![]() This discrepancy of inner and outer worlds meant the hero’s plight was wrought with instability, often leading to isolation, unfulfilled desires, and subsequent brooding. Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, published in 1774, exemplified this genre. The turn of the century saw the re-emergence of the Medieval Bildungsroman, or developmental novel, as a popular genre. This was due in large part to the German authors of the counter-Enlightenment Sturm und Drang movement such as Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose tales focused on Romantic heroes, aware of themselves and of the outside forces of society acting against them, particularly concerning how their morals often contradicted societal values. Both past and present commentaries on Beethoven and his music, especially his symphonies, agree that the foundation of his transitional status is his mastery of the expressive capabilities of the Classical symphonic language and practices he inherited (summarized in the essays on the preceding page “ Beethoven’s Classical Inheritance: The Symphony and the Orchestra”), and that by recasting and reconsidering elements of rhythm and melody with motivic implications, tonal and harmonic relationships, dynamics and the use of silence, instrumental treatment, and structural boundaries and expectations, he propelled the symphony towards a new Romantic direction, inspired in part by the emerging “Heroic” impulse and sublime aesthetic, with each moment packed with teleological (end-aimed) musical and dramatic implications.Īs the Enlightenment came to a close, there was a growing interest in heroic stories and ideals. ![]() Wilfrid Dunwell’s assessment of the matter, efficiently summarized in the quote that begins the essay, assents to the Beethoven bridge based on the recognition of three factors: 1) an artistic freedom that emerged in the early years of the nineteenth century, 2) expressed using existing music conventions, 3) but reconsidered in order to illuminate a developing outlook of the human condition. ![]() Open any textbook in music history or music appreciation and the problem of Beethoven’s relation to music historiography becomes immediately apparent: is he Classical or Romantic or both or neither? Is he part of the Canonical Three of the Viennese Classical Style-Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven-or is he a chapter unto himself, as the One destined to inherit and transform, even liberate, the achievements of the Classical Duo? (“ The Spirit of Mozart from Haydn’s Hands,” The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, 45.) Elaine Sisman addressed the matter by asking (and later answering) some questions regarding such historicization and the Western music canon: 67 page.) Recent historical assessments have continued to acknowledge the pivotal stylistic role Beethoven played. (See essay “Others’ Words” on the Symphony No. Hoffmann, which placed Beethoven on the peak of the “Romantics” mountain, reached by climbing through Haydn and Mozart. 21 page.) In 1810, after Beethoven had completed his first six symphonies, the Allgemeine musikalisches Zeitung published the famous essay “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music” by prominent Romantic author and critic E. Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, one of Beethoven’s earliest and most devoted admirers, sent the young composer off to Vienna in 1792 with a letter that stated Beethoven would “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” (See essay “Significance and Structure” on Symphony No. Even in his own time this was recognized in Beethoven’s music, especially in his symphonies. Through his symphonies and other works, Beethoven built a musical bridge from the Classical past to the Romantic future. “Beethoven in his turn brought a new freedom, not by discarding an artistic convention, but by bringing within its scope a new range of human experiences.” Wilfrid Dunwell, “The Age of Goethe and Beethoven,” in Hays, ed., Twentieth-century Views of Music History (New York: C. From Classical to Romantic Symphony: A New Way, the Heroic Narrative, and the Sublime
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