Beethoven 3

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life, Vienna was occupied by Napoleon's armies but his work went steadily forward. Nevertheless, the ideas that brought those armies into existence was sweeping across Europe. The spirit of independent thought and action was stirring and it was this that eventually gave birth to the inventive genius of the 19th century. It animated the poetic thought of Goethe and Schiller and infused itself into the music of Beethoven from the Sonata Appassionata to the ninth symphony.
This spirit might be the strongest reason for Beethoven's slow working and his comparatively small output. Haydn and Mozart could turn out symphonies and quartets by the dozen because they accepted certain principles of order without question. Beethoven, on the other hand, considered every work a matter of strong personal conviction. When, in later life, he looked back at earlier works he was disgusted by how much he had taken for granted. Now he felt that his ideas as he first put them on paper did not represent ...

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that sketching was a "bad custom", either because he may have felt it interfered with his natural spontaneity, or because he may sometimes have thought he was wasting time in jotting down everything and anything that occurred to him. But there was no real alternative for him - he was breaking new ground all the time and must therefore go warily.
Slowness is the first quality in Beethoven's character making him typical of the change of attitude of musicians towards their art at the turn of the century. Had he been content to compose for the calculated satisfaction of his patrons there can be no doubt that, like Haydn, he would have produced a vast quantity of finished work, much of ...

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