Beethoven

 

Ach! You can tell how busy your host is when he overlooks the 250th birthday of one of the world’s greatest composers to have ever scratched a note onto a staff.

Three days ago the musical world celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven. He was born on December 17, 1770 in the city of Bonn in the then German state of Westphalia, and would live 56 years, dying in Vienna on March 26, 1827. His first major work, his First Symphony, debuted when he was 29, and his last major work, the majestic Symphony No. 9 in Dm, known to some as “Ode to Joy,” was first performed three years before his death. He suffered from progressive deafness and tinnitus his entire professional life.

I first because acquainted with the Maestro in the spring of 1992. I was playing rhythm guitar in a band, playing live, learning the recording studio, trying to make a go of it, and for the first time I was living alone. Grunge had the rock world in a stranglehold, choking out the hair metal that had dominated the late-80s scene. Though I was listening and buying Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Saigon Kick and the like, I was also casting about for something new.

In the CD store I frequented I came a across a discount bin of classical music CDs. Figuring it could only help to round out my musical education, I picked out three double-CDs: one featured Back, another Mozart, and the last, Beethoven. I listened to all of them off and on that spring and summer.

The Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy,” was the entirety of one Beethoven disk. Several other compositions, including part of the Second Symphony and the Overture to Egmont, were scattered on the other. I liked them all, but I was still “in the closet,” so to speak, for I feared ridicule from my bandmates if I ever brought up my clandestine listening activities.

Santa brought me a 10-pack of classical CDs the following Christmas. Each CD featured a separate composer, and each CD had about a dozen shorter compositions or parts of longer ones. I also began listening to the local classical musical station here, WQXR, and within a few months my education and familiarity with classical music greatly expanded. In 1998, I discovered my local library had CDs you could borrow for two weeks at a time. Within two years I considered myself an amateur authority.

Looking over my CD collection, in addition to those Beethoven discs mentioned above, I see I have:

 

The Complete String Trios

Piano Concertos No. 3 in Cm and No. 5 in Eb (“Emperor”)

Piano Concertos No. 1 through 5 (to round out my collection)

Symphonies No. 5, 6, 7, and 8

 

Which is something like twelve hours of uninterrupted genius on eight CDs. It’s also great background music for writing or studying.

What do I recommend? What is, subjectively, the peak of the Beethoven experience, to Hopper?

Wow, that’s a hard one. I liked Egmont and the Ninth, particularly the choral part. (What human being doesn’t, or can’t?) The String Trio in G Op. 9 No. 1 (though they’re all enjoyable). Second movement of the Seventh Symphony (how utterly sad!). Just about all the Piano Concertos. All of the famous Fifth Symphony – fate knocking on the door; co-opted by the British V for Victory over the Germans.

In all his catalogue there are really only two compositions I just don’t get, though I tried. The first is Beethoven’s one and only, opera, Fidelio. I listened to it all the way through, several times, listened to just the Overture. Most recently back in July. Just doesn’t move anything in me. Same can be said for the Moonlight Sonata. I can’t fight the involuntary yawn that erupts in me whenever I hear it. And that is something wrong with me.

Let me leave you with one of my favorite two minutes of music I have ever heard. It occurs during the first movement of the Sixth Symphony (the “Pastoral Symphony”), between the time stamps of 5:18 and 6:50. Listen for the two modulations that occur at 5:32 and 6:21. If I could take that moment and translate it into a novel, I think I the next couple of generations of my descendants could live off the royalties …