III.

Influence

Perhaps Beethoven's most profound influence was in changing the perception of the role of the composer from that of a craftsman producing work to order for Church or aristocratic patron (a role which Mozart and Haydn had been obliged to adopt), to an artist producing work to meet his own artistic needs, financially independent through publishing and performing his works—a change in perception that is one of the hallmarks of 19th-century Romanticism. In this respect he paralleled the influence of Byron in poetry or Turner in painting.

His explicit musical influence was limited. For some composers—such as Johannes Brahms, who produced no symphony until his 40s—Beethoven's presence was paralysing. The German composer Richard Wagner invoked Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, particularly its choral finale, as support for his own vision of the music drama. Not until the late-Romantic symphonies of the Austrian composers Anton Bruckner and, especially, Gustav Mahler, was Beethoven's symphonic ideal carried to what many regard as its final stage of development. Today Beethoven's works form the core of orchestral and chamber music repertoires the world over.