An Outline of The History of Western Music Grout ... - The Reel Score

c) improvisatory character of some passages give some idea of his actual
improvisations at the piano
d) importance placed on Fugal textures gives his late style a universal quality
1: from his reverence for J.S. Bach
2: contemplative habits during his last 10 yrs
e) utilized new sonorities and form in his last works - 2 of last sonatas & quartets
retain the external scheme of 4 movements but the rest dispense with even this
bow to tradition
3. Missa Solemnis
a) like Bach's B-minor Mass it is too long and elaborate for ordinary liturgical use
b) choral treatment owes something to Handel (whose music Beethoven revered)
c) it is a planned musical unit - a symphony in five movements, one on each of the
five principal divisions of the Ordinary of the Mass
4. 9th Symphony
a) firs performed on May 7, 1824
b) most striking innovation is its use of chorus and solo voices in the finale
F. Summary
1. A pivotal figure - the last Classical // the first Romantic - his earlier works look back to
the Classical period while his later works look forward to the Romantic period (1830
-1900)
2. his late works were so personal, that they could hardly be imitated - his influence on
later composers resulted mostly from works of his middle period - especially the
Rasumovsky Quartets & the 5th, 6th, & 7th symphonies & the piano sonatas
3. the revolutionary element, the free, impulsive, mysterious, demonic spirit, the
underlying conception of music as a mode of self expression is what fascinated the
Romantic generation
4. Beethoven was one of the great disruptive forces in the history of music - after him,
nothing could ever be the same - he opened the gateway to a new world
II. Romanticism & 19th Century Orchestral Music
A. Background
1. Classic & Romantic are rough and imprecise labels - like Renaissance & Baroque -
the terms are used to define chronological boundaries and to give us starting points
for discussing the music of these periods
2. the two are not entirely contradictory
a) the historical continuity between the two cultural movements is greater than any
contrast
b) the great bulk of music written between 1770 & 1900 lies on a continuum
employing common conventions of harmonic progression, rhythm, & form
c) the Romantic in music is not so much a collection of style traits as a state of mind
that enabled composers to seek individual paths for expressing intense emotions
d) composers respected conventions of form and tonal relationships up to point - but
their imaginations drove them to trespass limits and to explore new realms of
sound
3. Musical orientations
a) some 19th century writers considered instrumental music the ideal Romantic art
because being free form the burden of words it could perfectly communicate pure
emotion - while an aria is limited by its text and can only express the feelings that