Welcome to the Exhibit

Why Beethoven? Leonard Bernstein posed this question about the most popular composer of classical music nearly eighty years ago, and it is still not clear why his music has had such lasting appeal. This exhibit seeks not to answer that question—musical taste is highly personal, and no one answer will satisfy everyone—but to clarify some of the main issues surrounding the man, the music, and their larger-than-life reputation. Sections are devoted to Beethoven as pianist, as composer, and as myth, and finally to the complicated legacy this musical titan left behind.

Beethoven’s proclivity for excursions to the countryside reflected larger, historically contemporaneous trends. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, many urban centers in Europe—including Vienna, where Beethoven lived—were rapidly evolving. These early years of the industrial revolution witnessed an influx of new residents to cities lacking the appropriate infrastructure to dispose of waste (both industrial and human). And unsanitary conditions culminated in outbreaks of disease, including Vienna’s cholera epidemic of 1831–1832.ⓘ As such, medical practitioners in the early 1800s often prescribed “time in the countryside” for conditions exacerbated by air and noise pollution, hence the recommendation for Beethoven to spend time in Heiligenstadt. Indeed, Heiligenstadt—and its natural hot-water spring—was wildly popular among the Viennese bourgeoisie as a summer destination.

Beethoven's Walk in Nature by Julius Schmid

Escaping the city (note that, at this time, Vienna was walled-in, meaning there was limited space to accommodate the influx of people, although Beethoven lived outside the city walls at the Theater an der Wien beginning in 1803) for health matters reflected a larger trend among the bourgeois and aristocratic classes: to escape the summer heat, many withdrew to country estates in search of relaxation, recreation and—for composers like Beethoven or Franz Schubert who developed relationships with members of these higher classes—inspiration.ⓘ Beethoven travelled with Prince Lichnowsky to his country estate at Grätz, near Troppau, Silesia, while Schubert (who worked for the Esterházy family) often traveled to their country estate in Zseliz (in modern-day Slovakia), where he composed much of his four-hand piano music.ⓘ

“How delighted I shall be to ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees and over grass and rocks. No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees and rocks produce the echo which man desires to hear.” – Beethoven in a letter to Therese Malfatti (May 1810) ⓘ

Lastly, nature was an important aesthetic tenet in German Romanticism. We see this reflected in the reception history of nineteenth-century music in and beyond Beethoven’s idiom. Notably, valuing music for the ways in which it represents nature extended beyond those works with explicit allusions to natural phenomena (e.g., the Pastoral Symphony). An anonymous review, published in the Allgemeine musikaliche Zeitung in 1824—a prominent German-language musical periodical—praised Beethoven’s last sonatas for the way in which they reflect the natural world: leading one through a “magnificent landscape garden with splendidly laid out paths, often strangely intertwined, that circle through thickets, meadows, valleys, and rocky ravines.”ⓘ The metaphor of landscape remained central in the discourse of music criticism through the twentieth century; Theodor Adorno uses the metaphor of landscape, and imagery associated with the natural world, in articulating the value of Schubert’s oeuvre in his seminal essay "Schubert."ⓘ These appeals to landscape invoked the idea of the sublime, another important aesthetic of the Romantic experience, and allowed critics to articulate the power of music—like nature—to inspire feelings of pleasure and fear, of awe and overwhelm, in the listener.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F, op. 68 (“Pastoral”) encapsulates the ability of music to portray nature. This is reflected from the outset, given the work’s full title—“Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life”—and the subtitles of individual movements (e.g., “Scene by a Brook” and “Joyful Gathering of the Country Folk”). It is also reflected in the music itself, via specific compositional devices that were typically employed to evoke nature, such as the choice of key (F major), meter (6/8 or 12/8), and tonic/dominant drones (mimicking bagpipes). Today, these devices are understood to be stock techniques used to create shared meaning among performers and listeners. That said, for Beethoven, this work was “more the expression of feeling than tone painting” and can thus be understood as expressing a personal and emotional connection to nature that goes beyond programmatic representation.ⓘ

Beethoven the Pianist

Beethoven first rose to fame as a virtuoso performer at the piano, and it remained his instrument throughout his life; even when he was profoundly deaf he continued to work at the piano. But the piano was constantly changing during his lifetime, and he worked at several different instruments with very different characteristics. All of the instruments Beethoven used had a lighter touch and smaller sound than today’s grand pianos, but they also had some extra sound effects not available on later models, and Beethoven took full advantage of these. He was also known for improvising brilliantly, something most classical pianists don’t do today. We will explore some of Beethoven’s pianos in this part of the exhibit.

When it comes to dissecting elements of a composer’s style, one component often overlooked is the instrument written for—and the impact of a given instrument’s capabilities on compositional choices. To be sure, developments in piano construction shaped the way in which composers wrote for the instrument. Robert Levin helps contextualize the impact of such developments on composers, likening the transformation of personal computing over the last thirty years to developments in piano technologies during Mozart’s lifetime.ⓘ The rise of the pianoforte in the eighteenth century gave composers and performers access to new dynamic extremes (louds and softs), as well as a broader range (expanding from five octaves to six-and-a-half meant higher highs and lower lows). And indeed, Mozart’s sonatas reflect the instrument’s new capabilities.ⓘ Just as an outdated computer cannot run the latest software, the most recent music often could not be played on an outdated instrument.

The piano evolved throughout the nineteenth century, particularly between 1770 and 1830, in three cosmopolitan centers: Vienna, London, and Paris. Each locale had their own schools of craftsmanship and unique characteristics. For instance, Beethoven preferred the lighter action of Viennese instruments while declaring English pianos to be unplayable.ⓘ

Like Mozart’s, Beethoven’s music for piano evolved to take advantage of new instrument designs. In 1803 Beethoven purchased an Erard Frères fortepiano “en forme de clavecin” (in the shape of a harpsichord), built in the Parisian style. Beethoven preferred its sound but disliked the heavier touch.ⓘ Shortly after receiving this instrument he wrote three piano sonatas: op. 53 (“Waldstein”), op. 54, and op. 57 (“Appassionata”), as well as his Fourth Piano Concerto. In these works Beethoven experimented with the French technique of son continu (“continuous sound”) and took advantage of sonic effects made possible by the Erard’s four pedals (lute [felt moderator], damper, sourdine [buff], and una corda)—imitating the works of his former rival Daniel Steibelt and Louis Adam, a piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire. The result was a piano that sounded fuller than the Viennese instrument.

In 1817, the English firm Broadwood gifted a grand piano to Beethoven, perhaps hoping to gain traction in the Viennese market. Compared to Viennese pianos, the Broadwood had higher string tension, meaning more volume; a thicker soundboard resulting in a longer tone; a milder attack; and smaller dampers in the bass to promote reverberation.ⓘ Perhaps the most striking difference can be found in the pedals—the sustain pedal is split so that you can sustain notes in the bass while playing a clear melody in the treble and vice versa.ⓘ Beethoven wrote a substantial body of music for his Broadwood: the fourth movement of the Hammerklavier sonata (op. 106), the sonatas op. 109, op. 110, and op. 111, as well as the Diabelli Variations, op. 120, and many of the bagatelles opp. 119 and 126. Notably, Beethoven had composed the first three movements of op. 106 prior to receiving his Broadwood; the change in instrumentation is reflected in the finale, which shifts the six-octave range down a fourth from F to C (CC to c''''). While this gave Beethoven access to lower low notes that the Viennese piano could not play, it capped the high register a fourth lower than previous movements. This careful attention to the range of the instruments shows that Beethoven was still composing with specific pianos in mind even when his hearing loss was quite advanced. Clearly, Beethoven had changed his mind about English pianos. Due to his growing deafness, he found the tactical experience of playing the Broadwood with its deeper action and vibrational resonance to be richly rewarding, and this is reflected in many of the musical features of his late piano works.ⓘ

The last piano Beethoven used was a six-and-a-half octave instrument loaned to him by the Viennese firm of Conrad Graf in 1825. The only piano work Beethoven wrote while using this instrument was the four-hand arrangement of the Grande Fugue (Ger. Grosse Fuge), originally the finale of the string quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130. This difficult work baffled the public at its first performance, prompting Beethoven’s publisher, Artaria, to urge him to write a new finale. The fugue was published separately as Op. 133. By arranging it for piano four hands as Op. 134, Beethoven and Artaria sought to capitalize on the growing market for four-hand piano music, which for many in the nineteenth century offered the easiest way to become familiar with new instrumental works; remember that there were no recordings or broadcasts, and symphonies and string quartets were only rarely performed in public. Even in this form, though, the work is extremely difficult to play, and the arrangement is rarely heard.

Beethoven's Graf piano at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, Germany

While the constraints of an instrument impact compositional choices, the effects reverberate today for contemporary performers using modern instruments. Consider Beethoven’s "Moonlight" Sonata, op. 14, no. 2. Written for a Viennese pianoforte lacking sustain, Beethoven instructs the performer to play with the pedal depressed.ⓘ While this might not make sense on a modern-day piano, knowing the context for the instruction can inform the pedaling choices of today’s performers.

As a pianist, improvisation would have been central to Beethoven’s musical life. Improvisation was considered so crucial to one’s musical success that treatises dedicated specifically to the art of improvising were published throughout the nineteenth century, including one by Carl Czerny (published in 1829) who was a student of Beethoven. Like many other great composers of his day, Beethoven was renowned for his improvisational skills (e.g., Mozart and Schubert). He not only improvised variations on popular tunes—folks songs or opera arias—but also improvised passages for otherwise notated compositions. For example, during the 1808 premiere of his Choral Fantasy, op. 80, Beethoven did not compose an introduction which he ended up improvising on the spot.ⓘ Sometimes these improvisations were later written down and published, reflecting the tangible connection between the acts of improvising and composing.

“His extemporizations were the most extraordinary things that one could hear. No artist that I ever heard came at all near the height which Beethoven attained. The wealth of ideas which forced themselves on him, the caprices to which he surrendered himself, the variety of treatment, the difficulties, were inexhaustible.” – Beethoven's friend and former student Ferdinand Ries (1840) ⓘ

In closing, it is worth zooming out to consider the context in which Beethoven was performing and composing. Specifically, there were various—competing—schools of piano playing in the nineteenth century; Beethoven’s was not the only way of doing things. We see glimpses of this through the eyes of Czerny, who notes that Johann Nepomuk Hummel's supporters “reproached Beethoven, claiming that he abused the fortepiano, that he was deficient in purity and clarity, that he, through the use of the pedal, only produced confused noise, that his compositions were far-fetched, unnatural, without melody and irregular. The Beethovenists, on the other hand, asserted that Hummel lacked all real imagination, his playing was monotonous as a hurdy-gurdy, the application of his fingers was like a garden spider, and his compositions were mere arrangements of themes by Mozart and Haydn. Hummel's playing influenced me to the extent that it stimulated me to a higher degree of purity and clarity."ⓘ

Beethoven the Composer

In this section, we explore the connection between improvisation and composition in Beethoven’s musical life, and further elaborate on his compositional process. In the early nineteenth century, musicians earned respect chiefly through improvisation—not just composition. Critics like Fétis and Moscheles ranked figures such as Beethoven, Mozart, Hummel, and Chopin for their improvisatory skills. Hummel’s pedagogical writings further championed free fantasy as essential for deeper musical expression. Directly connecting improvisation with composition is the genre of the composed “fantasias” which intentionally imitate improvisation; some of Beethoven’s so convincingly did so that audiences often couldn’t discern them from real extemporization. Beethoven’s creative process itself intertwined improvisation and nonlinear sketching: themes emerged in walks, were fleshed out at the piano, then refined through multiple draft stages.

To better understand what it meant to garner respect as a musician in the nineteenth century one must take improvisation seriously. While today it is more common to engage with classical music by reading from a score, many of today’s canonic composers (e.g., Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin)—valued in contemporary society precisely because of what they wrote down for posterity—were as, if not more respected, for their ability to improvise. Indeed, ca. 1803 Beethoven was perceived as an “improvising piano virtuoso first and a composer second."ⓘ That is, improvisation was deeply interconnected with one’s overall musicianship. Writing in 1840, influential critics F. J. Fétis and Ignaz Moscheles measured composers—as musicians—by their ability to improvise. They considered Beethoven (and Mozart) as the best improvisers of their day, followed by Hummel, Moscheles, and Chopin.ⓘ Moreover, the musicians themselves clearly recognized the value of improvisation. Take, for instance, Hummel’s closing remarks in his instruction book for piano:

"I close by recommending free improvisation in general and in every respectable form to all those for whom [music] is not merely a matter of entertainment and practical ability, but rather principally one of inspiration and meaning in their art … Even if a person plays with inspiration, but always from a written score, he or she will be much less nourished, broadened, and educated than through the frequent offering of all of his or her powers in a free fantasy"ⓘ

That an audience could distinguish between pre-composed and improvised works may seem far fetched, but attending to Beethoven’s compositional process can illuminate why these two ways of making music could be distinguishable by an audience well acquainted with both milieus. Some of Beethoven’s works can be directly traced to improvisation: consider the finale of the "Appassionata," op. 57, which—according to Ferdinand Ries—was conceived of by Beethoven on a walk (“[humming] to himself or partly [howling], always up and down, without singing any definite notes”) and further fleshed out through improvisation at the piano to shape the material.ⓘ However, Beethoven was also notorious for his sketching process when it came to perfecting composed pieces. Over thirty volumes of Beethoven’s sketches survive today, and scholars meticulously pore over the pages to better understand his compositional process.

Beethoven’s sketchbooks contained more than thematic fragments or motives; they were a way for Beethoven to visualize elements like form (including the distribution of thematic material) and key areas.ⓘ And, as he began to take the craft of composition more seriously, we see a more meticulous sketching process (including how the sketches were categorized and stored by Beethoven himself). One aspect of Beethoven’s process gleaned from sketch study is that it was non-linear. He would write down ideas as they came to him. As such, we find thematic material from a given composition spread across multiple books. For example, the "Eroica" Symphony, op. 55, can be found in three different sketchbooks (Kessler, Wielhorksy, and Landsberg 6). When he was ready to combine ideas from various sketches, Beethoven would create a “continuity draft.” For example, there is a continuity draft from the Andante of Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Sonata, op. 28, that comprises 57 measures of music that equate to roughly measures 39–50, with an interruption of three measures, followed by measures 54–82. Measures 83–94 and 95–99 can be found on “the leaf’s verso."ⓘ As drafts were combined, missing measures would be filled in and, as the work coalesced into a continuous whole, Beethoven could tweak sections to adjust sectional proportions that would eventually lead to the production of an autograph score (used by copyists to produce parts for performance). It is possible that there were additional stages of this process that were not preserved in writing. Composing, for Beethoven, was a continuous process of revision and refinement.ⓘ

Given the wealth of music written by Beethoven, we are able to generalize not only about the composer’s individual style, we are also able to abstract larger stylistic trends in music composition. Indeed, the first eight bars of Beethoven’s op. 2 (no. 1) have become iconic in music theory pedagogy: they comprise one of the most common eight-bar theme types in classical music—the eight-bar sentence, which was theorized by Arnold Schoenberg in Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1967).

For many scholars, both historical and contemporary, Beethoven’s treatment of grouping structure is particularly idiomatic. There is a modularity to it; stringing sentences one into the next, referred to as sentence chains, prefigures the late-Romantic music of Wagner and Liszt. Beethoven’s treatment of thematic development (the isolation and transformation of small cells, or motives)—especially his use of fragmentation, whereby the initial grouping structure is increasingly shortened—creates a sense of forward motion that is, to an extent, unique to Beethoven. Indeed, the goal-directed, teleological drive of Beethoven’s sonata forms is often contrasted with Schubert’s lyrical approach to the form. Another aspect of Beethoven’s style that contributes to an overarching sense of forward drive is the use of off-beat accents—that is, Beethoven’s use of syncopation disrupts stable musical time, inviting listeners to project forward to a moment of stability that has yet to arrive. Lastly, Beethoven’s expansion of inherited forms is both unique and a product of his time: that is, while the expansion of "standardized" forms was common in the nineteenth century, composers approach such adaptations idiomatically.

Beethoven the Myth

Beethoven is perhaps the best-known classical composer, but with his fame comes a great deal of confusion about what he was really like. He is often depicted as a scowling titan, an angry misanthrope unable to hear, and an isolated genius who had to wait decades to be recognized. In reality, his hearing loss was gradual, but the recognition of his music was nearly immediate. This recognition did not come in isolation, though; the ground had been prepared by his predecessors, and his rise was supported by aristocratic patrons open to the idea that a composer could achieve greatness. In this section we will explore some of the most common myths about Beethoven, and counter them with more accurate descriptions of who and what he was.

Few composers are known by musicians and non-musicians alike, yet the name “Beethoven” (along with Mozart and perhaps Bach) remains recognizable by many to this day. But it is crucial to distinguish the stories we tell about the composer—creating a character, or myth, that we refer to as Beethoven—from the human being who lived from 1770 to 1827. Indeed, while we will never know Beethoven the man, many of us are quite familiar with Beethoven the myth. This character, extracted from reality, serves as a blank canvas upon which subsequent generations project their values. Stories are told and retold, but “fashioned anew by each generation” for “his music is heard as a direct expression of human values” that are constantly in flux.ⓘ

Consider the exhumation of Beethoven and Schubert’s skulls in 1863. Scientist Gerhard von Bruening was able to “prove” that the difference in compositional style between Beethoven and Schubert—the former heroic and masculine, the latter lyrical and feminine—stemmed from differences in personality and temperament which, in turn, were related to skull construction: “[The skulls] seemed to reflect the characteristics of the composers’ works. The walls of Beethoven’s skull exhibit strong density and thickness, whereas Schubert’s bones show feminine delicateness”).ⓘ

“[Beethoven] himself provided the key to those depths when one day, in [my] presence, he pointed to the beginning of the first movement and expressed in these words the fundamental idea of his work: 'Thus Fate knocks at the door.'” – Anton Schindler on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony ⓘ

Biographers, too, have helped shape this constructed figure—some with reputations and agendas of their own. Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s early secretary and one of his first biographers, notoriously inserted himself into the narrative, altering or inventing material to enhance both Beethoven’s image and his own proximity to genius, as in the quotation above concerning the famous opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Beethoven the Legacy

Beethoven is universally revered as the pivotal bridge between classical and Romantic eras, reshaping musical form and aesthetics through perceptions of emotional depth and structural innovation. His legacy extends far beyond composition, influencing instrumental and music-theory pedagogy, orchestral traditions, cultural iconography, popular music, and politics. Yet this legacy was constructed within and through shifting cultural forces, such as Vienna’s musical culture, systems of patronage, mythmaking through reception history, and later appropriations—which elevated Beethoven from composer to symbolic giant.

It cannot be denied: often heralded as the bridge between classical and romantic periods in music, Beethoven’s compositions shaped generations of future composers.ⓘ Specifically, the types of emotions expressed, and the manner in which Beethoven expressed them, aligns with a larger aesthetic shift. The turn towards Romanticism at the end of the eighteenth century brought with it the centering of the human experience and individual expression paralleled in other contemporaneous art forms such as painting and poetry. For instance, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is another iconic Romantic artwork that uses visual images of the natural world to evoke the sublime (much like Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony uses aural imagery to similar ends).

“Beethoven. When asked to name the single most influential composer of the Western world, few would hesitate.” – Scott Burnham in Beethoven Hero (1995) ⓘ

Beethoven’s legacy touches many facets of culture to this day. Within the concert hall his works are performed and recorded regularly. And references to the composer in popular culture can be found anywhere, from cartoons (the infamous bust of Beethoven appears as Schroeder’s idol in the Charlie Brown comic strip), and popular musics (artists create tracks from samples of Beethoven’s instrumental works) to political propaganda (which you’ll see in our brief film). In this gallery, we confront Beethoven’s legacy and illuminate some of the cultural context that supported his transformation from well-known composer to cultural icon.

We must remember that Beethoven’s rise to fame is tethered to more than the quality of his compositions or his abilities as a performer. While these factors are important, they operate in conjunction with cultural trends. Just as “no man is an island,” no cultural figure becomes significant without a culture propping them up. For instance, one important factor in the musical canonization of Beethoven is geographical location. His arrival in Vienna—in the early nineteenth century—coincided with a transformation of musical taste. Burgeoning notions of “serious music” and the image of the “genius composer” (a myth addressed in the previous section) coalesced to create figures that were larger than life. While similar processes of canon formation occurred at this time in other cultural centers, like London and Paris, Vienna was unique for welcoming living composers into the fold of greatness. The Viennese created a lineage in which “previous ‘great’ composers (Bach and Handel) were viewed as leading up to Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven."ⓘ Equally important to Beethoven’s long-term success were his connections to aristocratic patrons such as Prince Karl Lichnowsky, who helped Beethoven navigate the social scene and progress “from pianist, to pianist-composer, to … a major Viennese and eventually international figure and a composer of large-scale symphonic works."ⓘ All of this to say, the influence of Beethoven and his compositions was not a given; rather, through social mediation, he became central to the canons of music performance, theory, and history.

The concept of one’s legacy is, therefore, tricky to unwind: it is, on the one hand, the product of a culture at a given point in time (to put it bluntly: it is made up) and, on the other hand, something quite real. As depicted in the painting Liszt at the Piano, the bust of Beethoven is prominently displayed; composers look up in reverence, while Beethoven seems to be passing judgement on some of the most prominent composers of the romantic generation. Indeed, we see Liszt’s admiration of Beethoven manifest through his efforts to pay for the erection of a statue of the composer’s likeness to be erected in Bonn. Liszt emerged from retirement to perform recitals, the proceeds of which (over 10,000 francs) were donated to the cause.”ⓘ However, Beethoven’s legacy could also be a bit suffocating for nineteenth-century composers. Consider Brahms, who famously took over twenty years to compose his first symphony. According to Brahms, “a symphony is no laughing matter … you have no idea what it’s like to hear the footsteps of a giant like that behind you."ⓘ The giant is, of course, Beethoven’s symphonic legacy. Beyond the realm of composition, piano students to this day can trace their pedagogical lineage back to Carl Czerny and, ultimately, to Beethoven. Striking in the image of the “family tree” is the inclusion of Muzio Clementi on the right-hand side; although present in this genealogy, it is clear in practice that tracing your studies back to Beethoven is the primary goal of this activity.

Liszt at the Piano (1840) by Joseph Danhauser

As for the claim that Beethoven’s legacy is very much a construct, the myriad ways in which the composer’s reputation, music, or likeness are wielded in popular culture and politics demonstrates the malleability of Beethoven as a figurehead. That is, while Beethoven is often construed as a man of the people, who those people are—and what they stand for—can vary a great deal. For instance, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was performed in 1942 to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday; meanwhile, the opening rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony “was the hallmark of the BBC’s foreign broadcasts during [World War II] and thus of its resistance to Germans.” Indeed, the Ninth Symphony has become somewhat of a political gem: the Fourth movement—Ode to Joy—was used as the national anthem of an apartheid regime in 1970s Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); demonstrators in Chile protesting a military dictatorship in the 1970s similarly sang the Ode, as did students in Tiananmen Square, China in 1989; now, Ode to Joy is the national anthem of the European Union.ⓘ

Ultimately, while Beethoven’s legacy is mutable, the composer’s impact on culture is difficult to overstate. We hope that, through this exhibit, you’ve come to know a bit more about who Beethoven (the man) actually was, confronted common myths that highlight constructions of Beethoven (the caricature), and grappled with his lasting legacy and how it has been appropriated in various cultural contexts.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the many contributors who made this exhibit possible, including faculty, students, staff, and partner institutions. Full acknowledgements will be added here soon.