A Brief History of Absolute and Programmatic Music (cont.)
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Beethoven and Germany
Beethoven emerged during the late 18th century and early 19th century as one of the most revered composers of his day. Germany was a fractured state that could not be recognized by the rest of Europe as a whole. At the same time Beethoven was writing many of his pieces, Napoleon was marching across Europe on a warpath of imperialistic conquest. So at the focus you had a tyrant bent on the conquest of all Europe, and obscured was the idea that many voices could create a feasible and coherent idea. Its hard to imagine the gravity of Beethoven's work in retrospect, but when you put yourself in the shoes of the everyday European at that time, this was a very exciting occurrence. Music now had something behind it, a civic significance, that made the public eager to turn their ears toward it and ask for more. Symphonies became a popularized style when Beethoven came along, before that they held the second-in-command after operas. Music with words was just more popular with the people and was able to yield more profits for composers. Musicians and composers like Beethoven were bound to aristocratic salons in order to expose people to their music. (Bonds, 50) E.M. Forster illustrates the multiplicity of interpretations of Beethoven's work in his book Howard's End, "It will be generally admitted that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. All sorts and conditions satisfied by it. Whether you are like Mrs. Munt, and tap surreptitiously when the tunes come-of course, not so as to disturb the others-;or like Helen, who can see heroes and shipwrecks in the music's flood; or like Margaret, who can only see the music; or like Tibby, who is profoundly versed in counterpoint, and hold the full score open on his knee; or like the cousin, Fraulein Moseback, who remembers all the time that Beethoven is 'echt Deutsh'; or like Fraulein Mosebach's young man, who can remember nothing but Fraulein Mosebach: in any case, the passion of your life becomes more vivid and you are bound to admit that such a noise is cheap at two shillings..." (Forster, 38) There was a universal accessibility in Beethoven's work that transgressed class, age, gender, etc. This accessibility was so though that it did not void the remarkable quality of his music. Having something that spoke to everyone had a tremendous civil effects on Germany. (Will, 67) Beethoven was the leader of a movement that had a far longer life than he did, with far greater effects than anticipated. Take, for instance, the deep rooted connection between Beethoven's music and the uniting of Germany. Creating symphonies like Beethoven's had been largely a trait that Germans (or rather German-speaking people) prided themselves on. So his work carried a nationalistic air to it. Just as purely instrumental music had grown from a notion to reality, as was the ambition of a united Germany becoming a clearer thing. |
