At the end of the 18th Century, Beethoven created and discovered an artistic revolution.
Musical Romanticism.
Powerful, immense, emotional, highly individual works of towering scope.
And Beethoven explored the possibilities of this.
Explored it in piano sonatas.
Explored it in string quartets.
Explored it in symphonies and concertos.
Explored it in stormy dramatic works, like the 5th Symphony, and explored it in lyrical sweet works like the Pastoral 6th Symphony.
And finally, going into the mid-1810's, decided that he had explored those possibilities enough
And wanted to go farther.
Beethoven knew well the great late works of Bach, and Handel's Messiah.
Immense, immensely complex works, immensely complex works that sang like a sweet soaring song, that came together in harmony according to a great harmonious plan, works that were not just very complex but were gloriously, harmoniously complex.
Beethoved knew from these works that he could go farther.
And so he searched. And experimented. And experimented and searched.
And finally found it.
Beethoven's late period.
First a few works to test the new waters.
The Op. 101 piano sonata and Op. 102 cello sonatas.
Then the first full-scale late masterpiece.
A piece to exceed the scope and complexity of anything he had ever written.
The Hammerklavier Sonata.
Thus began Beethoven's late period.
Perhaps the pinnacle of all European music, with Bach and Handel's Messiah.
More came.
Three late piano sonatas.
The 9th.
The Diabelli Variations. The great Mass, the Missa Solemnis.
The late string quartets.
Most of these- the last 3 piano sonatas, the late string quartets- are like quiet indie movies.
Intimate. Indie films, not big blockbusters.
And sophistocated. Hugely complex. Full of ideas.
Telling stories like a Tolstoy novel.
The Missa Solemnis is a huge, powerful formal work, not too rigid but definitely formal, with all the complexity, sophistocation and discussion of ideas of the rest of the great late works. Not an indie work but a huge, powerful, dramatic formal work.
And there are two pieces that, at least to some extent, combine this complexity, and the indie ethos, with some of the big, Hollywood blockbuster spectacle of works like the 5th Symphony and 6th Symphony, the big, Hollywood blockbuster spectacle that Beethoven does so well in one great masterpiece from the great middle period after another.
The great Hammerklavier sonata has that blockbuster feel to a certain extent. Along with the full indie treatment and all the complexity and discussion of ideas.
And the 9th is a full-on blockbuster, the greatest ever composed.
Still with the full complexity, still with the discussion of ideas. Still with indie moments.
No one would combine the wonderful qualities of a great indie work with a spectacular blockbuster this well again until Steven Spielberg gave us Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
While the late string quartets, the late piano sonatas, so many of the great late masterpieces, are quiet indie pieces through and through.
Not everything in them is quiet.
But in so many of these great late works, everything is indie. Like a great indie film.
The 9th is the blockbuster which still has the soul of a great indie film.
The Hammerklavier is the semi-blockbuster which still has the soul of a great indie film.
The rest, save for the Missa Solemnis, are great indie films through and through, in their purest form.
The last 3 piano sonatas. The late string quartets.
And all of them have narratives worthy of a Tolstoy novel.
Beethoven's late period.
One of the pinnacles of Humanity.
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson