Initially, the amateurs and professionals who played and listened to Beethoven's early compositions may have felt reassured by the apparent familiarity of his musical language. But the perceptive ones among them would soon have realized that his was an authentically new and original voice, especially when they heard his early C minor works: the Piano Trio, op. 1 no. 3, the String Trio, op. 9 no. 3, and the Pathétique Sonata, op. 13, or the G minor Cello Sonata, op. 5 no. 2, and several movements in the op. 18 string quartets. Some aspects of his originality were clear from the start: the increasingly democratic sharing of significant material between each member of an ensemble, the greater length of many individual movements and the inclusion, in some early sonatas and trios, of four movements in place of Haydn's and Mozart's more usual three; also a reappraisal of key-relationships and formal structures, the prominence given to timbre, to varied and detailed dynamics and other expressive devices, and the frequent recourse to rhythmic distortion and extremes of tempo.

Dynamics, and the ‘spirit of the composition’

As a viola player in the Bonn orchestra, with its ‘perfection in pianos, fortes, rinsforzandos’, Beethoven had experienced at first hand the expressive and dramatic effectiveness of varied dynamics, and this remained for him a vital concern throughout his life. Dismayed by poor orchestral playing at the unsuccessful premiere of Fidelio, he complained bitterly that ‘all pianissimos and crescendos, all decrescendos and all fortes and fortissimos should have been deleted from my opera! In any case they are not observed. All desire to compose anything more ceases completely if I have to hear my work performed like that!’ When he himself conducted, his awkwardly balletic gestures showed how strongly he felt about marks of expression; he would lose all his inhibitions, and cause a good deal of merriment among members of the orchestra, as Louis Spohr later testified: ‘So often as a sforzando occurred, he tore his arms, which had previously been crossed upon his breast, with great vehemence asunder. At piano he crouched down lower and lower as he desired the degree of softness. If a crescendo then entered he gradually rose again and at the entrance of the forte jumped into the air.’