Posted on 12/16/2006 10:57:05 AM PST by ZGuy
Happy Holiday Music Weekend! Hear the music of Mozart this weekend on Beethoven Radio!
well..ok..just so long as they can't do that with my mortgage payment.
I would recommend Paul Morrisey's "Beethoven's Nephew" from 1986. It's much darker, and it gives a glimpse into the mind of a genius who lacked almost all social skills.
Beethoven's perceived lack of social skills was a result of his profound hearing loss in his late 20's. I know first hand about this having lost much of my hearing in my early 40's. Hear are some of his writings about his hearing loss which are well known by hearing loss sufferers.
"Forgive me when you see me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you. My misfortune is double painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, not refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished. I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands. If I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, and I fear being exposed to the danger that my condition might be noticed."
"Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. Oh how harshly was I flung back by the double sad experience of my bad hearing."
"Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, 'speak louder, shout, for I am deaf.' Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed."
Herbert von Karajan does a good Beethoven
On your list of great composers who I agree starting with Bach but where is Brahams? What a wonderful sound.
I heard Andre Watts play a full version of Moonlight Sonata several years ago, and his performance of its rapid fire 3rd Movement was simply awesome.
Ode to Joy
My favorite.
Watts is a wonderful pianist.
I remember when he was a kid and played with the NY Philharmonic, with Leonard Bernstein when he did the young peoples concerts on TV
We do have many great composers today as well. The definition of what makes one a great composer has changed, and there's a glut of music, recordings, mediocrity, bull, and other distractions that obscure the true geniuses of the 20th-21st century.
Talent is not limited to the past.
Try the composer John Tavener from the UK.
Their music would be very "today" -avant garde, experimental and unpalatable to the untrained ear.
I guess, in their time, it was in a more pure form.
Today is also my oldest son's birthday.
I did not name him Ludwig :-)
Have you ever heard Bachs concerto for 2 violins in d ( Vivace ) ? great song.
I think it's just a matter of the harmonic vocabulary being exhausted. There are only so many notes and chords in the diatonic scale. Even in the late 19th century people were expecting tonal music to eventually dissapear. Composers had to keep piling up more and more chromatic chords to refresh the ear. Tristan and Isolde was the beginning of the end of tonal music.
Concerto for 2 Violins in D minor BMW 1043: Vivace
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