Beethoven and Your Dumb Baby

Crawling through the first two chapters of Alexander Wheelock Thayer's drier than dust with a side of hair, 'Life of Beethoven' - I finally got to the beginning of his relationship with Count Waldstein, dedicatee of the Waldstein Sonata.

Thank you Waldstein. You saved me. Noble, musician, soldier, Beethoven's first great patron and, most importantly, my excuse to put down Thayer and re-goolge Waldstein.

The genius who wrote all of Wikipedia says this about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Ferdinand_Ernst_Gabriel_von_Waldstein

I find it sweet that between 1791-92 Beethoven wrote "Eight variations for piano four hands on a theme by Count Waldstein". Four hands! I picture the two of them, giggling, shoulder to shoulder, just as happy as these two:

And lo! through the child-like magic of Tom Hanks, the Beethoven of likeability, we come to the strange thing about WoO 67: apparently it'll make your kid smarter.

Of all the profound, urgent, deep things Beethoven ever wrote, it's this little trifle he wrote for him and his buddy to play that appears about 87 times in Google Play as a baby or child brain development aid. Not actual recordings of professional pianists playing it, no, but specifically one particular recording of a synth harp playing the theme; this weird Celtic robot version seems to be a go-to for making the unborn or recently born way smarter. "Baby Sleep Therapy Club" (featuring a baby in glasses, glasses = super smart), "Early Development of Child ("child" singular - we'll never know which one), "Child in the World of Music" (same child as the last one), "Development and Learning" by Einstein's Music Education, "Baby Music Serenity", and finally "Child's Brain and Music". I wish I could find this version on YouTube so you could hear it. It's so bizarre. If I were a baby and I heard it, I'd probably get smarter just thinking of ways to get the fuck out of there.

But since I can't find it and since we're already on the theme of child, I found a couple of childs playing it here. Meet Dutch piano wunderbrothers, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, respectively, 24 and 20 years old. Obviously they're not actual kids, but they're such cute lil fellas I couldn't help myself. I'll let you be the judge of which brother wins the "Most Moved-by-the-Music Face" competition.

In spite of the brothers' incredible hair and acting, this piece still seems like a playful but respectful spin around the block with the theme. Maybe it was his relative youth or nerves about offending his first real patron, but Beethoven never opens up his full inventive engine - at least not so much to make Waldstein feel embarrassed. He refrains from slapping the theme around and juggling it and mocking it and elevating it like he did, later in life, with Diabelli's. I agree with Sonof Thunder who commented on Youtube: "What a hammy jokester LvB is in that final coda! Love it!!!" Exactly: it's good fun, but it never goes deep.

Unless you're a baby. Then it will enter your mind and make you a genius. Probably an evil one, but still a genius.