ABSTRACT
The first half of Chapter 3 investigates the innovations of Beethoven as a symphonist. A brief discussion of the relationship of his First Symphony to the works of his teacher Haydn is followed by a detailed examination of the Eroica Symphony and its relationship to Napoleon Bonaparte as well as to Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament and the emergence of his Heroic period. Also included here is some mention of the programmatic aspects of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the new use of an attacca connection between some of the movements. The chapter finishes with a look at the biographical events that prompted the emergence of Beethoven’s late style, and how the Ninth Symphony relates to that style.
The second half of Chapter 3 deals with the question of what constitutes Romanticism in 19th-century music, and how this is related to the Romantic movement in painting and literature of the previous century. Schubert’s relationship to earlier classical symphonists and to the innovations of Beethoven is an important part of the examination of the question of the mixed Classical and Romantic characteristics in his symphonies.
