Wes Crone replies  to Bob Draper:

>In my view, Beethoven was not so much an inventor/creator of new forms as
>he was a culminator.  I have often heard Beethoven referred to as creator
>and Bach referred to as culminator.  It has seemed to me that Beethoven
>just brought the art he dealt with to a new level(symphonies, piano music),
>just as Bach did(counterpoint.  I would be interested in hearing what my
>fellow list members have to say regarding Beethoven's inventiveness versus
>his mastery of what was already known to composers of his time.

It seems to me to depend on what you're counting.  Yeah, Beethoven worked
with genres already used, and, yes, he raised expectations as to what could
be done with those genres.  However, at a very basic level, I believe he
redefined what musical coherence was, especially in the late works, like
the Missa Solemnis, 9th, piano sonata no.  31, and the late quartets.  The
innovation is that the piece is no longer determined by dance and song
forms or dance and song phrasing.  There's a plasticity of both rhythm and
form, to that point unknown, which later composers took off from.

Steve Schwartz