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Subject: Re: just another reverse bitscan

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 15:53:34 12/22/05

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On December 22, 2005 at 17:47:00, Dann Corbit wrote:

>This last remark is very odd to me.  Beethoven's music is [to me] very simple
>patterns.  [Fur Elise and the 5th Symphony are obvious and clear examples of
>it].

The frequency of my off-topic posts is now so high that I will probably
soon receive a life-time CCC ban, but I can't resist taking the risk
once more:

I was mainly thinking about Beethoven's late music, which is the
only part of his work which holds any great interest for me.  Early
Beethoven sounds like charming, but somewhat clumsy attempts to
imitate Haydn or Mozart, while middle Beethoven is pompous, noisy
and repetitive (like the 5th symphony).

The Hammerklavier sonata is the perfect example of what I was
thinking about.  It is one of the most impressive pieces of music
I have ever heard.  It is staggeringly complicated and ingenious,
clearly a work of phenomenal genius, and yet it leaves me
completely cold.  Great fun to analyse and pick apart, but I don't
hear any beauty.

"Für Elise" can hardly be seen as representative for Beethoven's work.
It is a very simple and unambitious little piece which was not published
at all in Beethoven's lifetime, and which was probably only composed
for pedagogical reasons.  It is ironic that several of the most famous
pieces by the greatest composers are not really characteristic for the
composer at all (two other notable examples of this are Ravel's Bolero
and Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor).

Tord



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