The Mannerisms of Beethoven

Abstract

It was originally my intention to write a paper on the mannerisms of the masters, but time would have failed me to tell of Spohr the mannerist par excellence, of Mendelssohn with his “Midsummer Night's Dream” figures and harmonies, of Chopin with his peculiar chords and grouping of notes, and of Schubert, Schumann, and others, so I determined to limit myself to the one great master—Beethoven. Let me say a word or two about the title of my paper. You may not agree with it, but I want you, at any rate, to understand what I mean by the mannerisms of Beethoven. They are those ruts and grooves into which his mind and pen frequently glided. If you ask why I call them mannerisms, I reply that no word better suits my purpose. Mannerism means adherence to a manner, or sameness of manner, and I am going to try and show how Beethoven repeated over and over again certain peculiarities of harmony, modulation, progression, and development. I am well aware that the word mannerism is commonly used in a disparaging sense; that it implies faultiness of manner, and carries with it besides the idea of affectation and also of excess. Now looking at the word from an etymological point of view, its meaning—like that of the word manners—appears to me quite general. Take another word with the suffix ism from the Greek iσμóς, the Latin ismus —the word Egoism. Some dictionaries establish a nice distinction between Egoism and Egotism, or Egomism as it is called, but there are other dictionaries, and good ones too, which give to the former word, first the plain meaning, belief in or adherence to self; secondly, the one used in ordinary language, too much belief in self, thinking too much of self. Dean Trench in his charming little book “On the study of words” says :—“What a multitude of words originally harmless have assumed an harmful as their secondary meaning; how many worthy have acquired an unworthy.” Of this multitude the word mannerism may be one. It is differently used by writers. Of the secondary meanings which I have named sometimes only one is taken. For example, the writer of the article “Spohr” in Sir G. Grove's “Dictionary of Music and Musicians” speaks of that composer as a mannerist, and reminds 'us of the melodious phrases and cadences, chromatic progressions, and enharmonic modulations, “in themselves beautiful enough and most effective,” which occur over and over again in his works. Here the manners are not declared faulty, only they are carried to excess. Again, Lord Macaulay in one of his essays says :—“Mannerism is sometimes not only pardonable but agreeable, when the manner though vicious is natural.” Here the idea of affectation seems excluded, and also that of excess, for surely immoderate use of a vicious manner could be neither pardonable nor pleasant. I take then the liberty of using the word in what I call its primitive sense—viz., sameness of manner, self-repetition. I cannot attribute to Beethoven faultiness of manner, although as a human being he was perhaps not exempt from errors; if any, they originated—as Hazlit has well said of Shakespeare—in the fulness of gigantic strength. I am going to accuse him of having once at least fallen into excess; and at the risk of incurring your displeasure, I am going to point out one or two of his manners which appear to me to savour of affectation in so far as they are artificial, recherchées rather than natural. So in a small way I accept the secondary meanings; and hence my superscription appears to me a convenient one.