I could have posted this in the “latex-gloved-finger-up-the-bum” forum, but I wasn’t really thinking of being particularly controversial. I just caught the butt-end of a programme on the Beeb tonight that was describing the bombing of Coventry by the Luftwaffe in November 1940. Hundreds were killed in the raids and the medieval cathedral was gutted (it still stands as a ruin, left as a memorial to those terrible times). A few Christmases ago I remember being reduced to tears when I heard an old radio broadcast of the Coventry Carol being defiantly sung in the ruins, just weeks after the blitz. Just tonight I found out that the Nazis had called the raid on Coventry “Operation Moonlight Sonata.” Now I have two heroes, Jesus (whom I shall leave aside for now) and Beethoven. I felt a welling up of rage within when I heard that the Nazis has usurped the soubriquet of one of Ludwig’s best-loved pieces for an act of indiscriminate violence. I imagined the old boy turning in his grave at the very notion. He was a terrible man himself in some regards - he never managed to stay in one rented residence for more than a few months before being forced to leave, he never emptied his “pot de nuit,” he neglected his personal hygiene outrageously, he was the archetypal noisy neighbour from hell and he argued with anyone and everyone about the most trivial things. He wrote some pieces that I can’t stand to listen to - many of his middle-period compositions are, to me, full of misplaced and unfunny wit. Not all of them - the violin concerto, Emperor Concerto and Pastoral Symphony are eternal masterpieces, and the Eroica symphony and Appassionata sonata changed the face of western music forever. And in his late music (I’ll avoid the purple prose I’m tempted to employ) he knocked everyone else into a cocked hat, to put it mildly. But he’s my hero because he produced works of sublime mastery in spite of the most appalling odds stacked against him. He had a chaotic domestic life (I could get all incorrect and suggest that a good woman might have sorted him out), his personal circumstances were usually filled with friction and disappointments and, above all, he went deaf. Most of his middle-period masterworks and all of his superb late works were composed when he had little or no hearing left. He composed at the piano, and he had to play with his ear pressed to the piano’s woodwork in order to pick up the vibrations of his playing. He tried to conduct the first performance of the Choral Symphony, but fortunately his friends had discreetly arranged for a conductor to lead the orchestra while Beethoven tried to convey what he could from the podium - in reality, the players had to ignore him and attend to the other fellow instead. I just think of this chap composing and raging at his knackered old piano, deaf yet producing the greatest music known in western art. Knowing that he would never hear it performed yet driven to deliver himself of it for the future edification through joy (his philosophy!) of humanity. I just find that incredibly poignant and moving. That’s why he’s my hero and, in a strange way, I find it all the more easy to say it knowing that he was such a pain in the arse. That’ll do for now. I think I’ll just put on the C minor Sonata Op. 111 before I go to bed. 
Is it true that he composed mainly for harmonica and kazoo? 
djm
That would have made him all the greater. I can do a fair rendition of the Op.78 Sonatina on a G harp. Dordan do it even better on the album “Jigs to the Moon.” 
The Nazis used a lot of great things for their propaganda. Just think of the Swastica (that can’t be the right way to spell it…), the ancient indian symbol for whatever (I don’t even know, but it’s something positive).
The nazis were who they were and did what they did. I was gonna say they were a bunch of assholes, but that would be unjust to a lot of other people I occasionaly call assholes.
The problem with music is, that once you put it on the market, you lose most control over who uses it for what. Just think of how Ronnie Reagan used “born in the USA” for his campaign and how Bruce Springsteen hated that. (and I don’t mean to put RR anywhere near the nazis in any way at all, nor would I put the Boss at one level with Beethoven, it’s just an example o someone writing a piece of music and then someone else uses it for something, that the composer totally disagrees with)
I’d imagine so, seeing as how, in his own lifetime, he changed his mind about dedicating a piece to Napoleon Bonaparte after he proved to be a total megalomaniac. And, in regards to human rights abuses and general megalomaniacism (if that’s a word) Hitler is worse than Napoleon.
Just a random unrelated note: I was listening to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony reciently and it occured to me that Ode To Joy (particularly if you consider hte poem it’s based on), in spite of having become almost a musical chiche, has a certain cathartic quality to it. I find it sort of a musical equivalent to the death of Prince Andre in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Steve, I am right with you on this one.
The final movement of the 9th is still stunning, for all the overuse of its main melody. The instrumental part in the middle after the tenor solo, what my students call “the battle,” when all the jumbled emotions mix together and fight: The rage, the joy, the sadness, the hope…and at last sort of calm down, think things over, meditate on what it all means, before exploding in that awsome expression of joy…that’s big.
The man was Olympian.
People who use his music for political gain or TV jingles should be shot in the face with a bazooka. Twice.
Tom
As I’ve said on numerous occasions, I was a strange child.
My first memory of hearing Moonlight Sonata was in one of the Lon Chaney Jr. Werewolf movies. He was sitting at the piano in his “tortured soul” persona, playing this hauntingly beautiful music. Luckily, my dad loved classical music (actually all types) and knew what song it was.
Me, in my typical 7 year old obnoxiousness, insisted to my piano teacher that I had to play that song. I had only been taking classes for a year, so she managed to find me a “easy” version of it.
I later learned the full transcript.
That giant fugue in the middle of the finale, preceded by the tenor, kicks off with a “military band” in marching mode, and it was, unfortunately, one of the passages that most appealed to Hitler. I’m certain that Beethoven would not have been best pleased. I may be cutting my nose off to spite my face, but I’ve always rejected the music of Wagner and Richard Strauss because of their fascist sympathies. Likewise, I don’t own any recordings of Herbert Von Karajan because of his affiliations with the Nazi party. To me, such artists are horribly tainted. Now Wagner was a man who I’m sure would have delighted in Hitler’s championing of him. 
In one of my Jewish Studies classes we talked about the swastika and how some Jews in the US are trying to reclaim it as a positive, life-affirming symbol. Needless to say, it’s a small movement and wildly unpopular, but the symbol itself is essentially a positive one, having thousands of years of positive history and basically the last century of a tarnished image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastikahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
Steve: I read again, your original post… You have the wit, clever use of language, and the slightly irreverent attitude in your prose, that would have probably made you an exceptionally successful teacher of the age group from 12-16. Rather lovingly self-centered, these wonderful individuals can be a challenge to interest in the more serious side of the musical art form. I think you would have excelled at that task. Nice job…
Best to you.
Byll
That’s very kind, Byll. Thanks!
Yeah, thanks for posting that, Steve. Nice to hear something positive about a dead white male once in a while.
I always wonder if I could understand and appreciate him, or Bach for that matter, if I had lived as a contemporary. Now, we are completely humbled by their genius…
I met one of those science genius prodigies (ya know, MIT at 14 and all) once and he was a true oddball, completely inept at social skills, but I could perceive how his consciousness was completely affected by his intellectual power. I could practically hear the wheels turning…
I have the quaint notion that it might be hard for Beethoven to focus on day-to-day reality when his head was filled with music, that music.
Well, I am glad we finally got that sorted out.
Perhaps they pale next to all the other things the Nazis did and were, but the deep wounds they inflicted on language and thought and ideas have always made me sad - many of them fester still (particularly in German).
That’s much more than a quaint notion. I think you’re absolutely right. My admiration for Beethoven has always been tempered with sadness. It seems that the very traits which made him able to bring such joy and exaltation to others kept him from enjoying. It’s as if his mind was so full of music (and the emotions and experiences which produced it) that there was no room for anything else.
Bach seems to have been reasonably normal. The fact that his compositional genius was never recognized in his lifetime doesn’t seem to have particularly bothered him. He seems to have been fairly happy with a steady gig, a chance to serve God, a good mug of beer, and a house full of little kids. Hard to do much better than that.
Haydn was the one I’d like to hang out with. He was a man of rare genius, integrity, humility, and an iron-clad work ethic. Plus, he seems to have had a pretty darn-good time. 
Tom
As befits one of my heroes, I’ve read a lot about Beethoven over the years. He was no recluse. He liked his wine and had a few unsuccessful affairs with the ladies. Socially, he tended to be a bit explosive and was prone to falling out with his friends over the most trivial things. He was suspicious by nature and often accused people, without foundation, of cheating him out of money. His deafness, which came on gradually from quite a young age, was a terrible frustration to him and eventually stopped him from performing. There certainly were times when he seemed to be totally immersed in composing, but there were stretches in his later years when his output was much lower. That fallow period led to his final blossoming, the period in which he produced his greatest music, in the last few years of his life. He did not seem to be unhappy all the time as has often been portrayed, though tussles over his nephew Karl were very vexatious for him. My favourite book about Beethoven is the Beethoven Quartets by Joseph Kerman, which not only describes peerlessly my favourite works but also adds a wealth of biographical details of most of his adult life (the quartets stretch from Beethoven’s 20s right up to the time of his death). I love the late music most of all. Even there I have some blind spots, the Hammerklavier Sonata being one (especially that final fugue which I find almost incomprehensible) - and I wish he hadn’t spent so much time on the Missa Solemnis (nothing to do with its being a religious work I hasten to add - after all, Bach’s B minor Mass is coming to my desert island!) But choose anything from the late quartets, the final three sonatas or the Diabelli Variations and I’m in seventh heaven! What I love about him most is his sheer earthy humanity and I find it very moving to think of him fighting his deafness and his private frustrations to produce music that is so transcendently wonderful and, above all, immediately accessible. You don’t need to be an intellectual giant or a professor of music to appreciate even the “hardest” Beethoven!
Very well said.
T
Hi Steve
The title of your thread made me think of something entirely different 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4zuVY1Npb0
The song in question starts about 5:50 in the video.
David
That’s where the thread title comes from. I believe that Brian McNeill wrote the song. Dick’s one of my favourite atheists!