Beethoven,

 Beethoven was born in Germany around the year 1770, he had many siblings and most of them died as infants.  Beethoven just like Mozart was fortunate enough to be born into a musical family.  Both his father and grandfather were employed as musicians in the court of the elector in Bonn Germany.  This gave Beethoven a head start in the musical field.  As we all know Beethoven was a great composer, but wasn’t very successful during his lifetime in the music field, but as we all know him now, we can say he had a God given gift.  Many of us might know the Moonlight Sonata written by Beethoven which was originally called Sonata quasi una Fantasia, but we might not know who it was written for and the purpose it was written.  This sonata will tie in with the thesis that some scholars believe Beethoven was the composer that bridged the gap between the classical and the romantic period.
 It was Beethoven’s biographer Wilhelm von Lenz who first divided Beethoven’s output into three periods.  “A first formative period ending around 1802, a second period lasting until around 1812 and a third period from 1813 to 1827 (Grove).” As this biographer has stated Beethoven’s music was separated into three periods, in which I believe he started his romantic music composing during the second period. The first period consists entirely of chamber music, most of it based on his own instrument, the piano.  All of his pieces seem to occupy his attention to the style of the 18th century.  His content has a warmth of a family the way Haydn and Mozart portrayed in their music, but it was coarser and more blunt.
The second period may be said to begin in the piano music with two sonatas quasi una fantasia and the Fourth Piano Concerto.  Beethoven is now concerned on showing the greater detail and the logical implications of every note apart from the norm.  In the first period he was concerned on showing how it could fit into the 18th century now he deviates from that.  Out of all the composers Beethoven is most unlikely to repeat himself because he creates an infinite variety of stress and accent, and so each movement is created this way.
Lastly we have the third period which is a growing thought combined with an increasingly wider range of harmony and texture.  Of course these periods are important to know but for the purpose of this paper I will stick to the short description given.  The reason I wanted to expose these three periods is because Beethoven had such a unique way of being, and acting, that it comes out through his work.  Beethoven was a changing man and so was his music.  He went through different stages in his life, and always wrote great music.  Beethoven was not famous or admired for his music during his lifetime but in the years after his death people realized how great he really was.
Beethoven came into existence because he had to serve a purpose; the purpose was to start the bridging of the two periods.  I believe this started with his love life, which began with Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.  He loved her but was not allowed to marry her because of his social ranking.  “Beautiful young Giulietta, Countess Buicciardi, took Viennese society by storm.  She became Beethoven’s pupil and he fell in love with her.  The match was, of course, hopeless because of the difference in their ranks (Beethoven 98).”  Sonata quasi una Fantasia which started his second period of music was written for this Countess.  Beethoven was not much of a materialist, he didn’t want fame and glory, he loved music and it was his life and passion.  In 1801 he composed this piece for the Countess, and later was said to have proposed marriage to her.  Her father opposed because Beethoven was a man not worthy of his daughter, he was without rank, money, or permanent employment.  This is a real tragedy in Beethoven’s life.  He loved her and she loved him and they were not allowed to be together because of his social ranking.  This form of power over that takes part in his life, was unfair for him.  Just like we have learned in class we see the big man with money having power, and gets whatever he pleases.
We see the father having the power over, and Beethoven having the power relations.  Writing a piece of music to a young lady and capturing her heart and her entire being to love him was the power relations he had.  He had the power in his mind to write such a beautiful piece and capture her heart.  Then the big bad wolf that has no power relations but has the power over takes away his daughter and does not give her hand in marriage to Beethoven.  Of course the power over dominates.  Just like I emphasized before I believe this was the beginning of the romantic period in Beethoven’s music.  The romantic period only starts around the years 1820 but in 1801 this was the beginning of the romantic period in Beethoven’s life as a musician.
 The New Grove Beethoven written by Joseph Kerman and Alan Tyson has to say something that is so true. “He was neither good-looking nor equipped with more than a very rudimentary education; it was by the force of his character that he produced such a powerful effect on those around him (138).” Many people liked Beethoven not for his good looks or impressive education but because of his character. The character that Beethoven possessed was what helped him to be who he was.  He had a forceful attitude which gave him the courage to compose his romantic pieces, which was beginning to fill this gap between the classical and the romantic period.
Beethoven ended up never being married but was said to have proposed to a few women.  His first proposal of course was to the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.  She got married to Count Gallenberg and Beethoven seems to have remembered her only with anger and disgust which was one factor that I believe played out in his life as he made the transition between the classical and the romantic period.  The feelings that kept on persisting in his heart for different women at different stages of his life affected his musical composition.  It was a major factor in his musical writing, having intimate feelings for different women kept the fire of love burning that made him write such romantic pieces.  This is the way his romantic music came into existence through the power over he possessed from the relationships he had.  Most of the relationships Beethoven was involved in came to an end because of family problems, such as the father not liking him mainly because of his social rank.
Beethoven was very poetic and in a book called Impressions by his Contemporaries  Ludwig Rellstab says “ ‘Have you received my poems?’... ‘I like them very much, and when I am well I expect to set some of them to music (186).’”  From this example we can see that Beethoven used every form he could to write his music.  This made him very popular with family and friends that inspired his pieces.  Because he wrote pieces inspired by family and friends he was very favored, which I believe is one reason why he was accepted to write romantic music.
Vincent D’Indy in his book Beethoven records a conversation between Franz Liszt and Councilor Wilhelm von Lenz, he says “Three Beethovens: the child, the man, the god (pg. 2)” Beethoven’s career started out with a few insignificant variations, and closed with the most powerful five quartets.  To many people who are musicians and love classical and romantic music Beethoven is a god.  He had a God given gift.  It is not natural for someone to compose the most powerful creations of their life when they are deaf, and to have the rest of the world after them hear it for centuries and admire its beauty.  The passion that Beethoven had in his heart was music.  He loved music and he loved lots of women.  One interesting fact is that we see three Beethoven’s and we see three periods of music in his life.  For each Beethoven there is one period.  Throughout his life he matured, first he was a child and wrote insignificant pieces (for him they were insignificant).  Then he turned into a man and had feelings for women and had a passion to write music.  He wrote for women because that is what pleased him.  Then we have Beethoven as the god, during the last seven years of his life he wrote beautiful pieces that made him a god.  He turned into a god during the last seven years of his life, even though he lived a short life, he matured into his final stage being experienced and having the age.  Having these qualities Beethoven didn’t need his hearing because the music was in his heart, he felt it, dreamed it, and lived it.  It wasn’t about hearing the music it was feeling it that counted, which was a quality that no other musician possessed during his time.
Beethoven hated his life when he was deaf.  In an article that I found in the Grove Dictionary of Music Beethoven said “I must confess that I am living a miserable life.  For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf.  If I had any other profession it would be easier, but in my profession it is a terrible handicap (Beethoven).”  Just as he has realized he has been censored.  He knows that people are going to think bad about a musician that is deaf so he already took the punishment upon himself and censored himself.  He knows what people will think, he knows the power relations involved.  People might not say a word to him but the stress and tension that builds up from being deaf, and other people judging him because of a handicap is unbearable.  The power relations that we see in this example shows us that Beethoven knew his social ranking and if he revealed this to the world it would be even more pain for him to bear.  He tried solving the problem by not attending any social gatherings for two years.
The social construction of knowledge throughout Beethoven’s career was constructed not through domination as we have seen in the previous paragraphs but through small compositions that gradually grew to become more and more well known.  Beethoven’s music was a response of what was in his heart and the passion he felt.  This is why the music he wrote is still alive today; there is passion and feeling in his music.  At this point of his life the music couldn’t come from his hearing it had to come from the spirit, because that is how he heard the music.  A man named Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee went to visit Beethoven and this is what he had to say “He is a most unusual man.  Great thoughts float through his mind which he can only express through music.  Words are not at his command.  His whole culture is very neglected and, apart from his art, he is rough but honest and without pretensions.  He says straight out what is on his mind (Beethoven 135).”  I believe that what Xaver had to say was the truth and that is why today he is known as the composer bridging the gap between the classical and the romantic period.  He wasn’t afraid to expose what was in his heart even if it would not of been accepted.  The courage he had to expose himself was what started the beginning of this bridge between the two periods.
In his book The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven Glenn Stanley says “even before his hearing began to deteriorate, many witnesses to his playing were struck by its roughness; others emphasized its nobility of spirit (pg. 16).”  When scholars say that Beethoven bridged the gap between the classical and the romantic period, I think that Beethoven was one of the few that were brave enough to start adding color to his music.  One of the characteristics of the classical period is the emphasis on clarity, balance and form.  On the other hand we have the Romantic period which has very loud and contrasting dynamics, has color, texture, and is either descriptive or expressive.  When Beethoven went deaf during the last years of his life, he couldn’t hear what it sounded like, but he could feel the music in his body.  He had love in him and he wanted to express it, and the best way he could do it was through his music.  He was brave enough to go against the clarity and balance of classical music, he gave it all he had, Crescendo’s Pianissimo’s and Forte’s.  He felt the vibrating of the drums in his body, the silence of the flutes and the uniformity of the orchestra.  Beethoven was talented, and had a God given gift.  He was not afraid of his music, he was proud of it.  He wanted it to be loud and attractive.  He wanted people to get aroused at his music, music was his life and he tried the best he could to make his audience feel what he felt, and the best way he could do this was through the type of music he composed.
At the time when he started out loving Guiletta Guicciardi he had strong feelings of arousal, passion, and love.  This is what he also put in his music, he is such a good composer at making the audience feel what he is feeling that most critics notice that about his music first.  Beethoven’s music is rough, loud, blunt, and never repetitive, which has to do with the lifestyle he lived.  The knowledge that he created through his music will stay around for ever.  The power over that was always against him never got him down, he resisted to the power that was pushed on him.  He wasn’t going to let his social ranking determine his inner self, he knew who he was inside and people just had to accept him the way he was on the social ladder.
As Beethoven became completely deaf during the last seven years of his life a couple family members also died, and he had terrible heartache’s because of it.  As Glenn Stanley writes in his book Beethoven  we can see that in his ninth symphony “you are struck at once, as if by force of destiny, with the long sustained perfect fifths with which the first movement begins:  these sounds, which played such a spectral role in my earliest impressions of music, came to me as the ghostly fundamental of my own life (239).”  All of the music that we hear in the ninth symphony is because of the love and pain he felt in his heart.  No one does such a job as Beethoven by accenting every note to make you feel his pain.  Beethoven was starting to get some recognition by the end of his life, and was getting power over in the social sense.  People realized that he was a great composer and a master of music and gave him respect for that.  Nothing more then music mattered to him, he couldn’t hear, but he could feel it.  He felt the power of his own music through his body.
Later other composers started to feel the music of Beethoven and realized the passion, love, and power there was in his music.  I realize now why scholars say that Beethoven bridged the gap between the two periods.  It bridged the gap that gave other composers the courage to move on the way he did.  It was seen as deviant to move away from the uniformity of classical music, and be blunt, loud, and furious in your music.  Beethoven was seen as deviant because of his romantic compositions.  But the power of romance that he felt within him was censored and not realized until after his death.  He lived a miserable life during the last seven years of his life, because of the handicap that he possessed, but more then that he loved his music and that kept him going.
All of us know Beethoven as a great composer which he was, and we might know him because of his music.  But now we see that there was more to him then meets the eye.  He was a deviant, with no social ranking, no wife, and no career.  During his lifetime he was nothing until the later part of his life.  But look at the way we know him now.  He was a genius, and like many believe he was a god of music.  He had something that no one could of taken away from him, not even his hearing, his passion of music was with him everywhere he went.  Girls were taken away, family members were taken away, and even his hearing was taken away.  But his mind could never stop composing.  The power over that challenged him during his whole life was because of his social class.  Beethoven was not given a fair chance in life to be what he could have been.  But I believe he would be proud to see how we look at him now.  Beethoven was a genius that was not recognized during his time, but has written some of the most original pieces of work that can never be copied, and will never be forgotten.  He was great, and his music was wonderful.