improvisatory techniques, with surprise rhythmic accents
and other unexpected elements.
Many critics and listeners regard Beethoven as the finest
composer who ever lived. He elevated symphonic music to
a new position of authority in the Western music tradition.
He also made great strides with chamber music for piano,
as well as for string quartets, trios, and sonatas. His works
include nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, five piano
concerti, 17 string quartets, ten sonatas for violin and
piano, one opera (Fidelio), the Mass in C Major, Missa
Solemnis, and other chamber music.
Structural Innovations
Beethoven remains the supreme exponent of what may be
called the architectonic use of tonality. In his greatest
sonata movements, such as the first allegro of the Eroica,
the listener’s subconscious mind remains oriented to E-flat
major even in the most distant keys, so that when, long
before the recapitulation, the music touches on the domi-
nant (B-flat), this is immediately recognizable as being the
dominant. Of his innovations in the symphony and quar-
tet, the most notable is the replacement of the minuet by
the more dynamic scherzo; he enriched both the orchestra
and the quartet with a new range of sonority and variety of
texture, and their forms are often greatly expanded. The
same is true of the concerto, in which he introduced for-
mal innovations that, though relatively few in number,
would prove equally influential. In particular, the entry of
a solo instrument before an orchestral ritornello in the
Fourth and Fifth piano concerti (a device anticipated by
Mozart but to quite different effect) reinforces the sense
of the soloist as a protagonist, even a Romantic hero, an
effect later composers would struggle to reproduce.
7 Ludwig van Beethoven 7