{"id":22279,"date":"2017-12-09T17:25:15","date_gmt":"2017-12-09T22:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/?p=22279"},"modified":"2017-12-09T21:01:57","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T02:01:57","slug":"beethoven-message-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/blog\/elements-of-music-1\/beethoven-message-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Beethoven and his message to our times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Beethoven, Symphony 9, 4th movement (complete) Ode to Joy, Presto, Philharmonia Baroque\" width=\"1080\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ljGMhDSSGFU?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Beethoven and his message to our times. (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ludwig_van_Beethoven\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ludwig Von Beethoven<\/a>)<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Beethoven was not the only tortured artist who composed exquisite<br \/>\nmusic in the face of his suffering (Gesualdo\u2019s agonies of guilt,<br \/>\nBach\u2019s loss of 10 of his 20 children in childhood), but his music<br \/>\nis an especially poignant illustration of the human spirit\u2019s<br \/>\nstriving to transcend and overcome its pain. He had contemplated<br \/>\nsuicide years earlier when his deafness was first overcoming him,<br \/>\nand almost all the most famous and celebrated music you know of<br \/>\nBeethoven came AFTER that. But not easily. Mozart famously wrote<br \/>\nalmost effortlessly, as if dictating. For example, Mozart wrote<br \/>\nthe Overture to Don Giovanni on the morning of the premier,<br \/>\nwriting 41 symphonies in all, though he died in his early 30s.<br \/>\nBeethoven lived almost twice as long, and only wrote 9 symphonies,<br \/>\nand reworked the last one from bits of materials written 10 years<br \/>\nbefore, writing and rewriting. We know from his notes many<br \/>\npremature scribbles and versions of his 9th Symphony theme, that<br \/>\nwere quite underwhelming. <strong>He struggled.<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>The fourth movement of his last symphony, (<em>amazingly rendered <\/em><br \/>\n<em>visually by my friend Stephen Malinowski<\/em>) is the pinnacle of<br \/>\nperhaps one of the greatest musical careers of the ages. (And I<br \/>\nLOVE Bach, and dozens of others in the pantheon). Amazingly, you<br \/>\ncan also whistle it . . .<\/p>\n<p>Beethoven is held in awe as one of the musical \u201csaints\u201d, including<br \/>\nby my mentor and inspiration for Piano Wizard, Don Beattie, whose<br \/>\nlove of Beethoven and others inspired me to study music<br \/>\nseriously.<\/p>\n<p>Later, Dr. Robert Winters, one of my professors of the Classical<br \/>\nera style (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven) at UCLA, once broke this<br \/>\nmovement down for our class, and his analysis, shared roughly<br \/>\nbelow, reveals yet another layer of the genius of it especially if<br \/>\nyou know the rest of the piece.<\/p>\n<p>The fourth movement is a re-creation and illustration of his<br \/>\ncomposing mind. It opens in crisis, then searches for musical<br \/>\nthemes, first finding the themes of the first movement, then the<br \/>\nsecond,, then the third, before rejecting each and lurching into<br \/>\nthe next (The human mind first searches its archives, and only<br \/>\nwhen rejecting those past solutions, does true creativity emerge)<br \/>\nuntil he stumbles into what turns into his world famous<br \/>\ntheme of the Ninth Symphony, first rendered purely as a simple<br \/>\nmelody, doubled in the base strings. It then is joined by<br \/>\nthe orchestra, and harmonized, enriched, and explored,<br \/>\n(foretelling the message of harmony of Schillers\u2019s Ode to Joy\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>But all of these themes lack something, yes they are vibrant, yes<br \/>\nthey speak of suffering, but not . . . Joy. Transcendental joy,<br \/>\nthe purifying of our suffering through compassion, solidarity, and<br \/>\nunity of purpose. (and of course, through MUSIC.)<\/p>\n<p>And so the music abruptly is interrupted. A voice, almost as if<br \/>\nfrom the audience, interrupts. Yet the interruption was also<br \/>\nforetold in the symphonic parts of the music, though it still<br \/>\nshocks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cFreunde! Nicht diese tonen!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cFriends! Not these tones. \u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And he (Beethoven), breaks with<strong> ALL WESTERN MUSIC<\/strong> up to that<br \/>\npoint. Nobody sees it coming, many critics of the time thought he<br \/>\nwas mad, and found the music deeply disturbing and even ugly and<br \/>\ndissonant.<\/p>\n<p>Up until this symphony, NOBODY had introduced a CHORUS into a<br \/>\nsymphony structure, let alone commented on the earlier portion.<br \/>\nThis completely startled the audience, and and what he did next,<br \/>\n\u201cbroke\u201d the Classical style completely (he had cracked it many a<br \/>\ntime), and birthed the richest most passionate, most varied epoch<br \/>\nin classical music, the Romantic Era.. .<\/p>\n<p>He introduces poetry and meaning into his symphonic work, mashing<br \/>\npassionate opera, oratorio and symphony into a strange stew. He<br \/>\nthen uses this strange and wonderful poem, to speak of this<br \/>\n\u201cjoy\u201d,, to exalt the brotherhood of man (<strong>Alle menschen werder <\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Bruder, All men will be brothers<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>Historically, (1824) this was concurrent with class turmoil,<br \/>\ndozens of battles and revolutions across Europe, originally<br \/>\nstimulated by Napoleon and the American revolution, overthrowing<br \/>\nmonarchies, the idea of human rights, fruit of the Age of<br \/>\nEnlightenment, of which Beethoven was a fervent admirer, (though<br \/>\nNOT of Napoleon himself).<\/p>\n<p>&gt;From here, the excerpts of the poem that Beethoven chose (the full<br \/>\npoem is much more wandering and even mediocre) he expresses his<br \/>\nurgent message for all of us to leave behind the arbitrary<br \/>\ndivisions of convention and culture, and unite our souls, and<br \/>\nreceive the \u201ckiss of nature\u201d that must come from a loving father<br \/>\nbeyond the starry canopy, beyond the veil, beyond our<br \/>\nunderstanding, but who must exist. The \u201cjoy\u201d that we all feel,<br \/>\nthat sparks our souls.<\/p>\n<p>He \u201creworks\u201d the famous theme, in a fantastic, startling and<br \/>\nground bursting way, from martial, to sacred, to a dance, to an<br \/>\nurgent imploration, and finally to a celebration, in a series of<br \/>\nclimaxes and variations that leave us dizzy and even exhausted<br \/>\n(one of the most challenging choral and vocal pieces in the<br \/>\nclassical repertoire even today)<\/p>\n<p>His promise, his request, his invitation remains unfulfilled up to<br \/>\nthis day, but in spite of the dramatic set backs in human<br \/>\nevolution (The Nazis famously borrowed his theme for a war song,<br \/>\ntalk about blasphemy!), we struggle forward to find that<br \/>\ntranscendent harmony amongst ourselves, especially today in our<br \/>\nAmerican life. It is life or death that we as the human race find<br \/>\nit.<\/p>\n<p>Here in this piece is a musical and spiritual map for the soul of mankind to use<br \/>\nto find our way.<\/p>\n<p>I wish you great joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beethoven and his message to our times. (Ludwig Von Beethoven) Beethoven was not the only tortured artist who composed exquisite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":407,"featured_media":22280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[311],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-22279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elements-of-music-1","tag-beethoven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/407"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pianowizardacademy.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}