Beethoven's humanity
During Radio 3's Beethoven Experience last week, no music but Beethoven was played, with no interruptions, around the clock. Nothing he composed was left out.
A range of opinions about the project have gone up on the station's message boards. While most posters are full of praise for it, a couple of posters feel that to dedicate the station's output to one composer is to go too far.
Before last week, I would have guessed that I would have been bored of listening to Beethoven by the 2nd or 3rd day of tuning in and out to the programmes. I tend to vary my listening on a whim and would never dedicate myself to one composer.
But I found that having Beethoven constantly there was a wonderful thing. Having his music there every day began to make his music that much more human and real to me.
I've also sometimes found Beethoven a bit self-important. Norman Geras posted a couple of links on his blog that relate to this. First, he quoted from a Beethoven-bashing piece in the Guardian:
If overstated, still sort of true. This is why Beethoven for me has been secondary in importance to Bach. Beethoven seems to push himself into his music in a way that Bach doesn't.
But Norm links on to a comment elsewhere, which takes this argument head on. What Beethoven did
Hearing a lot of Beethoven in a week leaves me feeling similarly. While I can't accept Beethoven as Bach's superior, the sheer humanity that comes across from Beethoven's music vindicates his approach.
A range of opinions about the project have gone up on the station's message boards. While most posters are full of praise for it, a couple of posters feel that to dedicate the station's output to one composer is to go too far.
Before last week, I would have guessed that I would have been bored of listening to Beethoven by the 2nd or 3rd day of tuning in and out to the programmes. I tend to vary my listening on a whim and would never dedicate myself to one composer.
But I found that having Beethoven constantly there was a wonderful thing. Having his music there every day began to make his music that much more human and real to me.
I've also sometimes found Beethoven a bit self-important. Norman Geras posted a couple of links on his blog that relate to this. First, he quoted from a Beethoven-bashing piece in the Guardian:
Most western musicians had agreed that musical beauty was based on a mysterious connection between sound and mathematics, and that this provided music with an objective goal, something that transcended the individual composer's idiosyncrasies and aspired to the universal.
Beethoven managed to put an end to this noble tradition by inaugurating a barbaric U-turn away from an other-directed music to an inward-directed, narcissistic focus on the composer himself and his own tortured soul.
If overstated, still sort of true. This is why Beethoven for me has been secondary in importance to Bach. Beethoven seems to push himself into his music in a way that Bach doesn't.
But Norm links on to a comment elsewhere, which takes this argument head on. What Beethoven did
was a great departure from earlier composers, who did indeed try to create regular, somewhat mathematical pieces. But those constraints were the outside force; the detachment from true music. Beethoven composed from the heart. He wanted you to feel - to be sad, happy, thrilled, or even to laugh [...] He hadn't abandoned a guiding principle, but rather embraced a different and, I'd say, better one.
Hearing a lot of Beethoven in a week leaves me feeling similarly. While I can't accept Beethoven as Bach's superior, the sheer humanity that comes across from Beethoven's music vindicates his approach.
posted by Peter at 09:09
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