolidar una relació suposarà un daltabaix emocional. [ sordesa avançada, sense ingressos fixes, sense consolidar una relació ] Una vegada passejava amb Goethe quan es van creuar amb l’emperadriu. Goethe els cedia el pas saludant i Beethoven va tirar pel dret, orgullós.

 

MÚSICA

“Continguts expressius densos i canvis bruscos de tonalitat. En la segona etapa reformà l’estructura clàssica de la simfonia, substituint el minuet per un scherzo que permetia una major llibertat en la composició. És el moment de les simfonies tercera a la vuitena, del seu Concert per a violí, dels tres darrers per a piano i orquestra, dels tres quartets Rassumovski, opus 59, i de l’òpera Fidelio. D’aquesta època, són també algunes de les seves sonates més famoses: l’Appassionata, opus 57, per a piano, i la Sonata a Kreutzer, opus 47, per a violí i piano.”

The middle period begins with a famous series of compositions in the heroic vein (1803–8): the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, Leonore (Fidelio) and others. The music of the sub-period 1809–12 follows the same general stylistic impetus, but becomes rather less radical and turbulent as it becomes more and more effortless in technique. Most of Beethoven’s orchestral music dates from the middle period.

SONATES DE PIANO

After he wrote his first 15 sonatas, he wrote to Wenzel Krumpholz, “From now on, I’m going to take a new path.” Beethoven’s sonatas from this period are very different from his earlier ones. His experimentation in modifications to the common sonata form of Haydn and Mozart became more daring, as did the depth of expression. Most Romantic period sonatas were highly influenced by those of Beethoven. After 1804, Beethoven ceased publishing sonatas in sets and only composed them as a single opus. It is unclear why he did so.

 

• Opus 31: Three Piano Sonatas (1802): Piano Sonata No. 16 in G major, Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor (“Tempest”), Piano Sonata No. 18 in E-flat major (“The Hunt”)
• Opus 49 No. 19 in G minor and No. 20 in G major, 1805
• Opus 53: Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major (“Waldstein”) (1803), WoO 57: Andante favori — Original middle movement of the “Waldstein” sonata (1804)
• Opus 54: Piano Sonata No. 22 in F major (1804)
• Opus 57: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor (“Appassionata”) (1805)
• Opus 78: Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp major (“A Thérèse”) (1809)
• Opus 79: Piano Sonata No. 25 in G major (“Cuckoo”) (1809)
• Opus 81a: Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major (“Les adieux/Das Lebewohl”) (1810)

Altres

• Op.35 Variacions Eroica , 1802
• Woo80 32, Variacions en Cm , 1806 [ Sense número d’opus. Peça popular però de la qual el mateix Beethoven no en enia una gran opinió. Les havia escoltat molt a Solius i m’agradaven molt]

SONATES PER VIOLÍ, CELLO

• Opus 30: Tres sonates per a violí (1803):núm. 1: Sonata per a violí núm. 6 en la major, núm. 2: Sonata per a violí núm. 7 en do menor , núm. 3: Sonata per a violí núm. 8 en sol major
• Opus 47: Sonata per a violí núm. 9 en la major “Kreutzer” (1803) [ que tant agradava a l’avi Josep ]
• Opus 69, 1808, Sonata per a cello no.3 en A
• Opus 96: Sonata per a violí núm. 10 en sol major (1812)

TRIOS

• Op. 70, 1809, Piano Trios, Op. 70 (Beethoven)
• Op.97   Piano Trio, Op. 97 (Beethoven) Bb 1811 (trio de l’arxiduc)

QUARTETS

• Op-59. Rasumovsky 1807: String Quartet No. 7 in F major, Op. 59, No. 1; String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2 ; String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59, No. 3. Un encàrrec del comte, cada quartet havia d’incloure un tema rus.
• Op.74, 1809, No. 10 in E♭ major, Op. 74 (Harp)
• Op.95, 1810, No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 (Serioso)

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1803. Simfonia Eroica. But something else was evidently pressing: the inner demand to complete a great instrumental work. The writing of the Third Symphony, the Sinfonia eroica, was the major effort of the summer of 1803, which was spent in Oberdöbling. The symphony was originally entitled simply ‘Bonaparte’, in tribute to the young hero of revolutionary France, who was almost exactly Beethoven’s age. But this idealization of Napoleon as a heroic leader gave way to disillusionment when the First Consul proclaimed himself Emperor in May 1804. The story of Beethoven’s rage when the news of this reached Vienna is well known: he went to the table where the completed score lay, took hold of the title-page and tore it in two. On its publication in 1806 the symphony was given its present title of ‘heroic symphony’, and was described as having been ‘composed to celebrate the memory of a great man’. The ‘great man’ may well have been Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, who was an esteemed friend of the symphony’s dedicatee, Prince Lobkowitz, and who in fact died a hero’s death in 1806. / The ‘Eroica’ Symphony was not the only work by Beethoven from these years that appears to reflect or embody extra-musical ideas of heroism. A similar spirit pervades the so-called Waldstein Sonata (op.53), for instance, composed immediately after the symphony in the last months of 1803, and the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata (op.57), begun in the following year. Even the string quartets of this period, the three of op.59 completed in the summer of 1806 and dedicated to Count Rasumovsky, are cast in the same mould.
EL nou iudeal simfònic. The sketches show a minimum of false starts and detours. The most radical ideas were present from the start, if in cruder form, and work seems to have proceeded with great assurance. This is striking indeed, for however carefully one studies Beethoven’s evolving style up to 1803, nothing prepares one for the scope, the almost bewildering originality and almost continuous technical certainty manifested in this symphony.
In the first movement, one must marvel at the expansion in dimensions on every level; at the projection of certain melodic details of the main theme into the total form – the bass C (D ) instigating moves to the keys of the supertonic and the flat seventh degree in the recapitulation, the violins’ G–A returning vertically as the famous horn-call dissonance; at the masterly coagulation of diverse material into the second group; and at the whole concept of the panoramic development section, with its passage of deepening breakdown redeemed by the introduction of a new theme (if it is indeed really new). The moving thematic ‘liquidation’ at the end of the Marcia funebre, the four alla breve bars in the da capo of the scherzo, the novel structure of the finale, the powerful fugatos throughout – none of these could have been predicted. Also astonishing is the quality of ‘potential’ that informs the main themes of the three fast movements. Two of them require (and in due course receive) horizontal or vertical completion, and the other is presented in a state of almost palpable evolution.
These themes were made to order for the new ‘symphonic ideal’ which Beethoven perfected at a stroke with his Third Symphony and further celebrated with his Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth. The forcefulness, expanded range and evident radical intent of these works sets them apart from symphonies in the 18th-century tradition, such as Beethoven’s own First and Second. But more than this, they all contrive to create the impression of a psychological journey or growth process. In the course of this, something seems to arrive or triumph or transcend – even if, as in the Pastoral, what is mainly transcended is the weather. This illusion is helped by certain other characteristic features: ‘evolving’ themes, transitions between widely separated passages, actual thematic recurrences from one movement to another, and last but not least, the involvement of extra-musical ideas by means of a literary text, a programme, or (as in the ‘Eroica’) just a few tantalizing titles.
In technical terms, this development may be viewed as the projection of the underlying principles of the sonata style on the scale of the total four-movement work, rather than that of the single movement in sonata form. This view takes account of the impression Beethoven now so often gives of grappling with musical fundamentals. He had the power – and it must be called an intellectual power – of penetration into the gestural level below sonata form.
The conception of this symphonic ideal, and the development of technical means to implement it, is probably Beethoven’s greatest single achievement. It is par excellence a Romantic phenomenon, however ‘Classical’ one may wish to regard his purely musical procedures. It is also a feature that has offended certain critics, especially in the early part of the 20th century, and set them against Beethoven. The composer himself was capable of producing a cynical and enormously popular travesty of his own symphonic ideal, in the ‘Battle Symphony’ of 1813.
Beethoven immediately capped this work with the delightful Eighth Symphony (1812), a salute to the symphonic ideal of the previous age. It has a comical slow movement and a slowish minuet in place of the now customary scherzo. Flashes of middle-period power occur only in the outer movements. Beethoven could hardly have planned a more genial gesture of farewell for a time to the symphony and to the decade of work produced under its aegis.

• Op. 55, 1803, Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”), E♭
• Op. 60, 1806, Symphony No. 4, B♭
• Op. 67, 1807, Symphony No. 5, C minor
• Op. 68, 1808, Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”), F
• Op. 92, 1811, Symphony No. 7, A
• Op. 93, 1812, Symphony No. 8, F

ÒPERA

• Op.72, 1803, Fidelio

OBRES PER ORQUESTRA

• Op. 37, 1803 , Piano Concerto No. 3, c minor. The score was incomplete at its first performance. Beethoven’s friend, Ignaz von Seyfried, who turned the pages of the music for him that night, later wrote: I saw almost nothing but empty pages; at the most, on one page or another a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me were scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to set it all down on paper.
• Op. 61, 1806, Violin Concerto, D
• Op. 56, 1808, Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and piano, C
• Op. 58, 1808, Piano Concerto No. 4, G [ l’havia escoltat molt a l’adolescència, em segueix agradant molt]
• Op.73, 1811, Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”), E♭

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[ sordesa avançada, sense ingressos fixes, sense consolidar una relació ] However the turmoil of the summer of 1812 is to be understood, it proved to be a profound turning-point in Beethoven’s emotional life. It initiated a long period of markedly reduced creativity, and there is evidence that he became deeply depressed. Henceforth Beethoven accepted the impossibility of achieving a sustained relationship with a woman and entering into a shared domestic routine, though he was scarcely reconciled to it; even in 1816, as will be seen, he had by no means overcome his longing.

1814. Recupera certa popularitat amb un concert sobre la victòria de Wellington (o simfonia de la batalla) i les simfonies 7 i 8. Es recupera Fidelio. Amb el Congrés de Viena de 1814 repren més activament la composició (sonata piano op.90) i prepara concerts amb les obres populars. From the point of view of Viennese popular acclaim and fame the year 1814 must be regarded as the high-water mark in Beethoven’s life. Not only were his compositions applauded by large audiences, but he also received in person the commendations of royal dignitaries. Es recupera econòmicament. Alhora, però, degut a la sordesa, deixa de tocar el piano en públic.

El 1815 quan mor el seu germà comença una batalla legal per guanyar la custòdia del seu nebot [ possiblement com a substitució de no haver pogut formar una família ]. Això l’ocuparà moltíssim temps i diners en batalles legals fins al final de la seva vida.

Segueix essent considerat però comença a quedar en segon pla per  l’ascens de popularitat de Rossini. These were indeed unhappy years for Beethoven. He was now thoroughly out of sympathy with the kind of music being written and being applauded in Vienna. The aristocratic milieu that had welcomed and sheltered him in his earlier years in Vienna had been shattered by the military, political and financial upheavals of the Napoleonic wars, with the result that he had lost or broken with almost all his high-born friends apart from the Archduke Rudolph. In spite of his popular successes in 1813 and 1814, his general acceptance as the greatest living composer, and a resurgence of Viennese performances of his works from 1816 onwards (testifying to their growing status as part of the standard repertory), Beethoven found no wide public in Vienna that he could respect, and daydreams of journeys abroad – to England, even to Italy – filled his mind.

Els últims anys Beethoven són difícils, per l’aïllament de la sordesa i per la mala salut. Es relaciona amb amics propers escrivint en llibretes. La novena simfonia, de 1823, serà un gran èxit.

A partir de 1818 la sordesa és gairebé total. his deepening deafness. By 1818 he was virtually stone deaf, so conversation had to be carried on with pencil and paper. This was the start of the ‘conversation books’, nearly 140 of which have survived.
Malgrat tot, recupera una mica l’activitat creadora amb la formidable sonata Hammerklavier (1818) i comença a escriure la Missa Solemnis. Trteballa en una obra de gran envergadura, la que serà la novena simfonia. Des de la seva joventut a Viena que volia escriure una peça basada en l’oda de Schiller. Hi treballa tot el 1823. Té problemes de diners ja que els editors han deixat de confiar en ell perquè no respectava els compromisos d’exclusivitat. The difficulties were increased by the illness and death on 6 August 1823 of Wenzel Schlemmer, who had been Beethoven’s chief copyist for a quarter of a century and on whom he relied greatly.

1824. L’estrena de la simfonia serà un gran èxit: Beethoven responded by agreeing to give a concert. It took place in the Kärntnertortheater on 7 May 1824 and consisted of the op.124 overture, the Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei from the mass, and the Ninth Symphony. The theatre was crowded and the reception enthusiastic. Many years later the pianist Thalberg, who was among those present, recalled that after the scherzo had ended Beethoven stood turning over the leaves of the score, quite unaware of the thunderous applause, until the contralto Caroline Unger pulled him by the sleeve and pointed to the audience behind him, to whom he then turned and bowed (Schindler and Mme Unger also remembered the moving incident, though they placed it at the end of the concert). A second performance of the symphony and the Kyrie of the mass (with some other pieces) 16 days later was much less successful.

Els darrers anys es dedica als quartets: The impetus to complete it and to compose others was provided by a commission from Prince Nikolay Golitsïn, a music lover and cellist of St Petersburg. In a letter of 9 November 1822 Golitsïn invited Beethoven to compose ‘one, two or three new quartets’ for whatever fee was thought proper; they were to be dedicated to the prince. In his reply of 25 January 1823 Beethoven accepted the invitation, fixing his honorarium at 50 ducats per quartet and promising to complete the first by the end of February or by the middle of March at latest.

1826 La relació amb el seu nebot Karl s’havia complicat, amb B reclamant gelosament més atenció. Karl intentarà suïcidar-se. B aconseguirà que sigui acceptat a un regiment per seguir una carrera militar.

Tornant de casa el seu germà a Gneixendorf enmalalteix.

Meanwhile news of the seriousness of his condition, and exaggerated reports about his financial needs, had spread far and wide. The firm of Schott sent him a dozen bottles of Rhine wine; the Philharmonic Society of London resolved to provide £100 for his relief. There were occasional letters from Karl, now with his regiment, and some entertainment for the sick man was provided by Breuning’s 13-year-old son Gerhard, who called daily. There was also a stream of other visitors.

When it was clear that the end was near Breuning drafted a simple will, which bequeathed Beethoven’s whole estate to Karl; on 23 March Beethoven copied and signed it (‘luwig van Beethoven’) with great difficulty. He died at about 5.45 p.m. on 26 March. The funeral on 29 March was a public event for the Viennese; the crowd was estimated at 10,000 (fig.10). The funeral oration, written by Franz Grillparzer, was delivered at the graveside in the cemetery at Währing by the actor Heinrich Anschütz. In 1888 Beethoven’s remains were removed, together with Schubert’s, to the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) in Vienna, where they now rest side by side.

Mor el 26 de març de 1827.

MÚSICA

“Absoluta llibertat melòdica i formal. En l’última fase de la seva vida, creà les darreres sonates per a piano, com l’Hammerklavier, opus 106, els últims quartets, la Gran Fuga per a corda, opus 133, la Missa Solemnis en re major i la Novena Simfonia, en l’últim moviment de la qual introdueix, per primer cop, la veu humana (amb text de Schiller). La seva influència sobre generacions venidores fou inesborrable, car promogué la transformació de la música occidental, de la qual és, potser, el compositor més representatiu.”

Després de 1812 hi ha certa pausa, com si estigués exhaust. No és només que els darrers anys hagués produït obres d’enorme envergadura, l’eroica, les simfonies, i estava ocupat amb múltiples preocupacions.

Beethoven’s concern for lyricism deepened throughout the late period.
There is also a growing interest in folklike melody, hardly surprising in one who made arrangements of over 150 folksongs for Thomson in these years. The song cycle An die ferne Geliebte op.98 (1816) marks Beethoven’s closest approach to Goethe’s ideal of the Volksweise as a basis for song composition. // In the most general sense, variation may also be said to inspire the transcendent fugal finales of the Hammerklavier Sonata and the Quartet in B (the ‘Grosse Fuge’).//Related to this general tendency is Beethoven’s frequent avoidance in the late music of obvious dominant effects, his characteristic undercutting of tonic triads by 6-4 chords, and his somewhat wayward experiments with the church modes. As noted above, his early plans for a ninth symphony include a ‘pious song … in the ancient modes’.// Yet ultimately Beethoven’s real concern with fugue, as with variation and lyricism, was to mould these elements so that they could be embedded integrally into the global concerns of the sonata style.
The sonatas op.90, op.102 nos.1 and 2, and op.101 – stand closer to Romantic music of the 1830s than any other Beethoven pieces. .. All four sonatas carry on much further than before Beethoven’s search for more fluid solutions to the problem of the form of the total sonata, in terms of the weight, balance and mood of the various movements. …The Sonata in Bb op.106, arbitrarily, but not inappropriately called the ‘Hammerklavier’ (both op.101 and op.109 are also subtitled ‘für das Hammerklavier’), occupied Beethoven from late 1817 to late 1818; it was his first really large project in five years. Like the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, it occupies a pivotal position in his output, though the differences between the two works are striking. The ‘Eroica’ is one of the most popular and ‘available’ of his compositions, while the Hammerklavier is probably the most arcane. In different ways each represented a breakthrough for Beethoven, one like the crest of a great wave and the other like the breaking of a dam. And while both were works of revolutionary novelty, the Hammerklavier also paradoxically represents a reaction, in that Beethoven reverted to the traditional four-movement pattern in place of the fluid formal experiments of the sonatas of 1814–16, and turned away from their tone of lyrical intimacy…. Beethoven had never written a work that depended so thoroughly, in all its aspects, on a single musical idea. The extremity of its conception, and of its demands on the performer, are as much a part of the character of this piece as are ideas of heroism in the ‘Eroica’.
In the three sonatas of 1820–22 Beethoven returned to the proportions and preoccupations of the sonatas of 1814–16. Of all his works, the Sonata in E op.109 is perhaps the most original in form, in respect both to its first movement and to the total aggregate.
Between October 1822 and February 1824 Beethoven completed three works which are in one way or another as gigantic as the Hammerklavier Sonata: the Diabelli Variations, the Mass in D (Missa solemnis) and the Ninth Symphony. .. Mass and symphony stand together as the crowning statement about non-musical ideas in Beethoven’s later life – a ‘religious’ statement to match or, rather, to supplant the ‘heroic’ statement made in the ‘Eroica’ Symphony and Leonore nearly 20 years earlier. Between the two late works there are many parallels of musical gesture and language. .. Unorthodoxies are multiplied in the Gloria and Credo (always the problematic movements for composers of masses). It is particularly in these two central movements that the traditions of the Viennese mass are made to accommodate older traditions deliberately resuscitated; Beethoven rubs shoulders with Haydn (the Haydn of the masses), Palestrina, Handel and Bach. Sublimity, awe and pathos are evoked unforgettably, but they are perhaps evoked too frequently and in too rapid a succession to leave a satisfactory total impression. One can feel this even while acknowledging Beethoven’s strenuous efforts at organization: the use of recurring themes for ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ and ‘Credo, credo’, the powerful tonal dynamic, and the weighting effect of the tremendous fugues ‘In gloria Dei Patris’ and ‘Et vitam venturi’.
9ª: In the face of this, the first movement of the Ninth provides a magnificent reassertion of the traditional dynamic – though with a difference. During the famous and much imitated introduction, the main theme (another ‘evolving’ theme, one which seems to evolve out of timeless infinity) grows up over a hollow dominant 5th, A–E; then at the recapitulation this returns fortissimo as a tonic D–A with F in the bass: an enhanced recapitulation from which all sense of bluster has been filtered away and replaced by what Tovey called catastrophe, and others brutishness. // After completing the Ninth Symphony in early 1824, Beethoven spent the two and a half years that remained to him writing with increasing ease, it seems, and exclusively in the medium of the string quartet. The five late string quartets contain Beethoven’s greatest music, or so at least many listeners in the 20th century came to feel.
In the Quartet in B op.130, the confrontation of themes in different tempos gives the opening movement an elusive, even whimsical feeling. A deliberate sense of dissociation is intensified by the succession of five more movements, often in remote keys, with something of the effect of ‘character pieces’ in a Baroque suite. The feverish little Presto is followed by movements labelled by Beethoven Poco scherzando, Alla danza tedesca and Cavatina – and then by the ‘Grosse Fuge’, which seems to bear on its convulsive shoulders the responsibility for asserting order after so much disruption earlier in the piece… Stravinsky the ‘Grosse Fuge’ was ‘this absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary for ever’. // As though in reaction to this study in musical dissociation, Beethoven next wrote the most closely integrated of all his large compositions. From this point of view, the Quartet of Cminor op.131 may be seen as the culmination of his significant effort as a composer ever since going to Vienna. The seven movements run continuously into one another, and for the first time in Beethoven’s music there is an emphatic and unmistakable thematic connection between the first movement and the last – not a reminiscence, but a functional parallel which helps bind the whole work together.

//The Hammerklavier Sonata of 1818 represented a kind of breakthrough, but only after the matter of his nephew’s guardianship was settled by the courts did Beethoven’s compositional energies flow easily again, in the unbroken series of late-period masterpieces written from 1820 to 1826.

DARRERES SONATES DE PIANO

Beethoven’s late sonatas were some of his most difficult works and some of today’s most difficult repertoire. Yet again, his music found a new path, often incorporating fugal technique and displaying radical departure from conventional sonata form. The “Hammerklavier” was deemed to be Beethoven’s most difficult sonata yet. In fact, it was considered unplayable until almost 15 years later, when Liszt played it in a concert.

•  Opus 90: Piano Sonata No. 27 in E minor Les Adieux (1914)
• Opus 101: Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major (1816)
• Opus 106: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major (“Hammerklavier”) (1818)
• Opus 109: Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major (1820)
• Opus 110: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major (1821)
• Opus 111: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor (1822)
• Opus 119: Bagatelles (1822)
• Op. 120: Variacions Diabelli (1823)
• Opus 126: Bagatelles (1823)

TRIOS

op.121a, Kakadu Variations , 1824

SONATES PER CELLO
Opus 102, 1815 Sonata No. 4 in C major, Sonata No. 5 in D major

QUARTETS

• Opus 127: String Quartet No. 12 in E♭ major (1825)
• Opus 130: String Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major (1825)
• Opus 131: String Quartet No. 14 in C♯ minor (1826)
• Opus 132: String Quartet No. 15 in A minor (1825)
• Opus 133: Große Fuge in B♭ major (1825; originally the finale to Op. 130; it also exists in a piano four-hands transcription, Op. 134)
• Opus 135: String Quartet No. 16 in F major (1826)

SIMFONIES

• Op. 125, 1822  , Symphony No. 9 (“Choral”), D minor

MISSA

• Op. 123,1823, Missa solemnis

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El caràcter i el llegat

Les relacions humanes

He was neither good-looking nor equipped with more than a very rudimentary education; it was by the force of his character that he produced such a powerful effect on those around him…  A basic problem, it seems, was his ineptness at reading his own motives and interpreting those of others; thus misunderstandings were frequent, which his hot temper magnified into quarrels, even fisticuffs. But typically these were followed by reconciliations and scenes of penitence or remorse. Però fascinava la gent; tot al llarg de la seva vida competien per ajudar-lo i fer-li serveis. // Li interessaven les dones i sempre n’estava festejant alguna, però sovint sense possibilitats reals ja que eren de classe superior // tot i ser conscient que necessitava el suport dels aristòcrates for his financial support, he resolutely declined after his departure from Bonn to ‘play the courtier’ or to show the deference and obedience normally expected from musicians in circles of the nobility. He was often most unwilling, for instance, to perform on the piano if called on unexpectedly by his hosts to do so; sometimes he refused outright, and even left the soirée in a temper. He would also break off playing if people showed their inattention by chattering. The formal court etiquette that surrounded the Archduke Rudolph was especially irksome to him, and in the end it was Rudolph who surrendered by giving orders that the rules were not to be applied to Beethoven. Even in matters of dress Beethoven seems to have been unwilling to show the conformity expected of him, though in his earlier years in Vienna he was often smartly turned out.

Déu i la naturalesa

In matters of religion his views, as might be expected, were idiosyncratic and somewhat incoherent. It was not a subject that he discussed much with others. He was brought up in the tolerant Catholicism of the late 18th century, but the formal side of religion held little interest for him, though he went to some trouble while composing the Missa solemnis to ensure that he fully understood the words of the Mass. The deity of his faith was a personal God, a universal father to whom he constantly turned for consolation and forgiveness. That much is clear from the many private confessions and prayers scattered throughout his papers. Among philosophical books he was moved by the moral reflections of Kant. Perhaps more surprisingly, he found certain oriental writings on the immaterial nature of God sympathetic to him, and he copied out a number of their texts. He even framed some ancient Egyptian inscriptions on the nature of the deity and kept them on his writing-desk.

He also felt the presence of God in the beauty of nature, and sought to worship him in the countryside, having been greatly influenced by Christian Sturm’s Betrachtungen der Werke Gottes in der Natur. Beethoven’s love of the country was an enduring characteristic. He left Vienna for some months almost every summer and settled in one of the outlying villages such as Mödling or Heiligenstadt, or in the spa of Baden somewhat further afield. There he would take long, solitary walks in the woods and find refreshment of spirit. ‘No-one’, he wrote to Therese Malfatti in 1810, ‘can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees and rocks produce the echo which man desires to hear’

Vida diària

Yet in relation to the thing about which he cared most – composing, and presenting his works to the public – Beethoven could hardly be said to be ill-organized. He had a regular domestic routine, rising early, making coffee by grinding a precise number of coffee-beans, and then working at his desk until two or three o’clock, when he had a meal. The morning’s work was interrupted, though also in a sense maintained, by two or three short excursions out of doors, during which he continued to make sketches on music paper. Several of these ‘pocket’ sketchbooks have survived, together with a much larger number of ‘desk’ sketchbooks in which Beethoven worked when at home. The significance of these volumes, with page after page of seemingly illegible entries, was not understood by his contemporaries, who regarded his devotion to them as yet one more sign of his eccentricity. Only later did it come to be recognized that the sketchbooks provide a unique documentation, although a somewhat fragmentary and at times enigmatic one, of his creative processes.

Llegat

Va començar a ser mitificat en vida. // In the benevolent formulation of his patron Count Waldstein, Beethoven went to off to Vienna to receive ‘Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands’. Such early consecration is a powerful trope in myths of the great artist. // The decisive turn to this latter view was helped by Wagner’s influential monograph of 1870, written for Beethoven’s centenary, in which he glorified Beethoven’s deafness as a trait of enhanced interiority — the deaf composer forced to listen inwardly.

El sXIX el va mitificar com a romàntic. La crítica del sXX el va voler situar com a clàssic al costat de Haydn i Mozart. S’han estudiat els seus quaderns d’esbossos i la seves transaccions econòmiques. Although the Beethoven myth has been dressed down in the academy, it remains alive as ever in mainstream commercial culture. A good deal of its vitality stems from the kitsch industry: the standard image of Beethoven’s face and mane – the ‘Lion King’ of Western music – is reproduced ubiquitously, while the opening motive of the Fifth Symphony is still Western art music’s most recognizable roar.

La influència musical

The sheer drama and scope of Beethoven’s most ambitious works fostered an overriding perception that his music coheres organically even to the point of inevitability. Beethoven’s art registered as a sublime force of nature: here was a music that fully embodied the recently propounded shift in aesthetics from mimetic imitation of the products of nature to expressive emulation of her processes. The overmastering coherence felt in Beethoven’s music became an imposing measure of the greatness of musical artworks. Not only individual works but whole genres in his output came to assume a wholeness and totality, as well as a sense of teleology: the symphonies, the string quartets and the piano sonatas are all treated as coherent narratives of creative development. Playing these ‘cycles’ in their entirety continues to be a standard test for ambitious performers. // Mainstream symphonic composers above all chafed under the magnitude of Beethoven’s accomplishment; as Schubert put it, ‘who would be able to do anything after Beethoven?’. Few escaped this stifling anxiety, and for some, like Brahms, it was practically overwhelming. // Hermenèutica, buscant el missatge. Beethoven was to exercise a more subtle and no less pervasive influence within mainstream music criticism and theory. From the beginning, his music seemed to demand a more serious and attentive manner of listening. In several landmark reviews, E.T.A. Hoffmann lauded the deep coherence in Beethoven’s music, noting that, as in the case of Shakespeare, the music’s underlying unity could easily elude those critics attuned to conventional surfaces. Music critics could no longer hope to judge this music competently at a first hearing; according to A.B. Marx, whose editorship of the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung did so much to promote the music of Beethoven, critics needed to learn how to divine the Idea embodied in each of Beethoven’s works. A hermeneutic imperative quickly gathered strength in the face of his music, one which has not abated. His works have been heard to be telling us something, as a kind of secular scripture in need of hermeneutic mediation.

 

 

 

 

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FONTS: viquipèdia  |  llista d’obres   | article Grove

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LLOCS

• Casa natal a Bonn, Bonngasse 20 und 24-26
• Heiligenstadt , 1190 Vienna, Probusgasse 6
• Oberdöbling, Unterdöbling, Mödlinq, Hetzemdorf o Nussdorf.
• Gneixendorf prop de Krems an Donau, casa del seu germà.

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[ especial el viatge en bicicleta al Rhein, Bonn, Dortmund i simfonia nº8 ]