Beethoven - an antidote to Composer of the Week

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For those Forumistas who may be more interested in learning about Beethoven and his works than they are about Marin Alsop's dog (welcome to the snobish elite, folks!) there is more to be gained from the first three minutes of this five minute talk than in the whole of Monday's programme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZsBi50VbXw&list=PLErHuBsy75wzNtI5pjaDqwyM_C_RdipXn&index=3&t=0s

... the Funeral March aspect is one I hadn't previously encountered - but the rhythmic similarities with the Slow Movement of the Eroica offer further ponderable points.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Bernstein's TV discussion of Beethoven's Fifth, mentioned, IIRC, by Marin Alsop on Monday, is also youTubable. The introduction (is that Alistair Cooke?) isn't very enlightening - Beethoven going blind??? - but the insights Bernstein brings to the composer's working thoughts, and the way he (LB) presents these to a non-specialist audience, show how these things could and (I believe) should be done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v_8FN0u07E

[antongould]

Not being a member of any elite ..... I find the programmes both enjoyable and, to me at least, informative .......

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[eighthobstruction]

....I am surprised that Simon Sharmas' delivery is fast and furious without the pauses he employs on TV....i found it hard to start with to realise it was him talking....better too not to see his movements and gestures. Enjoyed his part in second eps when he dapped down Alsops thin ideas....

[Pianorak]

Thanks for that fhg - fascinating and enlightening!

[Serial_Apologist]

We don't need an antidote to COTW.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We don't need an antidote to COTW.

You didn't hear Monday's ... attempt ... I take it, S_A?

[LMcD]

....I am surprised that Simon Sharmas' delivery is fast and furious without the pauses he employs on TV....i found it hard to start with to realise it was him talking....better too not to see his movements and gestures. Enjoyed his part in second eps when he dapped down Alsops thin ideas....

Could the same thing be said of Simon Schama?

[Serial_Apologist]

You didn't hear Monday's ... attempt ... I take it, S_A?

There is either an awful lot one can say about Beethoven to the world of today, or not very much at all, in my opinion. Beethoven could compose the sorts of music he wanted to because it expressed the congruence of his interests with those of the rising bourgeoisie who wanted a music that would express their power and dominance. It is specific - preaching to the age in which it was composed. For the sake of life itself it's time the ruling classes were put out of their misery, but they cling on much in the analogous way "we" cling on to the manifestations of their power and any past glory that went with it - the accompanying miseries put down to human frailties we are expected to look up to the Beethovens and past heroes as iconic substitutes in a hypermediated world in order to overcome. The progressive age Beethoven was in effect celebrating was expressed in the survivalistic spirit of his music - an individualistic ethos of winners and losers, of heroes and people in need of rescue in one way or another, now etched into damaged ecosystems and dreams sustained by the power and fakery of publicity.

We no longer need the old dreams, nor do we need new Beethovens, as seems somehow implied by his being championed. If we don't need new Beethovens, why is there any need to pore over the same old same old like prize exhibits in a museum collection that has long revealed any secrets that may have any relevance to the present, like, how have they managed to survive? Who keeps digging them up for display and for what purposes? Why all this time and "taxpayers' money" spent, in effect, on propaganda of the second order?

These are questions we really should be asking.

[Joseph K]

There is either an awful lot one can say about Beethoven to the world of today, or not very much at all, in my opinion. Beethoven could compose the sorts of music he wanted to because it expressed the congruence of his interests with those of the rising bourgeoisie who wanted a music that would express their power and dominance. It is specific - preaching to the age in which it was composed. For the sake of life itself it's time the ruling classes were put out of their misery, but they cling on much in the analogous way "we" cling on to the manifestations of their power and any past glory that went with it - the accompanying miseries put down to human frailties we are expected to look up to the Beethovens and past heroes as iconic substitutes in a hypermediated world in order to overcome. The progressive age Beethoven was in effect celebrating was expressed in the survivalistic spirit of his music - an individualistic ethos of winners and losers, of heroes and people in need of rescue in one way or another, now etched into damaged ecosystems and dreams sustained by the power and fakery of publicity.

We no longer need the old dreams, nor do we need new Beethovens, as seems somehow implied by his being championed. If we don't need new Beethovens, why is there any need to pore over the same old same old like prize exhibits in a museum collection that has long revealed any secrets that may have any relevance to the present, like, how have they managed to survive? Who keeps digging them up for display and for what purposes? Why all this time and "taxpayers' money" spent, in effect, on propaganda of the second order?

These are questions we really should be asking.

I bit mad, relegating Beethoven to a mere expression of the ideas of the ruling class, non? Or reductionist. The same could be said of 'classical' music of any epoch, don't you think? It seems a bit crude and un-dialectic if you ask me. I'd say that Beethoven contradicted and inveighed against the bourgeois at least as much as he expressed their values, but then, I don't know too much...

[Richard Barrett]

It's not "bourgeois dominance" that Beethoven's music aspires to, but something more like "permanent revolution", in my opinion. Not that I'd expect anyone on Radio 3 to take such a line.

[Joseph K]

It's not "bourgeois dominance" that Beethoven's music aspires to, but something more like "permanent revolution", in my opinion. Not that I'd expect anyone on Radio 3 to take such a line.

Yes - listening to the first symphony earlier today (see the what are you listening to thread) I would agree with you... such irrepressible and indominable spirit, to be swept away by.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There is either an awful lot one can say about Beethoven to the world of today, or not very much at all, in my opinion. Beethoven could compose the sorts of music he wanted to because it expressed the congruence of his interests with those of the rising bourgeoisie who wanted a music that would express their power and dominance. It is specific - preaching to the age in which it was composed. For the sake of life itself it's time the ruling classes were put out of their misery, but they cling on much in the analogous way "we" cling on to the manifestations of their power and any past glory that went with it - the accompanying miseries put down to human frailties we are expected to look up to the Beethovens and past heroes as iconic substitutes in a hypermediated world in order to overcome. The progressive age Beethoven was in effect celebrating was expressed in the survivalistic spirit of his music - an individualistic ethos of winners and losers, of heroes and people in need of rescue in one way or another, now etched into damaged ecosystems and dreams sustained by the power and fakery of publicity.

We no longer need the old dreams, nor do we need new Beethovens, as seems somehow implied by his being championed. If we don't need new Beethovens, why is there any need to pore over the same old same old like prize exhibits in a museum collection that has long revealed any secrets that may have any relevance to the present, like, how have they managed to survive? Who keeps digging them up for display and for what purposes? Why all this time and "taxpayers' money" spent, in effect, on propaganda of the second order?

These are questions we really should be asking.

I can see why someone who had listened to Monday's gushing CotW would think in this way, S_A - that's precisely why we need an "antidote" to it. I'm seeking out and posting online material which demonstrate that this so-familiar Music hasn't "revealed any secrets it may have any relevance to the present". Monday's CotW certainly spent a lot of time (and some of the licence-Payers' money) on "propaganda of the second order" (actually, Ms Alsop's dog doesn't even reach the "third order") - and seemed intended to keep matters of technique and craft - easily communicated to the wider audiences - restricted to an "elite" (to use Beeb vocabulary) who have studied this Music.

[Serial_Apologist]

I bit mad, relegating Beethoven to a mere expression of the ideas of the ruling class, non? Or reductionist. The same could be said of 'classical' music of any epoch, don't you think? It seems a bit crude and un-dialectic if you ask me. I'd say that Beethoven contradicted and inveighed against the bourgeois at least as much as he expressed their values, but then, I don't know too much...

Which wasn't what I was doing. What I was trying (in my usual clumsy way!) to do was point out the ways, whys and wherefores in which Beethoven has been and is singled out of the pantheon for use as he is here.