How many of the Beethoven symphonies do you actually LIKE?

[Dave2002]

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and recently also 8 which I realised has hidden depths I'd previously missed.

and 8

But are we talking Beethoven or Glazunov now? Some comments might apply to either!

[visualnickmos]

and 8

But are we talking Beethoven or Glazunov now? Some comments might apply to either!

I hold my hands up - I take responsibility for cross-threading, and causing possible confusion.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm currently listening to JEG's traversal of these cornerstones of western civilisation (see Charity Shop Trawl thread).

I find the first two symphonies unmemorable. The 1st has a famous final movement but the 2nd, to my ears, has nothing to recommend it. it's indistinguishable from a Hadyn symphony (who famously wrote multiple symphonies that only H.C. Robbins Landon has ever been able to tell apart).

As for the others, I like 3, 5,6,7 and 9.

4 is only slightly more memorable than 2 and 8 I've always felt to be a crude and shallow piece of work, with a truly horrible finale (Hanslick's comment on the final movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is more applicable to this movement, I feel).

When it came down to it, Beethoven was as fallible as any other great creative artist: if Shakespeare could write dud plays, Beethoven could write dud symphonies (though W.S. came out with more rubbish than L.v.B., imo).

As I offered in #12 above - as one who loves all of the symphonies and the 2nd most especially, I would be fascinated to hear exactly which Haydn Symphonies (or individual movements) you hear as so remarkably similar to those of Beethoven's 2nd. If you can't specify, how can you make such a claim?

Haydn of course never really repeated himself; even when two movements from different symphonies employ closely similar thematic ideas, their resulting moods and expressions are always remarkably differentiated. Par exemple, listen to the closely related menuetto/trio movements of Nos 44 and 52: their ideas and rhythms are very similar; yet one is sorrowful, one anxious; the trios use the same materials as the minuets, but transform them into - unlikely songful serenity in No.44, a playful little march in 52. Only genius can do such things; a casual listener easily misses them, as many other such subtleties. When Haydn quotes the fiery passion of No.45 in the relaxed and playful No.60, allowing its effect (which initially sounds like a development of earlier ideas) to disturb and darken the mood, he actually knew what he was doing. And doubtless hoped the listener would too.

Only the casual listener would ever mistake the explosive dynamism of Beethoven's 2nd Symphony (straining the seams in its finale coda, on the verge of the full-blown Romantic masterpiece which became the Eroica) for the sternly controlled energies and formal intensity of Haydn's Sturm und Drang style, so memorably, differentially and perfectly expressed through Symphonies 26, 39, 44, 45, 49, 52, 58, 59 and others. If you cannot tell them apart you simply need to know them better, take them into heart, mind and memory, and - love them.

How well do you know the finale of No.8? It flashes past so fast, it can be hard to take it all in, even if you think you know it.
But if you take more time to appreciate its remarkable blend of rondo and sonata (which manages two developments in its white-dwarf formal compression) you may find its thematic memorability impressing itself upon you the more.

[makropulos]

I really don't know. For some reason, I find it very dull, and most famous works in the key do nothing for me. Brahms PC2 is a rare exception.

What a strange thing. So Schumann Spring, Schubert 5, Piano Trio D898, Sonata D960, Shepherd on the Rock, Haydn 102, Mozart K595 and Serenade for 13 wind, Bach Brandenburg 6, Beethoven Op. 130 and Archduke Trio, Brahms's Sextet No. 1 - all duds in your book?

[Richard Barrett]

But are we talking Beethoven or Glazunov now? Some comments might apply to either!

I don't know anything about Glazunov!

[kea]

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and recently also 8 which I realised has hidden depths I'd previously missed.

Pretty much this (except I've always loved No.8). I also like No.1 and admire, if not like, No.2. Rarely listen to any of No.9 apart from the choral finale; the rest of the symphony is honestly not that interesting to me and seems like Beethoven trying to recapture his style of the 1810s at a point when he was no longer invested in it on any level, whereas the finale is more genuinely representative of the kind of music he was interested in creating in his "late period".

[Bergonzi]

What a strange thing. So Schumann Spring, Schubert 5, Piano Trio D898, Sonata D960, Shepherd on the Rock, Haydn 102, Mozart K595 and Serenade for 13 wind, Bach Brandenburg 6, Beethoven Op. 130 and Archduke Trio, Brahms's Sextet No. 1 - all duds in your book?

Yes, I find that comment about B flat extraordinary as well.

[Richard Barrett]

As Schoenberg said, there's still a lot of boring music to be written in B flat major.

[verismissimo]

I cannot think of a single movement that I don’t love…. from the sense of excited awakening and discovery of No1’s con brio to the multiform shout-aloud triumphal symphony of symphonies that is the 9th’s finale.
Yes, one becomes jaded with some movements some of the time; early LP-ownership (and consequent over-listening) has to some extent blunted my response to the first two movements of No.9, the middle two of 7…..
…but there’s always another unknown cycle somewhere to bring them to life again. For me it was Toscanini’s live 1939 NBC Cycle which took over my listening life for weeks, just around a year ago: I fell in love with all of them, all over again.

I have my favourites of course: the 2nd Symphony’s larghetto seems to me the perfect, pastoral, musical paradise; a “home-world, Wordsworthian, platonic” to quote Saul Bellow in Humboldt’s Gift, that one longs to return to, or escape from the relentless stresses of The Real Life back into.
A deep and profound and withdrawn serenity is here, as in the adagio of No.4 or the 6th’s Scene by a Brook; perhaps only Bruckner, in the slow movements of his 2nd and 4th, finds his way to a similar spirit-of-place.
The radiant spiritual intensity of the climax of the 6th’s finale… then the rapt quiet of the strings’ withdrawal before the very end; the horn and cello duo in the trio of the 8th, as pure as pure music can be…. the great shout of the horns in the coda of the 7th’s vivace....they live, for always, in the very fabric of my musical being.

Even when I don’t feel like replaying them, I often think about them; the first four especially, as an ideal of musical and spiritual pleasure, contemplation, and contentment; imagining some happier future day, when the 4th’s opening allegro will bustle along joyfully once again, as the Spring sun slants in through the listening-room windows.

What joy it is to read Jayne Lee Wilson's thoughts on Beethoven's symphonies (and much else).

[Conchis]

As I offered in #12 above - as one who loves all of the symphonies and the 2nd most especially, I would be fascinated to hear exactly which Haydn Symphonies (or individual movements) you hear as so remarkably similar to those of Beethoven's 2nd. If you can't specify, how can you make such a claim?

Haydn of course never really repeated himself; even when two movements from different symphonies employ closely similar thematic ideas, their resulting moods and expressions are always remarkably differentiated. Par exemple, listen to the closely related menuetto/trio movements of Nos 44 and 52: their ideas and rhythms are very similar; yet one is sorrowful, one anxious; the trios use the same materials as the minuets, but transform them into - unlikely songful serenity in No.44, a playful little march in 52. Only genius can do such things; a casual listener easily misses them, as many other such subtleties. When Haydn quotes the fiery passion of No.45 in the relaxed and playful No.60, allowing its effect (which initially sounds like a development of earlier ideas) to disturb and darken the mood, he actually knew what he was doing. And doubtless hoped the listener would too.

Only the casual listener would ever mistake the explosive dynamism of Beethoven's 2nd Symphony (straining the seams in its finale coda, on the verge of the full-blown Romantic masterpiece which became the Eroica) for the sternly controlled energies and formal intensity of Haydn's Sturm und Drang style, so memorably, differentially and perfectly expressed through Symphonies 26, 39, 44, 45, 49, 52, 58, 59 and others. If you cannot tell them apart you simply need to know them better, take them into heart, mind and memory, and - love them.

How well do you know the finale of No.8? It flashes past so fast, it can be hard to take it all in, even if you think you know it.
But if you take more time to appreciate its remarkable blend of rondo and sonata (which manages two developments in its white-dwarf formal compression) you may find its thematic memorability impressing itself upon you the more.

Well, that'll learn me! :)

Your appreciation of Haydn is genuine and informed and you're a much better listener than I am but he's one of those composers I fear I shall always admire rather than enjoy. I genuniely can't tell his symphonies apart because, after a time, my 'inner ear' just switches off.

[Bergonzi]

As Schoenberg said, there's still a lot of boring music to be written in B flat major.

OR in any major and minor key ...

[Bergonzi]

Well, that'll learn me! :)

Your appreciation of Haydn is genuine and informed and you're a much better listener than I am but he's one of those composers I fear I shall always admire rather than enjoy. I genuniely can't tell his symphonies apart because, after a time, my 'inner ear' just switches off.

Likewise, any and all of the string quartets!

[Dave2002]

Likewise, any and all of the string quartets!

You realy don't know what you are missing ... but then again ... perhaps you do!

[BBMmk2]

No.4 and 8 I just couldn't get along with. Until I heard Harnoncourt's cycle. This broke new ground for me!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What a strange thing. So Schumann Spring, Schubert 5, Piano Trio D898, Sonata D960, Shepherd on the Rock, Haydn 102, Mozart K595 and Serenade for 13 wind, Bach Brandenburg 6, Beethoven Op. 130 and Archduke Trio, Brahms's Sextet No. 1 - all duds in your book?

Most of those - yes, thought I'm sure the fault is mine alone.