In 1804, Ludwig van Beethoven, who up to this point had himself been a classicist in the Mozartian vein, penned his groundbreaking Sinfonia Eroica. Unapologetically heady and tempestuous, the Eroica introduced, by means of strident syncopations, slippery modulations, and unrelenting d
Before the Eroica, composers had to a large extent worked collectively – as had, for that matter, artists in all other media. Style was considered shared patrimony; deriving, in other words, not from the efforts of the lone creator who, eager to gain artistic autonomy, shut himself off from his peers and worked in isolation, but rather from subtle, super-individual processes of creative cross-pollination that unfolded slowly and organically over time and could be traced to no one artist in particular. The aesthetic of Mozart had been inherited from previous generations of composers, who had worked collaboratively to prepare it. It was Mozart’s task, not to create anew, but to bring to heights of ever greater perfection that which was already inherently there.
Beethoven changed this. By putting his own stamp on his music and wilfully steering it away from the work of his predecessors, he made a clear and bold statement, game-changing in its effects: it was the individual, not the collective, who was the ultimate font of artistic inspiration. His Eroica had, not by coincidence, originally been dedicated to Napoleon, the heroic figure par excellence. And although Beethoven would, upon learning that his dedicatee had arrogantly crowned himself emperor, later scratch out his name from the original manuscript, the principle remained: this was the hero’s symphony, a homage to the glory of individual brilliance and achievement.
Here, ‘hero’ had a twofold meaning: both the philosopher-king who would save the world, and the artist-genius who would save people’s souls. And the notion of saving souls was not incidental. The Romantic artist had gradually come to see himself as the modern embodiment of an ancient archetype: the high priest or wizard, more pagan than Christian in spirit and function; a special being, gifted with rare, supernatural powers, who had more immediate access to high ideals than the common man. read more here
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