BaL 18.01.20 - Beethoven: Symphony no. 1 in C, Op.21

[Ein Heldenleben]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-p...&index=13&t=0s

“The impossibility of talking about music” ...that’s this forum done for then...

Barenboim is right. Thing is I can’t see anything either comic or tragic in those three chords . I can see wit and comedy in the scherzo of Beethoven symphony 8 but only because I know that it’s a parody of the Maazel metronome . I can see something ironically tragic at the end of the Brook movement but only because I am aware of his biography. Presumably though even Fischer and Arrau would have agreed that the slow movement of the same Opus 10 sonata is a teensy weensy bit sad ? Otherwise we are in the wilfully perverse world of “King Lear - essentially a comic farce..”

[Master Jacques]

Otherwise we are in the wilfully perverse world of “King Lear - essentially a comic farce..”

The phrase I'm used to, is the description of King Lear as a "cosmic farce", though indeed the suppression of the "s" makes for a delicious irony. As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods ... Gloucester's sentiment from the play doubtless resonated with Beethoven too. The humour is of the gallows kind.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The phrase I'm used to, is the description of King Lear as a "cosmic farce", though indeed the suppression of the "s" makes for a delicious irony. As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods ... Gloucester's sentiment from the play doubtless resonated with Beethoven too. The humour is of the gallows kind.

In fact I’m misquoting the Nigel Planer classic I An Actor but I couldn’t remember this quote or the play.....
You’re right Lear is shot through with grim humour...

[Bryn]

. . . And, as Matthias B pointed out some time ago, the BPO/Rattle set is available as a 24/96 download from 7 digital for not much more than £12:

https://fr.7digital.com/artist/berliner-philharmoniker-and-sir-simon-rattle/release/beethoven-symphonies-nos-1-9-9386374?f=20%2C19%2C12%2C16%2C17%2C9%2C2

Apologies for the link being to the French site but it should ask you to switch to the UK one.

Actually, it's -1p 'more' than £12.

Had it been available for that when I bought the Bu-ray/CD version, I would have saved myself both significantly more money and shelf space.

I find the Adam Fischer set more idiosyncratic than idiomatic, but I rather like what I hear.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... the Nigel Planer classic I An Actor ...

Oh, but that's a heart-rending work; a cry of agony, channeling the writer's anguish as his career dissolved around him after The Young Ones - his inability to get roles and audiences' clamouring for Neil when he did get theatrical roles. Friends of Planer have reported his near-suicidal distress that the work was taken as a comic parody.

[Bryn]

Further, re humour in Beethoven's works, I would strongly recommend Alfred Brendel on the subject. His "Does classical music have to be entirely serious?" can be found as one of his "Three Lectures" double DVD set. I note that there is new, sealed copy available on eBay.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Oh, but that's a heart-rending work; a cry of agony, channeling the writer's anguish as his career dissolved around him after The Young Ones - his inability to get roles and audiences' clamouring for Neil when he did get theatrical roles. Friends of Planer have reported his near-suicidal distress that the work was taken as a comic parody.

I didn’t realise it was a comic parody - it strikes me as a wholly accurate depiction of the theatre world..

[Master Jacques]

Further, re humour in Beethoven's works, I would strongly recommend Alfred Brendel on the subject. His "Does classical music have to be entirely serious?" can be found as one of his "Three Lectures" double DVD set.

I don't know what Brendel says on the matter, but my answer is, "yes it does - but 'serious' is never to be equated with 'solemn'." As Ken Dodd often wisely said, "comedy is a serious business".

[Bryn]

I don't know what Brendel says on the matter, but my answer is, "yes it does - but 'serious' is never to be equated with 'solemn'." As Ken Dodd often wisely said, "comedy is a serious business".

Unfortunately, the Brendel lectures are not to be found on YouTube. As to Ken Dodd, he always struck me seriously unfunny, whether on stage, fiddling his taxes* or acting as a rabble-rouser for Margaret Thatcher.

* He was, of course, acquitted of evading his taxes.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I didn’t realise it was a comic parody - it strikes me as a wholly accurate depiction of the theatre world..

(or, if you prefer - )

[Master Jacques]

As to Ken Dodd, he always struck me seriously unfunny.

Humour is personal: I don't know whether you saw him performing live, as I did at the London Palladium? I've never seen an audience whipped up into such mass hysterical laughter, myself included. Never to be forgotten exhibition of sheer genius. The only comedian in the same league (in my experience) was Mr Francis Howerd.

[jayne lee wilson]

No. And no. (I can say that with a perfectly straight face, too.)

It's a satisfying coda, exuberant and beautifully turned, that's all: and thinking of it in terms of Beethovenian biography is the sort of modern solecism which puts people off it. It's only a step from such "CM in jokes" to those fatuous and infuriating cries of "elitism".

If special fantasies (or "metaphors" if you don't like the more loaded word) work for us, that's great. But by no means ought we to criticize other people's pleasure in the music, because it does something different for them. Beyond pictorialism, it's possible to hear irony in the Pastoral Symphony, a profound cry of yearning for a world which - rather than simply being "lost" - never existed in the first place. That is the whole point of Pastoral, as Empson so brilliantly elucidates -- and as LvB graphically demonstrates. Finding it funny perhaps misses the point, don't you think?

What a world of wilful misunderstanding lies here.....

First, there's nothing biographical in my suggestion about the 8th Symphony's ending; just how I hear it as it relates to other such passages, especially conclusions, in Beethoven's music itself. I could exemplify, but it appears to be a waste of time here. Those comments above relating the 6th’s birdcalls to Beethoven’s deafness (#135) are far more extramusically biographical than anything in my own comments. But he “conjured up” the birdcalls from memory, surely; as anyone who has heard the birds (especially the Quail, so accurately transcribed) for themselves can attest.

Next, I never got anywhere near saying I found the 6th Symphony “funny”. What a crass, bizarre misreading of my comments (#127 etc) above, which anyone can read and see for themselves.
Of course it is a deeply spiritual work, with shades of joy, peace, euphoria, fear and awe and sheer human excitement at the violence of a storm….then the thankful song and a profound calm at the close. All unsmiling? Really?

Everything I say relates either to my own actual listening, or Beethoven’s own various titles and movement headings or what inspired them….no “fantasies” involved.
Not to mention the responses of some very insightful and musically perspicacious writers such as Richard Osborne. There are many others.
Still if its “biographical reading” you want, here’s a lovely example, balancing listening, evidence and speculation with deft acuity, from a great English Symphonist and Writer:

“One is reminded of the incident when Beethoven, walking (or rather stampeding) in the country and singing (or rather bellowing) was all at once hit by a tremendous idea, with terrifying effect on a herd of cattle - whereupon he was himself driven from the field by an angry herdsman who though him an escaped lunatic. There are plenty of unsubstantiated anecdotes about Beethoven, but the finale of the 8th is suspiciously like internal evidence for this one.”

Robert Simpson, Beethoven Symphonies (BBC Music Guides).

Off to the Country myself now - no cattle to bellow at, they're still in the barn, but plenty of birdcalls to make me smile...)

[Barbirollians]

Humour is personal: I don't know whether you saw him performing live, as I did at the London Palladium? I've never seen an audience whipped up into such mass hysterical laughter, myself included. Never to be forgotten exhibition of sheer genius. The only comedian in the same league (in my experience) was Mr Francis Howerd.

I remember him making a joke about his favourite singer being the German - Betty Blackhead.

[Bryn]

Humour is personal: I don't know whether you saw him performing live, as I did at the London Palladium? I've never seen an audience whipped up into such mass hysterical laughter, myself included. Never to be forgotten exhibition of sheer genius. The only comedian in the same league (in my experience) was Mr Francis Howerd.

Francis Howard was a real class act. Very much premier division, rather than non-league.

[Dave2002]

There seems to be a bit of a diversion right now. What do others think of the complete box set of symphonies by Fischer? Does the relatively (I assume) small size of the orchestra work in the larger scale works?

I'm probably going to have to listen to the whole (I only listened to part of it before) of last weekend's BAL in order to find out what the reviewer thought was so special about Fischer's version of the first symphony.