Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Pieces Volume 1 Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770. His father was still employed as a singer in the...
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Pieces Volume 1
Ludwig van
Beethoven was born in Bonn
in 1770. His father was still employed as a singer in the chapel of the
Archbishop-Elector of Cologne,
of which his grandfather, after whom he was named, had served as Kapellmeister. The family was not a
happy one, with his mother always ready to reproach Beethoven's father with his
own inadequacies, his drunkenness and gambling, with the example of the old Kapellmeister held up as a standard of
competence that he was unable to match. In due course Beethoven followed family
example and entered the service of the court, as organist, harpsichordist and
string-player and his potential was such that he was sent by the Archbishop to Vienna for lessons with Mozart, only to be recalled to Bonn by the illness of
his mother. At her death he assumed responsibility for the family, the care of
his two younger brothers, with whose subsequent lives he interfered and the
management of whatever resources came to his father from the court.
In 1792
Beethoven returned to Vienna.
He had met Haydn in Bonn
and was now sent to take lessons from him. He was an impatient pupil and later
claimed to have learned nothing from Haydn. He profited, however, from lessons
with Albrechtsberger in counterpoint and with Salieri in Italian word-setting
and the introductions he brought with him from Bonn ensured a favourable reception from
leading members of the nobility. His patrons, over the years, acted towards him
with extraordinary forbearance and generosity, tolerating his increasing
eccentricities. These were accentuated by the onset of deafness at the turn of
the century and the necessity of abandoning his career as a virtuoso pianist in
favour of a concentration on composition.
During the
following 25 years Beethoven developed his powers as a composer. His early
compositions had reflected the influences of the age, but in the new century he
began to enlarge the inherent possibilities of classical forms. In his nine
symphonies he created works of such size and intensity as to present a serious challenge
to composers of later generations. Much the same might be said of his piano
sonatas, in which he took advantage of the new technical possibilities of the instrument,
which was now undergoing a number of changes. An increasing characteristic of
his writing was to be heard in his use of counterpoint, an element that some
contemporaries rejected as 'learned', and in notable innovations, some of
which, in contemporary terms, went beyond mere eccentricity.
Socially
Beethoven was isolated by his deafness. There were problems in the care of his
nephew Karl, after the death of the boy's father, bringing litigation with the
latter's mother. His loudly voiced political indiscretions were tolerated by
the authorities in the repressive years that followed Waterloo and he continued to enjoy the
support of friends, including his pupil Archduke Rudolph. In Vienna, in fact, he became an institution, at
the passing of which, in 1827, there was general mourning.
During the
course of his life Beethoven wrote a quantity of short piano pieces. Many of
these remained without an Opus number, their listing indicated as WoO, Works
without Opus Number, although they may have been published in the composer's
lifetime. The present collection of short pieces opens with the best known of
all, a Bagatelle in A minor, WoO 59, inscribed,
it once seemed, für Elise (for
Elise), but generally supposed to have been designed for Therèse Malfatti, whom
he had hoped to marry. She gave him no encouragement and the match was strongly
and understandably opposed by her parents. The little piece was completed in
1810, the year of Beethoven's rejection as a suitor. The piece is followed here
by a Bagatelle in B flat major, WoO 60,
written in 1818 and published in the Berliner
allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1824. The Allegretto quasi andante in G minor, WoO 61a, a brief contrapuntal
fragment, was written in 1825 and inscribed to the daughter of Dr Charles
Burney, Sarah Bumey Payne, who visited Beethoven in that year. Counterpoint
again plays a part in the Allegretto in B
minor, WoO 61, written in 1821. This was for the album of Ferdinand
Piringer, who became a close friend of Beethoven and served as assistant
conductor for the Concerts spirituels
at the Landhaussaal in Vienna.
Beethoven
wrote various sets of dances during his earlier years in Vienna. A sign of the esteem in which he was
soon held is to be seen in the commission to provide sets of dances for the
Redoutensaal ball of November 1795. The annual balls had been established in
1792, with dances specially composed by Haydn. In the following years there
were contributions from Kozeluch, the court composer, and in 1794 from Dittersdorf.
In 1795 Mozart's pupil Süssmayr provided music for the larger hall and
Beethoven for the smaller. These were sets of Twelve Minuets and the Twelve
Gennan Dances, WoO 8, the latter surviving only in the published
arrangement for piano in which they soon appeared. The set of Seven Landler, WoO 11 was probably written
in 1798, scored, presumably, for two violins and bass. It was published in a
piano version in Vienna
in the following year. All seven Landler
are in D major and end with a formal coda. A further set of Six Landler was completed in 1802 and
similarly scored, with a piano version appearing in Vienna in the same year. Once again the same
key of D major is generally preserved, with one dance in the minor.
The undated
Minuet in C major, with its contrasting
Trio, suggests music for the piano
rather than for the ballroom. The Six
Minuets, WoO 10 seem to date from 1795. Each minuet has its necessary trio and
the set makes a sequence of keys, C, G, E flat, B flat, D and C. The best known
of all these must be the famous Minuet in
G, familiar from generations of beginners at the keyboard. These dances
were presumably originally scored for other instruments, but survive only in a
piano version.
Beethoven
published various sets of Bagatelles,
the first set in 1803 and the last in 1825, two years before his death. The
undated Bagatelle in C major is a curiously
capricious little piece, with its imitative entries and sudden whimsical shifts
of key. It is here followed by the so-called Bagatelle in C minor marked Presto
and perhaps intended for the Sonata in C
minor, Opus 10, No.1. It was probably written in 1795 and is here coupled
with a C major Allegretto, WoO 56, seemingly
dated to 1803 but making a plausible foil to the companion piece, leading some
to suggest it as intended also for the same sonata. Two further short pieces
follow, in C and E flat major respectively. The final Allegretto in C minor, WoO 53 seems to have represented a further
attempt at an additional movement for the Sonata
in C minor. It has been dated to the years 1796 or 1797.
Keith Anderson