Ludwig Van Beethoven's Most Important Works

Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most influential and significant composers in the history of Western music. His symphonies have shaped every subsequent generation of composers, (Kelly 2013) including Louis-Hector Berlioz who was born one year after Beethoven performed his Symphonie No2 in D major.

Beethoven was a pioneer, and his symphonies were responsible for the transition from the Classical style of structure, form, orchestration, and melodic development to the Romantic style, full of possibility, characterized by emotion and impact. (Kelly 2013) Each subsequent symphony pushed the orchestras technically, “left audiences further behind” (Classical Music (BBC Music Magazine 2015), and was met with little enthusiasm. Yet, even while Beethoven was alive, there was a growing appreciation for his symphonies.

Hector Berlioz further pushed the Romantic style with larger orchestras, storytelling, and intense emotion. He criticized and characterized as radical, but his work subsequently influenced generations of Romantic composers. (Kelly 2013).

Beethoven had already started to lose his hearing when started working on his 5th symphony in the summer of 1804. Considered one of the most popular symphonies in the world, Beethoven didn’t finish it until 1808, during which time he worked on several operas and commissioned pieces. (Kelly 2013) Having revealed he was losing his hearing in the fall of 1801, and famously writing “I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crush my completely,” in a letter to letter to F G Wegeler (Wagner 1999), the opening movement has been called the ‘Fate motif”, the musical interpretation of ‘fate knocking on the door.’ His 5th symphony seems to present a large-scale narrative, with struggle and a progression of emotion from the “opening in C minor to the triumphant C-major coda of the last movement.” (NPR 2006)

For Hector Berlioz, Beethoven, “opened before me a new world of music, as Shakespeare had revealed a new universe of poetry.” (Kelly 2013) Having abandoned his studies in medicine to give his “body and soul to music” (Cairnns 1999), Berlioz went on to study music at the Paris Conservatoire. He premiered his Symphonie fantastique, a self-portrait of ‘an artist in the making’ and his destructive desire for beautiful women, on December 5th, 1830 at the Conservatoire to mixed reviews. (Kelly 2013)

In the early classical period, symphony was a rather unimportant genre of instrumental music. An introduction or interlude to theatrical works, it held the position of what we would now call an overture. (Libin 2019) Haydn and Mozart took the style and ran, with the former writing 108 symphonies in 50 years, and the latter writing 41 in 25 years. (imslp.org) Where Haydn and Mozart ran, Beethoven flew. Despite writing only 9 symphonies during his career, Beethoven's symphonies paved the way for all future symphonies, and are still regarded as some of the genre's greatest works.

The symphony is a four-movement work with the structure fast-slow-minuet-fast. The movements also have their own individual structures, with the first movement typically written in sonata-allegro form, the second movement written as theme and variations, the third as a minuet and trio, and the last as a rondo. (Kelly 2013) Both Beethoven and Berlioz deviated from the standard structure in Symphony 5 in C minor, and in Symphonie Fantastique, respectively. In Beethoven's fifth, he replaces the minute of the third movement with a lively scherzo and uses a sonata-allegro form for the final movement. (Kelly 2013) In Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, he replaces the minuet with a march, adds waltz between the first and second movements, and the last movement doesn't fall into any standard structure, instead of combining multiple contrapuntal techniques to create the image of a funeral twisted into a witches' sabbath. (Kelly 2013) Both symphonies are connected by a single theme, with the four-note 'fate' motif appearing in every movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony, and an idée fixe appearing in each movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.

Beethoven and Berlioz both took that initial orchestra and expanded upon it: in his fifth symphony, Beethoven calls for three trombones, a contrabassoon. and a piccolo flute to be added to the orchestra for the last movement, claiming in a letter to Count Franz von Oppersdorff that, '[They] will make more noise than six drums, and better noise.' (Altmann, n. d.) In Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz calls for a massive orchestra, even by today's standards. Performing the piece takes a minimum of 30 violins, 10 violas, 11 cellos, and 9 basses; alongside two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, a serpent (an instrument that was used to accompany church music at the time), four horns, two cornets, two trumpets, three trombones, two ophicleides (a predecessor to the modern tuba), four harps, and a massive percussion section. This helps him achieve a wide variety of textures and colors. (Cone, 49) (Kelly, 275).