Almost a Fantasy

The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 2, was a massive hit in Beethoven's lifetime. So huge was its popularity, that Beethoven, baffled, was prompted to say to his friend Carl Czerny, "Surely I've written better things". 
But whether he had or not, was beside the point: people fell in love with it. With the whole sonata, to be sure, but mainly and most profoundly with its haunting ear-worm of a first movement, the Adagio Sustenuto.
And, truly, it's a hard heart that hears the first movement without feeling something. 
In 1832, ten years after Beethoven's death, music critic Ludwig Rellstab was also moved by it and likened the movement to moonlight striking the surface of Lake Lucerne. Within 10 years of this analogy's coinage, it had grabbed onto the piece and never let go. We still call it "The Moonlight Sonata". 
I'm writing about this piece today, obviously, because it's Valentine's Day and no work by Beethoven is more associated with love and romance and the human heart than the Moonlight Sonata. The music itself is off-the-charts emotionally evocative and there's also about fifteen volumes of lore around its composition, dedication and meaning that will get its own entry maybe this time next year. 
For today, I'd like point out something that scholars have frothed about for centuries. Namely, that Beethoven was dead by the time it garnered the name "Moonlight". When he initially published it and dedicated it to the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, with whom he was probably in love, he titled it, "Sonata, quasi una fantasia". Literally translated, that means "Sonata, almost a fantasy". 

Love, in this music, is not a fantasy - it's almost a fantasy.
It has its fantastic dream-like elements, but the flesh and the life and death and the real, the truly human, asserts itself over and over and gives us something so much more complex and alive than paper hearts.
Berlioz called the first movement, "one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify". It think that can be said about the whole sonata and, more to the point, about love. It is unwordable, unqualifiable, unquantifiable and realer than real.
This poem showed up in my inbox today and says all of that so much better than I just did:

Heart to Heart Rita Dove

It’s neither red nor sweet. It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or harden, so it can’t feel pain, yearning, regret. It doesn’t have a tip to spin on, it isn’t even shapely— just a thick clutch of muscle, lopsided, mute. Still, I feel it inside its cage sounding a dull tattoo: I want, I want— but I can’t open it: there’s no key. I can’t wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here, it’s all yours, now— but you’ll have to take me, too.

And here's the great Daniel Barenboim playing the whole sonata, in what I can only guess is his bedroom. When you give the sonata a listen, I'm asking to give some serious love and attention to the second and third movements. Because in the first movement, you get moonlight. But in the second and third movements, you get sunshine and rushing blood and we need those too.

The Lieder Bored

 Yesterday I listened to a couple of Beethoven's settings for Irish folksongs.
Today I listened to six more of his settings of Irish, Scottish and Welsh melodies.
They are lovely. They are beautifully performed. Their cultural value is undeniable.
And I am bored out of my fucking skull.
I'm sure there's a way to like it. I'm sure there's something I'm missing. I'm happy to take the blame.
But good sweet God I find it boring.
Which is a problem as the idiot who's committed to listening to all of Beethoven, because I Googled "Beethoven's folksong settings" and found this: the Complete Beethoven Folksong Settings, recording by various artists for Deutsche Grammophon.

This multi-album recording includes all of his folksong settings. Every last goddamn one. And the website selling it casually stated the album's complete running time is...

7 HOURS AND 58 MINUTES!

7 HOURS AND 58 MINUTES!

OK.

I'm gonna get through these gradually, one by one, until 2035 when I finally listen to the last one and weep for my wasted life. 

And I'm gonna make it bearable by spreading around some sugar wherever possible to the brave artists that commit their time and energies to performing and recording these songs. (Shudder)

Today I listened to the Neues Munchner Klaviertrio with soprano Julie Kaufmann. The trio plays with beautiful nuance and Kaufmann brings incredible clarity and musicality to these little musical sleeping pills. Even when the lyrics are trite or dull, she makes them crystal clear. 

This isn't that recording. This is some other group of people who can't possibly be happy. "No Riches From His Scanty Store" WoO 152, No. 2.

Irish and Proud

Guinness. Leprechauns. Potatoes. Mood swings. Beethoven. 
Nothing says Ireland like Beethoven.

George Thomson (1757 - 1851) spent 59 years working in Edinburgh for the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Art and Manufactures in Scotland, a body set up to improve Scottish trade and commerce. He also spent the bulk of his leisure time collecting Scottish and Welsh folk melodies, commissioning famous composers to write arrangements around them, then finding poets willing to provide appropriate lyrics. 

Having published two volumes of Scottish melodies, Thomson's friend, poet Robbie Burns, floated the idea to Thomson of collecting Irish melodies and repeating the process. Thomas was into it, collected the melodies, many from his friends, and reached out to renowned Irish composer, Ludwig Van Beethoven, to write some arrangements.

As a proud Irishman, Beethoven agreed to healthy terms of payment, and wrote the songs. 

Here's the thing though: he wrote arrangements to the melodies without any lyrics. Thomson added lyrics he thought would be appropriate after the fact. So, kicking every accepted songwriting rule right in the blarneys, Beethoven wrote the music with no knowledge of what lyrics would go with it. I'm sure it happens, but for these songs it was the rule, not the exception. 

To my ear, the resulting arrangements are beautiful, but don't sound remotely Irish. They're like Irish melodies behaving themselves after getting yelled at by German police. 

I will listen to them all, but today here's a little romance. 

The lyrics are a poem by Lord Byron, called "On Parting".  The song is called "The Kiss, Dear Maid , Thy Lip Hath Left", Op 224, WoO 153, No. 9. It's an achey song of leave-taking, love, longing, kissing and waiting. I love the heart-beat pulse in the violin line and the sweet light tenor of Robert White really adds to the Irishness, not that Beethoven could be any more Irish. 

The kiss, dear maid, thy lip has left,
Shall never part from mine,
Till happier hours restore the gift
Untainted back to thine.

Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,
An equal love, may see;
That tear that from thine eyelid streams
Can weep no change in me.

I ask no pledge to make me blest
In gazing when alone;
Nor one memorial for a breast
Whose thoughts are all thine own.

Nor need I write - to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak:
Oh! What can idle words avail,
Unless the heart could speak?

By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent ache for thee.

The Concubine's Children

My mother is Iranian.

In Persian culture, there is an expression for that piece of food left in a dish that no one will eat at the end of a meal.  Everybody goes "I couldn't possibly" or "Too full" or "There just isn't room" and it just sits there. Persians call that unwanted piece of food "the concubine's child". Because - as the saying's clearly awful origins indicate - when you're a concubine, no one wants your kid.

Lately when I look at my list of Beethoven's complete works, I've been having a hard time ignoring his concubine's children. There they are, shivering and shunted down below his works with shiny opus numbers: the WoO. WoO is the abbrieviation for the German: Werke ohne Opuszahl. In English, "works without opus number". According to wikipedia, these are the works "that were not originally published with an opus number, or survived only as fragments."

I feel bad for these little guys. I see them on the list and get the same feeling I get walking around the Adopt-A-Cat section of the Humane Society. "Aawwwww".

Seems that in 1955, two musicologists named Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm (it's also called the Kinsky-Halm Catalogue) felt the same way about these lesser known pieces and fragments and decided to compile them into their own list. This Island of Misfit Toys for Beethoven's music has some 205 items, all squished together with their patchy fur and missing teeth.

Heart-breaking.

So my goal for this blog has changed:

Instead of only listening to his works with opus numbers, I'm going to listen to his WoO as well. That means this blog will continue until approximately 2035 AD - a fact that will affect very few people, but will give me something other than Facebook to do until I'm 61.

To wrap this entry up, I should mention the one WoO that broke from the pack and, through sheer talent and good-looks, became arguably Beethoven's most famous piece of music. Alone it stands, high in its mansion in the Hollywood Hills, having completely forgotten all its friends from the WoO list it came up the ranks with:

WoO 59.

"Für Elise"

And proving its timelessness, this guy dubstepping in his bedrooom to it:

In addition to being what 61% of music boxes and Casio keyboard demo buttons play, "Für Elise" is my wife's favourite piece of classical music and, as if that wasn't enough to make me love it, my daughter's name is Eliza which is, you know...close enough. Here are the facty facts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BCr_Elise

Fur Elise, fur you.

Super Bowl, Opus 51

For me, football is like World War One without death: inch by inch, yard by yard. Pure attrition. Big men and boredom.

I don't get it. I never have. 

But tonight I watched my first Super Bowl. Scratch that. Tonight I watched my first ever football game and it happened to be the Super Bowl 51, New England Patriots vrs. Atlanta Falcons. 

I can barely write it, but holy shit that was exciting. I didn't care and then I cared SO MUCH. 

In honour of having my football cherry popped, I listened to Beethoven's Opus 51, 2 Rondos. You can find all you need about the game and the rondos on-line. 

I gotta go lie down. 

Rondo One:

Rondo Two: 

Tom Brady again: 

Adelaide

Around the age of forty, Beethoven composed, to name a few: the Emperor Concerto, the Egmont Overture, Piano sonata #26, Les Adieux, Fur Elise and threw in a string quartet just 'cause.

I'm turning forty in less than two months.  My artistic arc has brought me to the point where on Friday I auditioned for a MacDonald's commercial where the character description from the casting director said:

"THIS ROLE FOR SURE EATS AN EGG MCMUFFIN." (I did not add the caps).  

After that, I needed a few days off from Beethoven - the compare and contrast was too bruising. 

But now I'm back! Ready for full ego dismantlement!

Here's our man at about the age of 25.  This is the only portrait I've seen of him where he appears to have an upper lip. His cheeks are rosy, his eyebrows appear neatly plucked, his hair is dark and full and, most strikingly, he doesn't seem grumpy at all. He looks like a porcelain composer doll. 

It was at this age that Beethoven composed the song "Adelaide", based on a romantic poem by Friedrich von Matthisson, best known for his poem "Adelaide", because of the song by Beethoven.

As Chocolate Mouse in Youtube comments said: "Love me some 18th Century pop". You know it, Chocolate Mouse. 

Beethoven adored Matthisson's poem and laboured over his setting of it for as much as three years. The result: a hit.  The song was "24K Magic" popular in Beethoven's day, going through several "editions", which is a crazy thought unto itself. Now, if a song is a hit, it means millions of people consume it digitally. In 1797, a hit meant that many many people bought the sheet music and went home and PLAYED IT THEMSELVES. I find that thought staggering. Not only did musical popularity at that time require at least a portion of the population to be musically literate, a fraction of that portion would have to be skilled enough to play Beethoven's writing.  

I'm not saying one is better or worse. I just love the idea of people falling in love with a song and the interpretation they know best might be their own. 

Here's the wikipedia article about the song.  It includes the poem itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide_(Beethoven)

 My first instinct was to laugh at the poem's gonzo idealization of its subject. Lines like, "In the fields of stars thy face beams forth, Adelaide!"  But then my younger self piped up and reminded me of how completely lost I got in people when I was young, how I saw them in everything, how the whole world became them, and I realized - oh, the poem might be ridiculous, but it's true. I'm just getting older.  

I like imagining young, intense, idealistic Beethoven recognizing a truth in himself in this poem and dedicating himself to honouring that truth with all his heart. It warmed my shitty older self right up. 

I listened to a few versions of the song. The one I offer you is Jussi Bjorling singing. Bjorling is one of my grandfather's favourites and this extraordinary recording is ample evidence as to why. Bjorling's singing is god-like. His control in quiet passages is incredible and how he sings her name at 4:07 gave me goosebumps. 

Plus, there's a bonus to this YouTube video buried in the comments section. A petty snipey fight between two guys calling themselves "The Art of  Bel Canto" and "Alf Zay" about vocal technique and pedagogy.  High comedy. 

Enjoy Adelaide. 

Ach! Ach! Ach! Ach!

sing the Greek man and the Greek woman in "Die Ruinen von Athen" (The Ruin of Athens), Op. 113, incidental music Beethoven composed for the play of that title by August von Kotzebue.

Those Achs come at the end of this sadly timeless set of lyrics:

To suffer slavery, though guiltless, is misery!
Every day new sorrow to get our scrap of bread! 
On its branch shines the fig tree’s sweet fruit,
not for the slave that tended it
but for the cursed master!
The people oppressed,
bent low by his hand,
ah! ah! ah! ah!

(Ah! is English for Ach!)

Just listening to the music, it's futile trying to guess what's going on in the play. Zeus is summoned, Mohammed is mentioned, Ka' abah is sung. Going by the title, I'm going to say the Greeks are invaded by heathen Turks, they plead to Gods, the Gods respond favourably, the heathens are vanquished. But to say that guess isn't educated would be spot on.

I was following along with the lyrics on wikipedia and giggling at the gaudy (and god-y) grandness of it all.  I wasn't really listening properly. My ears perked up when the music got all faux -Eastern in the fourth movement, but again in response to the goofiness, not the beauty.

Here's the wikipedia with lyrics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruins_of_Athens

Then all of a sudden, Movement 5 - a greatest hit. I was surprised to hear what I always assumed was Tchaikovsky for all the triangle tinging: the famous Turkish March.  Give it a listen on its own. At 1:20, you can catch the percussionist at the back just punishing that triangle.

Also interesting is the playwright of The Ruin of Athens, August Von Kotzebue. He was a Rubix cube of contradictions:  shit-disturber, politician, subversive, bureaucrat, father of 18, and wildly prolific creator. In addition to his over 200 plays, he wrote stories, autobiography, sketches, novels, history, polemic, journalism, and satire.  Does anyone live like that anymore? Can anyone live like that anymore?

Here is the Ruin of Athens (video complete with lots of Greek images in case you forgot: ATHENS)