Page 174 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

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No composer looms larger as an iconic figure than Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). When we imagine the “musician as artist,” most likely it is the angry, defiant, disheveled Beethoven who comes to mind. Is it not the bust of Beethoven, rather than the elegant Mozart or the stalwart Bach, that sits atop Schroeder’s piano in the comic strip Peanuts? Is it not Beethoven’s music that accompanies “the king’s speech” in the Academy Award–winning film of that name (2010)? Is it not Beethoven who is one of the “3 Bs” of classical music (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms)? And why is our first listening example (Download 1) the beginning of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5? Because he and it serve as useful reference points recognizable by all. Beethoven is, in short, deeply ingrained in our popular culture.
But Beethoven was lucky. The period of his maturity (the early nineteenth cen- tury) was the first to create the notion that a great artist was an angry, self-absorbed loner, suffering for his art. Beethoven was all these and more, and thus his contem- poraries made him something of a poster boy for the “artist as genius.” Oblivious to the world, he walked about Vienna humming and scribbling music in a notebook. His last compositions were understood only by a few. At the same time, Beethoven did matter to the people of his day, because he had elevated the stature of the art- ist and art itself (Figure 10.1). When he died in March of 1827, 20,000 citizens of Vienna turned out for the funeral. Schools closed, and the army mobilized to con- trol the huge crowd. An artist—and a musician, no less—had become a cult figure.
FiguRe 10.1
In this work painted after Beethoven’s death by artist Josef Danhauser, a bust of Beethoven looms godlike over the scene
as pianist Franz Liszt and other artists of the day look up with reverential respect. For the nineteenth century, Beethoven came to personify the divinely inspired genius, perhaps because Beethoven himself said that he “conversed with God.”
Beethoven’s Music
Today Beethoven’s music continues to enjoy great popular favor. Statistics show that his symphonies (9), piano sonatas (32), and quartets (16) are played in con- cert and on the radio more than those of any other classical composer, slightly
152 chapter ten beethoven: bridge to romanticism
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Josef Danhauser (1805–1845). Franz Liszt at the Piano. 1840. Oil on canvas, 119 × 167 cm. Photo: Juergen Liepe. Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany. © Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY
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