Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

BEETHOVEN READY

1803. Let me update you quickly. 1803 - Napoleon's doing well. Well, he would be, wouldn't he. Let's leave it at that. The sculptor, Canova, has chipped away at a small but perfectly formed statue of the… small but perfectly formed Grand Fromage himself. Incidentally, France and Britain are at war again… Id nous allons, encore, as they say in Leeds. Moving on, racing starts at Goodwood for the first time and Turner, having been well received with his Millbank Moon Light, comes up with Calais Pier. Somehow, if he went and got out his easels and painted the same places today, the titles Millbank Spin Doctors on Mobiles and Calais Asylum Seekers Riot would seem a little unromantic. Call me reactionary.

But back to the angry young man Ludwig van Beethoven. He was born in Bonn in December of 1770. lie had a miserable boyhood, beaten into an unreasonable regime of practice by a violent and alcoholic father. The music side of it paid oil, ihongli, and he was spotted by Marie-Antoinette's brother, the Elector of Cologne, Maximillian Franz, and made deputy court organist. When his dad lost his job through his drinking, the young Beethoven was forced to go out to earn money by playing viola in a lowly theatre. How degrading. Not the lowly theatre, the viola playing!^ In 1792, he headed off to Vienna to study with Haydn and ended up never going back to Bonn. He launched himself as a concert pianist three years later, playing his own piano concerto (the first, almost certainly) and his reputation as both pianist and composer begins to spread. As you can imagine, though, fate was never going to allow Beethoven a storybook 'happy ever after' ending. Only a year later, he began to get the first signs of a deafness that would eventually become total.

In 1803, Beethoven was thirty-three, and gradually realising that he was succumbing to deafness. In a letter of 1802, discovered many years after his death, he made it clear that he knew what was happening to him. It's maybe in a sort of race against time that he came up with a massive burst of creativity.

Over the next six years, he would write his Kreutzer, Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas, as well as the ever popular 'Moonlighf - not his title, I might add, but one his publishers stuck on. He also produced the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives and the Third Piano Concerto. But in 1803, he also came up with something that has been described as 'the greatest single step made by a composer in the history of the symphony and of music in general'. Big talk, little breeches, as Baloo would say.

But fair, though, because the Third, Symphony is just not like anything that had preceded it. If you hear a Haydn symphony in concert, it's… orderly, it's… in place. If you hear a Mozart symphony even, it's still order. Genius, often, without doubt, but still order. Then you get something like Beethoven's Eroica - the 'heroic' symphony. It's… well, it's just not on the same playing field. Beethoven was really raising the symphony game with this one. It's EPIC, it's AMAZING. fi For some reason, viola players in the classical world are akin to drummers in the jazz world, i.e. the butt of jokes. Personally, of course, I don't subscribe to such jokes. Such jokes as: What's the difference between a viola and a trampoline? Answer:??? take your shoes off to jump up and down on a trampoline. Or: What do you call a guy who hangs round with musicians? Answer: A drummer. Terrible jokes. It's the Star Trek of symphonies - it boldly goes where no man had gone before. The 'hero' of the tide was the man of the moment, too, Napoleon, who was a bit of an idol for Ludwig. Sad to say, it wasn't to last. When, just one year later, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in Paris, Beethoven ran to his bottom drawer, took the Eroica manuscript from underneath his hairbrush, and scratched out the name 'Bonaparte', dedicating it, instead, to 'the memory of a. great man'. Strong stuff!

Also composing some great stuff around this time was Beethoven's friend - and, I think, a possible contender in the Mildly Amusing Middle Name stakes - Johann Nepomuk Hummel. In his day, Hummel was considered certainly the equal of Beethoven as a piano player, and some even said as a composer too. Now, though, he's remembered for a mere handful of works and, in particular, his Trumpet Concerto. It's a bit of a partner to Haydn's in the trumpet repertoire, with an equally impressive third movement, comparable in difficulty to its predecessor - often considered a blood relation of Haydn. And with good reason, because Hummel's, too, was written for Weidlinger, the guy who invented the new trumpet. The one from Haydn's band. You see, when Haydn got a bit too frail, not able to handle the full job at Eisenstadt, the very cute powers-that-be gave him his pension of 2,300 florins plus all his medical bills, and allowed him to stay on as 'general music bigwig - allowed to potter around, read the papers, no questions asked'. And who took over from him as Kapellmeister? Correct. JN Hummel. Well, isn't it a small world?

In the 'Where are they now?' stakes, it seems to be merely a matter of fate that, despite being extremely popular and indeed influential during his lifetime, die moment he died, his music simply fell out of fashion. Of course, I have a personal theory, which I am willing to share. You see, Gluck… largely out of fashion, isn't he? Hmm? And Dittersdorf? Also, more or less totally forgotten. And now Hummel. Revered by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt in his day, but now the dodo of classical music. And why? Well, my theory… mildly amusing middle names. Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf Christoph Willibald von Gluck Johann Nepomuk Hummel Need I say more? QED, as the French call the famous cruise ship.

If Haydn were to stroll into the Esterhazy Palace to read the papers in 1806 - and he was still there - then there'd have been plenty to catch tip on. The Battle of Trafalgar has been and gone, last year, with Nelson doing the most famous snog in history - or not. Napoleon is now, wait for it: i) First Consul ii) Emperor iii) King of Milan iv) President of the Italian Republic v) Milk Monitor©, and vi) Captain of die Netball team© More or less everything, in fact. Pitt the Younger is now going by the somewhat less jolly nickname of Pitt the Dead. What else? Well, Prussia has declared war on France - yeah yeah yeah, talk to the Handel, the Facade ain't listening. Moving on, Turner has turned up another goodie, The Shipwreck. Think of the impact that a picture like that must have had in that day and age. It wouldn't be just a great picture, it would be a huge shiver down the spine - remember, the sea is a big, relevant image for people. Nelson's victory and death were still big news, press gangs are still all the rage, plus the fact that die sea was less tamed then than it is now, and you've got a bit of shocking image in Turner's Shipwreck.

And musically? What about mat? Does the music of the time match images like Turner's Shipwreck}

Well, if you're talking Beethoven, then the answer's a big, steaming lump of 'yes'. He's already produced his first draft of his one and only opera, Fidelio, with its themes of brotherhood, comradeship and freedom. And 'one and only' - that's important. You see, he doesn't waste paper, our Beethoven, oh no. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, Mozart forty-one, but Beethoven? Only nine. But they were, no disrespect to the other two, truly greater works - a magnificent nine - and, in that respect, the numbers speak volumes. Much less frivolous than Haydn's, more demanding, more revolutionary than Mozart's, and, generally, on another level completely. And, then, in 1806, he comes up with his one and. only violin concerto. It's less 'in your face' than some of his other stuff, with a delirious second movement that is truly ages away from Haydn and Mozart. It's said that, at its first performance, the original fiddler, a man called Clement, was left to sight-read the whole thing, having had no rehearsal, but somehow managed to pull it off. And thank goodness he did: had he completely buggered it up and, in so doing, consigned the work to an eternity of obscurity, then I, for one, would never have forgiven our friend Clement. I don't think I could bear to be without the Beethoven Violin Concerto. But, anyway, he didn't. He got through it, everyone applauded, probably politely, he left the concert hall, shut the door and, before you knew it - VOOOMH - it was 1808.