Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

[(poco) Sforzando]

The only thing wrong with you is that you're hanging around with people who tell you it's not okay to like one piece of music more than another.

Oh, come now. Do you really think anybody does that here? If so, quote chapter and verse. People may not share your liking or esteem for one piece or another, and they have every right to say so, but I seriously doubt anybody says it's not OK to like what you like.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Yes. Even if we concede Orfeo's point. 

Which I don't. And my answer is "yes" too.

[Brian]

Nice comments. It's ironic that Beethoven himself thought especially well of 22, which neither of us much cares for.

(I didn't mean to interrupt, but I do love both Opp. 22 and 26. Can't exactly explain why; just one of those things.)

[(poco) Sforzando]

(I didn't mean to interrupt, but I do love both Opp. 22 and 26. Can't exactly explain why; just one of those things.)

Well, it's not okay for you to like them! Because I said so!

[Madiel]

Oh, come now. Do you really think anybody does that here? If so, quote chapter and verse.

Two people on this page have responded Yes to the question, and you want me to quote chapter and verse?

EDIT: And if you think they're not being serious, then... why do you think I'm being serious?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Two people on this page have responded Yes to the question, and you want me to quote chapter and verse?

EDIT: And if you think they're not being serious, then... why do you think I'm being serious?

How do you know I do think you're being serious?

And BTW it's three people. Four if we include Brian, only he hasn't weighed in yet.

[Ken B]

Two people on this page have responded Yes to the question, and you want me to quote chapter and verse?

Wow. And after all the cat scratching recently about reading comprehension. My comment, for those challenged in the art of reading between the lines of one liners, was a joke saying there is something wrong with Nate period, forget music.

[Ken B]

Oh, come now. Do you really think anybody does that here? If so, quote chapter and verse. People may not share your liking or esteem for one piece or another, and they have every right to say so, but I seriously doubt anybody says it's not OK to like what you like.

Except for Gurrelieder. Liking Gurrelieder shows real moral turpitude. 

[Todd]

And after all the cat scratching recently about reading comprehension.

For the record, I was serious.  Deadly serious.  Preferring the C Major to the E Flat is a crime against humanity.

[amw]

For the record, I was serious.  Deadly serious.  Preferring the C Major to the E Flat is a crime against humanity.

Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong all preferred the 1st symphony to the Eroica. Just saying.

[Madiel]

Wow. And after all the cat scratching recently about reading comprehension. My comment, for those challenged in the art of reading between the lines of one liners, was a joke saying there is something wrong with Nate period, forget music.

I know. Wow right back at you.

[Jo498]

(I didn't mean to interrupt, but I do love both Opp. 22 and 26.

Chopin didn't care much for Beethoven's music, but apparently loved op.26 (which is to some extent a model for his b flat minor sonata).
Composer's remarks should be taken seriously, but also with more than a grain of salt. Often it might just have been sales pitch. But in such a case it could also be some rather "technical" thing Beethoven had solved to his satisfaction. In any case, with my idea of "waves" or phases op.22 works as a kind of endpoint and apparently Beethoven saw it as a landmark.
I still do not see in which respect he thought it superior to op.2/3 or op.7 or op.10/3 (if his remarks are to be understood thus). It might be "tighter" in construction but less original and I find the themes/melodies rather unremarkable throughout; the whole thing seems quite ordinary, solidly done but not very inspired.

[EigenUser]

Thanks for the laugh, guys.

I like the Eroica, but not as much as some people here seem to. I think that the 1st reminds me of the Mendelssohn string symphonies that I used to be obsessed with in high school (and still am to an extent, though I haven't heard them in awhile). It was like -- after all these years of loving the Mendelssohn SS's -- they make even more sense now.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Thanks for the laugh, guys.

I like the Eroica, but not as much as some people here seem to. I think that the 1st reminds me of the Mendelssohn string symphonies that I used to be obsessed with in high school (and still am to an extent, though I haven't heard them in awhile). It was like -- after all these years of loving the Mendelssohn SS's -- they make even more sense now.

How 'bout we all meet in the middle and decide to like the D major, no. 2?

[amw]

How 'bout we all meet in the middle and decide to like the D major, no. 2?

Seriously.

Re op 22 not being very original—it's an archetype, a proof of mastery. Classical composers liked to do those when they felt they had reached the point, to produce a work of utter mastery using only the simplest materials, forms and structures. Op 22 was meant to show that Beethoven could Compose Good in spite of what everyone said, that he could write a Normal Sonata Form and a Normal Minuet and a Normal Rondo with none of the wild and original ideas he was infamous for and it would still be a masterpiece. He was trying to be Mozart in other words.

Mozart produced some insanely good masterpieces using very, very conventional materials and this is obviously an aesthetic Beethoven aspired to as well. Problem is Beethoven did not have Mozart's mastery. He was proud of Op 22 but he never tried to do something like that again, with one possible exception: the 2nd symphony (whose first movement is very obviously modeled on Mozart's "Prague") which was significantly more successful because of the trademark Beethoven energy that just pushes everything forward, which he didn't bother trying to suppress in order to prove a point. Also cos the slow movement is amazing. In other cases, though, Beethoven's 'conventional materials' end up becoming really weird because he just can't resist (Op. 70/2/i, iii) or stick out because of their apparent crudity, which in itself makes them unconventional (Op. 30/2/iv, Op. 53/i)

[Karl Henning]

Why the discussion? This is all we really need to know about LvB:

Beethoven was pretty wrapped up in himself and it's ego-centric, boorish...his bloated utterances are hardly on a measured or gentile human scale. Vast self-important planes of grandiose postering & bombast that aren't much justified, crying out for attention like a typical drama queen in so many ways. It's just so earthbound & completely over-rated.

Although I'm not certain what a gentile human scale is.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Seriously.

Re op 22 not being very original—it's an archetype, a proof of mastery. Classical composers liked to do those when they felt they had reached the point, to produce a work of utter mastery using only the simplest materials, forms and structures. Op 22 was meant to show that Beethoven could Compose Good in spite of what everyone said, that he could write a Normal Sonata Form and a Normal Minuet and a Normal Rondo with none of the wild and original ideas he was infamous for and it would still be a masterpiece. He was trying to be Mozart in other words.

Mozart produced some insanely good masterpieces using very, very conventional materials and this is obviously an aesthetic Beethoven aspired to as well. Problem is Beethoven did not have Mozart's mastery. He was proud of Op 22 but he never tried to do something like that again, with one possible exception: the 2nd symphony (whose first movement is very obviously modeled on Mozart's "Prague") which was significantly more successful because of the trademark Beethoven energy that just pushes everything forward, which he didn't bother trying to suppress in order to prove a point. Also cos the slow movement is amazing. In other cases, though, Beethoven's 'conventional materials' end up becoming really weird because he just can't resist (Op. 70/2/i, iii) or stick out because of their apparent crudity, which in itself makes them unconventional (Op. 30/2/iv, Op. 53/i)

This is the kind of comment that makes me still grateful for the existence of this board, even after all the James-this and name-your-top-43-xylophone-concertos-written-in-1629 clutter. Your comment reminds me of a famous essay by Donald Francis Tovey, "Some Aspects of Beethoven's Art Forms," which among things demonstrates what Tovey considered the uniqueness of Beethoven's most "normal" work, the op. 22, and the normalcy of his most "unique" work, the op. 131 quartet. Basically Tovey's point is that for all the ordinariness of its materials, op. 22 is like nothing in else in Beethoven, Haydn, or Mozart; and that for all its originality, op. 131 creates its own set of internal laws making it a consistent and inevitable organic form.

[Jo498]

What about op.28? This is also comparably conventional but IMO much nicer.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Why the discussion? This is all we really need to know about LvB:


Although I'm not certain what a gentile human scale is.

Well, you posted before I had finished my comment about James-this and xylophones-that. I assume a gentile human scale is opposed to a Jewish human scale, or something like that. But of course the problem with James's comment is that it is based on a cliché about Beethoven and not the actual music, or at least about not more than a small part of it. You would think from James's comment that the second movement of the 8th symphony, the third movement of the op. 130, and the variations of 127 had never existed. Of course Beethoven is not the only composer who has suffered from such misperceptions: Bach the mechanical, Mozart the pretty and decorative, Chopin also pretty and decorative in his own way, Debussy wispy and shapeless, Bruckner elephantine, Wagner heavy and loud, Verdi nothing but oom-pah-pah.

If I care to find it again, I wrote a highly sarcastic comment some years back blasting someone here who wrote this kind of nonsense about Chopin, and even a critic as smart as John Simon can write such foolishness as this:

It seems to me that before the Romantics, music was constricted. I do not dispute that the two Bs and one M were important composers, but for me they were all about technique and technical innovation, but ultimately—even the tonitruous [Simon wouldn't be Simon if he didn't have us running to the dictionary] Beethoven—not truly free. . . . It appears to me that Bach and Mozart (Beethoven was somewhat different) wrote predictable, mathematical music, limited in scope, not unlike a caged canary's pleasant but anodyne chirping. It was also perfectly square, by which I mean that from the first two notes of a bar you could predict the next two.

James's pet cliché reminds me of a well-known poem about the 9th symphony by Adrienne Rich:

The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood At Last As a Sexual Message
by Adrienne Rich

A man in terror of impotence
or infertility, not knowing the difference
a man trying to tell something
howling from the climacteric
music of the entirely
isolated soul
yelling at Joy from the tunnel of ego
music without the ghost
of another person in it, music
trying to tell something the man
does not want out, would keep if he could
gagged and bound and flogged with chords of Joy
where everything in silence and the
beating of a bloody fist upon
a splintered table.

Well, like all of us, she has a right to her opinion, but my opinion is that if Beethoven is "over-rated" (unlike such geniuses as Koechlin, Braga-Santos, and Havergal Brian), I'll continue to over-rate him.

[(poco) Sforzando]

What about op.28? This is also comparably conventional but IMO much nicer.

I'm sort of on the fence with that one. The outstanding movement to my mind is the andante, and he gets some fine energy in the development of the first movement. But I don't find much of interest in the scherzo or finale.