Beethoven's failures ???

[starrynight]

I don't think this looks like a 'worst composer' thread at all.  Nobody is questioning that Beethoven is a great composer.  But that doesn't mean you have to worship him like a god.

As the Pastoral was brought up....I'm not sure it is that questioned as being particularly weak in it's composition.  In fact I'd say it feels like one of the most perfectly constructed of his symphonies.  Of course the bane of any composer are bad performances and when heard in an insipid interpretation which is slow and without energy it could probably feel weak.  I also wonder how much our opinion of this piece would be altered if it didn't have all the descriptions attached to it, which I thought Beethoven eventually regretted doing.  What if it was just the Symphony in F op68.  Would it have been less or more acclaimed?  Some may have a tendency to see it as a descriptive piece and not much more.  Really it's the companion piece to the 5th which people look at in a generally less programmatic way.