Analysis Of The Emperor Concerto

To ignore the Emperor concerto and its heroic sublimity when discussing the early developments of the Romantic era and the ending of classicism, would be to altogether ignore a fundamental transitive step in the passage of classicism to romanticism

While the harmonies throughout the concerto seem simplistic enough to be, within reason, of a classical caliber and each movement sound accordingly traditional to the average listener, the concerto itself presents an idea more musically complex

Specific traits pervading Beethoven’s style and increasingly developed over time, converge in this piece to make a strong assertion that Beethoven actively participated in turning to Romanticism

Orchestration, words jotted down on music scores, the composer’s

Nevertheless, the sublime does not lead us to despair, but to a higher pleasure than beauty affords

In Kant’s own words, "sublime is what even to be able to think proves that the mind has a power surpassing any standard of sense." A composer’s mind is more powerful than any standard of sense, meaning that a composer is not meant to follow blindly existing traditions, but is free to move away from what he knows, without necessarily changing everything at once

With this conception of the sublime, Beethoven wrote his Emperor concerto

Paul Henry Lang made a bold claim concerning Beethoven, stating that “[he] was the musician who found the way to the last confines of Classicism and thus passed from the realm of the beautiful into that of the sublime” 1

Lang could be wrongly interpreted to assume that Beethoven was the first musician to pursue the concept of the sublime

While Beethoven might prove with his work to the future to be a key figure in the lingering concept of sublimity in music, the notion began taking shape with other composers as well

William Kinderman, Roland Schmenner and Eberhard Muller-Arp devoted much effort in studying the sublime in Beethoven’s works and came to the conclusion that the composer’s shadow looms behind James Webster’s suggestion that “we think of the entire great flowering of music between 1780 and 1815 as the age of Haydn’s sublime”

Beethoven might even be said to be exploring a more personal meaning of the sublime in the Emperor concerto

4Parallels may be drawn in terms of sublimity between Beethoven’s Emperor concerto and his Opus 48 which allow for a more profound understanding of the sublime’s role in the concerto

It seems odd that so little attention is payed to the one movement that Beethoven actually marked “sublime”

The words Majestatisch und erhaben head the fourth song of the Sechs Gellert-Lieder, Op 48, “The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God”, which contains intriguing clues to Beethoven’s conception of the sublime and suggests broad ramifications for the heroic style in general including the hymn-like melodies, the piano textures recalling religious choral prelude, and the subtle counterpoint

Both the fifth piano concerto and the fourth song of the lieder cycle include a powerful introduction of a few chords, respectively performed by the orchestral tutti or the piano accompaniment

The choral writing and texture as well as the lack of counterpoint or difficulty to distinguish it resemble hymn passages which were incorporated into the concerto – particularly in the opening fifteen measures of the second movement, played by the string