2 | Beethoven and the Symphony
As we have said, what sets Beethoven instantly apart from Haydn or Mozart is his mood of excitement and urgency. This he achieved by maximizing virtually all musical elements. Higher and lower registers, sharper syncopations, stronger accents, harsher dissonances yielding to more profound resolutions — all of these are found in Beethoven’s music. He made new demands on instruments, expanded the orchestra, and stretched Classical forms to their limits.
Given all this, it is not surprising that this composer should be especially associated with the symphony, the most public of Classical genres, with the greatest range of expression, variety, and sheer volume. In fact, Beethoven wrote fewer symphonies (nine) than piano sonatas (thirty-two) or string quartets (sixteen) — and no musician would rank these works any lower than the symphonies. But at the height of his career, from around 1800 to 1810, even many of his piano sonatas and string quartets sound like symphonies. The torrents of sound Beethoven summoned up in these works demanded whole new techniques of piano and string playing.
We can approach Beethoven’s “symphonic ideal” through his Fifth Symphony, written in 1808. Three main features of this work have impressed generations of listeners: its rhythmic drive, its motivic consistency or unity, and the sense it gives of a definite psychological progression. The first feature can be grasped at once, the second by the end of the opening movement, and the third only after we have experienced all four of the symphony’s movements.
- Rhythmic drive. Immediately apparent is the drive and blunt power of the rhythmic style. Beethoven hammers the meter, piles accent upon accent, and calculates long time spans with special power: a far cry from the elegance and wit of the Classical style.
- Motivic consistency. During the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, a single motive is heard constantly, in many different forms. They are not random forms; the motive becomes more and more vivid and significant as the work proceeds. People have marveled at the “organic” quality of such music, which seems to them to grow like a plant’s leaves out of a simple seed.
- Psychological progression. Over the course of the Fifth Symphony’s four movements, Beethoven seems to trace a coherent and dramatic psychological progression in several stages. “There Fate knocks at the door!” he is supposed to have said about the first movement — but after two eventful middle stages, Fate is nullified in the last movement, trampled under by a military march.
In Beethoven’s hands, the multimovement symphony seems to trace an inspirational life process, one so basic and universal that it leaves few listeners unmoved. This was, perhaps, the greatest of all his forward-looking innovations.