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| quote: | Originally posted by RichieV
but you phrase it like he did it intentionally. He didn't. |
In conversation with his musical friends, Beethoven took pleasure in ridiculing the strict precepts of the schools. When anyone ventured to point out infringements of them in his compositions, he used to cavalierly cast aside the small scrupulosities of his would-be censors. When in good humour on such occasions he would rub his hands, and exclaim, laughing heartily, "Oh yes, yes-- you are quite astonished, and at your wit's end, because you cannot find this in one of your treatises." "One day," says Ries, "when we were taking a walk together, I spoke of two consecutive fifths in one of his first sets of violin quartets, which produce a striking and beautiful effect. Beethoven did not recollect the passage, and would have it that there were no fifths in it. As he usually carried music paper in his pocket, I asked him for a bit, and wrote down the passge in four parts. Beethoven, seeing that I was right, said, 'Well, who has prohibited the use of fifths like these?" I was at a loss how to take the question. He repeated it several times, till at last I answered, greatly surprised at his putting it, 'Bless me, they are forbidden by the very fundamental rules of harmony!' Still he insisted on knowing by whom. I said, 'By Marpurg, Kirnberger, Fux, every theorist who has ever written on the subject.' 'Well,' cried Beethoven, 'they may have forbidden them, but I allow them!'"
To the end of his life Beethoven violated rules whenever he thought proper- especially if the progress of an idea was likely to be interfered with by a slavish adherence to some law of harmony.
True, he didn't just throw away the rules, in fact I read about how he frowned upon other composers who used the parallel fifths.
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