You have now read about Beethoven and have listened to a few of his major works.

Question

You have now read about Beethoven and have listened to a few of his major works. Admittedly, if this is your first exposure to Western “classical music”, it might all seem very strange. Discuss your reactions to the music of Beethoven. Does it “say” anything to you? Is it all gibberish to you? Can you appreciate (or even hear?) the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) in Beethoven’s music—his struggle to write music that is truly transcendent, and in so doing, transcendent of his own physical limitations as well?

Explanation / Answer

Beethoven music could be loftily spiritual, blazingly dramatic, sweetly domestic, suavely aristocratic and rudely demotic, often within the space of a single work. From 1793 until 1809, Beethoven composed at a steady pace. But for the next several years, he stalled dramatically, as he dealt with the onset of his deafness, severely trying personal circumstances, and the struggle to find what would become his late style, which to a remarkable degree involved the total reinvention of his musical language.

My way of approaching Beethoven symphonies has always been to view them as a total work, which is not to say they all must be performed each time, but rather they are conceived as an opus magnum.” How does giving the down-beat for the First Symphony’s Adagio molto introduction, while keeping the Ninth’s choral summation in mind, shape the idea of a “cycle” – an “integrated cycle” – rather than an anthology of nine self-contained performances?

“This gigantic ride, so long, so difficult, needs to be shaped logically; thinking about all the symphonies distributes that logic.”

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