[MUSIC] I devoted most of a whole class to talking about Beethoven's influences, but we have only a few minutes to talk about the truly immense influence he had. It is still felt in a meaningful way today. From 1795 to 1822, over the course of 32 works, Beethoven transformed the sonata. At the beginning, it was the product of an enormously effective, but rather straightforward, model. By the end, he had evolved it into something so much more free-form and flexible, the model had become obsolete, or at the very least simply not the point any more. And the terrific problem for composers who come after him lies therein. His works are too great and his personality too powerful to ignore, and yet it is precisely his own greatness and the power of his personality that are holding these late works together. Which means, unlike music that is in some way the product of a system, that they are inimitable. The tale end of Beethoven's life turns out of have been not only a huge turning point in the history of music, but a moment of an amazing creative flowering. It isn't really possible to know if this was strictly a coincidenceâ perhaps Beethoven was a massive inspiration, or perhaps genius simply comes along when it comes along. Beethoven died in 1827. Schubert died only one year later, at the age of 31, and bizarre as it may sound, it may well be that this year, the one after the death of Beethoven, is the one that produced the highest concentration of great works ever written. This means Schubert's string quintet, Schwanengesang and countless other leider, the fantasy for piano four-hands, and the final three piano sonatas. Even if it were average music, this volume of production would be highly impressive. Given the indescribable quality and the visionary nature of these works, it becomes simply unimaginable. Schubert knew Beethoven's works very well. In fact, the String Quartet, Opus 131, is apparently the last music he heard, maybe even at his own request, and Schubert is perhaps the only composer in history who had the right combination of training, stubborn individuality, and genius to have been able to take these late works as a point of reference and be inspired rather than stifled by them. Schubert's last sonatas are not the subject of this course, and they could easily fill a course of this length, but it is worth noting the influence of Beethoven within them. The last movement of the second of Schubert's trinity, the A major Sonata, D. 959, is modeled after the finale of Beethoven's Opus 31, Number 1â not a late work, of course. And when I say modeled, I mean modeled. When Beethoven transfers the theme from the right hand to the left, Schubert does so as well. When Beethoven introduces a subsidiary voice in triplets, Schubert follows suits. Beethoven gives this gentle allegretto movement a boisterous presto coda, which is exactly how Schubert brings his work to a close. And more radically, Beethoven precedes this coda by having the main theme break down into fragments separated by lengthy rests. Even this Schubert imitates precisely. And yet, not one single note of the work sounds like anything but Schubert. His voice was so strong and his ideas about structure were so idiosyncratic, he could afford to hew to Beethoven phrase by phrase. Anyone else who tried would have been forced to simultaneously try to adopt Beethoven's voice, which would have doomed them to failure. Schubert, who is the last great composer who in any way deserves the moniker "Classical," is exactly one generation younger than Beethoven, born in 1797. He's really the only great, truly great composer born in the years leading up to the 19th century. Fifteen years later, however, there is an extraordinary concentration of masters born at the same time: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Verdi, and Liszt. All of them are born, amazingly, between 1809 and 1813. Which means that each of them was coming of age just exactly at the time of the death of Beethoven. It also means that they were coming of age just as diatonicism was being seriously threatened for the first time, as the Classical style's rubber band was being perilously stretchedâ all of this, naturally, is thanks to Beethoven, if "thanks" is the word. [LAUGH] Some of those composers, certainly Verdi, come out of different traditions. But others, in particular Mendelssohn and Schumann, are in very clear-cut ways heirs to Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin are, I would argue, the greatest composers of piano music after Beethoven and Schubert and before at least Brahms. Each, amazingly though, mostly abandoned the piano sonata, the form in which Beethoven was most prolific. Mendelssohn wrote hundreds of works for the piano, many of which have entered the repertoire, and yet only three piano sonatas which absolutely have not entered it. One of these, the E major, Opus 6, is clearly modeled on, or at the very least inspired by, Beethoven's Opus 101, of which it is such a pallid echo, one can hardly hear Mendelssohn's voice in it at all, much less Beethoven's. Schumann wrote three sonatas, all with truly wonderful things in them, but even a lover of his music as fervent as I am would have to admit that each of these works is either flawed or at least limited, and reveals a certain formal awkwardness. There's just this slightest sense of a child wearing his parent's clothing. It's not just that they are too big for him, they're too old for him. In Schumann's hands, and in Mendelssohn's, the piano sonata begins to feel like a past number, a sense one never gets listening to Schumann's greatest piano works. It is interesting and perhaps revealing that Schumann's fantasy, which was initially called a sonata in the planning stages, is by contrast so formally unrestrained, individual, expressive, it's as if even the word "sonata" itself was a problematic one for Schumann and he felt liberated as soon as he could let go of it. Chopin did write two truly great piano sonatas, but not only do they represent a tiny fraction of his output, one of them is the piece that Schumann referred to as "the four unruly children." Even Beethoven, in his late period, would have questioned whether it was appropriately titled. And the other Chopin sonata, while outwardly more traditional, does not really rely on traditional sources of drama. After hundreds of listenings to the piece, I still can't even really locate its first movement's recapitulation. Nominally, it's a sonata form, but the form itself means little to it. The work thrives because of the beauty and the interest in the material, phrase by phrase, rather than because of its structure, whereas even the last works of Beethoven are always deeply concerned with structure, no matter how unconventional those structures might in fact be. In short, it is interesting that... you know, the "Beethoven influence" is incessantly talked about, yet in honesty, while it would be wrong to call it a negative influence given that it's spawned such creativity, it was, in a sense, a destructive influence. Put another way, Beethoven advanced the forms he worked in to a point where their total destruction was probably inevitable if music was going to remain vibrant. As we come to the end of this class, what strikes me is not just how much more ground there is to cover with the Beethoven sonatas, but how different ground could have moved us in different directions. Every time I made the decision to focus on one sonata, one movement rather than another, it moved the discussion in one direction. Focusing on another sonata might equally have moved it in another direction. This is not true of other composers, and it is really the reason why we are sitting here, talking about, playing, grappling with Beethoven, almost two centuries after his death. He is all-encompassing. In terms of his skill, the emotional terrain represented in his music, and the legacyâ positive, negative, and otherwiseâthat he leaves, he has more to say about humanity than any artist whose work I know. Let's take a short break for a review question. It's been a very great pleasure to share this little corner of Beethoven with you. And I would be absolutely delighted if some of you might use it as a springboard to discover not just the other sonatas, but the rest of his music, string quartets above all. I can guarantee you, based on my own experience, that this relationship with Beethoven, like most good relationships, is one that becomes ever more fruitful the deeper you go into it. I wish you as much joy in the discovery of this music as I have had in it, and as I have had in the teaching of this course. Thank you very much for sharing in it with me. [MUSIC]
