Beethoven (Master Musicians) by Barry Cooper

Author:Barry Cooper [Cooper, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2009-08-05T11:52:00+00:00

Yet the key structure is cunningly designed so that, as in his early sets of dances (WoO 7 and 8), one tonic triad and the next always have a note in common. Beethoven also gradually increases the length of the sections containing tonal stability, with the final one in B major actually returning after a brief digression. Thus there is a sense of gradual progress from instability to stability. There is also some motivic cohesion, the two main motifs being a rapid descending scale and (usually three) repeated notes. The scale is initially highly disruptive, yet it is eventually incorporated inconspicuously into the final variation, so that when it reappears in the coda it seems far less threatening and eventually brings the work to a very emphatic close. Meanwhile the repeated notes seem merely incidental when they first appear in the B flat section, but they are more prominent in some of the ensuing link passages, and re-emerge as the main motif in the theme on which the variations are built. The Fantasia is one of Beethoven's most original, challenging, and forward-looking piano works, with a Romantic wildness that easily obscures its ingeniously crafted design.

During the latter part of 1809 Beethoven also composed a number of songs. This sudden spate, in which more songs were completed than in the entire previous six years, suggests that he may have resumed the singing parties that had been abandoned during the war. Five of the songs (including one duet) were to Italian texts, but the majority were German Lieder, mainly settings of poems by Christian Ludwig Reissig. Reissig was an army captain who had been wounded in the war, but he now persuaded several composers to set his verses to music, and Beethoven, feeling sympathy for him, agreed to do so.

The chronology of these Reissig settings, as with several other works of 1809, is not entirely clear, but the first one appears to have been completed in early August, for on 8 August Beethoven wrote to Breitkopf & Hartel that he had just sent them a sextet and two German Lieder. The sextet, an early work, was published by them as Op. 71, while one of the Lieder was `Andenken' (WoO 136), which had been intended the previous year for the ill-fated journal Prometheus. The other Lied must have been one of the Reissig settings, and was probably `Der Jungling in der Fremde' (WoO 138). This short, strophic composition, however, was originally a setting of a different poem by Reissig, `Lied aus der Ferne', as is clear from the autograph score, and it was probably this text that was sent to Breitkopf & Hartel. He then made a new, much more elaborate and through-composed setting of the same words (WoO 137), and his brother Carl sent this to Breitkopf & Hartel at the end of January, with a brief note that arrived on 5 February 1810." Beethoven's own letter of 4 February 1810 confirms that his brother had recently sent them `Gesang in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.