Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies

Abstract

Beethoven's symphonies captured the public imagination from the outset and remain compelling today. Revolutionary in their time, these life-enhancing works now sit at the centre of the classical music repertoire, retaining their ability to delight and inspire. The career of Sir George Grove (1820–1900) ranged from civil engineering to biblical scholarship, but he is best known for editing his celebrated Dictionary of Music and Musicians. A driving force at the heart of nineteenth-century British musical life, Grove organised important concerts at the rebuilt Crystal Palace in Sydenham, and he served as the first director of the Royal College of Music from 1883 to 1894. First published in 1896, and reissued here in its swiftly corrected and indexed second edition, this work is a classic of musical analysis, exploring the composition, structure, performance and reception of each symphony in turn. Intended for 'the amateurs of this country', it represents the culmination of a lifetime's research.

Numerical Odds and Evens in Beethoven's Nine Symphonies

“…The only real ambiguity concerns the Fourth and Fifth. Ample evidence establishes that the composition of the Fifth was undertaken before that on the Fourth, the composer likely drafting the first two of the four movements (Grove, 1898(Grove, /1962. If Beethoven had completed the Fifth first, then probably the whole odd-even conjecture would never have come about, and this specific empirical study would never have been conducted.…”

“…This contrast between odd and even is often implicit when comparing specific symphonies. A famous example is Robert Schumann's claim that Beethoven's Fourth was "like a slender ð Greek maiden between two Norse giants" (Grove, 1898(Grove, /1962, these giants obviously being the Third ("Eroica" with its dedication to the memory of a hero, originally Napoleon Bonaparte) and the Fifth (the opening motive purportedly representing Fate knocking at the door; Kolodin, 1975, p. 6). Nor are these assessments confined to listeners.…”

“…Like many parents, the composer himself often expressed recognition of the contrasts among his symphonic "children." For instance, he once compared his Seventh and Eighth symphonies by calling the first "grand" (and "one of my most important") but the second merely "little" (Grove, 1898(Grove, /1962. The latter symphony Beethoven composed when he was "unbuttoned" (the work including many musical jokes).…”

Music Composition with Deep Learning: A Review

“…As we mentioned in section 2, Instrumentation and orchestration are fundamental elements in the musical genre being composed, and may represent a characteristic signature of each composer by the use of specific instruments or the way their compositions are orchestrated. An example of that is the orchestration that Beethoven used in his symphonies that changed the way in which music was composed [54]. Instrumentation is the study of how to combine similar or different instruments in varying numbers in order to create an ensemble Orchestration is the selection and combination of similarly or differently scored sections [55].…”

A paradigm for the production of practice-based knowledge

“…From composers to scientists, innovation and discovery are highly valued by society and by the innovators themselves. Beethoven, for example, believed so deeply in innovation and individual expression above ritual and tradition, that the originality of each of his nine symphonies limited him to composing far fewer symphonies than his predecessors (Grove 1962). Conner’s (2005) compelling account of the history of science reveals the significance of the artisans – people who worked with their hands – in the development of knowledge and the Scientific Revolution.…”