...and don't forget to listen to his piano sonatas and string quartets.

I'm popping the Ode To Joy in my CD player right now. The 1953 recording by the NBC orchestra and conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

(With Condi out there mucking up the works I don't talk about the ice skating or the piano lessons.)

I was at Best Buy this AM looking to purchase Shostakovich Symphony No. 1 for a gift, but they didn't even have his name in the categories. I settled for Justin Timberlake's new CD instead. I hope my sister likes it.

i'll play the 7th.

The Waldstein Sonata is absolutely brilliant - and I listen to the 5th symphony whenever I need inspiration. Angsty minor opening, triumphant crashing end - I end up playing "air piano" every time.

IMO, there's Beethoven - and then there's everybody else. Happy birthday to him!

Yes, the string quartets especially. They separate the dilettantes from people who really get ol' Ludwig.

Two weeks ago, the early program on CBC Radio Two had a complete week devoted to Shostokovich. This past week, it was the final years of Mozart's life.

And with the passing of Tower Records, look for even less names in catorgies - As the giants in the industry decide for us who and what are "important" T'will be the loss of many labels and artists.

And to "I'll play the 7th" - Watch out for that dogleg.

I always thought 12/16 was Beethoven's birthday (I remember Schroeder mentioning it in a Peanuts comic strip I read when I was about 8 and for some reason never forgot it)

But I see it listed at the 17th in some places. What gives? Wiki says he was baptized on the 17th but his family celebrated his birthday on the 16th....what the hell does that mean?

Catholic Advent says that it was customary for families to have the child baptized the day following their birth.

Reminds me of marriages in Germany - Marriage in the City Hall one day followed by a religious ceremony the next. Now, which day is your anniversary?

And the 7th is indeed beautiful with no dogleg.

May I recommend Peter Schikele's "New Horizons in Music Appreciation"? It's the Fifth (Allegro con brio section), but, uh...different.

V, is that the one with the sports announcers doing the play-by-play? "Whoah, the french horn really fluffed that note! Nice recovery, though."

That would be it. "No, folks it is not a fugue. The violins tried to make it one, but the bassists are not following up."

Ludwig couldn't hear you applauding his birthday before he died, and I suspect he "can't hear you now'.

Oh, those decomposing composers.

Too bad most people under twenty-five think Beethoven is the name of a big furry dog...

Viserys and Kenji,

Isn't that also on PDQ Bach with Peter Schickele and Robert Dennis doing the play by play?

One of the CBC Radio Two programs played that recently - Hilarious

You know, Glenn Gould did a bunch of things like that for CBC, but they are usually more clever than funny.

ssdagger: Beats me, but I assume he was born on the 16th and baptized on the 17th. In any case, we (along with everyone else) always celebrated it on the 16th in my family, because it was also my father's birthday. In fact, the title of this post is a play on my father's name.....

Kevin--good time for an uplifting post.
I have to attend a Christmas party soon-- at least it's at a comedy club and there will be a nice buffet. Wish I could go in pajamas.

Kevin - Your family actually celebrated Beethovens birthday too? That is so cool. (Gawd we're a bunch of geeks. But we sure do put the fun in functional). By the way, this is also my brother's birthday. (The Lt. Col. who retired in April that I've mentioned before.)

I'm going to hear the Mahler 3rd tonight. If you're in NYC you should come! www.nyro.org

You mean it was only a title - Zoots alors, and I was ready to have my underground group move out - Ve always listen for the Da, Da, Da, Dum - Viva la France

If you're in the mood for that kinda thing, here's Slava & Slava playing a cello sonata: 1, 2.

My Birthday too! Happy Birthday to me! And, unlike Beethoven, I'm not dead, quite yet, nor deaf, though getting there. On the other hand, I can't carry a tune to save my life.

Happy Birthday David, fellow Gregarious Sagittarius! My newspapersays that if your birthday is today, you will develop a new style that draws positive events and people.

As for musical genius - today is also the birthday of Billy Gibbons, guitar slinger for that l'il 'ole band from Texas, ZZ TOP.

Shostakovich and Mozart get extra play because this was their 100th and 250th anniversaries.

I'm listening to Barenboim & Dupre play one of the cello sonatas. Later, "The Creatures of Prometheus" and who knows what else. I love the Waldstein sonata, too, and "Les Adieux" has another beautiful, almost singable tune.

Third movement of the Ninth sym for me.

Beethoven, dream giant.

Thanks for the reminder.

George Bush is about to send ever more young soldiers and Marines to their deaths and you are suggesting some French guy's music. Sheesh...:-)

PDQ Bach, New Horizons in Music Appreciation lol! I expecially like that beer *burp* as they're getting started ...

I am really ashamed of myself, but I haven't dug into the quartets yet. Piano music-wise, I'd have to say the second and third movements of the Appasionata are my faves. The foursquare simplicity of the slow movement's main idea -- just a 16-bar chordal question-answer phrase -- melts my heart. And the only brio that even approaches the finale movement is Prokofiev's astounding third movement of Sonata No. 8.

Symphony-wise, I'm weird; I have a major thing for the even-numbered symphonies (save for the 8th), the 4th especially. The introduction is like, I dunno ... orbiting Jupiter. But the 6th -- the Pastorale -- lords amighty. No music I love gets the waterworks in me going like those three plaintive hunting-horn notes in the last movement (the Sheperds returning to the field, to give thanks after the Storm), as the bass dives to a IV. I fucking cry my eyes out every time.

Of course the 5th is untouchable (though I'm less enamored of the scherzo and finale as I feel I ought to be) and the 7th is Beethoven the headbanger; apotheosis of dance, indeed! Whee! (I know a couple who marched down the aisle to the adagio.) Harder climaxes are just *not* available with one's clothes on :)

The 9th, like the 5th, is just *there*. But if I had to pick a favorite section (aside from the cumulative effect of the fugue movement), it'd be the March in the choral movement -- which Wendy Carlos did a charming Moog synthesizer arrangement of for the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange ...

And nothing can match that weird, weird dissonant chord (wtf key is that??) that comes out of nowhere in the long development of the Eroica (3rd) first movement ...

Bob

And not just Beethoven. Dec 16 is also the birthday of Jane Austen, five years after LVB. The star that shone over northern Europe in 1770-1775 was auspicious indeed! And Dec 16 is my husband's birthday as well. Not so famous, but definitely more alive.

I could listen to the "Eroica Variations" daily, and the Moonlight sonata. And though I know it has been played to death, I still find "fur Elise" charming.

I don't know, maybe it's the overexposure, but speaking as someone who spent roughly 25 years as a professional musician, I'd say the best of Beethoven was truly great, but a lot of it was uninspired hack work. Particularly, the man could not write for voice. Compare any line of the overrated "Ode to Joy" with any single line of, say, the Brahms Requiem, and you get the point. Most of Beethoven's vocal writing was repetitive and out of the singer's ordinary range. It just wasn't an "instrument" he was familiar with, which is why he only wrote one opera, and a mediocre one at best.
For my money, the one really Promethean composer was Brahms, though I have hundreds of other favorites.

heyyy you were quoted on "Wait wait don't tell me" today, for your pithy thoughts on the listening tour. Nice.

The nice thing about the quartets, Bob, is that you can jump in anywhere. The later ones (heading towards the mystically numbered Opus 111) are much more austere, but if you put them on without explanation, the listener can easily think they are from the early 20th century, and so it's immediately striking how inventive and original the music is.

The early ones, on the other hand, aren't as rich, but they pick up where Mozart left off, with lots of playful stuff that's easy to follow. In between, you can start with the so-called Razumovsky (sp?) Quartets, where baroque, romantic, and futuristic meet most convincingly. Really, don't miss them.

Well, as long as we are into birthdays - Isn't it also the day of the birth of Catherine of Aragon? The mother of Mary, later to be celebrated in bars across as the land as Bloody Mary. Married at first to Henry's older brother who died soon after the ceremony, Henry was allowed to marry her because as, the Church determined, she and his brother had "touched toes". Henry could marry her as she was a "widow".

Hail to the "touching of toes".

Beethoven was overrated!!!

I don't actually believe that, but this thread won't be complete until somebody does.

Oops! Somebody did. Never mind.

speaking as someone who spent roughly 25 years as a professional musician, I'd say the best of Beethoven was truly great, but a lot of it was uninspired hack work. . . Compare any line of the overrated "Ode to Joy" with any single line of, say, the Brahms Requiem, and you get the point.

Speaking as someone who's spent 15 years as an amateur musician (starting in 6th grade), I think you're correct about his overall output, but that's true of many composers. Even Brahms turned out some real shit, some of which I've had the misfortune of playing. (On the other hand, Brahms only wrote four symphonies, all excellent.) I think earlier composers tended to be more prolific, perhaps out of necessity, and not surprisingly this resulted in some real garbage. How many of Mozart's symphonies are performed regularly?

However, I think people tend to forget how revolutionary Beethoven's 5th symphony was, or how ahead of its time the 9th was. (Arguably, the 3rd too.) The opening of the 9th sounds like something Bruckner might have written. Composers of that period just didn't write very emotive works, and they didn't know how to fully take advantage of a large orchestra. Even the slow, quiet parts of Beethoven's best works have much more texture and power to them than any of his contemporaries' music.

Bob: I agree about the 4th; it's inconsequential but wonderful nonetheless, except for the truly Satanic bassoon solo in the last movement. (Beethoven did redeem himself with a beautiful bassoon solo in the last movement of the 9th.) I used to love the 7th, but after at least three performances the slow movement is the only one I can bear. The rest of the symphony is painfully repetitive, at least from where I was sitting.

Horatio: yeah, if I had to pick a single favorite Beethoven excerpt, 3rd movement of the 9th would probably be it. (Followed by the 1st movement.)

— Good night, Chet.
— Good night, David.
— And good night for NBC News.

No one's mentioned the piano concertos, so I will. Especially the last two, the 4th and the 5th. The 5th (Emperor) has such a sweeping, dramatic opening movement, and the beginning of the finale, where the piano crashes in with the main theme after the orchestra gives an early echo right at the tail-end of the Adagio, is thrilling. The 4th is so lyrical and so beautiful, and has an intense and despairing slow movement that gives way to one of the most cheerful and energetic pieces Beethoven ever wrote.

The piano sonatas are my favorite--I'm an amateur pianist, although the more difficult ones like the Appassionatta and the Hammerklavier are beyond my skill to play. The late Op. 110 (no. 31, A-flat major) is my favorite, with a beautiful, lyrical opening movement and an absolutely transcendent finale that starts in despair and ends in soaring triumph.

I agree that Beethoven didn't write for voice very well. There's a reason the Missa Solemnis isn't often performed.

I love the late quartets, too, especially the berserk Grosse Fuge. It's kind of a twin to the finale of the Hammerklavier piano sonata (Op. 106) which explodes into a chaotic, nearly impossible to play, fugue for its last 10 minutes.

Missa Solemnis here, or at hype machine here (I'm not how many of these tracks are still available, but some are). Sounds OK to me.

Brahms always seems too comptrived to me. Too many short melodic fragments pasted together. Nice harmony, though.

This didn't occur to me before, but I just got back from a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, meaning I celebrated Beethoven's birthday by hearing the Fifth performed on electric guitars. With rather a lot of fire. Also the Ninth, but there was less fire in that.

jprichva, Kenji, Nat Echols:

Great comments all; sitting here with a buncha Stella Artois, the divine pilsner, lemme see if can't weave 'em together ...

Jprchiva, a very good European friend is a choir singer who calls Mozart "her husband," but of course loves Beethoven as well. But as a singer, she'd certainly concur; Beethoven didn't have the affinity for voice writing that many of his great peers possessed. I'm no opera fan (and my friend, despite being Italian, isn't either; she says the vibrato-heavy bel canto style wrecks choral music), so I haven't heard Fidelio, but I'd have to disagree about many sections of the 9th Symphony choral movement. I think Beethoven transcends some of his own limitations there.

First, the Ode to Joy melody is *incredibly* singable; the tie on the last beat in the penultimate phrase is a stroke of genius. Secondly, think of the tenor line the March (the melody). Though as Thomas Pynchon sez, it might just make you want to go out and invade Poland :), it's hard to imagine *any* male vocal part more balls-out heroic and celebratory -- with the choir virtually shouting a pep rally-like response. Man, if that doesn't just rattle yer nads, then you're on life support in some ICU somewhere ... or as Schiller's lyrix say, you should go weeping and steal yourself away from such company.

But just as Schiller's incongruous slam at guys who haven't won a loving wife is kind of ... weirdly mean-spirited in the middle of a celebration of universal joy, the appogiaturas in the soprano parts when the melody is glorified, and the Presto section that follows the March *are* kind of over-the-top Teutonic and would fuck with the tessituras of any highly skilled vocalist. It's invading Poland *and* laying seige to Stalingrad. As much as I love Beethoven to death, he *is*, for good and ill, the Hegelian apotheosis of Germanic culture.

But ultimately I agree with Nat; this is what great composers do. They screw the rules and blow subtlety out the window. Dripping in earnestness, they let the structural scaffolding hang out there for all to see. The greatest composers tend to have a contempt for "proper" range. Think of the tippy-top-end bassoon solo that introduces the Rite of Spring. Or for that matter, think of jazz reed virtuoso Eric Dolphy, who, through well-rehearsed overblowing, singlehandedly turned the bass clarinet into a melody instrument.

Frank Zappa, as it should go without saying, was notorious for that in his orchestral writing -- and the Ensemble Modern pulls it off amazingly on their recording of Zappa's music, The Yellow Shark.

And at the end of the day, that's why Beethoven is one of my all-time favorite composers; only Bach, Stravinsky and Bartok are rivals. It's Beethoven's *position* as the pivot-point between the paint-by-numbers Classical aesthetic and Romantic expression. It's the First Industrial Revolution and the rise of the bourgeoisie, which not only drove the expansion of the orchestra, but created a thirst for democracy that Beethoven first tried to celebrate in Napoleon (and he famously withdrew his dedication of the Eroica, after realizing that Napoleon was going to be just another European despot). It's Beethoven the humanist who read Immanuel Kant and was moved to literal tears at the Categorical Imperative, Perpetual Peace and Kant's ethical writings.

Sure, Mozart was a progressive composer as well, but the difference between Mozart and Beethoven is that you have to be a lot more musically educated to catch the clever little modulations and such that subvert the Classical notion of perfect Greek proportion. Beethoven hits you over the head with a chamber pot. You know it's funny ... I listen to Haydn symphonies (and he wrote over a hunderd of 'em) -- one of Beethoven's teachers -- and I go to myself "that's exactly what Beethoven symphonies would sound like *without a single shred of Beethoven's creative mojo*."

No, Ludwig van Beethoven was not a supreme melodist like Mozart. But he was a harmonic innovator who went well beyond Mozart, and even more importantly, more than any other composer in the hidebound Classical era when strict ideals of mathetmatical proportion reigned, Beethoven composed form along with content. He *redefined* the symphony, piano sonata and string quartet. His creativity burst the bounds given by his time. He laughed at all the limitations life thrust in his path.

I think of Beethoven the deaf man who composed late-period music that profoundly influenced the 20th century masters and I start to fucking bawl again. He busted all the molds, suffering all the while.

Kenji: There is simply no excuse why I'm not familiar with the Grosse Fugue, let alone the rest of the quartets. Thanks for the fine recommendation and I assure you I'll rectify that glaring deficit in my musical experience.

And there is my maudlin, quasi-drunken rant on one of the greatest names in music.

Bob

I often think of Beethoiven as the man most likely to be responsible if I ever emulated Van Gogh

Nat Echols:

At the risk of further incoherent ranting, I've gotta mitigate your view of the 7th Symphony. You call it "repetitive" -- this is precisely what I mean by saying this is Beethoven the headbanger.

It's kind of like, umm, classic Metallica -- a band who wrote 7 minutue songs that any proper appreciation of form would say should be 3 1/2 minutes long. And it's not that Metallica wrote *dance music* (without Les Claypool playing bass, they certainly never could swing their asses out of a paper bag, as the saying goes), but I think this criticism misses the point.

Repetition, for Metallica, is *part of the effect*. And I think it's the same for Beethoven's 7th.

Think of the 3rd movement of Bach's Brandenburg No. 3. What a light and lovely confection that is! And it's only something like, umm, five (?, I forget exactly) sections or so, which if you ran through it straight would render less than a minute's worth of music. I used to play the 'sucker on bass guitar in highschool (it's what happens when you grow up with a virtuoso keyboard player), boy what a finger exercise *that* was. But the point is, it's a dance form, and dance forms (unlike sonata allegro form) are based on repeat structures.

Now think of the last movement of Beethoven's 7th: BUM badda bum. BUM badda bum. BUM badda bum. BUM badda bum. BAHHH, BAH BUM BE BUM BUM BAH BUM BUM BUM BE BUM BUM BUM, repeat! Could you really get that effect *without* the repeat? I don't think so. The whole point is to be poked in the eye by a sharp kettle drum. Very much like the kettle drum figures, you'll note, which pervade the fugue movement (no. 3) of the 9th Symphony. Which I will certainly agree with you, Nat, is a sublime slice of all the symphonies. But ask yourself -- would *that* movement be what it is without some of the inexorable repetitions of its driving main theme?

Bob

And at the risk of dominating this thread -- which is something I really don't want to do; every music lover should pipe up today with an ode to Ludwig; btw, did anyone see the new Ed Harris movie Beethoven's Copyist? -- but I just have to reinforce Nat Echol's perceptive words about the greatest works. Nobody managed resources like Beethoven; nobody had a higher quotient of expression to means.

The byword for Beethoven for me -- why I cherish him so -- is emotional expression. Nobody ran the full gamut the way he did, from simple sweetness, elegant self-assurance, implacable rage, soaring triumph, crushing despair -- and did it without a shred of contrivance. How could have he put such simple peasant emotions into the Pastorale Symphony without for a second sounding saccharine?

Nat is so right; there is a coiled expressive power in even Beethoven's slowest, quietest and most harmonically straightforward sections that any other composer would kill for. I'm tempted to use a phrase like "motific logic," but Bach was the supremely logical composer; Beethoven's forms in many ways scoff at notions of logic and proportion. Nonetheless, there is nothing Frankenstinian about even his oddest juxtapositions and transitions (one of the hardest tricks in progressive composing); in every germ idea there is a sense which contains the essence of the whole. Set your iPod to shuffle the Beethoven symphonies, and even an inexperienced ear can sort them out and match which movements belong to which symphonies.

And on this final note I shall become silent, and lurk the remainder of this thread with avidity. Have a Beethovenian Sunday, everyone.

Bob

And on that..er..note I going to put on Bach Violin Concertos* (A minor, E, G minor and C minor - Viktoria Mullova), make up a batch of 'Just-Short-of-Incendiary' Bloodys, and make up a batch of latkes.

Lots of sour cream!

* Because most all of my library of Beethoven is, alas and alack, on vinyl and I don't have a turntable.

one very moving tribute on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwzvMslu7e0

My daughter would approve - Now, Anne's daughter is another matter.

And now back to Frank Kelly and the Countdown to Christmas.

If you're looking for good recordings of the late string quartets that won't blow your budget, there's a set by the Quartetto Italiano on Philips Duo (2-fers).

As for Beethoven's somewhat pedestrian works, there are quite a number of them. I think the difference between his masterworks and his misses is determined by the time he took to compose the piece, and the reason for doing so. The longer he took, and the more personal the reason, the greater the work.

Works like Wellington's Victory, The Glorious Moment, the Choral Fantasia and the Triple Concerto are nice, but somewhat shlocky. They were written in a hurry, and largely to satisfy commissions. There wasn't much incentive for Beethoven's best work.

Compare these to works like the late quartets, the Missa Solemnis, and the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos--where Beethoven was writing to satisfy himself (and in the case of the Missa, missed the deadline by three years). There is a greater depth and reserve to these works that the others lack.

One work that hasn't gotten a mention yet--which also gives lie to the notion that Beethoven couldn't write for voices--is the short Elegischer Gesang. It's a late work (Op. 118), written in memory of a benefactor's wife. Scored for four voices and string quartet (but usually performed by chorus and string orchestra), it's a model of restraint: no straining voices, but still sincere and dramatic.

I was 16 when I discovered Beethoven. I was in love, especially with the 5th and the 9th. Except for the Adagios. "Why did he waste his time writing those when he could have maybe then finished the 10th" I thought. Now that I'm 61 instead of 16 I'm sure glad he "wasted" that time.

Actually it's an Andante in the 5th.

Bob--
You are obviously well-versed in Beethoven and very passionate about his work. I admitted before that the overexposure has probably affected me. After some nearly 50 years of practicing, playing, and singing classical music, half of that time professionally, I (like many of my colleagues who'd never admit it) are more excited musically by "lesser" composers, not for the least reason that we get to perform them comparatively less often. For my money, you can keep Stravinsky if I get Prokofiev for my team. :)

what Beethoven excelled at was building whole movements from little building blocks of melody or rhythm. The most famous example is of course the 5th Symphony, but examples abound in the piano sonatas. The Tempest sonata's first movement is entirely derived from the first line of music, with all the themes in the movement found therein. The finale of the Tempest is a simple 4-note rhythmic motif constantly repeated, but the harmonic modulations and left-hand patterns keep it from being boring, and instead make for a driving, energetic piece that's fun to listen to and a thrill to play.

The da-da-da-DUM motif used in the 5th gets a heavy workout in the first movement of the Appassionata, as well.

I sang the Elegy mentioned upthread in college. It's lovely, but kind of tricky to sing.

Beethoven didn't have a reputation as a great melodist, like Mozart or Schubert, but again, some of the late sonatas put the lie to that, like the heartbreaking beauty of the Theme from the Op. 109 variation movement--my single favorite movement from all the 32 piano sonatas.

Francois of ze underground

'Allo, allo'

How's it going with the radio under Grandmere's bed?

norsecats:

Just have to say real quick -- great posts! I'm enjoying your musical analyses; they're making me want to get familiar with those pieces -- especially the Hammerklavier which, like the quartets, I'm still a stranger to. I'll keep my ears open for Op. 109, too.

Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm. It's infectious :)

Bob

Ex-lib, indeed. The c# minor quartet is what you should have put on.

Oh, if you listen to a symphony, get better than a hack job conductor like Lenny Bernstein.

About the best modern instruments recording today, IMO, is David Zinman/Zurich Tonhalle.

Can you believe that Dan Snyder, owner of the overweight and overpaid bunch of losers known collectively as the Washington Redskins, is buying Washington's last remaining classical station (WGMS) and turning it into sports talk radio?

So now instead of Beethoven I get to listen to John Riggins and Terry Bradshaw.

Barf.

Oh, if you listen to a symphony, get better than a hack job conductor like Lenny Bernstein.

About the best modern instruments recording today, IMO, is David Zinman/Zurich Tonhalle.

Actually, for my money, I'd go with Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on Teldec--if you're going for a box set. However, you can probably do better piecing together your own cycle. (The only disc I would absolutely recommend is Kleiber's 5th and 7th, reissued in the DG Originals series.)

And nothing can match that weird, weird dissonant chord (wtf key is that??) that comes out of nowhere in the long development of the Eroica (3rd) first movement ...

That strange, "dying away" chord is really wierd, because it's almost impossible to pin down what it is.

The chord is, from bottom up: B, F#, A, C, D#. You can interpret it as either a diminished seventh based on A with the added ninth (B), or a dominant seventh on B with added ninth (C); more likely the latter is correct, since it gets "resolved" by stepwise changing the C to a B. (Or, technically, since this is Beethoven, to an H!)

At any rate, the reason why the chord is so unsettling is that it's a B major chord in E flat major. Of course, there's no B in E flat major, so it just sits there hauntingly, not really knowing what to do with itself.

Heh. That's funny, Ode to Joy came up in shuffle on my iPod Saturday.

'allo, 'allo, London, we await - Brie getting moldy, bread rather stale - send Da Da Da Dum soon - down to our last Berlioz record - Damnable Wehrmacht patrols keeping playing "Ode to something" above.

Und, Wagner is chopable liver?

Und, Wagner is chopable liver?

Not at all. I loved his work in the Bugs Bunny short, "What's Opera, Doc??"

"Kill da wabbit, kill da waaabbit!"

"What have I done?!?"

Bob - thanks for your comments.

I once had a lifetime ambition to play all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Unfortunately, I simply haven't got the chops to manage the really difficult ones, so I'll settle for browsing the ones I can learn.

Some of the early ones, although not well-known, are terrific, too. Kind of an amped-up version of Haydn or Mozart. The Pathetique is the really famous early sonata (Op. 13), but most of the others have their charms. The Sonata in D (Op. 10, no 3) is my favorite of the early sonatas, with a galloping first movement, a whimsical finale that keeps veering off in unexpected directions--it almost resolves several times, and then Beethoven will abruptly jump to a remote key and go off and running with new material. Its heart is the slow movement--Largo e mesto ("very slow and gloomy") in d minor, the first slow movement in a minor key that he had written. As the tempo marking implies, it's a really bleak and mournful piece, and it must have startled the hell out of his contemporaries. Nothing like that had ever been written before. The end, especially, is powerful--after an agitated interlude it slowly fades away, with voices dropping out until a single, plaintive two-note theme rises up and then dies away on a low D.

lone1c:

Ooh, ooh, harmonic analysis (everybody but total theory nerds can safely ignore this message):

I'm of the school of thought with an ambiguous chord that when in doubt, follow the root. Since you've got a fifth rising up from the bass, I think it'd be safe to spell it as some sort of B chord.

Although it *is* tempting to spell it as a diminished seventh (or, since I'm more familiar with guitar chord nomenclature, full diminished; I think of diminished seventh with a minor seventh, which could also be a minor triad with an added sixth spelled on the third).

Diminished sevenths are a weird beastie. A locrian sonority with a ... major sixth? They don't parse diatonically. Add the major ninth and the locrian possibility (phrygian with a flatted fith; a B scale on the white keys) melts away entirely ...

But it's spelled on the B. The major third and minor seventh seems to scream dominant seventh -- but dominant seventh with a minor ninth? And what's it a "dominant" to -- E minor?

Ordinarily a major sonority built on the minor 6th would simply signal a shift, local or otherwise, to the parallel minor. But then, viewed from the alleged Eb tonality, you've got that *tritone* (A), *and* a major sixth (C) -- which defeats the idea of shift to minor.

It's one thing to build a cluster chord diatonically. Nobody's bat an eyelash at CDEG (C add 9) or CEFG (C add 11). It's quite another to build a cluster *around* the alleged root (A and C with B) -- which could imply a full ninth chord on B phrygian if it weren't for that pesky major third (D#).

This sounds like one of Beethoven's famous enharmonic shifts. Since it resolves stepwise as you say, I think I'd read the F# (Gb) as the important note here, signalling a local shift to a minor area prior to the resolution, with the superimposition of the A and C as a static coloration. Diminished sonorities, unless arising from a dominant seventh, notoriously freeze movement.

And that is assuredly the psychological effect of that weird, weird chord in the context of its usage ...

Bob

lone1c:

Final thought: If the first resolution is moving the C to make the B root unambiguous, you've still got to account for that A tritone (the minor 7th in the B dominant 7th) in the key of Eb.

Eb locrian -- the most unstable and unused mode?

Depends on where it goes from there, I guess. I have to dig out the Eroica now ...

Bob

Blah blah blah BLAH

Heinrich von Sauerpussen:

Wagner is invading Poland, laying seige to Stalingrad *and* bombarding London with V-weapons.

jprichva:

Oh don't get me wrong; Prokoviev is up there, too. I love his restless motoric drive, harmonic indirection and impish sense of melody. One of the most instantly recognizable of 20th century composers. That all said, I agree with Shoshtakovich; I don't think he's a composer with a bottomless reserve of depth.

Stravinsky infuriates me sometimes. I have to admit actively disliking a number of his later works; in fact the whole neoclassical period is problematic to me -- and I wouldn't go near his 12-tone stuff.

It's just that his Russian primitivism -- especially the first three ballets -- was so devastatingly audacious that it makes up for the rest of the catalogue. Even a later throwaway that harkened back to that period like Scherzo a la Russe slaughters me like a pig; I could listen to it all afternoon.

It's long since been fashionable to talk wack about The Rite of Spring -- but it remains the single most influential piece of "classical music" for the 20th century. Entire composing careers were founded when young musicians encountered that piece. Many of my favorite rock musicians were Stravinskized in their youth and never forgot it. Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell, Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp -- okay, these guys aren't The Beatles, but I came of age during the progrock era. And let's not forget the countless film and TV score composers who owe their left creative nut to the RoS. William Courage, the Star Trek guy? You know that stupid fight scene music with the Gorn?

What the RoS did was, first, to allow crushing levels of *non-functional* dissonance -- polytonal superimposition rather than that tortured Germanic quest of de-centered tonality which the Late Romantics had taken to the breaking point and beyond. Take away that outrageous orchestration (look at the composer's two-piano reduction) and what you have is folk music on steroids, built on pedal-point harmony and repeat structures. Even more than Bartok (who I love a little more just because of the integrity of his vision), Stravinsky's folk-derived eccentric meters triggered the 20th century's shift to rhythmic development -- as harmony was becoming exhausted. The last dance, where The Chosen One either dances herself to death or is killed by the Elders, dependent on how bloody-minded and literal you wish to take the tableau -- is still one of the most bone-crushingly powerful pieces of music ever written.

Way back on a national BBS, I got into a pointlessly vicious debate with a cellist over which was the first true piece of rock music -- the RoS or Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. And of course the Carmina wins hands down on all the obvious levels: the bawdy lyrics, the pagan themes, the songs of the Goliards -- proto-hippie itinerant perpetual students who went around from castle to castle, singing for their suppers, seducing the noblewomen and drinking their wine. And of course the enormous percussion section, rhythmic focus (love that gong crash in O Fortuna), simplistic medievalized harmony and dance-form repeat structures. Orff was a didactic composer whose career concern was teaching. And while Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School were being chased out of Germany for being decadent crypto-Jewish modernists, the Nazis came around to the first rehearsals of the Carmina, enchanted at the pagan splendor of it all.

I mean -- what exactly is not rock 'n' roll about this?

Nothing, really. It's just that the RoS did it all, did it first, and did it much more violently, excessively and nihilistically. The first performance *caused a riot*. If the Carmina is Woodstock, the RoS is The Stones at Altamont. So if you're an aging baby boomer and aerobicize to classic rock, you might feel a stronger kinship to the Carmina. All You Need Is Love. If you never grew out of believing in the irreducible chthonian menace of rock -- its power of destructive renewal -- if you see a direct line from the riots at the movie openings of Rock Around The Clock and The Girl Can't Help it, through Lennon, Jagger and Hendrix to Johnny Rotten -- you find more uncomfortable truth in the RoS as a touchstone.

And if you believe that even rock can embody the ideals of musical progress rather than those of a fundamentally conservative dream of perpetual youth -- then perhaps even that much moreso.

Bob

Aside from one amazing duet in Tristan and Isolde I'd as soon ignore Wagner altogether.

Although that would leave a considerable hole in the soundtrack of 'Apocalypse Now'.

'the irreducible chthonian menace' sounds like a great name for a rock band.