
When Beethoven Met Goethe - tintinnabula
https://theamericanscholar.org/when-beethoven-met-goethe/#.WXqDcIWcHBV
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meri_dian
If anyone is curious about Beethoven's life, I can recommend and excellent and
relatively recently published biography: 'Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph', by
Jan Swafford.

We see figures like Beethoven and Goethe as geniuses themselves, but the 18th
century conception of 'genius' was not of a person, but of a sort of holy
spirit that blessed an individual with great abilities, while remaining
separate from that person.

So prior to Romantics of the 19th century taking hold of the concept of genius
and re-purposing it into the one we're familiar with today, one would not
speak of someone being a genius, but being graced with genius. Genius was not
who they were, but something external to them that they possessed.

It's a subtle but interesting difference.

~~~
colanderman
Note also that "genius" and "genie" are etymologically related, both
descending from Latin "genius". [1]

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genius#Latin](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genius#Latin)

~~~
beefman
I think _genie_ is an anglicization of _djinn_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn)

~~~
colanderman
Djinn comes directly from Arabic, genie from Latin via French and Arabic
influence. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genie#Etymology](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genie#Etymology)

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G2kyd7
This was arguably the golden age of German culture. Even if Kant just passed
away, you had philosophers such as Hegel in Berlin, Fichte, Schelling living
at the same time and the younger Schopenhauer actually meeting with Goethe,
although that did not turn out well. At that time, Romanticism was taking off
in Germany, after the Weimarer Klassik around Goethe, Schiller and people such
as Herder and Wieland was coming to an end. Goethe had a reputation of
protecting his status and suppressing other talented artists. It should also
be said that Beethoven's ninth uses text from the Ode to Joy, from Schiller,
who was a friend of Goethe and one of the few he might have seen as equals.
Overall, a giant, intricate network of historical figures.

~~~
dkural
German culture was going strong until the purges under Fascism began - in
philosophy, art, mathematics, physics & other sciences. One of the shocking
aspects of the rising of Fascism was that it happened in an intellectually
fertile environment with many reasonable people. It is tempting to try to spot
a gradual decline in German culture, but that was not the case. It was on the
rise until Hitler physically liquidated the intelligentsia.

~~~
davidreiss
> It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidated the intelligentsia.

That's not true. Hitler didn't liquidate the intelligentsia. The first
programmable computer ( by konrad zuse ) was created during that time. The
first rockets were developed during that time. Hitler didn't wipe out all the
nobel prize winners in germany.

Germany was still a major intellectual center before, during and AFTER ww2.

Germany is still the 3rd largest producer of nobel prize winners with 106.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita)

Germany didn't go anywhere. Hitler isn't germany. Hitler is just a blip in
german history.

~~~
dgut
Why the downvotes? He is right.

The reason Germany, England, and France (Spain didn't catch up because they
had no reason to as a negative consequence of their enormous wealth at the
time) excelled to such extent that this particular period appears like a very
special and wonderful intellectual age, is that the rest of the world was for
the most part severely under-developed. Germany didn't become less "wise".

Today the contrast is much smaller, but Germany continues to be a scientific
powerhouse even if it isn't as evident.

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cafard
"No doubt Beethoven chided Goethe along these lines, and the most revered
writer in the land would not have taken kindly to any sort of dressing down,
friendly or otherwise."

No doubt? I'd say no evidence.

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spodek
The population then was about 1 billion.

With 7.6 billion people, greater access to education, and more travel, how
many meetings of comparable people happen today?

~~~
flexie
Maybe the amount of geniuses grew proportionately, maybe there are more
geniuses per billion capita today.

My guess is that there are vastly more geniuses today but that they are spread
out more geographically and to many more types of art.

Today, maybe Beethoven would be making techno in Rotterdam. Goethe might be
making movies in Hollywood or computer games in Copenhagen. Who knows.

~~~
theoh
Still, culture operates on a "hubs and authorities" basis -- there are people
whose job it is to be hubs (curators, publishers, music programmers and
promoters) and people who become known for their genius ("authorities").

The interdisciplinary issue is interesting. There's probably enough of it
happening to offset fragmentation of culture into specialisations.

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gmarx
I love the description Goethe provides of Beethoven's personality. We've all
met that guy, extremely talented, contempt for the world which you kind of
admire but seriously dude could you give it a rest? I'm trying to enjoy
myself...people are always the same. only the technology changes

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xgk

       Beethoven would be making techno
    

Why? Given that making techno, or modern pop music in general, is basically
trivial. Just spin up Ableton, press a few buttons ... boom, 10 minutes later
you've got a competitive techno-track that doesn't sound all that different
(apart from mastering maybe) from what's being played in the clubs. There is
no art left in pop-music -- trivial and generic.

A genius would be horrified by the trivial repitition of the same that is
modern pop-music.

~~~
sweezyjeezy
Aphex Twin.

~~~
xgk
I wish you had elaborated this comment into something substantial that readers
could learn from.

Here is an interesting comment that a classical composer -- possibly the most
influential one in the 20th century through his students -- on Aphex Twin and
similar artists:

[http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz-
stock...](http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2010/10/15/karlheinz-stockhausens-
electronic-music-tips-for-aphex-twin-plastikman-others/)

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Influential though he may be, Stockhausen still comes across as a self-
aggrandizing asshole:

> I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work Song Of The Youth,
> which is electronic music, and a young boy’s voice singing with himself.
> Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African
> repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and
> he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it were varied to some extent and
> if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.

Reich, Glass et al. might disagree.

And course the reply:

> "I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of mine: 'Didgeridoo,'
> then he'd stop making abstract, random patterns you can't dance to".

For what it's worth, any student of "classical" (highbrow, not limited to
Classical period) music will have concepts such as ostinato, fugue, motif,
theme/variation, Don't Rush, etc. drilled into them. Periodicity is what
differentiates music from noise and a tension between periodicity and
aperiodicity is one criterion that separates good music from bad.

~~~
xgk

       And course the reply:
    

I found Aphex Twin's reply disappointing.

Like a petulant child he essentially negated Stockhausen's points, without
engaging with them. It seems to me that Stockhausen was trying to be helpful
-- after all he had been a music teacher for nearly 1/2 century with academic
offspring like Kraftwerk and Can. Aphex Twin seemingly was unable/unwilling to
see that there are other approaches to music than the orthodoxy of 1990s dance
music. Aphex Twin's main musical criterion seems to be dancablility:

    
    
        you can't dance to. Do you 
        reckon he can dance? You could 
        dance to   Song of the Youth, but 
        it hasn't got a groove in it, 
       there's no bassline."
    

I would argue to the contrary: dance music -- whatever its merits for dancing
-- cannot be interesting as art music. Why? Because dancing, specially dancing
well, is itself demanding: most brain capacity is used for moving the body
along to the music in the right way, and that capacity is missing for
listening to and analysind the fine points of the music.

    
    
       Reich, Glass et al. might disagree.
    

Of course the art music tradition of American mimimalism that you refer to,
does change tempi and changing rhythms quite a great deal. It does so in novel
ways that had not been explored in previous classical traditions. That's the
main novelty that American mimimalism gave to the world.

    
    
       Periodicity is what ...
    

I agree with that, and add that modern pop-music errs on the side of too much
periodicity, which renders it uninteresting as art-music, but useful as aural
background and for dancing.

~~~
specialist
What is art?

IMHO:

Dance(able) music, like all music/noise, is about altered states of awareness.

There's sometimes something wonderful about reggae, house music, chanting,
work songs that can change your frame of mind.

But then again all music (genres) do that for me.

