Beethoven’s Overtures: Towards a New Era
Beethoven’s Overtures: Towards a New Era

Summary/Abstract: Beethoven’s oeuvre is considered, owing to its composer’s unique style, one of the most important landmarks in the history of music. This paper looks to put together an overview, and to reflect on the importance and influence of a less popular genre in his orchestral output: the overture. The study is structured into three sections. The first serves as introduction, a brief history of the evolution of the genre, from the opera overture to the concert overture and to the arrival of the tone poem. The second part proposes a concise presentation of the eleven Beethovenian overtures: those written as incidental music or for a play’s opening, the four he penned for one and the same opera, and the only overture originally designed as an independent concert piece, without the corresponding extra-musical material. The last section offers some conclusions about these works so characteristic of Beethoven’s style and which represent a link between the spirit of the dramatic work and the symphonic tradition. They prove the composer’s essential contribution to the development of program music, unquestionably influencing all subsequent generations of composers.

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