The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173295   Message #4202237
Posted By: GUEST,Steve Shaw
08-May-24 - 09:34 AM
Thread Name: Beethoven 9 is 200!
Subject: RE: Beethoven 9 is 200!
I think that the Beethoven that dragged music kicking and screaming into the nineteenth century was some of his middle-period music - the third symphony, the Appassionata piano sonata and the Razumovsky quartets in particular. He did use the traditional structures of music such as theme-and-variations, fugue, recitative, sonata form and the like right to the end of his life, so the "revolutionary" character of his music derives more from the grander scale of many of his compositions (and using human voices in a symphony, never before done) rather than tearing up the past. Incidentally, in that 1824 concert his overture "The Consecration of the House" was also performed - very Handelian, building on the past but also very him!