Beethoven Forum

Beethoven’s Italian Trope: Modes of Stylistic Appropriation

Robert S. Hatten

A

lthough Beethoven in the 1790s wrote several sets of variations based on Italian opera themes, his appropriation of Italian operatic style for selected movements of his sonatas and string quartets reveals a more sophisticated set of strategies ranging from expressive enhancement to parody.1 Already in three “instrumental arias” composed between 1799 and 1802 we find passionate tragedy (op.18, no.1, movt. II), soulful yearning (op.22, movt. II), and playful mockery 9 (op.31, no.1, movt. II). In each of these movements, Beethoven explores 8 as an expansive metric framework, realizing an expressive potential for lyrical utterance that anticipates Schubert and the next generation of Italian opera composers (notably Bellini).2

1. Beethoven’s piano variations in the 1790s on Italian opera tunes include sets on Paisiello’s “Nel cor più non mi sento” (WoO 70, 1795) and Salieri’s “La stessa, la stessisima” (WoO 73, 1799). The variation finale of his Trio in Bb for Piano, Clarinet, and Cello, op.11 (1798), is based on a theme from Joseph Weigl’s opera, L’amor marinaro. 9 2. In pursuing a micro-history of 8 meter I am amplifying one portion of a fascinating story more fully documented by Hugh Macdonald in his article simply titled with the notation of Gb major 9 9 and 8 meter on a treble staff (“Gb/ 8 ” 19cm 11 [1988], 221–37). Macdonald’s thesis is that “a taste for remote keys and triple rhythms occurred at much the same time in much the same body of music, often for much the same expressive purpose,” which does not assume any “simple or exclusive link between keys and rhythms” (p.237). A closer link between meter and harmony in Brahms is explored by David Lewin (“On Harmony and Meter in Brahms’s Op.76, No.8,” 19cm 4 [1981], 261–65). I 9 will not address linkages between 8 meter and key or harmony, but I will link the emergence of this meter in Beethoven’s music to his enhancement of...