Beethoven - Classical or Romantic?

[eyeresist]

Honk honk honk hoooooonnnnnnnnk! (Sorry; knee-jerk reaction there. )With 110 cornets, and trumpeters who improvise (muted) a full octave higher than the score!

Sounds like Khatchaturian's 3rd.


To me, Vivaldi's Four Seasons is a thoroughly Romantic work!

[mahler10th]

Beethoven Classical or Romantic?  He was one of the last classicists and the first romantics.  He is Romassical.   

[Florestan]

Would you say that Brahms' music [...] is more like Haydn's than it is like Liszt's?   

Well, after listening to his piano sonatas op. 2 & op. 5 (Arrau), the answer is no. Haydn is far, far away --- while Liszt is just around the corner. 

[karlhenning]

. . . He is Romassical.

That goes perfectly with the new av, Johnnie! : )

[Ten thumbs]

Another aspect of this question is Beethoven's response to the lied and, looking at Op48/52, this does seem to be more classical than romantic with the piano part often mirroring the voice. Of course these are not late works and his deafness may have turned him away from this genre.
A classical song is basically a melody with an accompaniment that gives harmonic support. An idealised romantic lied has a melody accompanied by an independent piano part that operates in counterpoint, and which may even conflict harmonically with, the voice. This ideal can also be found in many examples of the 'song without words' for solo piano.

[Jo498]

Which is why the label "transitional" applies so well to him.

None of my associations with "transitional" works for Beethoven at all. For me, it is very hard to think of him in terms of "not yet", of imperfect experimentations that came to fruition later etc. (One exception might be the "An die ferne Geliebte" that seems a little like a much simpler prefiguration of Dichterliebe.)
I can think of Hummel as a "transitional" figure between Mozart and Chopin, but not of Beethoven as a transition between Haydn and Schumann or Liszt or Wagner. This seems to be grounded in the impression that his works are both experimental and "formally convincing" at the same time and to an incredibly high degree. But I also admit that I have thought of Beethoven as a "classical" composer from my earliest experiences with his music and was also influenced by the writings of Riezler, Tovey and Rosen, who all see him on the "classical" side, albeit with a rather narrow conception of "classical" in Rosen and a wider one in the other authors.

If forced, I'd much rather say that Beethoven is the closure and perfection of the classical style, than the beginning of romanticism. The beginning of romanticism was more strongly rooted in Beethoven's younger contemporaries like Hummel, Spohr, Field, especially Weber, all of which were shocked already by some things in "middle Beethoven". Beethoven and those guys are somehow at an oblique, skewed angle with each other. They share relatively few essential features.
(Of course, the most plausible story might be to deny a sharp distinction at all, as Gurn apparently has argued for.)

All throughout this debate it's become clear we all agree B pushed the boundaries of classical form. To me that's at least one MUSICAL example of his forward-thinking tendencies. That it has to be labeled "romantic" in this context is just a matter of semantics.

To some extent this debate suffers from the unavoidable vagueness of "classical" and "romantic. But despite this vagueness, I do not see why "forward-thinking" should be incompatible with classical. I also dislike the metaphor of "pushing boundaries of form". As has been pointed out by many (and shown in detail by Rosen and others), "classical form" was extremely flexible already with Haydn. (I doubt that one would find in early or middle Beethoven many movements as "formally odd" as the outer movements of Haydn's Farewell, the first movements of the quartets op.76, no. 5 and 6 or the finale of the 103rd symphony. I am cherrypicking here but Haydn is remarkable free and flexible also in less obvious cases)
What Beethoven demonstrated was that the forms (or dynamical principles) were even more flexible and admitted an even wider range of expressive and also "formal possibilities.

Then there's the zinger in the form of the op.131 quartet. Overt, heart on sleeve, thrustful, obtuse...a MESSAGE work if there ever was one. Perhaps not a "romantic" message in the sense we seem to be debating here but there's something of the "take a gander at this pretty lil' ditty", without question.

Then...there's that absolute bullhorn of a piece the Grosse Fuge. Honestly, who HASEN'T though of that piece in futuristic terms? Musically speaking, that is... 

What's their message? Even as a vague "poetic idea" we do not know of any (other than in case of the Pastoral symphony and maybe even the Eroica).
But more importantly: Hardly anything by the romantic composers following after Beethoven seems to me similar to op.131 or op.130/133. I think the first piece that tries to go in a similar direction as op.131 is Hugo Wolf's bold string quartet from around 1880 and closer cousins will be found with Schoenberg's op.4 and Zemlinsky's 2nd quartet, maybe also some of Reger's.
op.133 is even further from the romantics. (Except for the feature to somehow merge sections that roughly corresponds to the movements of a sonata in one big piece, but Schubert's Wandererfantasie was probably the closer model for e.g. the Liszt sonata than the "chinese fugue".)
I also find op.131 way too "abstract" to be described as "heart on sleeve". The Appassionata or the Kreutzer sonata would fit such a description much better. (And the differences between such vague characterizations are huge among composers we would describe as romantic, take Mendelssohn vs. Schumann, Brahms vs. Tchaikovsky etc.)
True, Mendelssohn takes op.132 as model (in some respects) for his early a minor quartet but his later pieces hardly share anything with late Beethoven. Schumann was influenced by "An die ferne Geliebte" and maybe by the Diabellis and Bagatelles, but his symphonies and quartets take middle Beethoven as point of departure. Even Brahms sticks to 4 movements with traditional characters and while he shares with Beethoven the continous development within a movement and tight connections between movements (and takes those features even further), he usually lacks the "gaps and clashes", the demonstrative shocking boldness of Beethoven. (And in other respects he is also far more conservative than Beethoven was at his time.)

Indeed, "experimentation" seems to be B's middle name by this point in his career! Heck, give him another ten years of composing and I have no doubts that we'd be celebrating Beethoven the MODERNIST instead of romanticist.    

There has actually been the idea that (some of) late Beethoven basically skips most of 19th century romanticism and that only the first modernists take up that "challenge".

[Mandryka]

I also find op.131 way too "abstract" to be described as "heart on sleeve".

This is just an informal impression you understand, but the rapid mood changes in the central sections of this quartet make me think of Schumann op 11/i. The two are . . . mad.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

To some extent this debate suffers from the unavoidable vagueness of "classical" and "romantic. But despite this vagueness, I do not see why "forward-thinking" should be incompatible with classical. I also dislike the metaphor of "pushing boundaries of form". As has been pointed out by many (and shown in detail by Rosen and others), "classical form" was extremely flexible already with Haydn.

I'm unsure of your point. In that quote of mine I said "pushing the boundaries of CLASSICAL form".

What Beethoven demonstrated was that the forms (or dynamical principles) were even more flexible and admitted an even wider range of expressive and also "formal possibilities".

Yes, which is another way of saying pushing the boundaries of form!! This is where I pick up on the notion that Beethoven is "transitional".

What's their message? Even as a vague "poetic idea" we do not know of any (other than in case of the Pastoral symphony and maybe even the Eroica).

"Message" in the context of making a landmark musical statement, not a work with a subtext tacked on. 

There has actually been the idea that (some of) late Beethoven basically skips most of 19th century romanticism and that only the first modernists take up that "challenge".

Yes, that is evident in the music.

I also find op.131 way too "abstract" to be described as "heart on sleeve".

I didn't just say "heart on sleeve", my friend. I did write "obtuse" there, too, which is in line with "abstract". I would prefer to be quoted in context, please, in the spirit of quality discussion.

Sorry to be so brief. I'm under the weather...

[Jo498]

I'm unsure of your point. In that quote of mine I said "pushing the boundaries of CLASSICAL form".

Yes, which is another way of saying pushing the boundaries of form!! This is where I pick up on the notion that Beethoven is "transitional".

My point was that if we mean that he wrote unconventional movements Haydn (undoubtedly classical) "pushed the boundaries" of (classical) form as well (but he also helped to establish them!) and it is doubtful whether Beethoven did this "pushing" to a larger extent or not. And I often wonder whether that metaphor makes sense at all if "form" is not a given structure but a set of flexible principles.

My problem here is not only the arguments by Rosen and others showing (by looking backwards) the "technical classicality" of Beethoven's forms. (I find them convincing but in most cases I simply lack the theoretical knowledge to challenge them.)

Even on a rather superficial level we can easily see how the post-Beethoven romantics split. On the one hand there is Wagner who basically claimed that Beethoven had exhausted the forms and to go beyond him meant composing musical dramas like Wagner or tone poems like Liszt and Berlioz. From that perspective Beethoven is a starting point but mostly in a negative fashion.
On the other hand, there are Mendelssohn, Schumann and others, later Brahms who hardly go beyond (middle) Beethoven in "pushing boundaries" (at least in the narrowly understood formal dimensions). Or when they do, like Schumann, they do it in completely different forms and genres (cycles of songs and shorter piano pieces).

As one example, take concerto form. It is usually said that Beethoven with the last two piano concertos composed "symphonic concertos". None of the "1810" generation follows him there! They either do soloist- focussed "virtuoso" concertos, far less symphonic than LvB (Chopin, Mendelssohn), or follow the "sonata/fantasy form" with shorter sections corresponding to the typical multi-movement works movements (Liszt, First version of Schumann's pc) starting from the Wandererfantasie and Weber's f minor concert piece, usually also less "symphonic".
The first to take up the "symphonic concerto" (with a vengeance ) is Brahms, quite a bit later (and most 1870-90s concertos are not as symphonic as Beethoven's or Brahms).

Similarly with "Uber-symphonies" in the style of the 9th. We do not find those before Bruckner's around 1870 or even Mahler's 2nd. (Admittedly, Liszt's Faust symphony and maybe Berlioz' Romeo & Juliet (one of the oddest hybrids in music history, I guess) could be mentioned.)

All this shows for me that Beethoven although he is without a doubt also a point of departure for most of the romantics (not Chopin, though) he is an "endpoint" as well.

"Message" in the context of making a landmark musical statement, not a work with a subtext tacked on. 

o.k., I misunderstood this. But then I would claim that "making a landmark musical statement" has not much to do with baroque, classical, romantic, modern: Monteverdi probably wanted to set a landmark with the 8th madrigal book as well and so did Mozart with the quartets dedicated to Haydn. Whereas "poetic ideas" or programmes are a feature of one (the Berlioz-Liszt) strain of romanticism.

I didn't just say "heart on sleeve", my friend. I did write "obtuse" there, too, which is in line with "abstract". I would prefer to be quoted in context, please, in the spirit of quality discussion.

I'd deny "heart on sleeve" with or without qualifications for late Beethoven. If anything, this is already a feature of early Beethoven (e.g. the slow movements of op.18/1 and op.10/3).
FWIW, I completely agree about the uniqueness of late (and also a lot of not so late) Beethoven compared to Haydn and Mozart. But it is as unique compared to Liszt and Brahms. So I am back at the technical arguments by Rosen and others.

Thanks for taking up this old thread. It is not an interesting question which label we put on Beethoven but I think such discussions can throw light on real aspects of his music.

[amw]

Yes, which is another way of saying pushing the boundaries of form!! This is where I pick up on the notion that Beethoven is "transitional".

But if Beethoven is "transitional"... transitional between what and what? Romantic form, after all, isn't Classical form with new boundaries. It's something completely different. (And Beethoven's "innovations" are often simply revisitations of conservative—sometimes ancient—practices.)

[jochanaan]

Hmmm...Is it possible that all our labels and categories are insufficient to describe any great composer?  That labels are really only useful for two classes of people: academics, and market researchers?

[Dancing Divertimentian]

But if Beethoven is "transitional"... transitional between what and what?

In crude terms, the flood that came after him.

Romantic form, after all, isn't Classical form with new boundaries. It's something completely different. (And Beethoven's "innovations" are often simply revisitations of conservative—sometimes ancient—practices.)

I think this has all been pretty effectively covered throughout this thread. As I'm suffering from a cold, a perusal there will probably answer your queries better than I can.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Hmmm...Is it possible that all our labels and categories are insufficient to describe any great composer?  That labels are really only useful for two classes of people: academics, and market researchers?

If ever a composer could be pigeonholed as un-pigeonholeable, Beethoven is it!

[Jo498]

But if Beethoven is "transitional"... transitional between what and what? Romantic form, after all, isn't Classical form with new boundaries. It's something completely different.

How are broadly speaking "classicist" symphonies by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, even Bruckner "completlely different" from classical ones? They are different, but certainly not completely, that is, Schumann's "Spring symphony" is much closer to a symphony by Beethoven or Haydn than to a suite/ouverture by Telemann or to "La mer". This might be a trivial point but "completely different" seems a misleadingly strong formulation.

[jochanaan]

If ever a composer could be pigeonholed as un-pigeonholeable, Beethoven is it!

+1!

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Like Schubert, most of his works seem to fit within the Classical style, regardless of his unusual personality. Compare the late quartets of Beethoven with, say, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, etc, and you will find composers deeply indebted to his harmonic soundworld, but the compositions themselves are more alike to each other than Beethoven. It is as if Beethoven, far from creating a template to the style of Romanticism, actually found himself in far more abstract territory while later composers were busy just continuing down the Haydn-Spohr line, inspired by Beethoven but really producing nothing all that relatable to his music.

I am going to quote this old post because it describes my own position on this issue very well. I'll also add that Beethoven, for me, was as much a transitional figure from the Classical to Romantic periods as Sibelius was from the Romantic to Modern periods. Despite their huge influence, many of their idiosyncrasies were never drawn upon stylistically by younger generations.