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Sunday, August 7, 2011
Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 (Ode to Joy)
A cliché is defined as something that is so repeated or overused as to become expected, and even boring. But we have to remember that all clichés once were new. And so with Beethoven.
His life is, with perhaps the single exception of Byron, the personification of the Romantic movement. A towering intellect, writing music like nobody had written before, tragically struck with deafness so that at the end of the premiere of this piece he couldn't hear the audience roaring its applause and one of the singers had to take his hand and turn him around so he could see. Even in death, he maintained his flair. He died during a huge thunder storm, and witnesses said there was a prodigious thunder clap at the moment of death itself.
It's all so over the top as to be unbelievable. Cliché, even. But it was all new, and he broke ground like perhaps nobody else. He is a bright line in musical history: before was Bach, Mozart, and Hayden: organized, almost mathematical in theit precision. After was Bruckner, Mahler, and Dvořák: rich, lyrical, painting moods with the score. Brahms' Synphony No. 1 was referred to as "Beethoven's 10th."
I find that I'm torn by this piece. It is a stunning creation, musically. It's incredibly famous - indeed, perhaps the most famous classical music. Everyone knows it, even if they don't listen to classical. The opening to the Second Movement was the theme music to the "Huntley/Brinkley Report" news program in the 1960s and early 1970s.
But it's also been used for all sorts of political purposes, by people whose romanticism extends to a decidedly non-musical arena. The Olympics has used it for decades. Most recently, it is the theme of the European Union.
But there's no escaping the grandeur of the music itself. This astonishing performance was at the opening of the 1998 Nagano Olympics, where Seiji Ozawa conducted seven choirs on five continents. It's sadly broken into two parts due to Youtube's 10 minute limit. The video, perhaps like the political context, is a flawed mix of good and bad.
Pay particular attention at about 1:25 into the video. This piece is famous.
And so to the final, improbable, last bit of the Romantic. When the Compact Disc was designed, the Japanese engineers insisted that the disc had to be physically big enough to get the entire Ninth Symphony on a single disc. Musicologists were employed, searching the archives of recordings. It turned out that the longest recording took 74 minutes. The disc was resized from 11.5 cm to 12 cm to accommodate this symphony.
It is also the piece of music that defined the length of a standard compact disc. The charge during design was the Symphony No. 9 had to fit on one CD.
There is B's Ninth and then there is all other music, IMO. I have had the privilege of experiencing it live twice, both times under the Shed at Tanglewood.
If you HAVEN'T heard it live, I urge you to do so immediately.
8 comments:
Thank you for sharing. That was very much appreciated this morning.
It's spelled "freude" but works better if pronounced "freiheit".
(Or so the story goes. ;) )
Personally, Beethoven's 9th is to music what Michelangelo's Pieta is to sculpture: the reference standard by which all else is measured.
It is also the piece of music that defined the length of a standard compact disc. The charge during design was the Symphony No. 9 had to fit on one CD.
The only problem with this piece of music is that after performing it you can't get to sleep for another six hours or so. Amazing rush :)
Tam, the performed it in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, and made that exact substitution.
Amazing!
Every time I hear it.
Danke.
Borepatch,
It's almost like Schiller and Ludwig Van had planned it that way.
fnordilluminatifnord
There is B's Ninth and then there is all other music, IMO. I have had the privilege of experiencing it live twice, both times under the Shed at Tanglewood.
If you HAVEN'T heard it live, I urge you to do so immediately.
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