Performing Beethoven

Beethoven, Ludwig Van (1770-1827) was a German-Austrian composer. Ludwig van Beethoven was born into a family of musicians serving at the electoral and archiepiscopal court at Bonn. His grandfather, of the same name, was kapellmeister, or director of music, at the court when Beethoven was a small child, and his father was a singer there. The boy Beethoven was trained to be a court musician as well; he played viola in the orchestra and organ in the chapel; for opera performances he accompanied rehearsals and coached singers. In 1787 he traveled to Vienna, presumably to study with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), but was called back almost immediately by the illness of his mother; owing to her death soon thereafter and his father's alcoholism he became responsible at the age of seventeen for the care of two younger brothers. The young Beethoven's budding career as a composer, though apparently little supported by the Bonn court, got off to a fairly promising start: by the age of twenty-one he had produced two cantatas, three piano sonatas, three piano quartets (piano and strings), an early version of what became the Second Piano Concerto, and many shorter compositions. (Moore 191-223)

Performance practice of Beethoven

Beethoven's innovative intellect rises indisputably in that class of extraordinary artists who symbolize the Western melody peak. Beethoven's talent thus, was as much the inception of a novel arty as the zenith of the older one, and his personal melodic words assisted to shape the base for much that was distinctive in the Romantic style establishment. Due to his skills many people believe that Beethoven is the greatest of all musicians. Though, the Beethoven music significance lies as much in his association to and stress on the development of melody and the fortepiano as with his overall influence on musical form and style. The usually used pianoforte series was FF to f3 with the sonatas up to op.53 in music produced before 1804. Though, Beethoven previously knew bigger keyboards, for infomercial intentions he attempted to limit himself in 05 octaves. (Cooper 63-64)

Exceptions are:

In op.14/1==>wrote an f#3 (1798)

In Concerto op.15, f3 was deduced as f# by correspondence in resubmission

1818==>op.106==>CC, the later Viennese range is CC-f4

1816==>op.101==>lower register reaches EE

1808-1810 ==>including Trios op.70==>FF-f4

1803--Concerto op.37==>expanded to g3 though cadenza written to c4

Symphonies

The genre most indelibly associated with Beethoven's name is the symphony. From the First (1800) to the Ninth a quarter of a century later, his symphonies are a study in diversity. The Third Symphony, the "Eroica" (1804), decisively broke with the traditions Beethoven inherited. Its intended dedication to Napoleon, later changed to "the memory of a hero"; its monumental funeral march implicitly commemorating that hero; the unprecedented scope and expressive extremes of individual movements all seemed to mark this as a symphony that transcended its genre to become the larger-than-life embodiment of an idea. The Sixth Symphony, the "Pastoral" (1808), again laden with extramusical reference, but of a nearly opposite significance, makes elaborate use of accepted musical signifiers of the pastoral, of ...