The German Genius

school” and, to be sure, like Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven died in Vienna. But there is no real sense in which these three formed a Viennese school with common artistic aims or even common methods.
    Beethoven, born in Bonn, came from a family of musicians, as Mozart did. His father and grandfather had been professional players at the court of the Elector of Cologne. At the age of twenty-two Beethoven studied with Haydn in Vienna. After that, he gave lessons to the children of aristocratic families, but he always wanted to be a composer and gradually acquired fame in that direction. 16
    Beethoven had an unhappy private life and that, perhaps, made his music different from that of Bach or Mozart. The mastery, mystery, and perfection of Bach and Mozart are like polished gems in their cool, classical beauty. “Theirs is the music of the gods, but Beethoven—his is the music of man , of his suffering, his impatience, his exhilaration, confronting the world and yet affirming it at the same time…The progress of [Beethoven’s] music is a passage to human greatness…a musical achievement which stands unchallenged as a monument to the mind of man.” 17
    Beethoven’s output may be understood as falling into three periods. Before 1800 his works show the influence of Haydn. In 1800 the Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 15 and the First Symphony op. 21 appeared and this marks the emergence of the Beethoven with which the average concert-goer is most familiar. In the First Symphony Beethoven’s innovation in replacing the minuet of the third movement with a more lively scherzo, completed by a final allegro, vastly heightened the tension of the work, setting out Beethoven’s distinctive voice: tension-filled movement and restless passion. It is this restlessness that characterizes the middle period of Beethoven’s life: the first eight symphonies, the five piano concertos, the violin concerto, the opera Fidelio , the piano sonatas, including the Appassionata and the Waldstein . Beethoven was above all an instrumental composer. He once said, “I always hear my music on instruments, never on voices.” 18
    As magnificent as all this was, it was in the final period of his life that Beethoven produced his greatest music, by common consent some of the greatest music in the world. “All music leads up to Beethoven and all music leads away from him,” says Mumford Jones. This is the period of the Ninth (Choral) Symphony, the Missa Solemnis , the last three piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations for the piano, and the last five string quartets. 19 After a life of turbulence, movement, and conflict, ending in his tragic deafness, Beethoven’s late music shows a serenity and a redemption that the composer never attained elsewhere in his life.
    Just as Haydn had excelled in the symphonic form, Mozart in opera, and Beethoven in instrumental music, so Schubert—the last of the four great Viennese masters—excelled in song.
    Franz Schubert (1797–1828), who was born in Vienna and lived all his life there, had an even shorter life than Mozart, dying at thirty-one. Yet he managed to be one of the most prolific of composers. 20 He never had the benefit of aristocratic patrons and lived entirely as a freelancer (as we would say). In the precocity of his musical talents he rivaled Mozart and began composing at an early age. But he did not attract attention like Mozart did and it was not until a group of his friends published twenty of his songs at their own expense in 1821 (when he was twenty-four) that he began to be noticed. By that stage he had composed seven of his nine symphonies, the string trio, the Trout Quintet, and several operas and masses. Many of his works were never performed in his lifetime, and many others were published only posthumously. 21
    But it is for his Lieder (songs) that Schubert is chiefly known. Here too he was prolific—six hundred songs, including seventy-one settings of poems by Goethe and forty-two by Schiller. Despite his choice of Goethe and Schiller, Schubert was not particularly astute in his choice of verse; still, his music showed an unparalleled ability to use a tune to go beyond a mere “setting” and devise instead its musical equivalent. In doing so he elevated the piano accompaniment to a level it had never reached before, “a level for which the term accompaniment is no longer adequate.” 22
     
     
    The final new elements in music making (as opposed to listening , considered in the next