7. A condensed summary of the main points included in Read Chapter 7 (the romantic suthesis) and comments on the first movement of Beethoven?s "Eight Symphony" trying to find both classic and romantic elements in it as defined in the work, Thinking about

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                            Cunha 01

_____________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                       Beethoven

          _____________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                         

                                                                                                           Antônio D. Araújo Cunha

 A condensed summary of the main points included in Chapter 06 (some of the ideas about music from ancient times up to the year 1800), “The European Tradition to 1800” presented in the work, Thinking about Music, by Rowell (82-115), and comments on the first movement of Beethoven's "Eighth Symphony".

                       An overview of the intellectual history of the music (beginning of the Christian era to the year 1800) is presented by Rowell (82-115), who provides a variety of ideas about music, examining common assumptions, new proposals, the way ideas were articulated along the time, mentioning those ones who contributed to illuminate and elaborate the fundaments of music doctrine, organizing and presenting the facts in periods. An emphasis to Beethoven's "Eighth Symphony" is given in this essay, because we want to illustrate the classical style, which reached the climax in Austria, the cradle of so many splendid musicians (113). Although, Romantic Period took place (after 1750), and this transition claims for clarifications, because the result was a real synthesis of music and thought (115). If one considers the referential periods, it should be classified in The Middle Ages (1400), The Renaissance (1400-1600), The Baroque (1600-1750), and The Classical (1750-1800).

  

       

                       Cunha 02

Normally, it makes considerable sense to recognize unity and coherence in philosophy, as Rowell explains (84).

Then, contributions from ancient civilizations (Greek and Roman) together with  (contemporary schools (Cartesian rationalism (1596-1650), British school of thought (1561-1626) dominated European philosophy together until eighteenth. (84) A new school of thought had arisen in German idealism, with the contribution of Emanuel Kant (1724-1804), straightening relations with philosophy and artistic speculation (85). The three main schools of thought in later antiquity are The Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics, and two special voices are listened: Philodemus (a first century B.C. author), and Sextus Empiricus (an aggressively Skeptic philosopher from the Second century A.D.) (85). But the difficulty to justify music’s existence was not only theirs. They both have the conception of music as a harmless diversion, pleasant but useless. They did not understand music to symbolize, express, or represent anything but itself. They understand music as an illusion, like sound and time. The attempt to separate the sublime from the merely beautiful was reinforced with Hellenistic treatises on the philosophy of art, like the documentation of Cassius Longinus of Palmyra -  - On the Sublime (written in the third century A.D.) (86). “He specified five necessary conditions for the sublime: the first two are inborn – robust, “full-blooded” ideas and strong emotion. The other three may be acquired through training: the proper construction of figures (figures of speech and thought), nobility of diction, and the careful arrangement of words to produce the general effect of dignity and elevation”(86). Members united into a single system embraced to the bonds of rhythm gain a living voice (87).

      

        Cunha 03

            Rowell provides nice concepts. He comments the concept of sublimity, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “Sublimity, in their view, was linked with the feelings of awe and terror inspired by the vastness and infinite power of nature: mountains, the sea, the sky and night were cited as typical sources of the sublime”(87). Another concept is the one concerning Plato’s view that beauty is a transcendental quality and that the response to beauty is the soul’s feeling of kinship with an eternal idea, absolute Being:  “The material thing becomes beautiful – by communicating in the thought that flows from the Divine”(87). Plotinus vision of music was very respected and considered by the doctrines of Christian theology and became the standard medieval explanation from where many theories of music emerged as a link between humanity and divinity, the finite and the infinite (88).

The Middle Ages is marked by the proposals of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430) and St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The first registered his impressions about melodies and the pleasure of the senses. The second was celebrated by his book Confessions, which discusses many artistic questions (89). He also presented his masterpiece, the Summa theologica, distinguishing between the beautiful and the good (92). St. Thomas was also mentioned by James Joyce, in his work  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man  in which he is analyzed by the hero, Stephen Dedalus (93). The term claritas is discussed, but the meaning of it, came later. Claritas signifies a quality - an intangible property not subject to precise measure. It refers to the presentational quality of an artwork, a special luminous intensity that marks a work of real excellence. For the phenomenon of music: a becoming audible, the radiation of complex, harmonic vibration: the complex harmonic vibration from

       Cunha 04

its source, and its definition as tonal structure and motion in the perceiving mind (94). A technique known as counterpoint was to bring about the great flowering of musical style in the Renaissance, which is the next period to be commented (99).

            After the relatively static Middle Ages, the Renaissance years brought a burst of fresh artistic energy – specially in Italy. (99). New concepts came to enlighten the vast universe of music, concerning composition, expression, tonal motion and direction. Although, “Renaissance music was less a symbol and more a reality, intended to be perceived and enjoyed for its own sake, appealing directly to the senses and expressive of human feeling”(101). The musicians of this period became aware that they were living a new time concerning music, and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were years of an unprecedented outpouring of artistic activity, being literature dominated by practical men, not philosophers (101).  Rowell suggests a list of new proposals, new insights, presenting contradictions and basic assumptions of ancient and medieval aesthetic theory, by incomplete, but helpful propositions to indicate trends in the philosophy of art. (102).

            The next step should be the presentation of all those personalities who contributed to the new period, described as the Age of Reason and Enlightenment and clarification concerning music.  It is possible to start with the rationalism, represented by René Descartes (1596-1650). And Samuel Johnson (1759), Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), Francis Bacon (1607), John Locke (1632-1704), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), David Hume (1711-1776), Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Joseph Addison (1672-1719), George Berkeley (1685-

     

        Cunha 05

1753), Edmund Burke (1729-1797) (103-110). The last one, inspired distinctions between the sublime and the merely beautiful, which was a very popular theme in the eighteenth-century. Burke explains that “the sublime and the beautiful produce the same physiological effects as love and terror...”(109). So, two strands of philosophy are followed: rationalism and empiricism. By the same way, two distinct style periods ran their course during these two hundred years -- the Baroque (e.g. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, and Couperin.) and the Classic (e.g. Haydn, Mozart, Shubert, and Beethoven.) (110- 113).

            Progress was observed after 1750 and the composers in the nineteenth century made few substantive changes (113). These changes (more in manner and degree, than in substance), had led many scholars to assert that Classicism and Romanticism are two phases of the same period. Philosophers like Kant, Scholar (1759-1805), and Hegel (1770-1831). The result was a synthesis of music and thought perhaps the first since Middle Ages.

A good example of this transition between classic and romanticism is Beethoven’s music.[Downs 600] “He wrote his symphonies and amazing differences of language between them, specially the Fifth and Sixth could be observed to the attentive listener.”  After a period of three years, from those symphonies, the seventh was completed 13 May 1812, and the Eight, in October of the same year. But the “Seventh Symphony rapidly became one of Beethoven’s most popular compositions in Vienna, and was arranged for a variety of instrumental combinations. And the Eight, a twin of the Seventh in many ways, did not receive as warm a reception.” “Because of critics, the Eight Symphony is considered a lightweight work, and gave Beethoven very little trouble in conception and birthing, far less than its older twin.””

       Cunha 06

            In conclusion, Music became the art of inspired composers, as philosophy to humans’ thoughts. Despite the opportunities it provides to people to project their interior lives, music became the universal language of enchantment and pleasure. We can use Beethoven’s words to finish this presentation: “ Remember, please, that all my people have names, and they know what they can count on to survive.” But what function should be given in the court to a mediocre talented person like me”(Solomon 181)? It provides the sensation that only a brilliant spirit should think like him.  He couldn’t even wonder that future generations would have his music to appreciate, after so many years.  It is over anyone’s expectation. Immortal, in the collective unconscious, the dimension of his work is expended up to XIst century.       

                                                                                                       

                   

           

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Bent, Ian. Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. One, Cambridge University Press,

      1994.

Downs, Philip.  Classical Music.  The Era of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, University of

      Western, Ontario, NY-NY. 1992.

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, New York. Modern Language

     Association, USA, 1988.

Orga, Ates. Beethoven. Ediouro, Brasil, 1992.

Plantinga, Leon. Romantic Music. Yale University, NY-NY, USA, 1984.

Rosen, Charles. El estilo clásico Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Alianza Editorial, Madrid,Spain,

      1991.

Rowell, Lewis. Thinking about Music, The University of Massachusetts Press, USA, 1983.

Salomon, Maynard. Beethoven. Jorge Zahar editor, RJ, Brasil, 1997.