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I devoted most of a whole class to talking

about Beethoven's influences, but we
have only a few minutes to talk about the
truly immense influence he had.
It is still felt in a meaningful way
today.
From 1795 to 1822, over the course of 32 works,
Beethoven transformed
the sonata.
At the beginning, it was the product of an
enormously effective, but rather
straightforward, model.
By the end, he had evolved it
into something so much more free-form and
flexible,
the model had become obsolete, or at the
very least simply not the point any more.
And the terrific problem for composers who
come after him lies therein.
His works are too great and his
personality too powerful to ignore,
and yet it is precisely his own greatness and the power
of
his personality that are holding these
late works together.
Which means, unlike music that is in some
way
the product of a system, that they are
inimitable.
The tale end of Beethoven's life turns out
of have been not only a huge
turning point in the history of music, but
a moment of an amazing creative flowering.
It isn't really possible to know if this
was strictly a coincidence
perhaps Beethoven was a massive
inspiration, or perhaps
genius simply comes along when it comes
along.
Beethoven died in 1827.
Schubert died only one year later, at the
age of 31,
and bizarre as it may sound, it may well
be that this year,
the one after the death of Beethoven, is the one that produced
the highest concentration of
great works ever written.
This means Schubert's string quintet, Schwanengesang
and countless other leider, the fantasy
for piano
four-hands, and the final three piano
sonatas.
Even if it were average music, this volume
of production would be highly impressive.
Given the indescribable quality and the
visionary
nature of these works, it becomes simply
unimaginable.
Schubert knew Beethoven's works very well.

In fact, the String Quartet, Opus 131, is

apparently the last music
he heard, maybe even at his
own request, and Schubert is
perhaps the only composer in history
who had the right combination of
training, stubborn individuality, and
genius to
have been able to take these late works as a point of reference
and be
inspired rather than stifled by them.
Schubert's last sonatas are not the
subject of this course,
and they could easily fill a course of
this length,
but it is worth noting the influence of
Beethoven within them.
The last movement of the second of
Schubert's trinity, the A major Sonata,
D. 959, is modeled after the finale
of Beethoven's Opus 31, Number 1
not a late work, of course.
And when I say modeled, I mean modeled.
When Beethoven transfers the theme from
the right
hand to the left, Schubert does so as
well.
When Beethoven introduces a subsidiary
voice in triplets, Schubert follows suits.
Beethoven gives this gentle allegretto
movement a boisterous presto coda,
which is exactly how Schubert brings his
work to a close.
And more radically, Beethoven precedes
this coda by
having the main theme break down into
fragments
separated by lengthy rests.
Even this Schubert imitates precisely.
And yet, not one single note of the work
sounds like anything but Schubert.
His voice was so strong and his ideas
about structure were so idiosyncratic, he
could afford to
hew to Beethoven phrase by phrase.
Anyone else who tried would have been
forced to simultaneously try to adopt
Beethoven's voice,
which would have doomed them to failure.
Schubert, who is the last great composer
who in any way deserves the moniker "Classical,"
is exactly one generation
younger than Beethoven, born in 1797.
He's really the only great, truly great
composer born
in the years leading up to the 19th
century.
Fifteen years later, however, there is an
extraordinary
concentration of masters born at the same

time:
Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner,
Verdi, and Liszt.
All of them are born, amazingly, between 1809 and 1813.
Which means that each of them was coming
of age just exactly at the time of the death of
Beethoven.
It also means that they were coming of age
just
as diatonicism was being seriously
threatened for the first time,
as the Classical style's rubber band was
being perilously stretched
all of this, naturally, is
thanks to Beethoven,
if "thanks" is the word. [LAUGH]
Some of those composers,
certainly Verdi, come out of
different traditions.
But others, in particular Mendelssohn and
Schumann, are in
very clear-cut ways heirs to Mozart,
Beethoven, and Schubert.
Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin are, I
would argue,
the greatest composers of piano music after Beethoven
and
Schubert and before at least Brahms.
Each, amazingly though, mostly abandoned
the piano sonata,
the form in which Beethoven was most prolific.
Mendelssohn wrote hundreds of works for
the piano, many of which
have entered the repertoire, and yet only three piano
sonatas which absolutely have not entered
it.
One of these, the E major, Opus 6, is
clearly modeled on,
or at the very least inspired by,
Beethoven's Opus 101,
of which it is such a pallid echo,
one can hardly hear Mendelssohn's voice in it at
all, much less Beethoven's.
Schumann wrote three sonatas, all with
truly wonderful things in them,
but even a lover of his music as fervent as I am
would have to admit that
each of these works is either flawed
or at least limited, and reveals a certain formal awkwardness.
There's just this slightest sense of a
child wearing his parent's clothing.
It's not just that they are too big for
him, they're too old for him.
In Schumann's hands, and in Mendelssohn's,
the piano sonata begins to feel like a
past number,
a sense one never gets listening to
Schumann's greatest piano works.
It is interesting and perhaps revealing that
Schumann's fantasy, which was

initially called
a sonata in the planning stages, is
by contrast so formally unrestrained,
individual, expressive,
it's as if even the word "sonata" itself was
a problematic one for Schumann
and he felt liberated as
soon as he could let go of it.
Chopin did write two truly great piano
sonatas,
but not only do they represent a tiny
fraction of his output,
one of them is the piece that Schumann referred to as "the four
unruly children."
Even Beethoven, in his late period, would have
questioned whether it was
appropriately titled.
And the other Chopin sonata, while
outwardly more traditional,
does not really rely on traditional sources
of drama.
After hundreds of listenings to the piece,
I still can't even really locate its first
movement's recapitulation.
Nominally, it's a sonata form, but the
form itself means little to it.
The work thrives because of the beauty and
the interest in the material,
phrase by phrase, rather than because of
its structure,
whereas even the last works of Beethoven
are always
deeply concerned with structure, no matter
how unconventional
those structures might in fact be.
In short, it is interesting that...
you know, the "Beethoven influence" is
incessantly
talked about, yet in honesty, while it would be wrong to call it a
negative influence given that it's spawned
such creativity,
it was, in a sense, a destructive
influence.
Put another way, Beethoven advanced the
forms he worked in
to a point where their total destruction
was probably inevitable
if music was going to remain vibrant.
As we come to the end of this class, what
strikes me is
not just how much more ground there is to
cover with the Beethoven sonatas,
but how different ground could have moved
us in different directions.
Every time I made the decision to focus on
one sonata,
one movement rather than another, it moved
the discussion in one direction.
Focusing on another sonata might
equally

have moved it in another direction.

This is not true of other composers, and
it is really the reason why
we are sitting here, talking about, playing,
grappling
with Beethoven, almost two centuries after
his death.
He is all-encompassing.
In terms of his skill, the emotional terrain
represented in his music, and the
legacy
positive, negative, and otherwise that he
leaves,
he has more to say about humanity than
any artist whose work I know.
Let's take a short break for a review
question.
It's been a very great pleasure to share
this little corner of Beethoven with you.
And I would be absolutely delighted if
some of you might use it as a springboard
to discover not just the other sonatas,
but the rest of his music,
string quartets above all.
I can guarantee you, based on my own
experience, that
this relationship with Beethoven, like
most good relationships, is one
that becomes ever more fruitful the deeper
you go into it.
I wish you as much joy in the discovery of
this music
as I have had in it, and as I have had in
the teaching of this course.
Thank you very much for sharing in it with
me.
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