2. Musical Features of Beethoven’s Late Style Works Ninth Symphony Missa Solemnis Diabelli Variations Piano Sonatas String Quartets Technical Features Formal deviations/innovations Increased lyricism Cyclic techniques Use of “learned techniques” General Connotations Yearning Isolation Intensity Introspection Monumentality Stark Contrast

4. Fugue and Imitation A common feature in Beethoven’s late style is the inclusion of extended passages of imitation or large-scale fugues In addition to representing an inherited and “learned” tradition, these passages may represent a “struggle” (with a difficult musical technique, or, metaphorically, with some kind of disembodied musical/artistic value) The affective result is often a surprising synthesis of storminess, even struggle, with a pervasive expressivity, yearning, and lyricism

6. The Beethoven Myth Elevating music beyond “the art of pleasing sounds” Schopenhauer: “ A symphony of Beethoven presents us with the greatest confusion which yet has the most perfect order as its foundation… a true and complete picture of the nature of the world, which rolls on in the boundless confusion of innumerable forms, and maintains itself by constant destruction.” Nietzsche: “ Beethoven is something that happens between an old crumbling soul which is constantly breaking up and a very young soul of the future which is constantly coming. In his music there lies that half light of eternal loss and of eternally indulgent hoping .”