Beethoven's 8th Symphony: Your Opinions

[Tony Halstead]

Joseflegende, Burleske, and the operas Die Liebe der Danae, Die Egzyptzsche Helene, Friedenstag, Die Schweigsame Frau.

2nd horn concerto; Duet concertino for clarinet and bassoon.

[cloughie]

Blimey! I know there is antipathy here towards the modern trend of applying the concept of curation to everything, but to make the curate a parson? That just perpetuates the situation.

Twas always a parson for as long as I've known!

[Bryn]

Twas always a parson for as long as I've known!

Then you have been living under a misapprehension:

[cloughie]

So be it, my yolk is easy , my burden white!

[cloughie]

Unless you actually want to have some kind of discussion about it! (of course one could also have a discussion about how it is that things "hit the ear" in different ways!)

I don't know about the "Beethoven having fun" way of looking at it. I think there's always more to Beethoven than that. (And I'm not speaking as an uncritical admirer of Beethoven's work, about much of which I'll probably never make my mind up definitively.) Surely there's a memory of Beethoven's second movement in Mahler's "Purgatorio"... Beethoven's irony is more related to Mahler's than to Haydn's, maybe.

Mahler links to Beethoven include his copying of bird calls in his Sym 1 cf Beethoven 6 and the opening bars of Sym 4 have similarities to movt 2 of Beethoven 8!

[Richard Tarleton]

Blimey! I know there is antipathy here towards the modern trend of applying the concept of curation to everything, but to make the curate a parson? That just perpetuates the situation.

The meaning of the joke (yolk) is not always fully appreciated. The egg in question is, of course, bad - there aren't "good parts" in a bad boiled egg. The joke is about the relative status of the Right Reverend host and the curate, who is afraid to say it's bad. Not totally unlike "Up to a point, Lord Copper", meaning "no", not that you agree up to a point. People use the term "curate's egg" nowadays in a different sense, to imply the thing is "good in parts".

[Bryn]

Unless you actually want to have some kind of discussion about it! (of course one could also have a discussion about how it is that things "hit the ear" in different ways!)

I don't know about the "Beethoven having fun" way of looking at it. I think there's always more to Beethoven than that. (And I'm not speaking as an uncritical admirer of Beethoven's work, about much of which I'll probably never make my mind up definitively.) Surely there's a memory of Beethoven's second movement in Mahler's "Purgatorio"... Beethoven's irony is more related to Mahler's than to Haydn's, maybe.

Hmm, but Beethoven was not averse to slapstick either, was he. Take the opening of Op. 31/1, for instance, or the 'village band' episode in the final movement of the 9th. Those, I think, are closer to Haydn's humour than Mahler's. As to "Beethoven having fun", I find humour permeates his work, though often rather more subtly than in said piano sonata.

[Bryn]

The meaning of the joke (yolk) is not always fully appreciated. The egg in question is, of course, bad - there aren't "good parts" in a bad boiled egg. The joke is about the relative status of the Right Reverend host and the curate, who is afraid to say it's bad. Not totally unlike "Up to a point, Lord Copper", meaning "no", not that you agree up to a point. People use the term "curate's egg" nowadays in a different sense, to imply the thing is "good in parts".

Staying off track a while, the title of the cartoon (which latter I first encountered reproduced in an issue of Private Eye) also reminds me of the citing in the same publication of the invention of the neologism "humile" by Captain Mark Philips. He was holding an instruction session at Sandhurst and ask the attending cadets to suggest important qualities of an officer, one suggested humility, to which 'Foggy' replied, "Yes, an officer should be humile".

[Richard Barrett]

As to "Beethoven having fun", I find humour permeates his work

Humour permeates Samuel Beckett's work too but I don't think he's often accused of "having fun"!

[Bryn]

Humour permeates Samuel Beckett's work too but I don't think he's often accused of "having fun"!

The point I was aiming at. THere's a world of difference between "having fun" and the permeation of one's work with humour.

[Conchis]

I think a work like Wellington's Victory represented nothing so much as a 'big payday' for the composer - just like the forgettable hokum Wagner wrote for big money in the 1850s/60s (some of it recorded on Naxos).

[Alain Maréchal]

I think LvB enjoyed playing with the audience's expectations. One of his best is apparent in the third movement of symphony 7, but only if all the repeats are made (and they usually are not): at the end, we hear the Assai meno presto and think "surely not again", but we are refuted (and perhaps relieved) by five crisp chords.

[edashtav]

I love hearing Beethoven's 8th because of its wit, vivacity and cleverness.

[Maclintick]

Humour permeates Samuel Beckett's work too but I don't think he's often accused of "having fun"!

LVB's "humour" in the 8th surely slips into the category of what Robert Simpson termed "metaphysical wit", rather than the slapstick to which he is occasionally prone. As you've already explained in your excellent post #17, RB, this is manifest as a self-conscious or self-reflecting subversion of conventional contemporaneous expectations in a late 18th-century symphony, rather than anything overtly comedic or parodic -- wit, vivacity, and cleverness, as Ed says.

[Richard Barrett]

LVB's "humour" in the 8th surely slips into the category of what Robert Simpson termed "metaphysical wit", rather than the slapstick to which he is occasionally prone. As you've already explained in your excellent post #17, RB, this is manifest as a self-conscious or self-reflecting subversion of conventional contemporaneous expectations in a late 18th-century symphony, rather than anything overtly comedic or parodic -- wit, vivacity, and cleverness, as Ed says.

Indeed (& thanks!). I don't think all this enthusiasm is going to convince Conchis though...