J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

As is well known, these works had a problematic reception from the very first
—it may not be so well known that the very notion of a ‘third’ or ‘late’ period was
initially an attempt to quarantine these bizarre aberrations from the rest of his output. 65
Beethoven’s reception in the press had been more complex, and on the whole much
more positive, than the polemics of Wagner or the selective anthologising of
Slonimsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective would suggest. From the first he was
almost universally regarded as being a highly gifted and original musician. His
judgement, however, was not always held to equal his gifts. Many early reviews rather
condescendingly advise him to consider the capacity of his hearers (and performers)
with a little more care:
Mr v. B. must be on guard against his occasionally too liberal style of composing, entrances of
unprepared intervals and the frequent harshness of transition notes…; and from time to time he ought
to remind us less of the organ style. 66
After having arduously worked his way through these quite peculiar sonatas, overladen with strange
difficulties, he must admit that while playing them with real diligence and exertion he felt like a man
who had thought he was going to promenade with an ingenious friend through an inviting forest, was
detained every moment by hostile entanglements, and finally emerged, weary, exhausted, and
without enjoyment .... If Mr v.B. would only deny himself more and follow the path of nature, he
could, with his talent and industry, certainly provide us with quite a few good things for an
instrument over which he seems to have extraordinary control. 67
65 See G. Stanley, ‘Some thoughts on biography and a chronology of Beethoven’s life and music’, The
Cambridge companion to Beethoven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.3-13; K.
M. Knittel, ‘Imitation, individuality, and illness: behind Beethoven’s three styles’, Beethoven Forum
4 (1995), 17-36; A. von Lenz, excerpt from ‘Beethoven et ses trois styles’, ed. and tr. I. Bent, Music
analysis in the nineteenth century, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), vol. I,
Fugue, form, and style, pp. 316-327; Knittel, ‘Divining the enigmas of the Sphinx: Alexander
Oulibicheff as a critic of Beethoven’s late style’, Beethoven Newsletter 8/2 (Summer 1993), 34-37.
66 Review of the Piano Sonatas, op.10, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 2 (9 October 1799), 570-71;
The critical reception of Beethoven’s compositions by his German contemporaries, ed. W. M.
Senner, R. Wallace, and W. Meredith (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p.143.
67 Review of the Violin Sonatas, op.12, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1 (5 June 1799); ibid.,
pp.145-46.
341