penni westbrook!! No fair throwing "experts" into the fray!! you know perfectly well that the Classical/Romantic transition, and the position of Beethoven in this regard, has been the subject of reams of debate over the last 100 years or so. If we keep this up we will have to begin flinging "expert" quotations at each other (Take That!! And That!!) and this will be unspeakably dull.
1. Of course we hear backwards. This is how all history works. It is not important whether Beethoven thought of himself as staying within, or departing from, existing conventions. In music, I doubt that any of the "bridge" composers such as Stravinsky "called" themselves anything in particular. Beethoven was worshiped by the next generation of composers (such as the prolific but unfortunately short-lived Schubert, if only he had lived to 70!!), not only because he wrote such beautiful music, but because they knew that he had changed everything.
2. I maintain that there is very little in the previous generation of composers (Haydn, Mozart et al) that is "tempestuous" in the sense of the Appassionata, the "Storm" movement of the 6th Symphony, or the first movement of the 9th Symphony. I also believe that there was never anything, for example, like the then-shocking transition from the third to the fourth movement of the 5th Symphony. This just was not done. Adherence to the classical structures I think is relatively surficial compared to what you think.
3. There has been some increased tendency lately to move Beethoven back closer to the Classical side as opposed to the Romantic side, I believe the biggest proponents of this are adherents to the "original instrument" movement. This is a major controversy vis-a-vis Beethoven and only time will tell what direction scholarship will eventually move.
Your puerile friend, Tom |
