DEAR READER:
It doesn't take a Beethoven Bicentennial Year to remind us of the powerful and ubiquitous force the composer exerted on all subsequent occidental music. Indeed, it is hard to see how any special emphasis on the man could give us more of his music than we already receive each year. (I heard one sensible suggestion, that we honor Beethoven in 1970 by declaring a year-long moratorium on his works-so that we can come to him fresh again in 1971.) His musical contemporaries and heirs acknowledged his pre-eminence, and even today he remains the keystone of concert activity. In the popular mind, Beethoven has long been the personification (and Beethoven's Fifth the epitome) of classical music.
What makes Beethoven's music so great? His melodies? They are often simply triadic motifs, greater in their potential than in their immediate expressivity. While these themes, as Jan Meyerowitz points out elsewhere in this issue, are perfectly constructed to serve the purpose Beethoven has in mind for their future development, they are certainly not in themselves the reason for his unique position. Beethoven was hardly the tunesmith that Schubert, Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky--name your favorite melodist--were.
His harmonies? On the whole, they stay tied to the three basic I-IV-V chords. Beethoven's music is generally less chromatic, even less dissonant than, say, that of Bach, born almost a century earlier.
If his melodies are triadic and his harmonies diatonic, where is the revolutionary Beethoven who monopolized music for so long? Mahler wrote longer music, Wagner wrote louder music, Berlioz wrote faster music. What about rhythm? Again, while Beethoven makes his musical points as much through rhythmic as through melodic and harmonic means, there are few rhythmic patterns and devices in most of Beethoven's music that cannot also be found elsewhere. Brahms's rhythms are surely more subtle.
Counterpoint? Palestrina, Bach, and Mozart spoke more natural contrapuntal languages; Beethoven had to struggle for his. Beauty? Some of Beethoven's music (parts of the amazing Grosse Fuge, for instance) is among the ugliest ever written.
What then accounts for Beethoven's greatness? I believe it is the form of his music--that is, the incontrovertible "rightness" of every note, measure, phrase, passage, and section of a piece-as well as his uncompromising, powerful struggle to ensure that form. Beethoven already had a supreme mental capacity to see musical relationships; by sheer determination, he pushed that capacity to its extremes. As a result, his music demonstrates the limits to which the greatest mind can be stretched; and if we of lesser genius follow this music and these relationships, our own perceptions are stretched far beyond their usual capabilities, forced by a supreme creator almost to the frontiers of the superhuman. That's one thing Tchaikovsky cannot do for us.
Next month we will continue our critical discography with BEETHOVEN'S CHORAL MUSIC. Moving over to Mozart, in THE RIDDLE OF THE MAGIC FLUTE we will present an intriguing solution to the puzzling question of why Mozart changed the original fairy tale to a Masonic allegory. The key seems to be the identity of the person on whom the role of Sarastro is based. (Hint: Orson Welles played him in a 1949 movie.) For the audio-minded, we shall publish NEW DESIGNS IN HEADPHONES, a comparison of those models--including the new electrostatics-released since our previous survey last year, and in line with this, EIGHT RECORDS TO TEST YOUR HEADPHONES BY. Additionally, we will have an article on the latest developments in quadriphony: FOUR CHANNEL STEREO FM--FROM ONE STATION!
LEONARD MARCUS , Editor
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( High Fidelity magazine)
Also see:
BEETHOVEN'S WRITTEN CONVERSATIONS