van Beethoven's worst mistake

[Nick Armstrong]

No, it's me as well!

[verismissimo]

A typically earnest and thought-provoking plea from Mr Grew!...

Did the earnest and thought-provoking Mr Grew go AWOL when I wasn't paying attention?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No, it's me as well!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

- you'd've thought he (of all people) would've known!


... or perhaps it's a secret code - "this is where I tread on Maria Barbara's toe"?

Well Bach did write some of the Brandenburg Concerti for an orchestra containing instruments of uncertain existence.

[Flosshilde]

its revolutionary politics.

I can never understand why Fidelio has this reputation. The prisoners are released by an autocratic ruler & emerge praising God for his (the autocrat's) benevolence & their release. If it was truly revolutionary they would have broken out of prison & strung him up, as he was ultimately responsible for their imprisonment.

[Flosshilde]

Well Bach did write some of the Brandenburg Concerti for an orchestra containing instruments of uncertain existence.

Well, the poor chap didn't have the advantage of the modern symphony orchestra. Still, people have made up for that sad lack & have re-written his music to suit it.

[Pulcinella]

For me, and I think for some other forumites, his worst mistake was to write a choral last movement to his ninth symphony!

I do wonder, had he not gone deaf, would he have heard with his ears rather than in his head, what this really sounded like!!

(Runs for cover.....)

[visualnickmos]

A typically earnest and thought-provoking plea from Mr Grew!

Though I was not around to read the Spectator in 1902, I remember discussing the issue of sex and marriage with some equally-idle colleagues in the late Sixties and I commented that the reason that people have sex and marry is due to lust, and the purpose of sex and marriage is the production and upbringing of children. I naively assumed that might be a view shared by most.

On the contrary, I was roundly turned on by the other members of the group and told that the purpose of sex and marriage had absolutely nothing to do with having children. It was all about 'love' (a much nicer-sounding word than lust) which, of course, at the time the great Beatles themselves claimed it was all we really needed, so who was I to argue?

As for Germanic opera, I've never been a huge fan, though, unlike Mr Grew, I can't see much wrong with the ancient institution of marriage ... at least a happy one!

Far too clinically analytical; people have sex because that's what they want to do; people get married because that's what they want to do; some people who are unmarried have children and some do not; some people who are married have children and some do not. There is no philosophical argument to this - people are people just doing what they desire at a given point in time.

[visualnickmos]

Well Beethoven didn't make too many mistakes in my view. However the only work of the great master that I cannot tolerate is Wellington's Victory ('Battle Symphony') a work that leaves me cold.

It has perhaps a certain value as an oddity - I even have it as a 'filler' to de Burgos's LvB 5th....

[visualnickmos]

I've never been terribly keen on the two violin 'Romances' which I find a bit pallid.

Yes, Beethoven was never really at home in 'genteel' mode, was he!

[Bryn]

It has perhaps a certain value as an oddity - I even have it as a 'filler' to de Burgos's LvB 5th....

The oft repeated (on TtN) Octophorus performance is great fun.

[David-G]

For me, and I think for some other forumites, his worst mistake was to write a choral last movement to his ninth symphony!

Most definitely not for this forumite.

[David-G]

I can never understand why Fidelio has this reputation. The prisoners are released by an autocratic ruler & emerge praising God for his (the autocrat's) benevolence & their release. If it was truly revolutionary they would have broken out of prison & strung him up, as he was ultimately responsible for their imprisonment.

Why so? Florestan was a "personal" prisoner of Pizarro. The minister (presumably who you mean by the "autocrat") was a friend of Florestan and had thought him dead.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Most definitely not for this forumite.

Nor this one. I go along with Vaughan Williams and consider it to be the best movement of the four.

[Roehre]

For me, and I think for some other forumites, his worst mistake was to write a choral last movement to his ninth symphony!

I do wonder, had he not gone deaf, would he have heard with his ears rather than in his head, what this really sounded like!!

(Runs for cover.....)

though I am of the opinion that the Finale of the 9th is not a finale to conclude the first three mvts (I recall a very nice and lively discussion on these boards between JLW and myself), in itself it's far from bad music. Strip the orchestral disguise and the vocal parts, and you'll dicover a world very similar to the Diabellis. One has only to listen to Liszt's one-piano-without-vocals-arrangement to experience this.

More importantly: his deafness has obviously influenced his composing as he was hardly able to listen to contemporary developments (like the Weber operas). But had he not gone deaf, would he have heard with his ears rather than in his head, what this really sounded like is IMVHO straightforward nonsense, as that would mean dismissing the Missa solemnis for exactly the same reason, that work being conceived for near-identical forces, at nearly the same time and under similar conditions.
Even the hardest Finale-9-haters will be unable to dismiss the Missa.