
Beethoven’s audacious acts of musical risk-taking - tintinnabula
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/beethoven-wasnt-just-historys-greatest-composer-but-also-one-of-its-greatest-human-beings/
======
mturmon
One of my favorite recordings, period, is the Charles Rosen treatments of
Beethoven's late piano sonatas -- two of these pieces are mentioned in the
article.

I'm not a musician, so I don't grasp it at the level of the author, but _wow_.
They are dreamy, sublime, mesmerizing. I've been listening to them for 15
years and they are still a favorite. (Review:
[https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/beethoven-late-piano-
son...](https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/beethoven-late-piano-sonatas))

~~~
yomly
Didn't know Rosen made recordings - only knew him for "The Classical Style".
Thank you for this tip!!

~~~
mturmon
He also taught French at MIT, and wrote a series of essays for NYRoB
([https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/charles-
rosen/](https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/charles-rosen/)). I met him
through the essays.

------
smiljo
A great article! It's particularly cool to see that despite the author's
adoration for Beethoven, he still points out some of his musical weaknesses,
like counterpoint (we could also add opera).

I would highly recommend "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph" for anyone with the
perseverance: [https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Anguish-Triumph-Jan-
Swaffor...](https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Anguish-Triumph-Jan-Swafford-
ebook/dp/B00E78IB3E)

~~~
rectang
It's funny that the author chose the Hammerklavier Sonata to hold aloft, which
isn't that popular even though Beethoven considered it among his best works.
Reading the score for the fugue for Hammerklavier Sonata and imagining it in
your head, the harmonies (especially the weird trills) are not so jarring as
they come out when played on a real piano.

Similarly, the syncopated harmonic rhythm in the final movement of the last
Sonata #32 (opus 111) doesn't throw you off as much when you are reading the
score and have the bar lines to reinforce where the measure boundaries fall.

I speculate that if Beethoven had been able to hear those pieces played aloud,
he would have made adjustments to them. I hear similar glitches in much of
late Beethoven, but those two sections from those two sonatas are the ones
that stay with me the most.

~~~
grabbalacious
Excellent lecture on the Hammerklavier by Andras Schiff which includes an
amusing discussion of tempo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5f8yAnGik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5f8yAnGik)

~~~
ttctciyf
Schiff is also controversial on the "Moonlight"[1]

> I don't know any other piece of music that has such a thick layer of false
> tradition on it like this one.

As well as taking issue with the name - deriving from the poet Ludwig Rellstab
which has "stuck like glue" \- he notes that the manuscript for the slow first
movement, _adagio sostenuto_ (slowly and sustained), is marked _alla breve_
[2] meaning "count two in a bar" so that each beat counts for a pair of the
famous triplets[3] - effectively doubling the tempo:

> If you would play it in this tempo that is usually played [ _plays a bar at
> conventional speed_ ] you can have breakfast and lunch and dinner and the
> poor pianist is still playing this first ...

Not content with this disruption of "Moonlight" convention, he relates that
the manuscript writes _senza sordino_ , instructing the player to play the
whole first movement "without the dampers".

Despite the protestations of his colleagues that "you cannot do it on the
modern piano":

> I beg to differ. Why can't you do it on the modern piano? Have you tried it?
> They said "No I haven't tried it. But you cannot do it!"

> It's an argument just not good enough. Beethoven is a great great enough
> composer that you have to take him very seriously. [...] He wanted a very
> special sound, that the harmonies swim together like in a wash and the
> overtones are strengthening each other.

His solution to the "modern piano" problem is simple: just partially raise the
dampers by pressing the pedal down "about a third".

All this might sound like a recipe for disaster, but his interpretation sounds
wonderful!

A lot more follows, and I can also recommend his "Moonlight" masterclass[4] as
a demonstration of the cogency of his position on the piece.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_Dv_GNQAo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_Dv_GNQAo)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_breve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alla_breve)

3: [https://youtu.be/fW_Dv_GNQAo?t=282](https://youtu.be/fW_Dv_GNQAo?t=282)

4: [https://youtu.be/85KJkpbh_us?t=913](https://youtu.be/85KJkpbh_us?t=913)

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marcusti
Spotify playlist of top 5 recordings

[https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yFp02cwPHkqHnUeZCLjR5?si=...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yFp02cwPHkqHnUeZCLjR5?si=wMxINC58SpuxTHk3NSJ3vg)

~~~
bigbluedots
Thank you!

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ttctciyf
The article picks a "strangely thrilling Beethoven’s Fifth — strange, because
tiny details spring out of what sounds like a big band" recorded by Peter
Eotvos.

This might also be said of the John Eliot Gardiner version[1] Performed on
period instruments, which seems to expose detail, it flies through the first
movement at the hard rockin' tempo of 108 bpm as per Beethoven's score - a
refreshing change of pace if you're more used to lugubrious conventional
performances.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNtb-
ly1I_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNtb-ly1I_k) (full performance)

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jancsika
> (For what it’s worth, I think the latter matched his level of inspiration
> but not quite his achievement, though I wouldn’t be saying that if
> Beethoven, like Mozart, had died at 35.)

If "achievement" is to be read as influence, that's most likely due to
Beethoven's compositional process being tractable and, therefore, imitable by
mid- to late-period Romantic composers (and later, 20th century composers).

A young composer can be taught to take a motive (short pattern of intervals
and rhythms) and transform it to accumulate a phrase of music that is greater
than the sum of its parts. If you add to that the possibility to interrupt the
flow with related melodic fragments so that the melody seems to "comment" upon
itself, you already have a rich set of tools from which to create a dynamic
section of music. It's unlikely it will sound anything as sophisticated as
what Beethoven wrote. But it will likely be coherent.

Now compare that to this:

* learn to read, remember, improvise upon, and mash up all the musics of continental Europe

* when asked to write a piece, think of the most fitting styles and textures from what you learned (and sometimes, mash them up to make new ones), improvise some new content for that, and then write it down

* if you know your musicians, tailor the music specifically to any special skills or limitations (including yourself)

* put in various types of musical jokes to amuse yourself and the performers

So suppose you are a budding composer and want to express your support for
universal human solidarity. Do you chose as your model music from a composer
who masterfully employs Romantic irony for the singer to interrupt the
symphony that was previously in progress (Beethoven's 9th) to sing about
universal brotherhood?

Or do you choose the composer who masterfully mashed up three dances in three
disparate time signatures showing how three different social classes could all
make merry together in agreeable harmony (Mozart's Don Giovanni)?

Keep in mind that if you choose the latter you need to conduct and cue three
different groups from the orchestra so they know when to start and can remain
synchronized.

Given hundreds of years the musical legacy tends toward Beethoven more than
Mozart for this reason. Still, I'd bet if you measured 9th Symphony references
to Mozart's Requiem, the latter wouldn't be too far behind. Heck, Mozart died
after writing only _eight measures_ of the Lacrimosa and I've heard that in at
least 4 different Netflix shows this year.

~~~
pishpash
It's not just the ease of imitation, it is also the inherent biases in the
language. Regardless of the cleverness of mashing things up or musical jokes,
there is always a degree of juvenility or frivolity to the concept itself that
makes it less versatile to express certain serious ideas as straightforwardly
within the wider cultural realm. The toolkit itself is limiting, and the
invention less universally applicable because they are specialized clever
tricks in each case. It's like the difference between Ramanujan and Einstein.
Self-propagating influence _is_ a validation of either universality or
foundational depth. Now, is inimitable cleverness done 1000 times a greater
achievement? I'm not sure.

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mattjaynes
The article opens by talking about the details of a bust (sculpture) of
Beethoven, but oddly shows a sketch of Beethoven instead of the bust. This
appears to be the item the article refers to:
[https://twitter.com/holysmoke/status/1148316512710737921](https://twitter.com/holysmoke/status/1148316512710737921)

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visarga
Grosse Fuge. This piece is 100 years ahead, and almost 200 years old today. I
can't figure out how he could envision it in his time. That kind of music is
more like Shostakovich than the Beethoven we know.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmIr-7z3XdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmIr-7z3XdY)

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mikorym
It's interesting that the piece that immediately came to mind for me is not
mentioned here: his _" Moonlight Sonata"_ [1]. I think this was also an
immense risk at the time.

The risk payed off grandly. Moonlight Sonata could easily be a soundtrack for
a 2020 movie (if everyone hadn't already known it).

It says on Wikipedia that the piece was popular already at the time, so maybe
it was not such a big risk, but I have to say it sounds like (or maybe it
inspired) contemporary piano music.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_(Beethoven...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_\(Beethoven\))

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fredley
If you're in London, the Barbican has a 'Beethoven Weekender' coming up:
[https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/beethoven-
we...](https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/beethoven-weekender-
day-tickets)

