Essential Beethoven
When Beethoven was just turning 20, France overthrew its monarchy and a wave of rebellion spread through Europe. The composer was presented with an opportunity to change music, and to change the standing of the artist in society. He did both. With Beethoven, an era of the artist-hero was born that still holds sway today.
Read more…Things were no different on the pages of Beethoven’s scores. He wrote rhythms and harmonies that explicitly overturned the neat, ordered musical world that held sway in the 1700s. Harmony was pushed to then-inconceivable limits in Beethoven’s string quartets. The symphony reached a new level of profundity with the Ninth, the first to include human voices. The expressive range of the piano was blown out of the water by Beethoven’s concertos, sonatas and variation sets. But while Beethoven’s music is often moody and tempestuous, it’s radiant and loving, too, encapsulating the early flowering of Romanticism.