Reaching the oddity of Beethoven’s art was the starting point of seeking the sources of his genius at his contemporaries. Beethoven created at the turn of two centuries and two epochs – Classicism and Romanticism. So on one hand he became the exponent of classicistic ideals of the affirmation of life. But his engagement into the ideas of “storm and stress” movement and into the ideas of freedom were different from the classicistic ideas. Beethoven primarily wanted to search for new expressions in music. He experimented with the impression side as well as the formal side of music. Huge richness of musical ideas influenced the innovation of the form of his compositions and of their artistic expression.

Beethoven’s pieces, full of drama, the spirit of fight, weren’t suitable to the stylistic, formal and esthetic conventions of his
times. Beethoven’s composing workshop became the starting point of the development of the 19th century music. But he is different from romantics as he had an active attitude to the reality, at which the 19th century creators looked through the prism of lyricism and mysticism.

Surely Beethoven was the most individual from the great musicians. In his art we have the feeling of his own engagement. We hear, when he is angry, when he smiles, suffers, enjoys. His output is a great synthesis of musical and human contents. On the way of that synthesis, that chemistry, he created the music which reaches simple people as well as experts. Because Beethoven spoke the language of all people.

The output of Beethoven

First period – to 1802
Beethoven concentrated then on piano and chamber music, trying various instrument sets. From his youthful output from the Bonn period – to the 1792 come many compositions, which weren’t acclaimed but they proved seeking his own musical conception by a composer. Besides Octet E-flat Major op. 103 for wind instruments, some cantatas and music to Ritterballett, Beethoven created a lot of piano music in which we can observe a clear influence of C.Ph.E. Bach, Haydn and Mozart style.

Even in the first piece by Beethoven, Variations on Dressler march theme we can see the features very typical to the composer’s style: C Minor mode, which would occur in Pathetique Sonata op. 13 and in the Fifth Symphony, march rhythms, which are common in his sonatas, symphonies, in the mass and oratorio as well as variation technique, which was prefected bz Beethoven in his output.

In the Bonn period the composer practices the variation form and also chamber music, with the main role reserved for the piano. He also wrote piano quartets then, the genre which he would never come back to again. Pretty much of his output of that period are solo songs with the piano as well.

The early Vienna years of the composer were dominated by the form of sonata. It appears in the piano pieces, the pieces for piano and cello, for piano and violin, in the piano concertos as well as in the music for strings and horns. The main stream was the piano music, which Beethoven practiced as an active pianist.

Second period – 1802-1815
There is a time of a turn into the symphony form. Between 1800-14 Beethoven wrote almost all his orchestral music: 8 symphonies, concerto overtures, 3rd, 4th, 5th piano concerto, Triple Concerto C Major op. 56 for piano, violin and cello, Violin concerto D Major and also vocal-instrumental pieces – Fantasia C Minor op. 80 for piano, choir and orchestra, his only oratorio Christus Am Olberge, and his only opera Fidelio. He fully expressed his artistic message in his symphonies. First two have the influences of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven uses scherzo instead of minuet in the 3rd movement of Symphony No. 2 – and since then that change has become a fixed rule in the form of symphony.

The expression of revolutionary tendencies of the art of the composer became Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” and Symphony No. 5, which is penetrated by the “fate” motive, as Beethoven used to call it. Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” refers to the programmatic pieces, it expresses admiration of the beauty of nature, looking for example at the programmatic titles of the movements (e.g. The scene by the stream, Storm). Speaking of the programmatic pieces we have to mention The Victory of Wellington or the Battle of Vittoria op. 91 where the cannon shots were used. In the Symphonies No. 7 and No. 8 Beethoven increased the number of instruments of the orchestra and he enriched the color, becoming innovative.

Symphonic tendencies are also seen in the solo piano music of the composer. He produced orchestral colors using the piano, developing the piano technique and increasing the sound scale. We can see in e.g. in his piano sonatas “Waldstein” and “Appasionata” or in virtuoso “Kreutzer” sonata op. 47 for violin and piano. The vital part of his output of that period are string trios and quartets, which became a crucial part of Beethoven’s legacy.
At first he was using the classicistic models in his quartets but later he showed the world of his own sound imagination in those pieces.

Third period – after 1815
The composer remains faithful to the piano music although he creates his eminent string quartets at the same time. Primarily he wrote his greatest vocal-instrumental pieces: Missa Solemnis in which he technically and structurally reaches beyond the frames of liturgy, and Symphony No. 9. In his last symphony he introduced the choir and soloists, creating the new type of the vocal-instrumental symphony, the model used later by Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Liszt and Mahler. Symphony No. 9 became the greatest expression of the idea of Beethoven’s pieces. In the last period of his output the composer revolutionized the form of string quartet – he increased previously used scale of the instruments, he showed the richness of articulation, the sound and dynamics. His quartets sometimes consisted of even 7 movements, as in the op. 131. Beethoven creates the type of the facture of quartet which were appreciated and developed by the 20th century composers.

Last pieces of the composer are also piano sonatas in which he could present the advantages of the sound of the instrument thanks to the increased keyboard scale (C1-f4).
He showed there the sound palette of the utter registers, sophisticated color effects, e.g. the murmur trill effects, the play with the nuances of the sound using the left pedal as well as the experiments with the vibration of the piano sound. In his sonatas he also uses performing notations in German, which were the expressive-programmatic commentary. It greatly reached beyond the epoch of Beethoven...

The most important Beetoven’s pieces