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Nicely done Conor.
Love & comfort to the family.
He was born in Bonn in December 1770 to a family of Dutch extraction. His grandfather, also named Ludwig, was one of the great choirmasters of his era. His father Johann (“Jack”) Beethoven was a musician who succumbed to alcohol and a dissolute life. Because Lou was born in the German city-state of the Rhineland, his first languages were both French and German.
Lou showed early promise as a musician, and Jack hired teachers to give hm a solid background. By his early teens, Lou had nailed down a court musician’s job and supported the family as Jack sunk more deeply into the bottle.
Lou was 22 when Jack died, and he headed off to Vienna, the core of German musical life. He was a gifted pianist, and by now his compositions were beginning to show some sophistication. Mozart had died the year before, and Baron Gottfried von Swieten, who had championed Mozart’s works, now took Beethoven under his wing.
Gottfried had a good ear for musical talent. He introduced Lou to Prince Karl Lichnowski, who provided a roof over Lou’s head, money, and who treated him like grandson. This connection also brought Franz Josef Haydn into Lou’s life as his new teacher.
That relationship was rocky from the start and only got worse. Neither particularly liked the other, and Lou turned to Antonio Salieri – who later was to become Schubert’s mentor. It was a very tight musical world in Vienna; everybody knew everybody else.
You can follow Beethoven’s output via symphonies, concertos, sonatas for mixed instruments, or string quartets. But his greatest area of output was his 32 piano sonatas. Two of them, the Opus 49 duo, were juvenile works, and Lou didn’t want them published. That leaves 30 mature works, which we can cover in 15 weeks.
The first thing you notice is that Lou’s approach was different from Mozart’s. Wolfgang wrote every melodic line for human voice, which means that you can sing a Mozart line no matter what instrument he wrote it for. Beethoven thinks in short, concentrated bursts of melody. It’s a different way of composing.
The Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 2/1, dates from 1794 when Lou was 24, and he dedicated it to his teacher Haydn. It begins with a device known as the Mannheim Rocket, an upward thrust of notes that Mozart was particularly fond of using. The first movement is in 2/2 and is marked simply allegro. The triplet grupetto that ends each phrase turns out to be something more than that because Lou does quite a bit with it. Tonal instability leads to a second subject in the expected key of A-flat. The exposition is repeated.
At 2:14 he begins development by switching between keys and moving the melody between the left and right hands, then bringing back that little grupetto.
The short development leads to a recapitulation at 3:07. His second subject, formerly in the major mode, appears now in F minor. This is one of Lou’s “So there!” endings, defying the world.
Lou sets his adagio (“at rest”) slow movement at second position in 3/4 in F Major. The opening melody has a Mozartean feel to it, phrased in singing lines. The middle section turns to D minor and then C, before returning to F for the opening melody. It ends quietly.
In third position, Lou opts for an allegretto minuet in 3/4 in F minor in the usual format: AA-BB-CC-DD-A-B.
For a finale, Lou returns to F minor and 2/2 for a movement marked prestissimo, which means “like a bat out of hell.” It’s in a kind of sonatina format, and here we get a glimpse of the fire that Beethoven was to apply to his later works. The second subject is in C minor via A-flat but is no less vehement.
At 15:53, the middle section is not a sonata development but a quiet interlude, a port in the storm.
At 17:34 he recaps. The second subject appears now in F minor. Once again he ends it with a bang.
Hat tip to Old China Hand.
