The fugal sequence in the funeral march of the Eroica...

[lisa needs braces]

A great Beethoven symphonic moment or what? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arfHsnxE-MU#t=8m04s

[jochanaan]

Beethoven was a great fugal master, but folks tend not to remember this.  Of course there is the Grosse Fuge, but there are any number of fugal passages in his other great works, including (but not limited to) the Eroica's finale, the Fifth Symphony's Scherzo, the Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony, the finale of the Hammerklavier sonata, the Missa Solemnis, and the Ninth Symphony's choral finale.

Many of those fugal passages are "double" fugues in which both a subject and countersubject play from the first--very difficult to write, but Beethoven makes it sound natural.

[Jo498]

I wonder if Beethoven was the first to conclude a set of variations (as in his op.35) with a fugue on a theme derived from the variation theme (here from the bass that also serves as introduction).

Probably he wasn't (and the fugue is not really the conclusion of the piece anyway) but I am not aware of an earlier example. Brahms and Reger followed in some of their variation sets, also Britten.
Bach, of course, did similar things, e.g. in the grand organ Passacaglia that ends with "thema fugatum" but I don't know if Beethoven knew this piece. And there is Haydn with the unique and strange first movement of the quartet op.76/6 that starts with variations (on a rater trite theme) and concludes with a fugue (Beethoven surely knew op.76).

[amw]

Actually in the 'Eroica' variations Beethoven concludes with a reprise of the theme and a final (unnumbered) variation followed by a coda. (The Haydn example also being questionable, iirc the fugue ends on a half cadence leading to a reprise of the theme and coda—but possibly a precedent for Beethoven in that sense, also being in the same key.) I think Brahms would be the first to conclude a set of sectional variations with a fugue but don't quote me on that.

Would not be surprised if Beethoven knew the Bach (I assume you mean the C minor passacaglia), he studied all of Bach's available works in great detail afaik.

[Jo498]

I think the ending of the op.35 variations is a "modernization" of the older habit to sometimes have a literal dacapo of a variation theme (like in the Goldbergs). Anyway, I think the point is not that the fugue is literally the "conclusion" but to include a fugue at a somewhat prominent point that could be seen as culmination or so. The Goldbergs include a fughetta or three but they are not on very prominent "points" in the cycle, AFAIR.

The variation finale in op.109 has all of it: a fugal section, than a reprise-like ultra-ornamented section and finally a literal dacapo of the theme.

Yes, I meant the c minor passacaglia BWV 582. I don't know if those organ works were as widely available in Beethoven's youth as e.g. the WTC but it's certainly not impossible that he knew the piece.

[Monsieur Croche]

Beethoven knew counterpoint, and how to work it, more than well enough.

The reason this passage is tremendously effective has to do with one of the composer's major strengths, and that was placement of a particular event, the strategic brilliance of exactly what to delay, what to preface any of these sorts of dramatic surprises with so by the time they appear, they have the listener near to gasping in astonishment.

The contrapuntal writing of the passage is splendid, but what comes before, exactly where it arrives, and abates, is really what gives it the impact it has that makes it soar.

[Luke]

Many of those fugal passages are "double" fugues in which both a subject and countersubject play from the first--very difficult to write, but Beethoven makes it sound natural.

To my ears Bach makes it sound natural, and easy. That is his miracle, that is why his fugues sound so ineffably 'right', it is why people apply adjectives such as 'heavenly' to them. There are no Beethoven fugues i can think of which would easily fit that description. Beethoven, to my mind, often makes it sound as if it is unnatural, a superhuman struggle... which is closer to the truth, and which also fits in with his early-Romantic composer-as-hero aesthetic.

[Jo498]

The fuge in op.110 sounds fairly natural/fluid/lyrical (at least the beginning, the later section with inversion and diminuition not so much), also the fughetta Var. 24 in the Diabellis (NOT Var. 32).

[Luke]

That is why I added the 'often', but both these examples are of early stages in the process, as it were. The op 110 grows into something huge and titanic; the Diabellis grow towards the later fugue. Fugue itself, as a form, is incremental. By definition it starts small and then the difficulties pile up (although in something like op 106 or op 133 even the subject is a blazing challenge, to performer and listener alike). The question is how you handle that pile up, aesthetically, and I would argue that Beethoven goes for the extremes, for the dranatic, sometimes even  for the deliberately unwieldy. He prioritises this over smooth counterpoint.

[Monsieur Croche]

That is why I added the 'often', but both these examples are of early stages in the process, as it were. The op 110 grows into something huge and titanic; the Diabellis grow towards the later fugue. Fugue itself, as a form, is incremental. By definition it starts small and then the difficulties pile up (although in something like op 106 or op 133 even the subject is a blazing challenge, to performer and listener alike). The question is how you handle that pile up, aesthetically, and I would argue that Beethoven goes for the extremes, for the dranatic, sometimes even  for the deliberately unwieldy. He prioritises this over smooth counterpoint.

I think you are more than right. You've named Beethoven's skill, but also named what was so often his interest and purpose within so many pieces, i.e. struggle.

The Eroica is that milestone work embodying struggle, or an inherent contest as a premise of the piece itself, with its contrasted themes being the crux of setting up materials which are inherently at odds one with the other, are in contrast and then 'battle' towards a final resolve. So much of Beethoven thereafter is often enough a piece with a similar construct which has contrasting themes 'struggle.' Add that we often hear this composer, especially, himself struggling with his materials, grappling and wrestling with them like a sculptor chipping away at a highly resistant block of marble; compare that to fluidity, the relative 'ease,' with which Mozart or Schubert worked and the resultant music they produced , and we have Beethoven as the composer whose works were built upon the premise of struggle and where that other layer of the writer's personal battle to shape his materials seems 'to sound' within a piece as well.

Those deliberate contrasts of material set up as struggle are present in a lot of his work. The Große Fuge, is a fascinating battle of the contrapuntal at war with the harmonic. This counterpoint 'vs.' harmony I think is very much an innate element of the composer himself; the composer skilled in counterpoint, rather genius at when to deploy it, while a quick recall of all of his work more than demonstrates his 'fundamental musical impulse' [and strongest native interest] was harmony, harmony, harmony. In many of Beethoven's fugal works, and even shorter contrapuntal passages in other works, I think there is present that personal conflict of Beethoven the contrapuntist struggling with Beethoven the harmonist, and sometimes the results are far from 'pretty,' i.e. Große Fuge is a brilliant and fascinating train wreck rather than a 'lovely fugue.'

The Missa Solemnis has I think Beethoven's 'smoothest' counterpoint which sounds least like those other struggles. While working on it, Beethoven wrote his publisher and requested a score to which he wanted to refer, asking vaguely only for "that piece which," [i.e. choral / modal contrapuntal] and his publisher correctly deduced what that was and sent the composer the score of that 'model of smooth modal counterpoint,' Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli.

[jochanaan]

Oh, I did not mean to imply an absence of struggle in Beethoven's fugues!  What I meant was that he, like Bach and Mozart, wrote fugues in which every note is indeed "ineffably right."

[Monsieur Croche]

Oh, I did not mean to imply an absence of struggle in Beethoven's fugues!  What I meant was that he, like Bach and Mozart, wrote fugues in which every note is indeed "ineffably right."

"ineffably right." ~ well, yeah, right!

I think that if you do even a casual and quick retrospect of all the great composers and the works you love and keep returning to, there is one quality they share I think most listeners would agree upon, and that is the listener's perception that in that music, no matter what surprising turns it takes, everything about the piece seems "ineffably right."

When studying composition, analysis, and/or for the purpose of performing music as well, the word "inevitable" comes up a lot. To make the music seem that it could not possibly go another way, that not a note could be altered to make it better, that any change to the score would take away something vitally necessary, is a desired quality and goal.

That quality is a very key criterion in 'judging' the quality of a piece or its performance, and the strongest of composers and performers 'convince us' that quality is inherent in the piece, in a performance.