Author: Stuart Cracraft
Date: 16:34:19 12/22/05
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On December 22, 2005 at 18:53:34, Tord Romstad wrote: >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 Beethoven's music, while beautifully developed, is just not as interesting to me as Bach. This from a person who sat through John Gardiner's 9 Beethoven Symphonies live in the front row with Gardiner himself a dozen feet away, across many sequential evenings. Memorable and recommended. I used to play a lot of Bach secular organ music in churches and it is really fascinating music, my favorite. I do not see why Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is not representative. I think it is very Bach. I played it thousands of times along with much of Bach's other music. Don't be fooled by the greatness of the simplicity of the Toccata. It does not make it "not representative". It *is* representative. Yes, those were beautiful pieces. The "Gigue" fugue, the "Little" fugue, the "Great" A-Minor, and so on. I still have all the music. I am considering taking down my breakfront in the living room and erecting either a pipe organ or a large electronic organ some day, on the north wall, just to play Bach. The *ONLY* non-Bach organ piece to have interested me at all as much is Widor's Toccata finale from the 5th Organ Symphony (often played at the end of weddings and considered part of the practice in music school for organists), a piece by Gigout, and a piece by Mullet. I find Bach to be the most interesting of composers and certainly the only composer I would spend a great amount of time practicing. For this reason I would never go into either formal music or academic halls for music since I am too picky. It is with the great Bach that the Baroque period ended. In my book, he's the biggest of the three "B"'s though I enjoy listening to Brahms and Beethoven for "rest". Bach's busyness keeps me interested and happy. Most other composers sadden me. And it is in Bach's secular organ music, not his sacred organ music, that I find his brilliance of life-affirmation the most invigorating. Stuart
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