This part is devoted to two topics that have played a major role in the discussion of the development of style in the early nineteenth century. Both topics have also been seen as important ingredients of Beethoven's pianism. In Chapter 7, I will discuss Beethoven's alleged preference for legato and present a history of the development of his legato notation. Chapter 8 discusses the interpretation of Beethoven's trills.

The task of managing the triangle of performance conventions, Beethoven's notation, and execution is complex. Whenever we try to pinpoint one of these elements in order to view its relationship to the others, we bypass some unanswered question. For example, it is difficult to demonstrate Beethoven's role as a stylistic innovator in a narrative that makes use of musical examples if we neglect to analyze what the intent of his notation was. Would he also notate his ideas in a novel manner, or would he rely on conventional methods to express a novel thought? In the case of Beethoven's trills, an uncertainty here could produce directly opposed conclusions. In the discussion about Beethoven's legato style, the question is whether he learned it by interpreting Clementi's or Dussek's notation, by experimenting for himself and only adapting that notation, or by listening to other performers who played legato. In passages that lack a specifically marked articulation, we must know whether the intended “background level” of articulation for Beethoven was modern (assuming that “modern” means legato) or traditional (meaning that any variation of a late eighteenth-century common touch could apply).

CHRISTIAN GOTTLOB NEEFE: THE TRADITIONAL PICTURE

Christian Gottlob Neefe came to Frankfurt in May 1777, to conduct the orchestra of Seyler's theater company. He worked there for two and a half years, conducting operas “which, in turn, were presented in Frankfurt, Mainz, Kölln, Hanau, Mannheim and Heidelberg.” In August 1779, Seyler went bankrupt and fled from Frankfurt; his company continued playing for a while “to earn the means of leaving the city,” but in October its members dispersed. Neefe went to Bonn to join the Nationalbühne of Großmann and Helmuth, who, too, had both previously been members of Seyler's company. This theater had been opened at the request of Elector Maximilian Friedrich in November 1778.

On February 15, 1781, Neefe's name appears for the first time in the Bonn court documents. On that date, “on the recommendation of the reigning minister Count von Belderbusch and of Countess von Hatzfeld,” an official decree pronounced him “candidate for the office of court organist in Bonn.” It is not known when Ludwig van Beethoven's lessons with Neefe began. Thayer writes: “It would create no surprise should proof hereafter come to light that this change [of teacher] was made even before the issue of the decree of February 15, 1781.” In the same vein, Schiedermair supposes the lessons to have begun around 1780, after Tobias Pfeiffer had left Bonn.

FORTEPIANOS GOOD AND BAD

Organologists have invested much energy in studies of the various piano action types of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From a player's point of view, this research obviously needs no justification: the touch of a keyboard defines the player's contact with the instrument and directly triggers his psychological and artistic response. But the focus on action design distracts from the fact that it has significantly less influence on the tone than all the combined elements of an instrument's construction and the instrument's state of repair.

In 1985, the fortepianist Linda Nicholson wrote about an “alarming variation in quality between different [fortepianos] both old and new,” adding,

In spite of such inconsistency in fortepiano quality, one occasionally meets a curious lack of concern for an instrument's condition in the literature on early piano performance practices. For example, Sandra Rosenblum includes descriptions of fifteen new and old pianos played for her study, but mentions only in passing that their various tonal properties could be a consequence not only of differences in style but also of their age or state of repair.

The question of how Beethoven, the prophetic composer, was rooted in the musical practices and conventions of the eighteenth century began to interest some authors in the late nineteenth century. In 1881, Franz Kullak investigated the relationship between Beethoven and eighteenth-century keyboard tutors in order to establish guidelines for the performance of Beethoven's trills. In 1888, Theodor Frimmel produced a 62-page essay on Beethoven as a pianist, in which information about Beethoven's musical education and descriptions of his playing alternate with quotations from C. P. E. Bach's Versuch on the one hand, and information about Beethoven's various possible keyboard instruments on the other. Frimmel and, later, Ludwig Schiedermair were versed enough in eighteenth-century keyboard treatises to include instruments other than Thayer's ubiquitous “Pianoforte” in their analyses. In his later Beethoven-Handbuch, Frimmel gave a detailed overview of the knowledge in his time of Beethoven's various pianos.

After a strong tradition of subjective romantic Beethoven writing, this was a new tendency, in spite of a comparative lack of practical experience on the part of the authors with the performing conventions described in the tutors and with historical instruments.

It was, indeed, not until the 1980s that an increasing number of authors entered the stage who explicitly based their keyboard performance practice studies on their professional experience with historical keyboard instruments. At a time when first-rate institutions have offered complete programs in performance practices for decades, and when the performance of historical music on instruments of historical types has built many successful lifelong careers, it is not arrogant to claim that our experience helps us to understand some of the practical aspects of Beethoven's early musicianship in ways that were inaccessible to earlier scholars – even though the distance from Beethoven has more than doubled since Kullak's or Frimmel's time.

REPORTS ABOUT BEETHOVEN'S PLAYING

The preceding excursion into practical issues has shown how the fortepiano can be used in modern Beethoven performance. This provides an opening for understanding the character of Beethoven's dealings with his instruments as a matter of musical practice instead of a mere struggle. On a personal level, however, this question needs further investigation. Most of the time, Beethoven was struggling with various aspects of his life. One might think that piano playing was a part of this pattern, even if his fame among his contemporaries was undeniably based on his exceptional musicianship and not, for instance, on his endless quibbles with friends, servants, and editors, on his imagined or real financial worries, or on his complex relationship with women. Piano playing was absolutely central for Beethoven during his early life. Even in one of the famous letters in which he announced his upcoming deafness, he defiantly stated that he had “substantially perfected” his piano playing. In the spring of 1802 (a year later), crisis apparently subdued his ambitions for a while; Griesinger wrote: “In the future, Beethoven wants to write only a little for the Klavier, but more polyphonic [music].” But on 18 October of the same year 1802, a week after writing the final version of the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” Beethoven proudly announced the variations Op. 34 and 35 to Breitkopf & Härtel, which were written in a “truly completely new manner.”

The main topic of this book has been the confrontation between old and new in Beethoven's world. The old shows itself in Beethoven's relationship to his teachers and to the traditional musical practices of his time. Although we know very little about Beethoven's opinion of various stylistic conventions from the time of his upbringing, many notational details do link his practice to his teachers Neefe and Haydn, and to keyboard methods such as Marpurg's or Bach's. And even when he wrote “new” music, his communication with his customers and audiences had to rely on tradition; his expressive notation was conventional most of the time, even when his music was not.

Old and new define Beethoven's piano playing as well, although in a much more problematic sense. “New” in Beethoven's playing was what was still fresh in the memory of his contemporaries and first biographers. This is the decline of his pianistic abilities, which made a clear and lasting impression and has shaped the image of Beethoven the pianist until the present day. This circumstance has obscured the “old” element of his playing: the qualities as a pianist that he might have had during his first decade in Vienna, when he was at the height of his powers and performed frequently.

Finally, his opinion of various types of pianos would also have addressed both old and new, had it not been shaped by his ever more problematic relationship to piano playing on account of his deafness.

CONFLICTING OPINIONS ABOUT THE DETACHED STYLE

In Beethoven's legato style, the quest for a singing fortepiano tone and the manifestation of a singing manner of playing are combined. One source that depicts Beethoven's legato practice is Carl Czerny's recollection of his first fortepiano lessons with Beethoven in the winter of 1799–1800. Czerny was introduced to Beethoven and played a few pieces for him; Beethoven agreed to teach him. Czerny relates:

THE FIRST YEAR

Beethoven's first year in Vienna is in fact not very well documented. We do know that he had financial troubles after the death of his father on December 18, 1792, when he had to ensure that he received his rightful salary from Bonn. A late source, addressing his first months in Vienna, says that he generally had “a miserable time.” Anton Schindler writes that, upon his arrival, Beethoven carried letters of introduction from the Elector Max Franz to various prominent persons in Vienna. He claims that Baron van Swieten became one of Beethoven's first and most influential friends, even though Beethoven's connection to the Lichnowsky family was “the most important” one, but gives no exact dates for Beethoven's introduction in these circles. Theodor Frimmel suspects that it was Count Waldstein (and not the Elector) who helped to “open all the doors” to Beethoven, since he was acquainted with “almost all the high nobility of Austria.”

It is, in any case, impossible to create a detailed account of Beethoven's activities based on the scanty material dating from the first year. However, one can establish a chronology of the information that has to do with his keyboard playing and his first musical contacts. Beethoven's first year unfolds as follows.

By the time Beethoven moved to Vienna in November 1792, he no longer considered any keyboard instrument other than a fortepiano suitable for his private use.

Beethoven's opinions about piano playing and the piano, as outlined in the previous chapters, concentrate on three elements: tone length (or, as he expressed it, a “singing” manner of playing and a singing piano tone), tone character (evident in his wish to create a “personal tone” and in his disapproval of a “wooden” tone), and tone volume (evident in his middle-period interest in the French piano and eventually also due to his deafness). For a full understanding of these concepts in our time, practical experience with early instruments is indispensable. There are, however, obstacles to gaining that experience.

One difficulty when discussing the merits of historically informed approaches to music is the modern concept of a successful performance and an audience's adherence to comparison with earlier experiences. Whether this is a problem or not depends greatly on the circumstances. Early pianos of all kinds have become a fact of contemporary concert life. The audience's increasing experience of listening to these instruments, as well as the performers' ability to handle them with authority, has relieved them of their aura of imperfect exoticism. There should be no reason to be partial other than for reasons of admitted personal taste, except perhaps in the case of a direct comparison between several similar instruments. Nevertheless, the unavoidable confrontation of the early piano with its modern successor in the experience of the modern listener makes a discussion of the potential and the merits of the former a complicated task.

BEETHOVEN'S TRILLS: TRADITIONAL VIEWS

The trills in Beethoven's music have been acknowledged as being important, not only because of their expressive function in the music, but also as indications of Beethoven's stylistic preferences and how they changed. They often have an essential structural function (perhaps most of all in his later work). Their importance, it is usually argued, requires a precise performance, so their notation must be unambiguous; indeed, Beethoven himself intended it to be unambiguous, whatever problems of interpretation we might encounter today.

Annotations such as trill signs in Beethoven's scores are usually seen being just as obligatory as the notes themselves. Two historical performances of the quintet for wind instruments and piano Op. 16 show that Beethoven once altered a composed piece during his own performance, but was furious when somebody else made such an attempt. During his first performance in 1804, Beethoven added a lengthy cadenza before a theme entry in the Rondo, to the entertainment of the listeners (but to the irritation of the accompanying musicians). In another performance in 1816, Carl Czerny was playing the piano. Czerny altered some passagework, using the high octave of the larger piano, and received a rebuke from Beethoven. In contrast to the practice of adding notes to the keyboard music of the Baroque repertoire, there seems to be a general consensus among modern players to be restrictive when playing Beethoven. Apparently Beethoven's quod licet jovi, non licet bovi attitude made an impression far beyond Czerny.