Ludwig van Beethoven by Mark Evan Bonds
Author:Mark Evan Bonds [Bonds, Mark Evan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780190051754
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2021-12-23T00:00:00+00:00
Chapter 8
Composing
The act of artistic creation of any kind is a process shrouded in mystery, and perhaps nowhere more so than in the realm of purely instrumental music, the kind on which Beethovenâs reputation has always rested. A composer setting a text to musicâas in a song or an operaâbegins with something definite, a text that suggests a certain kind of mood and perhaps even certain rhythms. A composer writing a sonata, string quartet, or symphony, by contrast, begins with nothing. To all outward appearances the music comes from nowhere, which is to say, from within.
We nevertheless have a good sense of how Beethoven went about composing, thanks to the many sketchbooks he left behind. He began by jotting down musical ideas as they came into his head. These were sometimes little more than a few intervals and rhythms, but if they passed muster he would begin to explore their possibilities and develop them. Thinking and writing went hand in hand, and what in the end might seem like the simplest of melodies were often those that required the greatest labor. He tried out some nineteen different versions of what would become the âOde to Joyâ melody of the Ninth Symphony before settling on just the right one. As ideas for a movement or work began to accumulate, he would create what scholars have come to call a continuity draft, a rudimentary roadmap, as it were, of the movement or piece as a whole. When things had gotten far enough, he would transfer this skeletal outline onto proper full-sized music paper and expand the material into a complete score with all its parts. He would then hand the score over to a copyist, who would prepare a clean version, which in turn was subjected to further review and revisions by the composer before going off to a publisher to be engraved.
6. Beethovenâs study, sketched shortly after his death by J. N. Hoechle. Manuscripts cover the piano and the books are in disarray on the shelves.
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