This music is so much beyond words. There's no way to explain what the music is telling. The simple harmonic structure on one hand and the deep feeling it provokes in the listener on the other. This concerto is such a miracle.
Shifty Schubert at his best. His modulations always just sneak up on you, I find. It's what I love about them. If you're not careful you can so easily loos track of where you are. It's like he's spinning you around and saying 'follow me if you can'. What on earth might he have done if he'd lived longer?
The reason that the G Major chord needs the resolution is because the melody is directed toward the A, consequently directing the chord toward D major chord that supports it.
What’s so interesting about that one bar G major chord is that it ‘wants’ to go to in D to begin with, since usually, it’s the other way around from the dominant (D) to the tonic (G). We are in G major, but somehow the passage makes us feel like we’re developing into D only with the use of V-I progressions. It’s probably expectation, but still, why does that G major chord not feel like a resolution? A minor feels like the actual resolution there, which is quite absurd from a music theory standpoint. I geus Beethoven really defied G major and broke music theory along with it
I'm just an old blind Bebop upright bass player so my ears are broken as to what sounds distant incontinent to many people. But I actually think that the dominant is called dominant for a reason. Because if you look at the natural harmonic series, it is more a dominant chord, not just a major triad that is the first Harmony you encounter Or maybe think of it as the pieces in D7 and the G is the four chord
While 15 million on RU-vid here are watching Taylor Swift and whatever, other uber-wealthy, famous nobodies, a few thousand are watching this. I'm glad to be in the minority, don't you! Cheers 🥂
super! you explained why it has always been my favorite piece of music in musical terms. i had always understood it in poetical terms very well... inspired me for decades. and brendal's album also includes 32 variations on a theme in c# minor. that album changed my life.
I don't hear it resolving to the dominant. It's built tension with all those triplets but when it hits that G/B it's wanting to pass through bass B to A then to G. We get B to A but then it fails to resolve at all.
Yeah beethoven just poorly resolved the phrase, nothing more than that. He never was a genius, what looks to be genius from beethoven is just errors that amateurs constantly make.
The modulation to A minor directly from a Dmaj chord is the most striking thing about that passage. Also, that Eb part is interesting, could be seen as the inverted reply to the Bmaj, and/or a typical augmented (flat)6th (implied), resolving down to the V, which is what happens. Also of note throughout the whole concerto is the tritone, a prominent character. By far my fav of Beethoven's concertos.
In the 50s my mother had a 78 rpm recording of this concerto. There was a small bit broken off the outside edge, so the first intact groove was the orchestra entrance, apparently in B major, which modulates to G. I didn’t know the beginning of the story for a few more years. That B chord told me to pay attention to what it becomes-2nd movt e minor. Charles Rosen’s books are wonderful, as was his playing.
Ok. But I can not avoid the sensation that if thinking about the names of all those things I am putting together in a composition could lead to a Beethoven's concerto, there would be a lot of Beethoven's concertos being composed every day. I read Beethoven to learn some of his piano sonatas, and that material seems to me something between manually mechanical and graphically geometric. The score tells me how the piece was composed, note by note, even unknowing the names of tonalities, intervals, modes, modulations et cetera. And then, when note by note are ready to repeat like speaking, becomes the time to give them expression. And then, I am sorry, harmony rules are still less useful...
Charles Rosen had talked about this effect in his book about the Classical Era and Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven. (Edit: the very book you showed at 6:30) I have used this effect in a critical point in my composition too (although not at the start, but in a transition to the tonic in the development section, in a key previously stably established but now it's time to leave behind)
One can modulate the mode by vſing phꝛaſing and rhythm and harmonic rhythm. It is a modulation to the relatiue mixolydian. I actually did ſomething ſimilar is a recent piece I compoſed on my channel: it is Pſalm 1 put to muſicke. It is in C maioꝛ, and without any accidentals in the whole piece, it gradually vſeth harmonic rhythm as well as the melodic rhythm and the half diminiſhed 7th choꝛd on B to end the piece firmly in E Phꝛygian, without any feeling that there needeth to be a reſolution to C maioꝛ oꝛ A minoꝛ. That is what is neat about modulating to relatiue modes: it can be ſo ſubtle that the liſtener doth not euen notice at firſt that a modulation hath occurred.
Another factor that destabilizes the chord is the chromaticism in the orchestral interlude, especially the C-sharps in the bass line. While I tend to agree that the piece has not really modulated to D by the time we hit the chord, the chromaticism has already destabilized tonality away from G to a degree.
i put beethoven down below with mozart. drab uninspired nonsense orchestrated by powdered wigs who know nothing about life. debussy on the other hand, bach, gershwin, van dyke parks. those are the real greats. beethoven is loved because he was born without ears. amazing! what an incredible musician!
@@vittoriosommese i mean it. and have stated such since i was a kid. got in trouble time and again with the music teachers insisting its beethoven and mozart who define serious music. no, mozart ate his own poo and beethoven beat women. their music is utter drat and its genuinely frustrating reading all these regressive ignorant conservative comments. gershwin makes beethoven sound like vanilla ice in comparison. bach is the only good powdered wig. the only one worth listening to.
@@jennydeaf9O9 ok, I really hope you're trolling, not because you dislike Beethoven and Mozart (which is possible), but because your motives are absurd
@@jennydeaf9O9 Gershwin had an attention deficit problem with his concert music, didn't develop ideas very well. A few bars of something interesting, then it's on to the next thing, and so on.
I'm not an expert in music and I don't know a lot of english either so I'll do my best to explain myself. It doesn't seem surprising to me that first inversion of tonic chord resolves well to a second inversion of the dominant chord. A double step down in the circle of fifths feels resolving anyway (like going from Em to D) so in this case we have a G/B chord working as an Em chord in which the tonic of Em is substituted by the dominant of G/B that doesn't move (all the other notes move a step down and we can strictly say that the D is a consonant anticipation) and, althogh the fact that the chord actually is G (reinforced by the bass) it should feel like a two steps down (from Em to D) which is quite resolving. I don't know... I'm almost self-taught in harmony.
Such an underrated concerto for sure, I listened to Glenn Gould's concerto recordings and somehow the first movement of the fourth concerto stuck out for me
Wonderfull work thank you! I was wating so much to hear the secund theme but it is quite smart not to have put it😅😅 . Btw this kind of paradox makes me think about the final chord of the 13th nocturne of Chopin in C minor. The last three last chords are proper c minor chord and the very last is identical to the two other EXEPT.... he adds a G betwin the two C of the bass octave... so the final chord is more stable in some sens, but as it contrast with the two other by this only adjonction, it make the effect of some kind of ghosty unresolution within the most solid stability possible, and this contrapunctical semi-cadency that is just a ...suggestion, is zlso kind of a question , like why? (Why human are you so stupid doing wars when I (-Chopin, or the nocturne) exist (or existed just now on your ears)😅😅😅😢
Your description of “music that exists in a thought bubble” perfectly encapsulates how I feel about that e minor passage from the Eroica, which is the only place we get respite from the relentless forward motion of the first movement. It’s interesting here that in stabilizing G major in the recapitulation by a same-tone modulation from Eb Major, Beethoven is basically reversing the same-tone modulation from G major to B Major in the introduction.
Great video! I already knew the diminished 7th chord was versatile, but it's great to see every possible resolution to the tonic one after the other. I have a different audio complaint from everyone else: the "ding" sound effect when you resolve to the tonic is the same note every time, which interferes with the tonic chord being heard at the same time.
