Beethovens violin concerto analysis
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Some Thoughts on Beethoven's Violin Concerto
The serenity and majesty of Beethoven’s famed Violin Concerto belie the turmoil of its time: Vienna was under French occupation and Beethoven was coming to terms with his increasingly profound deafness.
Despite its popularity today, the Violin Concerto did not receive a warm reception at its premiere on December 23, 1806. The soloist, Franz Clement, received the soloist’s part a matter of days before the performance and Beethoven’s nearly illegible writing in the orchestra’s parts undoubtedly contributed to an underwhelming performance; indeed, between the first two movements the audience’s apparently poor response led Clement to turn his violin upside down and improvise a folksy tune in order to reclaim their attention and good graces! Beethoven felt discouraged by the Concerto’s reception and made a version for piano with orchestra. Although a full score manuscript exists (and I own a beautiful facsimile edition published in 1979), it leads to more questions than answers, as Beethoven has notated many different versions of passages – partly in preparing the piano version – without indicating his final selection. Even the fact that he “proofread and authorized” the first edition (published in 1808) does not convince
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The structure of the 1st movement is one of the finest examples of the "sonata form" of Beethoven's second period: grandeur of scale (the 1st movement alone is as long as - and longer in some cases - than entire symphonies by Haydn and Mozart), clearly articulated form (each Theme has its own distinctive "character" and one grasps its great importance as soon as it is heard).Developing material from a mere six motifs (A, B, C, D, E and F), Beethoven creates one of the most sublime concerto "movements" in the history of music, achieving perfect equilibrium.
The movement is constructed symmetrically: each Section has the same outline (two dialectically opposed parts) containing the complete motif (A+B, C, D, E).
The movement follows the standard "sonata form" of Beethoven's predecessors almost to the letter. It is divided into three parts: the Exposition (orchestra and soloist), Development and Refrain (with Coda). Since the Exposition is often repeated in classical sonatas, it is nearly always played by the orchestra alone and then by the orchestra with the soloist. This "bias" towards the first of the three parts is set off by an extended Coda which is no longer an appendix to the Refrain but a section in its own right.
The introduction of a new motif ("f" in the de
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