How Beethoven Revolutionized Classical Music

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin. You're watching LivingPianos.com and today, how Beethoven revolutionized classical music. And that's not an overstatement. If you listen to all the composers before Beethoven and then after Beethoven, there's a quantum shift in classical music globally and Beethoven was singularly responsible for so much of it. Let's break it down for you a bit here.

So fundamentally, the things that really, really stand out in what Beethoven did that Mozart, Haydn and other classical era and earlier composers didn't do was number one, he expanded the form and he also did things with surprises, notably deceptive cadences, subito pianos. Let's break it down and start with the expansion of the form. If you look at most Mozart and Haydn sonatas, there are three movement works or even some two movement works. Well, Beethoven certainly has many, many three movement piano sonatas, string quartets, but also four movement works became really the norm, particularly in his later works, adding the minuet and trio third movement.

That's an obvious way the form was expanded, but there's another way that's really instrumental that I believe has a lot to do with the emotionalism that Beethoven achieved that romantic composers built upon and that is expanding the forms themselves. Not just how many movements, but within the movements, the first movement of most sonatas, string quartets and other works are in that classical sonata allegro form, which you know has a big repeated first section followed by the development section and here is where Beethoven, what he did with the development section is pretty unbelievable.

Particularly in his later works, they took on epic proportions, but what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to play the development section from a late Mozart sonata and contrast it with the development section of an early Beethoven sonata and listen how much further Beethoven goes. I'm going to start with a Mozart sonata in C minor, K 457. This is the development that's right after the first repeat section in the first movement and listen to this and by the way, this sonata being in a minor key, Mozart has a lot of fire, a vocative of Beethoven.

And this is where it goes back to the first theme, the recapitulation.

So that's the development and that's a pretty substantial development for a Mozart sonata, but we're going to switch gears now and we're going to go to Beethoven sonata, the Opus 14 number 2 and this is relatively early sonata and it's going to be the development section of this G major sonata and listen how much further he goes in this development section. I think you're going to be really surprised.

We're not done yet.

And finally back to the first theme, the recapitulation.

Can you believe how much further Beethoven takes the development section in this early sonata? Listen to the Appassionata Sonata or the Opus 110 or any of the later sonatas and you will not even believe how far he takes the development sections of his works, all his works, not just his pianos sonatas.

So what else does Beethoven have? Well he has surprises galore in store for you and one of them is the utilizing deceptive cadence. Now what is a deceptive cadence? Well you heard one there and I'm going to play for you again but first I just want to explain what a deceptive cadence is and basically it's when it goes somewhere you don't expect. So for example, how about if it went here, here, here, here, here, here, instead? You would not expect that in a million years would you? So that is deceptive cadence and you heard one just a moment ago. I'm going to play the beginning of that development section again and when I get to the deceptive cadence you're going to go, oh of course.

Out of left field you would not expect that A flat major chord there. It just shocks you, makes you jump out of your seat.

Now Mozart, he'd set you up and you'd think you know where it's going to go and it would just go to a slightly better place and it was just like oh yeah I thought it would go there but it was almost a little bit better. It was like there's a perfection to it whereas Beethoven he just no holds barred, boom he just takes you to a whole new world. He just shocks you and knocks you out of your seat and he does this again and again. Listen the development of the opus 10 number three Beethoven Sonata.

You would never expect it. You're starting a D minor and suddenly you're in B flat major. Where did this come from? Beethoven knows how to surprise you. Now it's not just with deceptive cadences. Another thing that is a trademark of Beethoven is the use of subito piano. More than that but what does that mean? Suddenly soft. A lot of times you have a crescendo and suddenly drops it out. So you think you're going somewhere.

So listen for example this is the same Sonata the third movement, the middle of the third movement.

Opus 10 number three once again.

Here the subito piano right at the end and also earlier on you'll hear this again and again in Beethoven. As a matter of fact even in the famous Moonlight Sonata listen I'm going to start in the middle here.

There's two places where there's a crescendo to a piano and you must not water this down and think oh Beethoven he meant he didn't mean that. No he meant it and when you do it listen to what it does to the sound even in the lyrical movement like this.

There's one.

There's another one.

So the use of surprises in Beethoven surprising you with his harmony, surprising you with his dynamics and more than that expanding the form itself so that the development sections go so much further they become whole entities in two of them. So Beethoven's genius is not just the genius of Beethoven himself. This is the genius of Beethoven and really what helped usher in the romantic era with composers like Schumann and Mendelssohn and Brahms. None of these composers would have been the same had Beethoven not carved this new path from the classical forms bringing in the emotionalism of the romantic era.

Here's LivingPianos.com your online piano resource. Thank you all for joining me.

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