'Haydn or Beethoven?'
Free Be-a-Maestro Newsletter 17 - 24 March 2013 - Be a maestro!
by Reinier Maliepaard
This time, my newsletter is a little lecture, so less lighthearted. A student asked me about the Scherzo and its relation to Haydn and Beethoven. I will try to give a short answer.
At the end of the 18th century, the musical piece Scherzo was a replacement of the originally courtly Minuet, that can be found in symphonies, sonatas and string quartets etc. as a third and sometimes as a second movement. Although Scherzo is Italian for 'joke', it had not always a humorous character.
Minuet and Scherzo have some features in common: they are both lively movements, usually in 3/4 and share the same form: AABA, with B as a contrasting section, called Trio.
However, the differences between Minuet and Scherzo are more important. In short, the Scherzo is a piece of musical contrasts in a rapid tempo, while the Minuet is of noble and elegant simplicity (according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and rather slow. By Beethoven, the Minuet is definitely transformed into the contrasting Scherzo. The typical features of his Scherzo are:
- strong and active rhythm, often dotted
- restlessness, i.e. unexpected and not predictable events as sudden changes in mood by introducing new, surprising and contrasting ideas (op. 28) or a confusing rhythmical-metrical play (sf, syncopations in op. 18,6) or fragment-like melodies by many small motives and 'leaps' (op. 18,2)
- the form of the A section seems to be 'free': no regularly built phrases, but phrases which show 'Fortspinnung' and motivic development.
Haydn named the minuets in his string quartets op. 33 'scherzo' or 'scherzando'. Despite their title, they are minuets, where 'Scherzo' probably implies a faster tempo than the Minuet. One must say that the demarcation between Minuet and Scherzo is not always clear, as in some late minuets of Haydn's op. 77. They approximate the scherzo as do minuets by Beethoven (e.g piano sonata I). These minuets foreshadow more or less the Scherzo in Beethoven's sense. Haydn or Beethoven? Beethoven!
To feel the differences between a Haydn Scherzo (which is in fact a Minuet) and a Beethoven Scherzo, listen on YouTube to
Haydn - String Quartet in E flat major, Op. 33, No. 2 - II. Scherzo, allegro
Beethoven - String Quartet Op. 18 No. 6 - III. Scherzo: Allegro