Our relationship to Beethoven is a deep and paradoxical one. For many musicians, he represents a kind of holy grail: His music has an intensity, rigor, and profundity which keep us in its thrall, and it is perhaps unequalled in the interpretive, technical, and even spiritual challenges it poses to performers. At the same time, Beethoven’s music is casually familiar to millions of people who do not attend concerts or consider themselves musically inclined. Two hundred years after his death, he is everywhere in the culture, yet still represents its summit. This course takes an inside-out look at the 32 piano sonatas from the point of view of a performer. Each lecture will focus on one sonata and an aspect of Beethoven’s music exemplified by it. (These might include: the relationship between Beethoven the pianist and Beethoven the composer; the critical role improvisation plays in his highly structured music; his mixing of extremely refined music with rougher elements; and the often surprising ways in which the events of his life influenced his compositional process and the character of the music he was writing.) The course will feature some analysis and historical background, but its perspective is that of a player, not a musicologist. Its main aim is to explore and demystify the work of the performer, even while embracing the eternal mystery of Beethoven’s music itself. This season's Curtis courses are sponsored by Linda Richardson in loving memory of her husband, Dr. Paul Richardson. The Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation supports Curtis's lifelong learning initiatives.
Enter Beethoven
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From the course by Curtis Institute of Music
Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas
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From the lesson
How Things Were
To examine the relationship Beethoven had with the piano sonata, we begin by looking at its origins. In this lecture, we will discuss the role of music generally, and of the sonata specifically, in the time of Haydn and Mozart. This lecture will also provide an introduction to the form of the sonata—to the psychological effect sonata structure has on the listener. This background will be necessary to appreciate the innovations Beethoven introduces.
Meet the Instructors
Jonathan BissNeubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies
Performance Faculty
[MUSIC]
Everything we've discussed so far serves to illustrate one thing. That Beethoven
came of age at a unique and transitional moment in history.
He was the first composer who had models to follow, which could lead him towards
a more independent, more self-directed compositional life.
And this was an enormous bit of good fortune for him.
For while Mozart may have detested his employers, musically at
least he had all the tools to thrive within the system.
He composed at an unbelievable pace--over 600 works in a 30 year period
including 22 operas and 41 symphonies--without ever sacrificing quality, ever.
Beethoven, perhaps because he was so fixated on
innovation and because he first sketched and then
revised his music so much more extensively than
Mozart did, wrote at a much more deliberate pace.
He was also notably bad at taking orders.
When asked to include a Russian folk theme in each of three quartets commissioned by
the Count Razumovsky, he obliged only in
the first two cases and was paid accordingly.
When asked to provide one variation on a theme by Diabelli, to be published
alongside those of 30 other composers, he instead wrote 33 of his own.
Beethoven marched to the beat of his own drummer and therefore,
he would have made a terrible court composer.
But this is actually a chicken and egg question,
for the reality was, Beethoven never was a court composer.
Whether due to his temperament or to his good fortune to be
born at the right time, he was able to make decisions about
his future and his music of his own free will in a
way that Haydn and Mozart never could, particularly not in their youth.
Beethoven initially came
to Vienna for a prescribed period of study sponsored by the Elector.
A different personality, or at least one born a generation earlier
would have then either looked for employment or returned home to Bonn.
Instead, Beethoven simply found a way to stay, knowing
that it was the place for him to be,
and to stay independent knowing that that was the right situation for him to be in.
Beethoven did have patrons
of course--first the Princes Lobkowitz and Lichnowsky,
later the Archduke Rudolph. But as you can
see from their correspondence, they were friends, not employers.
There were few expectations placed on Beethoven and they
sponsored him simply out of belief in his talent.
This was about more than just survival.
It also meant that Beethoven could develop at a less frenzied rate and his,
he only published his first works at the age of 25.
By contrast at that age Haydn already had his first music directorship in remote
Weinzierl, hardly where he would have chosen to be if he didn't need to be.
At 25, Mozart had already written half of
his published works and ended his Salzburg employment.
And when Beethoven did publish Opus
One, which incidentally comprises three magnificent,
entirely mature piano trios,
it earned him enough money to live for a year.
This is astonishing, and the clearest evidence yet that
independence is an unambiguously positive resource for a composer.
For the rest of his life he earned
enough money through composition, to not be entirely--
or even primarily, really--reliant on the patrons,
which is lucky because they weren't particularly reliable.
And he didn't perform publicly after 1811 at all, which
is to say the last 16 years of his life.
And yet, without a performing schedule or the
support of an affiliated institution, he became internationally renowned.
He received very late commissions from as far away
as England, that's the Ninth Symphony, and unlike Haydn, he
never set foot there, and Russia, which, you know, is
where the three of the last quartets were commissioned from.
He really was the first professional composer.
Now this class is on the Beethoven sonatas.
Having talked about the professional circumstances of Haydn and Mozart
versus those of Beethoven, I would now like to talk
about the meaning of the sonatas versus, say, quartets or
symphonies, the only other genres which produced Beethoven's truly important work.
The question I've been asked most often when I've said
I would be giving this course is if I
would talk about the performance history of the works.
The fact is, there is none.
[LAUGH]
Whereas even the very first symphony and concerto were played
in a proper concert, in a proper concert hall in 1800--
that's Hoftheater nächst der Burg in Vienna--
only one of the 32 piano
sonatas was performed publicly in Beethoven's lifetime.
Interestingly, this is the sonata Opus 101, a late work, which is
in some ways among his most forward looking, and difficult to comprehend.
By the way,
this holds for the quartets, as well.
The professional string quartet didn't exist until
the unbelievable difficulty of Beethoven's music demanded it.
Ignaz Schuppanzigh founded the Razumovsky Quartet in 1808.
The earliest evidence of a dedicated string quartet.
So those works too were played mostly in private homes.
Often in four-hand piano reductions.
Anyway, really the piano recital
did not even exist until Liszt started playing them in the 1830s.
He famous, famously described this new phenomenon with the phrase
"Le concert, c'est moi"--
"I am the concert"--setting a standard
for pianistic hubris that few have matched since.
In Beethoven's day, solo works were sometimes played on mixed programs,
but one did not go to concerts to hear new piano works.
So the sonatas and quartets were home music and not concert music.
Which unlike in Bach's era did exist by that time.
This means several things.
Number one, Beethoven did not really need to think about the
limitations of players or the lack
of rehearsal time, inadequate conditions, etc.
Sure, it would be nice for the amateur musicians to find the pieces manageable.
But it was only their problem.
It's not as if Beethoven's reputation would be
jeopardized by home musicians struggling through the sonatas,
the way it would if his symphonies were massacred in performance.
The removal of this impediment
meant that Beethoven's imagination could be fully engaged in
a way that it probably couldn't with the symphonic music.
Number two, audience comprehension was also a much lower concern.
It's cliche to say it but absolutely true
that Beethoven's music broke a huge amount of ground.
But Beethoven was practical-minded enough that he was probably at
least slightly cautious about writing music for an audience that is so
far ahead of its time that it would stand no chance of being understood.
If the music is for playing at home, however, it becomes
a kind of a private experimentation between Beethoven and the player.
It cannot be a coincidence that as revolutionary
as the Ninth Symphony is, the last sonatas and
quartets, both of which are nearly contemporaneous to
the ninth, are far more ahead of their time.
And number three, there is simply
an inherent difference between playing alone and playing with a large group.
Quartets already have a degree of intimacy infinitely greater than symphonies.
And when it's a solo sonata, there is
an almost religious sense of communing privately with music.
And this sense was even stronger then than now,
because again, it wasn't all being aimed toward public performance.
You put all these factors together and you can see that
the piano sonata became the most extraordinary laboratory for new ideas.
And for Beethoven's most private thoughts.
Haydn and Mozart understood this as well.
But as marvelous as their piano sonatas are, they are
clearly more modest in ambition and scale than their string quartets.
Or in the case of Mozart, the
string quintets, which are truly symphonic in scope.
Beethoven is the first-ever composer to write piano
sonatas of the same proportions as his largest chamber works.
Time and time again Beethoven wrote piano sonatas of immense scale and
ambition, sacrificing nothing in the way
of individuality, innovation, and even often intimacy.
This remarkable confluence is why the sonatas make such an indelible impression.
Let's take a short break for a review question.
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