[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: The master

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Ron Coleman:
The master
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1160143608.shtml


                              [Beethoven.jpg]

   New York's NPR affiliate, WNYC, had a powerful item on this morning
   about the piano concertos of Beethoven, which represent, I learned, a
   self-standing volume of the canon of classical music all their own. It
   is part of their [1]Beethoven Festival. It was informative and
   evocative to say the least; regrettably, if there is a link to an
   online version of the program, I can't find it.

   What is it about Beethoven -- the music, the man, the concept -- that
   resonates so powerfully? The melodrama of the tortured genius fighting
   Fate itself to create the world's most brilliant and innovative music,
   even as he loses the ability to hear it performed, is irresistable. I
   learned this morning that Beethoven was such a leading-edge pianist
   himself that the technical demands he made on the still-new technology
   of the pianoforte instrument, where he did most of his composing,
   dragged piano makers into a new era of quality and responsiveness.
   Beethoven used his piano sonatas as studies for his orchestral and
   chamber works, so he needed to the piano "sing" and represent the
   voices of the complete range of musical and vocal performance
   possible.

   But the ringing irony of all remains the storyline too good for
   literature: The brilliant composer who at the end of his career could
   not hear the real-world realization of one of the history's most
   gifted muses. Beethoven, they say, did not work in the manner ascribed
   to Mozart, seemingly acting as God's musical scribe, taking Divine
   dictation "effortlessly" (an absurd concept) like a musical
   Prometheus. Beethoven tore up his soul and tortured his heart -- and
   those many of those around him -- to bring his muse to life.

   True, a genius hears, in his own world, more sound than even he can
   bring to life -- sometimes all too much. And the world was in
   Beethoven's time, and is now, full of true horror on a far more
   prosaic plane than his. But if we ever let our eyes wander heavenward,
   the thought of the artistic tragedy of Beethoven is sometimes just too
   much to contemplate.

References

   1. http://www.wnyc.org/music/articles/64284