Harmony in Bach, Mozart, Beethoven: a comparison

Woodduck said:

Where do you see Beeethoven deficient as a harmonist? It's true that he wasn't fond of chromaticism, but he was certainly capable of writing any sort of harmony his conceptions required, and his harmonic schemes are essential to his structures. His suspicious attitude toward the new Romantic fascination with chromaticism had to do, I suspect, with his sense of structural economy.

Click to expand...

Its just the way I hear his music. When I saw hammeredklavier post the quote from Brahms stating that true dissonance is found in Bach and Mozart, not so much Beethoven, I felt vindicated in my belief, because that is what I hear as well, and obviously to some extent Bernstein felt this way too. So I don't think it is just in my head, there is something to it. That said obviously Beethoven had other strengths (he was after all Bernstein's favorite composer), he is widely regarded as among the greatest composers, and his music has been incredibly successful. Whether his harmonic language was exactly as he wanted it, or just the best he could do, I think is speculation.

Woodduck said:

This I don't even begin to understand. The chief thing that makes Wagner a master of harmony is not merely a heavy use of chromaticism - he's only doing that some of the time anyway - but his ability to see how an unprecedented degree of harmonic suspension and modulatory freedom can be sustained coherently and used to build long spans of great tension and expressive power. And if you've ever sat at the piano and played through the scores of Tristan, Meistersinger or Parsifal you've had a superb demonstration of voice-leading as polyphony. Nothing in Brahms approaches Wagner's mature works in harmonic variety and complexity. That's obvious on a superficial hearing, but it's his powerful, intuitive yet carefully calculated control of form that enabled Wagner to create a stunning arch like the third act of Tristan. I don't see any point in comparing this to what Brahms was doing with his neo-Classical aesthetic.

Click to expand...

I will say I feel that Wagner is simply outstanding in some ways from a harmonic standpoint. If you want to call him on par with the greatest harmonic masters I respect your view, and maybe you're right. There are elements of Wagner, that I would best describe as dazzling, shimmering and attractive in ways that Brahms music is not. However I see these elements as essentially what I would describe as effects more so than the strong substantive harmonic forms that Brahms created. Previously in another thread I made the point that fools gold can seem to shine brighter than real gold, and I compared Brahms to gold. Calling Wagner fools gold goes too far as criticism, but in my view his strengths are more closely related to surface effects more so than the depth we hear in Brahms best compositions. They are very different composers, I stand in awe of some of the moments of Wagner's compositions, which were unprecedented and brilliant, but if we look at their work as a whole I still feel Brahms was the better composer over all, and I find his use of harmony more subtle and often emotionally complex in ways Wagner is not. We tend to know what Wagner is trying to evoke through his use of harmony, (this may be in part due to the limited amount of forms Wagner composed in and the fact that in the form he primarily chose the music is following along with a narrative) with Brahms I find the effect is often more complex, layered and multi-faceted.