Schubert: "Chi potrà fare di più dopo Beethoven.."

"Chi potrà fare di più dopo Beethoven"...

"Who can ever do anything after Beethoven?"...

Peter Franz Schubert (1797-1828), compositore Austriaco.

"Beethoven è la retorica della nostra anima, Wagner il suo sentire, Schumann forse il pensiero: Mozart è di più, è la forma..." -

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), poeta, scrittore e drammaturgo austriaco.

Beethoven, 1820 | Joseph Karl Stieler (1781-1858)

A Beethoven of the 13-year-old by an unknown Bonn master, c. 1783

"Il moralismo di Beethoven in musica: è l'eterno inno di lode a Rousseau, agli antichi francesi e a Schiller".

"Si trasformi l'Inno alla Gioia di Beethoven in un quadro e non si rimanga indietro con l'immaginazione, quando i milioni si prosternano rabbrividendo nella polvere: così ci si potrà avvicinare al Dionisiaco. Ai colpi di scalpello dell'artista cosmico dionisiaco risuona il grido dei misteri eleusini: "Vi prosternate milioni? Senti il creatore, mondo?" - La nascita della tragedia". -

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1844-1900, filosofo tedesco.

Beethoven 1803 | Christian Hornemann 1765-1844

"You can’t have any idea what it’s like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!" -

"Non puoi immaginare cosa significhi sentire sempre un gigante del genere marciare dietro di te!" -

Johannes Brahms

Beethoven, 1804 | Joseph Willibrord Mähler (1778-1860)

"[In Beethoven’s music] the dreamer will recognise his dreams, the sailor his storms, and the wolf his forests" -

"[Nella musica di Beethoven] il sognatore riconoscerà i suoi sogni, il marinaio le sue tempeste, il lupo le sue foreste" -

Victor Hugo, French author

Beethoven, 1812 | Life mask | Franz von Stuck 1863-1928

"Mark my words, the world will hear from that young man" -

"Ricorda le mie parole, il mondo sentirà parlare di quel giovane" -

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer

Beethoven - Joseph Willibrord Mähler 1778-1860

Excerption from "Untimely Meditations" by Friedrich Nietzsche:

"Before Wagner’s time, music for the most part moved in narrow limits: it concerned itself with the permanent states of man, or with what the Greeks call ethos.

And only with Beethoven did it begin to find the language of pathos, of passionate will, and of the dramatic occurrences in the souls of men.

Formerly, what people desired was to interpret a mood, a stolid, merry, reverential, or penitential state of mind, by means of music; the object was, by means of a certain striking uniformity of treatment and the prolonged duration of this uniformity, to compel the listener to grasp the meaning of the music and to impose its mood upon him.

To all such interpretations of mood or atmosphere, distinct and particular forms of treatment were necessary: others were established by convention.

The question of length was left to the discretion of the musician, whose aim was not only to put the listener into a certain mood, but also to avoid rendering that mood monotonous by unduly protracting it.

Beethoven 1900 - Franz von Stuck 1863-1928

A further stage was reached when the interpretations of contrasted moods were made to follow one upon the other, and the charm of light and shade was discovered; and yet another step was made when the same piece of music was allowed to contain a contrast of the ethos - for instance, the contest between a male and a female theme.

All these, however, are crude and primitive stages in the development of music.

The fear of passion suggested the first rule, and the fear of monotony the second; all depth of feeling and any excess thereof were regarded as “unethical”.

Once, however, the art of the ethos had repeatedly been made to ring all the changes on the moods and situations which convention had decreed as suitable, despite the most astounding resourcefulness on the part of its masters, its powers were exhausted.

Beethoven was the first to make music speak a new language - till then forbidden - the language of passion; but as his art was based upon the laws and conventions of the ETHOS, and had to attempt to justify itself in regard to them, his artistic development was beset with peculiar difficulties and obscurities.

An inner dramatic factor - and every passion pursues a dramatic course - struggled to obtain a new form, but the traditional scheme of “mood music” stood in its way, and protested - almost after the manner in which morality opposes innovations and immorality.

Beethoven at Golden gate Park, San Francisco | Henry Baerer

It almost seemed, therefore, as if Beethoven had set himself the contradictory task of expressing pathos in the terms of the ethos.

This view does not, however, apply to Beethoven’s latest and greatest works; for he really did succeed in discovering a novel method of expressing the grand and vaulting arch of passion.

He merely selected certain portions of its curve; imparted these with the utmost clearness to his listeners, and then left it to them to divine its whole span.

Viewed superficially, the new form seemed rather like an aggregation of several musical compositions, of which every one appeared to represent a sustained situation, but was in reality but a momentary stage in the dramatic course of a passion.

The listener might think that he was hearing the old “mood” music over again, except that he failed to grasp the relation of the various parts to one another, and these no longer conformed with the canon of the law.

Even among minor musicians, there flourished a certain contempt for the rule which enjoined harmony in the general construction of a composition and the sequence of the parts in their works still remained arbitrary.

Then, owing to a misunderstanding, the discovery of the majestic treatment of passion led back to the use of the single movement with an optional setting, and the tension between the parts thus ceased completely.

That is why the symphony, as Beethoven understood it, is such a wonderfully obscure production, more especially when, here and there, it makes faltering attempts at rendering Beethoven’s pathos.

The means ill befit the intention, and the intention is, on the whole, not sufficiently clear to the listener, because it was never really clear, even in the mind of the composer.

But the very injunction that something definite must be imparted, and that this must be done as distinctly as possible, becomes ever more and more essential, the higher, more difficult, and more exacting the class of work happens to be".

Andy Warhol 1928-1987