Bernstein on Beethoven:
It is almost a literal fact that there is no trace of cheapness in the whole body of his music. He is never sweet and romantic; he never sheds conventional tears; he never strikes orthodox attitudes. In his lightest moods there is the immense and inescapable dignity of ancient prophets. He concerns himself, not with the transient agonies of romantic love, but with the eternal tragedy of man. He is a great tragic poet, and like all great tragic poets, he is obsessed by a sense of the inscrutable meaninglessness of life. From the Eroica onward he seldom departs from that theme. It roars through the first movement of the C minor, and it comes to a stupendous final settlement in the Ninth…
It would be hard to think of a composer, even of the fourth rate, who worked with thematic material of less intrinsic merit. He borrowed tunes wherever he found them; he made them up out of snatches of country jigs; when he lacked one altogether he contented himself with a simple phrase, a few banal notes. All such things he viewed simply as raw materials; his interest was concentrated upon their use. To that use of them he brought the appalling powers of his unrivalled genius. His ingenuity began where that of other men left off. His most complicated structures retained the overwhelming clarity of the Parthenon. And into them he got a kind of feeling that even the Greeks could not match; he was preeminently a modem man, with all trace of the barbarian vanished. Into his gorgeous music there went all of the high skepticism that was of the essence of the Eighteenth Century, but into it there also went a new enthusiasm, the new determination to challenge and beat the gods, that dawned with the Nineteenth.
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I’ve always found it moving that this most German of composers was an inspiration for Britain and Europe at large in their fight against the Nazis (the first notes of the Fifth).
Whitewall, just in case you missed it I commented on your query in the thread below. “Merry New Year!” to you as Eddie Murphy’s Billy Ray Valentine would say, as well as to Malcolm, JK, and others.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ycMqFysJ0
https://youtu.be/GAmrxiEfjxw?si=hEllZDUN2-W2wJiM
Beethoven’s inaugural performance of the 7th was at a benefit concert for Austrian and Prussian veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. This inspiration is gone, because there aren’t enough young, healthy Anglo and European men left to fight in brother wars.
Jason,
I went down the page and saw it and commented. Speaking of Classical music, every new year day evening, PBS shows the annual live performance by the Vienna Orchestra. It shows twice tonight and I, and when my wife was still living, always watch it. Not Beethoven, but for this performance naturally Strauss fills the bill.
And a Mary New Year to us all too!
Hog jowl, crowder peas, and collards all round.
And the blessings of rabbit ice witnessed.
Appreciate it Jason
JK, thanks and to you too. BTW, I dispensed with the traditional pork peas and greens you mentioned and went with spaghetti and meat sauce with multi fruit salad. I’ll see what happens.