Beethoven grew up with the new idea of pianoforte music. The pianoforte presented to him in Bonn by Graf Waldstein was probably of the light-toned Viennese make; but as early as 1796 he came in touch with English pianos on a concert trip to Berlin and other cities. In 1803 he came into possession of an Érard, through the generosity of one of his Viennese patrons, Prince Lichnowsky. It never wholly pleased him. His wish was for one of the heavy sonorous English pianos. In 1817 it was fulfilled. Thomas Broadwood sent him an exceptionally powerful and fine one from his establishment in London, in token of admiration. The Érard was given away, the last colossal sonatas were composed. Even after this piano had outworn its usefulness Beethoven kept it by him. Even after he received a piano especially made for him by a Viennese maker named Graf, strung with four strings to a note in consideration of his deafness, he retained his Broadwood. Both were side by side in his room at the Schwarzspanierhaus when he died.
III
Beethoven developed his technique with the aim of drawing the utmost sonority and variety from the pianoforte. His demands on the instrument were far beyond the capabilities of the Viennese pianos. Streicher, who married Stein’s daughter and carried on the business of the firm in Vienna, exerted his ingenuity constantly to improve his pianos according to the demands of Beethoven, finally gave over the ideal of lightness of action and of tone, largely through Beethoven’s influence. Beethoven left the harpsichord far behind him. He conceived his sonatas for an instrument of vastly greater possibilities. He filled them with passages of chords, of double notes, of powerful arpeggio figures surging from low registers to high, all combined by the pedal, in the use of which he was a great innovator. He refused allegiance to the old ideal of distinctness to which Hummel, Mozart’s pupil, was still loyal, that he might be free when he chose to deal with great masses of sound. The quality of his genius has, of course, much to do with this; but the massiveness which, among other things, distinguishes his pianoforte sonatas from those of Mozart and Haydn is in no little measure due to a new idea of the instrument, which had been born of the possibilities of the English pianofortes, not inherited from the harpsichord. He concerned himself with a new range of effects beyond the powers of his two great predecessors. He found in the pianoforte an instrument fit to express huge ideas and powerful emotions. Of such, therefore, he was free to compose his sonatas.
Such works were not, we may be sure, written for the practice of his pupils, as so many of Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas had been. Most of them contained some measure of the outpouring of his own heart and soul, sometimes not less tremendous than the content of his symphonies. Each was to him in the nature of a great poem, an epic; most have a distinct life and spirit of their own. Into this poetic life must one plunge who would understand. There is a great mood to be caught, an emotion, sometimes an idea. Beethoven thought deeply about the meaning of his art. Colors of sound, intervals, rhythms, qualities of melody, keys, all had for him a symbolism, sometimes mysterious, sometimes definite. He regarded himself as a poet, speaking a language more suggestive than words. In those who listened to his music he expected an imagination quick to feel the life in it, to respond to it, to interpret it. Countless anecdotes reveal the close association Beethoven felt to exist between his music and the world of nature, of human life, of the spirit rising in spite of fate. Most are perhaps not to be relied upon. But scarcely less numerous are the ‘interpretations’ of his music, written down for us by students, by historians, by philosophic musicians; and all these, welcome or unwelcome, must be taken as reactions to a poetic chemistry at work in the music itself. The thing is there, and Beethoven was conscious of having put it there.
He was intensely conscious of his individuality. He was proud of his skill to reveal in music his emotions or his ideals. Little of such aristocracy, in a broad sense, is evident in Haydn or Mozart. They may seem to have taken themselves far less seriously. Beethoven knew himself the high priest of a great art. He demanded from others the respect due to such an one. His spirit rises majestic from his music, or from a great part of it. It speaks in an unmistakable voice. One listens to great stories, great epics, great tragedies, all part of the life of a man of enormous vitality, enormous force. One hardly listens as to music, rather as to a poet and a prophet.
Correspondingly, his music undergoes a development noticeably parallel to the course of his life. The pianoforte sonatas alone are nearly a complete record of the various phases through which his character passed from young manhood almost to the time of his death. They compose, as it were, a great book in many chapters. At times one might regard them as a diary. Beethoven confided himself to his piano.
He was a very great and an unusual player. His style was, as we have inferred, wholly different from Mozart’s. To begin with, it was much more varied. In the matter of runs alone one finds a deeper appreciation of legato and staccato, and the shades between. Mozart’s runs are oftenest of the ‘pearly’ variety, detached and sparkling. Beethoven much more frequently than Mozart requires a close, legato manner of playing. This, in the matter of scales, will give them a sweep and curve, rather than a ripple, make them a rush of sound, rather than a series of distinct notes; as, for example, the short scale passages in the first movement of the sonata opus 7, those for the left hand in the first movement of opus 78, and the long scale passages at the end of the first movement of opus 53. In other sorts of runs the legato execution which is required makes of them almost a series of broken chords; as in the final movement of opus 26, in the first movement of the concerto in G major. Even where the playing may be slightly staccato in style the pedal is employed to give the runs more significance as harmonies than as series of separated notes; as in the third variation of the middle movement in the sonata opus 57, or the figures which build up the transitional sections of the first movement of opus 110.
It is hardly to be denied, paradoxical as it may seem, that in many ways Mozart seems to demand a careful legato touch even more than Beethoven. That is perhaps because of the lighter texture of the fabric. The pedal is of less help, the fingers must do more of themselves. But the light runs which add so much to the charm of his music stand apart from this. They are intended to stand out distinctly in their separate notes. So, of course, are many in the sonatas of Beethoven, and the use of the pedal itself is an art of expression, not a makeshift to hide the clumsiness of fingers. The point of difference is that Beethoven often writes series of notes which are effective as a series; Mozart more often runs, the separate notes of which each must sparkle with its own light.
With Beethoven, too, legato series of chords are frequent; in Haydn and Mozart they hardly exist. Beethoven’s use of double notes and chords is ahead of his time. Take the finale of the sonata in C major, opus 3, No. 3, as a simple example. The staccato chord motive in the last movement of opus 27, No. 2, the first movement of the G major concerto, the first movement of opus 81, are but few examples out of many that might be chosen.
But, above all, it is by the use of the pedal that Beethoven goes ahead of his predecessors. The building up of great harmonies, either by wide-ranging, rapid figures, or by massive chords piled one on top of the other, was from the start characteristic of him. The trio of the scherzo in the sonata in C major, number three of the first published sonatas, offers a magnificent example, foreshadowing the colossal effects of passages in the sonatas opus 53 and opus 57 and at the beginning of the huge concerto in E-flat major.