Chord Progressions

But after Beethoven was deaf he would have had to use theory to remember what sounds good, because its not like he could experiment with different sounds and styles anymore.

Well, kind of...there were certain conventions they followed (voice leading, among others). I don't think those guys let theory dictate the composition of the piece. The idea of "If it sounds good" still prevailed in a way. Bach and Beethoven were just such musical geniuses that making it sound good was easy for them. lol

Hold on a second there -- there are laws that Baroque and Classical musicians had to follow. Like you said, there were certain laws in voice leading they would abide to in order not to fall into out-of-fashion sound. For example, under no circumstances were they "permitted" to have parallel fifths or parallel octaves (i.e. medieval fanfare music, Gregorian chant), and certain cadenzas were also prohibited (you could not finish a piece with any cadenza other than V-I or V-i, for instance).

I'm sure it might have happened a few times that composers broke these "rules", but in proper Baroque and Classical theory, doing so was frowned upon and deemed unprofessional.

But after Beethoven was deaf he would have had to use theory to remember what sounds good, because its not like he could experiment with different sounds and styles anymore.

Oh definitely. Beethoven had an incredibly developed theoretical ear.

Well, kind of...there were certain conventions they followed (voice leading, among others). I don't think those guys let theory dictate the composition of the piece. The idea of "If it sounds good" still prevailed in a way. Bach and Beethoven were just such musical geniuses that making it sound good was easy for them. lol

Hold on a second there -- there are laws that Baroque and Classical musicians had to follow. Like you said, there were certain laws in voice leading they would abide to in order not to fall into out-of-fashion sound. For example, under no circumstances were they "permitted" to have parallel fifths or parallel octaves (i.e. medieval fanfare music, Gregorian chant), and certain cadenzas were also prohibited (you could not finish a piece with any cadenza other than V-I or V-i, for instance).

I'm sure it might have happened a few times that composers broke these "rules", but in proper Baroque and Classical theory, doing so was frowned upon and deemed unprofessional.

Yes...but see, I don't know as much about that. That's more your realm of study.

Also, as I understand it, a lot of that stuff was just convention. It wasn't like anyone went and wrote down those rules, right? (And didn't Beethoven kind of "define" some of those unwritten rules of his day, so to speak?)
Unless...of course, we're talking about species counterpoint; there's SO many written rules for that. We briefly studied that in the Music Theory 1 course I took. Ugh, it was terrible. I much prefer freeform counterpoint.

But after Beethoven was deaf he would have had to use theory to remember what sounds good, because its not like he could experiment with different sounds and styles anymore.

Oh definitely. Beethoven had an incredibly developed theoretical ear.

I don't know if it's true, but apparently Beethoven sawed the legs off of his piano when he went deaf. So, the piano body lay on the floor, and then he could feel the notes vibrate through the floor (and therefore it helped him compose). Assuming it's true, that is a lot of skill, to be able to tell what a note is just by how it vibrates.

I have heard he went of vibration a lot, but I'm sure at that point he also had mostly memorized how certain intervals sounded and could imagine them in chords.

I don't know if the rules were really set in stone or if people who did other things were just forgotten. I think the trends may have been more similar to the kind of things that goes on still today, like how nearly all pop songs have electronic elements. I think people like Beethoven or Bach or whoever just kinda did their own thing and everyone else thought it was cool so they copied them.

@Sam: I'm not sure; I don't know where the conventions come from. And Beethoven is widely considered the transitional composer in between Classicism and Romanticism, so that's entirely possible.

I-VI-V-vi is the most common and probably needs to be learned first. However, of course, others add more life.