The Hopeful Romantic
by Scott B. Nelson
29 September 2020
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Robert Browning, “Andrea del Sarto”
Or what’s a heaven for?”
Why is Beethoven my favourite composer? What an unscientific and lazy subjective question. But to ask it is to pay tribute to the romantic aesthetic that Beethoven did so much to nourish. For, stylistically, Beethoven may have had one foot in the orderly world of the Enlightenment and the other in the emotional romantic, but in terms of his general attitude toward music he was a romantic full stop. Ludwig van Beethoven gave birth to the artist.
With Beethoven, for the first time, the performance took a backseat to the score. Before Beethoven, a composer such as Mozart would revise his parts to accommodate the talent (or ineptitude) of his performers. Perfection, to the extent that that was the goal at all, lay in the performance itself. And the performance was about entertaining people (the nobility, not hoi polloi). If they weren’t enjoying themselves then nothing obliged them to sit in solemn reverence; they could chat with each other instead. The music could function as the background noise, punctuating the conversation they were having with their company.
But when the music became the most captivating thing in the room, then it also needed to be very interesting. Novelty and originality were the order of the day (or the flavour of the week). The older aesthetic saw musicians regularly recycle old themes and melodies. And why not? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I recall it was once humorously (and unfairly) observed that even though Domenico Scarlatti has 555 keyboard sonatas to his name, he really only ever composed one sonata 555 times. The artist was much closer to the artisan, labouring away in his workshop, cranking out a product for church or court. It is revealing that when he died in 1750, J. S. Bach was mourned as a great organist, not as a great composer.
Much as Marx did to Hegel, Beethoven turned all this on its head. To begin with, he insisted on being a freelancer (the first starving artist). But more importantly, he gave precedence to the score. Perfection existed not in the performance, but in the completed score. Musicians therefore had to be found who could reproduce the score. Every single note had its place – because they had been well placed, including the premature horn right before the recapitulation in the First Movement of the Eroica Symphony. Pieces grew longer and more complex, no longer exhausted after a single listening. That same First Movement exceeded the length of most of Haydn’s symphonies. It’s no wonder that Beethoven only composed nine of them compared to Haydn’s 104.
Who is the romantic composer writing his music for then? Is it even meant to be heard? I have often thought that Beethoven’s late string quartets are out of place in any time period. Their sound is ethereal and yet still so earthy. Are these compositions meant for other musicians instead of the broader public? For no one at all? For eternity? Although not immediately appreciated by the public, their genius was acknowledged by later composers. Upon hearing a performance of op. 131, Schubert reportedly asked, “after this, what is left for us to write?” Indeed, that very work was more highly regarded than any other by the composer himself. The late string quartets speak more to the soul than to the ear. For my part, I have always been most affected by the Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit from op. 132. Like the third movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, it is the sort of piece you should listen to in those rare and precious moments of quiet, when solitude is your only company.
The romantic composer bears a weight so immense that at times it seems it can be shouldered only by an Atlas. If the 18th century saw massive collective works such as the Encyclopédie, the 19th century expected brilliance born of a single mind. The universe was no longer the external world, as it had been for the Enlightenment thinkers, but rather the individual himself. The inwardness of the romantic ideal – that everything one needs can be found within – would have been almost Stoic if it had not been so concerned with elevating the emotions that Stoicism suppresses.
Beethoven could deliver, albeit under much personal torment, exacerbated no doubt by the gradual onset of his deafness. First noticeable when he was only 25 years old, it threw the young composer into despair, leading him to pen his Heiligenstadt Testament and then embark on his heroic phase with the aforementioned Eroica Symphony, dedicated originally to Napoleon Bonaparte. But when the dedicatee declared himself emperor, Beethoven scratched his name from the title page. The democrat would not suffer the tyrant.
What they both shared in common, however, was a restless ambition for greatness. More importantly, and more in line with the romantic ideal, greatness of oneself. With Beethoven artistic expression becomes self-expression. A century and a half after Beethoven’s death, the Viennese-born philosopher of science Karl Popper would remark on the inadvisability of taking Beethoven’s aesthetic approach as a model. Why should artistic expression be mere self-expression, especially if some selves are not worth expressing? This self-referential aspect to artistic creation risks damaging the art itself, insofar as the artist is concerned more with himself than with his production. More worthy of emulation, therefore, would be the aesthetic of a Bach, invested entirely in the work such that the self disappears. At the bottom of his compositions he signed SDG (no, not sustainable development goals). Soli Deo Gloria.
Beethoven gets a pass on such criticism, however, simply because he was that great. His music had both to be transcendent and satisfy himself – a lofty standard indeed. This was appreciated by his successors. His domination of the symphonic form was so complete that it took half a century for it to be resuscitated by the likes of Mahler and Bruckner. In the intervening years Europe contented itself with the salon music of a Chopin, the tone poems of a Liszt, or the operas of a Rossini or Verdi. Brahms was so intimidated by Beethoven’s stature that he took over a decade to compose his first symphony, or “Beethoven’s Tenth”, as the conductor Hans von Bülow quipped. With Beethoven, absolute music seemed to have reached its zenith.
This is the Beethoven we all know so well: the intimidating Promethean composer. The stern-faced and steel-willed Thunderer. The very definition of Burkean sublimity. Angry and unsociable too (he was a German living in Vienna, after all). It’s all very amusing and not entirely true. Beethoven loved to socialize, making his increasing deafness all the more intolerable. True to the romantic aesthetic, his music evokes such contrasts as much as it does emotion.
For example, he could be incredibly funny – in a very musical way, of course (and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who is convinced that there are many humorous secrets concealed within Beethoven’s underappreciated 8th Symphony). The final movement of the Eroica Symphony, for example, tantalizes the listener with disconnected notes draped over a theme that seductively sheds veil after veil, like Richard Strauss’ Salome. After the weighty and profoundly serious movements that precede it, the final movement’s opening seems almost coquettish and highly comical for that very reason. Or the first movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, modulating and meandering about, like a youth unsure of what he wants to do with himself, before deciding at the still point to dance.
If romanticism is concerned with contrasts and emotions it is due to another romantic quality: the unending search for unity and wholeness – within one’s soul (being true to oneself, finding one’s other half) or within society. The French Revolution and Napoleonic wars disappointed the optimistic certainties of the Enlightenment, demonstrating how easily good intentions can be perverted. Restoration Europe was about keeping everything on an even keel. It was in this fragile environment that Beethoven composed his immortal 9th Symphony. The otherworldly tones of the earlier movements are given meaning only in the final movement, when absolute music transcends itself and must be brought back down to earth with the help of Schiller’s poem An die Freude, a glorious celebration of mankind in an age already exhausted by such celebrations.
Beethoven’s music resonates with us because it embodies that tension between the rational and universalistic certainty of the Enlightenment and the emotional and individualistic anxiety of Romanticism. It speaks to our innermost hopes and struggles. It knows the pain of a love lost or a love never to be found. It conveys that eternal longing. It is a language that we each individually understand – and feel.
We are like the lone oboe in the final movement of the Eroica Symphony (m. 348), timid at our theme. But when the strings enter and repeat our theme, we find that there were others ready and willing to harmonize with us all along. And then, in the distance, with confidence the horns join in and urge us on – as if they were the voice of the Thunderer himself.
Like Beethoven, we are all hopeful romantics.
