Hi, I found some interesting articles and videos on Beethoven that I thought I would share here. The video below talks about how he, as a composer, began to deal with his hearing loss and how he managed in spite of his handicap to make some incredible beautiful masterpieces.
What was interesting was that when his hearing started to go in the upper registers, he adjusted his composing to be within the registers he was still capable of hearing. In Moonlight Sonata for example, the notes are quite low compared to some of the pieces he wrote earlier. But it was also lower than the notes he would compose long after he went completely deaf, as if he embraced it and found another way to do what he loved.
What I thought was really cool was during the commemorative concert for the fall of the Berlin Wall the composer, inspired by the moment, changed the lyrics of Ode to Joy, to replace joy with Freedom (which sound very similar in German).
Articles on some letters of his, and what they reveal about his character:
I came across these first two items all by chance within the course of the last couple of days. It can be quite interesting, the biographies of people you hear know OF but haven't examined really closely. I think his life contains some great lessons in perseverance. I suppose my favorite music of his I enjoy is the Ninth Symphony (so creative, I know). Do you have any favorite pieces of this artist?
Celebrate Beethoven, Composer of Freedom
By Nancy Spannaus Two hundred and fifty-one years ago, on December 16, 1770, the world welcomed the birth of the man I call the “Composer of Freedom,” Ludwig van Beethoven. Let us celebrate Beethov…
risingtidefoundation.net
By Nancy Spannaus
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on December 16, 1770, the world welcomed the birth of the man I call the “Composer of Freedom,” Ludwig van Beethoven. Let us celebrate Beethoven today for his historical and ongoing contributions to liberating mankind from tyranny and ugliness, including in our own republic.
Although Beethoven was born a German, and lived most of his adult life in Vienna, Austria, there is a sense in which he was the quintessential American in spirit. The composer was well known for his revolutionary sympathies, writ large in his stirring composition on the subject of the Dutch Count of Egmont, who died fighting against Spanish oppression in the 16th century, and his opera Fidelio. The latter deals with the liberation of a political prisoner by his wife, and bears striking similarity to the story of the Marquis de Lafayette, who suffered imprisonment by the Austrian empire, and was ultimately freed by the efforts of his wife and the American government.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Listening to political prisoner Florestan’s famous aria, or the prisoners’ chorus which precedes it, would convey to anyone a clear idea of Beethoven’s commitment to freedom.
However, to Beethoven, as to other Classical artists and many of the American Founding Fathers, freedom was not just the idea of liberation from political oppression. It also involved liberation of the individual’s creative powers, a commitment to the brotherhood of all mankind, and the determination of uplift mankind to a life worthy of a species infused with a spark of the divine.
To experience this passion of Beethoven’s, one need only listen to his setting of Friedrich Schiller’s master-poem The Ode to Joy, the Ninth or “Choral” Symphony, which continues to be at the apex of popularity among Classical music listeners in the United States.
It should be no surprise, then, that Beethoven has also been credited with “democratizing” musical performance in Europe, by making his concerts open to the public, rather than just in the salons of the aristocracy. Indeed, his wide popularity in Vienna is credited to his 1795 performance of his Second Piano Concerto, which was held as a benefit concert for the Vienna Composers Society, which was established for the support of musicians’ widows and orphans. We could use more of that same kind of “democratizing” of Classical music today.
Beethoven in America
A more-than-400 page book[1] has been written about the rich history of Beethoven’s influence in America. The earliest reported performance of his works was in Charleston, South Carolina in 1805; it featured his Second Symphony. His popularity grew rapidly over the subsequent decades in locations as diverse as Philadelphia, Boston, and Lexington, Kentucky, along with that of composers such as Handel, Haydn, Bach, and Mozart.
The first Beethoven Society was established in Portland, Maine (my hometown) in 1819. Such societies were largely devoted to concertizing with Beethoven’s choral works, as choral societies were then very popular in the United States. According to today’s Beethoven Society of America, the most popular work was Beethoven’s oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, which deals with the story of Christ’s hours in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to his arrest.
If you have never listened to this work, I urge you to do so.
I have a very personal connection to this oratorio, which I listen to every year during Easter week. It just so happened that my college chorus, of which I was a member, had the honor of performing the work under the direction of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Eugene Ormandy. I unfortunately don’t recall the exact year—but it was sometime between 1962 and 1964. I can’t find it online. My Bryn Mawr women’s chorus combined with the men’s choir from Princeton University for the performance, which featured professional soloists. It was an unforgettable, glorious experience.
Beethoven’s Mount of Olives oratorio was written and first performed in Vienna in 1803, at a point when the composer was trying to come to terms with the fact that he was going deaf, and determined that he would continue to dedicate his life to his art. “Oh God, you look down on my inmost soul, and know that it is filled with love of mankind and the desire to do good,” he writes in the document known as the Heiligenstadt testament which otherwise reflects his struggle against despair.
One cannot but hear the same passion in Beethoven’s writing of Christ’s duet with the angel in the Mount of Olives, where He becomes reconciled to sacrifice Himself for the love of mankind.
The Power of Beauty
In the midst of the dangerous, roiling turmoil that currently pervades our political and social life here in the United States, we need the power of beautiful music more than ever. Classical music has the ability to convey beauty and truth in a way that no political speech or tract can possibly do.
(video shared below snipped)...
Beethoven believed that “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.”
The idea that Classical music lifts the mind to the realm of true beauty and freedom hardly seems popular in the United States today. But if this post can encourage its readers to experience at least one of the Beethoven masterpieces I have mentioned, it will have accomplished some good.
What I thought was really cool was during the commemorative concert for the fall of the Berlin Wall the composer, inspired by the moment, changed the lyrics of Ode to Joy, to replace joy with Freedom (which sound very similar in German).
Articles on some letters of his, and what they reveal about his character:
Beethoven’s Letters
By Cynthia Chung It is indeed very hard to come by anyone who has never heard of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest composers of all time. However, despite this level of fame which has follo…
risingtidefoundation.net
It is indeed very hard to come by anyone who has never heard of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest composers of all time. However, despite this level of fame which has followed him, nearly 200 years after his death, there is little that is truly known about the man himself. For certain, there have been numerous movies with numerous depictions of Beethoven, such as ‘Immortal Beloved’, who may catch aspects of who the man was, but I would daresay, rather miss the whole person. Some depictions even go so far as to portray Beethoven as partaking in madness, that is, the so-called madness of genius. I think this portrayal is especially misleading, and is a common thought by many, that creative persons who are passionate and even temperamental, seem to ‘ordinary’ folk as completely mad.
It is of course true, that to be creative necessarily means to challenge the existing boundaries of thought during that period, and thus most-naturally, confront much opposition and confusion by the majority of people, including its institutions of the time. It is very much for this reason, that creative persons are often wrongfully depicted as partaking in madness, however, when one really reflects upon this, we often have to conclude that it is rather the opposition to that creative genius that is partaking in madness. That is, if one is presented with a challenge to their own world outlook, but that this challenge, or new idea, partakes in truth and can be known through reason, than it is the resistor to such an idea who is mad, not its presenter!
It should be noted that this book of ‘Beethoven’s Letters’, was never intended by Beethoven to have been published and thus he is not writing with this in mind. However, despite this we at times are shown a window into Beethoven’s sensitive soul; his awareness of the responsibility that is brought with great creativity, and how one almost always feels short of that ever-reaching goal, as he writes in 1798 at the age of 28:This appears to be the special task of biography: to present the man in relation to his times, and to show how far as a whole they are opposed to him, in how far they are favourable to him, and how, if he be an artist, poet, or writer, he reflects them outwardly.
– Goethe ‘Wahrheit und Dichtung’
Keeping in mind that the last symphony Beethoven wrote was to Schiller’s poem ‘Ode to Joy’ in its final (fourth) movement, and that Schiller held a dear place in Beethoven’s heart, it is fitting that we end with Beethoven’s quoting of Schiller in a letter he wrote to his friend and student, Lenz Von Breuning, who unfortunately died the following year at the age of 21. It was thought by many that the quote was Beethoven’s but is actually from Schiller’s play ‘Don Carlos‘ and the words are those of the Marquis of Posa to the Queen in the fourth act.If I told you that the verses you just sent me did not perplex me, I should be telling a lie. It is a peculiar sensation to see, to hear one’s self praised, and then to be conscious of one’s weakness, as I am. I always look upon such opportunities as warnings to approach nearer, however difficult it may be, to the unattainable goal, which art and nature set before us. These verses are really beautiful, but they have just the one fault, which, indeed, it is customary to find in poets; for that which they wish to see and to hear, they actually do see and hear, however far it may be, at times, below their ideal. You can readily understand that I should be glad to make the acquaintance of the poet, or poetess, and now also I tender my thanks for your kindness shown.
Wisdom is for the wise,
Beauty for a feeling heart;
And both belong to each other.
I came across these first two items all by chance within the course of the last couple of days. It can be quite interesting, the biographies of people you hear know OF but haven't examined really closely. I think his life contains some great lessons in perseverance. I suppose my favorite music of his I enjoy is the Ninth Symphony (so creative, I know). Do you have any favorite pieces of this artist?