A Feminist Journey through Beethovens Musical Structure Essay

A Feminist voyage through Beethovens Musical StructureTraditional analysis of Beethovens use of Sonata allegro form tends to focus on harmonic or melodic travail and key relationships. This study stretches such investigations to include questions of historical context and philosophical motivations that drive a composer to structure symphony in a genuine way. Ultimately this leads to an inquiry about how these imposts affect us as listeners, and more specifically how they relate to gender issues in a tuneful tradition primarily made up of male composers.Music of the 1700s is often characterized as highly structured and balanced. A favorite form for pieces of many kinds was the sonata form, which relies to a great extent on the basic movement between different tonalities (especially tonic and rife or relative major). Ludwig van Beethoven wrote over 30 sonatas for pianoforte alone and used the structure for symphonies and many other instrumental works. nearly other composers of the classical time period also used sonata form, and music historians have spent much time discussing why this might be so. Some historians pose this question strictly within a musical world How did earlier musical structures give rise to sonata form? Others take in what it was in the surrounding historical context that made sonata form appealing.William atomic number 1 Hadow and Charles Rosen are two historians who talk primarily about musical context. Hadow sets his parole in the framework of classical composers movement away from Baroque forms. He says that when Beethoven and his contemporaries chose ternary form over Baroque binary, typified in the dance suite, they chose a structure that was then used successfully into the 20th century. This was only poss... ...s in history. Works CitedAbbate, Carolyn. Unsung Voices Opera and Musical storey in the NineteenthCentury. Princeton Princeton University Press, 1991.Ballantine, Christopher. Beethoven, Hegel and Marx. Music Re view. Vol. 33, 1972.Drake, Kenneth. The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience. indiumpolisIndiana University Press, 1994.Hadow, William Henry. Sonata Form. London Novello and Company, Limited, 1979.McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1991.Mann, Thomas. Doctor Faustus. New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.Rosen, Charles. The Classical elan Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York The Viking Press, 1971.Subotnik, Rose Rosengard. Developing Variations Style and Ideology in Hesperian Music. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1991.