Beet's grosse fugue

[BachQ]

Besides, you might want to chexk your spellyng. It's Grosse Fuge, dude...

He committed a gross blunder ........

[Harry Collier]

All you need to know about Beets, Harvard style:
Besides, you might want to chexk your spellyng. It's Grosse Fuge, dude...

Actually, if you stick to German, it's Große Fuge

[jochanaan]

Well, whether you call it a Grand Fugue or horrible fudge , I call it one of the great masterworks.  Sure, it's challenging; that level of complexity and depth and power and perfection is a challenge for anybody.  But it's well worth becoming familiar with.

[rappy]

It's the only Beethoven string quartet movement which catched my attention from the first to the last note on the first listening.

[12tone.]

Timbral aspects. Beethoven is not a great orchestrator imo and I find his orchestral music often underorchestrated and timbrally clumsy (Missa Solemnis and the 6th symphony are exceptions). In his string quartets Beethoven has an amazing timbral balance and "maturity" 

Could you explain how timbre comes into play when you're talking about Beethoven's SQ's / symphonies?

EDIT: What did you mean?

[71 dB]

Could you explain how timbre comes into play when you're talking about Beethoven's SQ's / symphonies?

EDIT: What did you mean?

I have explained these things before and people tend to disagree with what I say. However, this is how I have understood things myself and this is even logical.

My claim is Beethoven's music was "futuristic" in it's time except for orchestration. Beethoven should have invented the things Berlioz and other 19th century romantic composers invented. Beethoven's ideas had romantic scale but his orchestration isn't there. This is timbrally very clear (to my ears at least) in his large and ambitious orchestral music. The sixth symphony is an exception because it's "pastoral" meaning romantic orchestral timbral effects are not needed (it seems). Also, Missa Solemnis works timbrally very well because it's sacret music, relying on oldfashioned solutions (probably influenced by Haydn's ultra-futuristic Die Schöpfung?). Anyway, with string quartets Beethoven's futuristic ideas don't suffer from undeveloped orchestration. On the contrary, I find the timbral possibilities of a string quartet perfect for Beethoven musical language.

[prémont]

dB,
This problem arises when LvB´s orchestral music is played by great romantic orchestras. If played by a small scale HIP orchester there is no timbral problems, and LvB turns out to be a very great orchestrator indeed.

[BachQ]

and this is even logical.

Flawless logic.  Impeccable.

[Gurn Blanston]

I have explained these things before and people tend to disagree with what I say. However, this is how I have understood things myself and this is even logical.

Nothing you have written about music so far is logical. Logical to you maybe, but that bears little or no relationship to actual logic. 

My claim is Beethoven's music was "futuristic" in it's time except for orchestration. Beethoven should have invented the things Berlioz and other 19th century romantic composers invented. Beethoven's ideas had romantic scale but his orchestration isn't there. This is timbrally very clear (to my ears at least) in his large and ambitious orchestral music. The sixth symphony is an exception because it's "pastoral" meaning romantic orchestral timbral effects are not needed (it seems). Also, Missa Solemnis works timbrally very well because it's sacret music, relying on oldfashioned solutions (probably influenced by Haydn's ultra-futuristic Die Schöpfung?). Anyway, with string quartets Beethoven's futuristic ideas don't suffer from undeveloped orchestration. On the contrary, I find the timbral possibilities of a string quartet perfect for Beethoven musical language.

That is ludicrous, not logical. Futuristic? What are you thinking? Beethoven wasn't even a Romantic. He despised the music of those of his contemporaries that we today call the Early Romantics. He was a Classicist right to the end. Why should he have "invented" what Berlioz did? He had little or no interest in doing so. His advances in music had little or nothing to do with devising better ways to depict program music, which he despised in any case. Structurally he was the logical continuation and culmination of the Classical Era. "Classical" music is all about simplicity and economy of means, not about orchestral bloat. Isn't Berlioz the guy who wanted the 1000 piece orchestra? Well, that may have suited HIS ideas just fine, but it sure as hell wasn't Beethoven.

I think it would do you a tremendous amount of good to read a book. You can't absorb knowledge about something by mooning in the thin air that you appear to inhabit. I think that the reason you have this self-proclaimed inability to appreciate Beethoven is simply because you have unrealistic expectations. Without context (which you seem to be totally unaware of) and some vague idea of Time's Arrow (which I would hope that you are NOT unaware of, but I'm not sure) you will never be able to objectively evaluate music by anyone at all. Which you have already proved many times over.




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Now playing: Beethoven: Symphonies [Disc 5] - John Eliot Gardiner: Orchestre Révolutionnaire Et Romantique - Beethoven: Symphony #9 in D minor, Op. 125 - 2. Molto vivace

[BachQ]

I think it would do you a tremendous amount of good to read a book. You can't absorb knowledge about something by mooning in the thin air that you appear to inhabit. I think that the reason you have this self-proclaimed inability to appreciate Beethoven is simply because you have unrealistic expectations.

As a freethinker, he avoids reading anything that could brainwash him ........

Now playing: Beethoven: Symphonies [Disc 5] - John Eliot Gardiner: Orchestre Révolutionnaire Et Romantique - Beethoven: Symphony #9 in D minor, Op. 125 - 2. Molto vivace

How is it?  (viz. Hogwood)

[Gurn Blanston]

As a freethinker, he avoids reading anything that could brainwash him ........

How is it?  (viz. Hogwood)

It's excellent. Performance, recording quality, tempo choices &c. right on the money, IMO. Damn fine singing too. The orchestration is even adequate!



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Now playing: Beethoven: Symphonies [Disc 5] - Rodney Gilfry, Charlotte Margiono, Etc., John Eliot Gardiner; Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, Monteverdi Choir - Beethoven: Symphony #9 in D minor, Op. 125 - 4b. Presto, "O Freunde...", Allegro assai

[BachQ]

The orchestration is even adequate!

No!  Only the Sixth Symphony has adequate orchestration ......... 

[Valentino]

Strictly on topic:
What do you dudes think of LvB's own version for four hands, op. 134?

[Gurn Blanston]

Strictly on topic:
What do you dudes think of LvB's own version for four hands, op. 134?

I have one version only of it. It is Jorg Demus and Norman Shetler on the DG CBE. These are 2 very fine pianists, and the feeling I get whenever I listen to it is that this piece is absolutely kicking their asses! If it isn't, and they are playing it as it should be, then I will say that it lacks the smoothness that comes from playing it on strings, perhaps it is too idiomatic to be converted to another instrument. It IS impressive though, nothing quite like it.



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Now playing:  Quartetto David - Cherubini String Quartet #3 in d 3rd mvmt - Scherzo

[12tone.]

I used to like Beethoven's music a lot, be it piano sonatas, symphonies, whathaveyou.  Now I just find his music annoyingly grumbly.  Note that I didn't say GRUMPY. 

Take his piano pieces.  Compare his chord pounding and fast notes (but fast notes are good) and his apparent lack of a sustain pedal (although I know he uses it) to the music of Chopin and his sustained-washed music.  Notes are brought out more fluidly.  Fluid is the main word here.  Beethoven's music is not fluid.  I find it jerky, pounding and just not the slow, fluidity of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff or any of those.

I know all those people, especially Rach were way off in years but you get the idea. 

[Gurn Blanston]

I used to like Beethoven's music a lot, be it piano sonatas, symphonies, whathaveyou.  Now I just find his music annoyingly grumbly.  Note that I didn't say GRUMPY. 

Take his piano pieces.  Compare his chord pounding and fast notes (but fast notes are good) and his apparent lack of a sustain pedal (although I know he uses it) to the music of Chopin and his sustained-washed music.  Notes are brought out more fluidly.  Fluid is the main word here.  Beethoven's music is not fluid.  I find it jerky, pounding and just not the slow, fluidity of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff or any of those.

I know all those people, especially Rach were way off in years but you get the idea. 

The differences in style in those time periods are not merely incidental. They are crucial to the subject.

I don't necessarily agree with you about pounding actually, that can only be true if the player is not playing in the style specified by Beethoven (he was enamored of legato). So it isn't the music of Beethoven, it's the style of the pianist. That's yet another good reason to listen to a HIP performer like Brautigam. Ignoring for now the elemental fact that the fortepiano is the right instrument, the performance is certainly going to be different, as it should be.



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Now playing: Quartetto Italiano - Beethoven - Bia 840 Op 131 Quartet #14 in c# for Strings 1st mvmt - Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo

[jochanaan]

...Beethoven wasn't even a Romantic...

Gurn, I don't want to get deeply into this here, but this is still open to debate.  I for one feel that, despite the way LvB despised some of his contemporaries' "Romantic" music and program music (which you, of all people, should realize was just as popular in the so-called "Classical" period), he was in several ways more Romantic than any of them.  Certainly the whole Romantic ideal of Artist-as-Hero took Beethoven as its model, and not without reason, for he insisted on the primacy of his own Muse.  His high craft does not diminish his Romantic tendencies.

As for his orchestration, as an oboist I have to say that when I'm done playing a Mozart or Haydn symphony, I'm still good for a couple of hours of playing--but when I'm done with Beethoven, I'm TIRED!  The Ninth exhausts me for a couple of days! But it's a great exhaustion. 0:)

[Gurn Blanston]

Gurn, I don't want to get deeply into this here, but this is still open to debate.  I for one feel that, despite the way LvB despised some of his contemporaries' "Romantic" music and program music (which you, of all people, should realize was just as popular in the so-called "Classical" period), he was in several ways more Romantic than any of them.  Certainly the whole Romantic ideal of Artist-as-Hero took Beethoven as its model, and not without reason, for he insisted on the primacy of his own Muse.  His high craft does not diminish his Romantic tendencies.

As for his orchestration, as an oboist I have to say that when I'm done playing a Mozart or Haydn symphony, I'm still good for a couple of hours of playing--but when I'm done with Beethoven, I'm TIRED!  The Ninth exhausts me for a couple of days! But it's a great exhaustion. 0:)

Yes, it's true that program music was popular, ever since the 16th century. But assigning a program to any of Beethoven's music is in the mind of the beholder. Even the 6th symphony had a note from him on the program at the premiere "rather the record of impressions than any actual representation of facts". In other words, it wasn't a tone painting.

And it's also true that the Romantics took him for a model. I submit that he had no control over this, being dead and all...They were desperately in need of a hero and they made one out of him. Not his fault.



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Now playing: Quartetto Italiano - Beethoven - Bia 840 Op 131 Quartet #14 in c# for Strings 4th mvmt - Andante, ma non troppo e molto cantabile - Più mosso - Andante moderato e lusinghiero

[12tone.]

Well one might say that early Beethoven is classical and middle to late is romantic.  You kind of have to go with Mozart as the highest peak (or composers I guess around his time) of the classical style.  That's classical.  Then listen to Beethoven's 7th.  That's not sounding classical to me

The differences in style in those time periods are not merely incidental. They are crucial to the subject.

I don't necessarily agree with you about pounding actually, that can only be true if the player is not playing in the style specified by Beethoven (he was enamored of legato). So it isn't the music of Beethoven, it's the style of the pianist. That's yet another good reason to listen to a HIP performer like Brautigam. Ignoring for now the elemental fact that the fortepiano is the right instrument, the performance is certainly going to be different, as it should be.

All my cycles seem to pound.  I know Fischer seems to.  I guess I need a HIP cycle then   Help!

[Dancing Divertimentian]

I used to like Beethoven's music a lot, be it piano sonatas, symphonies, whathaveyou.  Now I just find his music annoyingly grumbly.  Note that I didn't say GRUMPY. 

Take his piano pieces.  Compare his chord pounding and fast notes (but fast notes are good) and his apparent lack of a sustain pedal (although I know he uses it) to the music of Chopin and his sustained-washed music.  Notes are brought out more fluidly.  Fluid is the main word here.  Beethoven's music is not fluid.  I find it jerky, pounding and just not the slow, fluidity of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff or any of those.

Why do so many people have these arbitrary hang-ups with comparisons?

"Beethoven must meet the requirements of Chopin et al to be successful" and the like. It's simply wrong.

Beethoven doesn't need "romantic indulgence with the sustain pedal" to be effective. In fact, his lively approach to dynamics would be buried if approached in this a manner. And his concentrated invention would sound little more than mush.

Ditto Chopin and Rachmaninov when you get right down to it. I don't look to either of these composers for wistful star gazing (intense sustain pedal). I look to them for what they deliver on both a technical AND emotional level. And such characteristics are emphatically NOT mutually exclusive...