Beethoven and religion

[Chris]

Since christians beleive in the same God the commandment is speakin of, i beleive it's completely irrilevant WHEN it was first coined.

This is indeed my point.

What does ?!?

That bit is the first part of the First Commandment.

I analize Beethoven's true standing on the matter on who he was, and a PERSONAL conception of things he propably had about life and his own religious feelings.

In times where everybody was thought to be a Christian, Beethoven merely followed the current cultural trend.

He was a christian, but does listening to the Great Mass rapresents proof of his devotion ?!?

I say it doesn't, and that's what i'm contesting here, again, because of who he was.

I never did say he never beleived in God or that he was not a religious individuals, only that his personal conception of God doesn't express itself with sermons or scriptures, he didn't follow his heart that way.

I never contended otherwise.

Saying that the Mass is proof of his religious feelings (by mere force of it's aestetics) it's missinterpretating Beethoven inner self and the way he looked at life.

You don't praise God by abiding to arbitrary aestetical values, it's something that runs deep inside and i think that Beethoven expressed that feeling in ALL his music, that, and hundreds of other sensations as well.

It's ridicolous to think the Mass rapresents a testament of his devotion just because it 'sounds' religious, the current connotations of what sounds religious it's a completely arbitrary conception.

I haven't made a single comment about his Mass in this entire thread.

If he wanted to 'praise' God that way, he would have written a lot more than a couple of Masses...

I don't know about that. We know from his work with Fidelio that the quantity of his output of a certain type of work does not imply a dislike for it or its purpose.

...he would took communtion, he would have followed sermons, you name it.

And yet he received the Last Rites, etc. before his death. I suspect this was a "no athiests in foxholes" deal. If he were truly anti-Catholic or whatever, he never would have allowed this. What I really think is that he had a natural, instinctive awareness of God, and was interested in it somewhat, and followed the ethical code that that implied (imperfectly, as with all men) but that he wasn't overwhelmingly concerned with it. At the time of his death, he simply went with the "fail-safe", which he not care about much during his life, but certainly had no active argument with. He was most unremarkable in this respect - in fact, probably most Catholics I have known in my life followed this pattern.

But he didn't, because his relation was purely presonal.

Everytime he walked by a church, he didn't rush in to 'praise' God, he propably talked to God within himself...

This is my point, actually. Whether you realize it or not, you don't actually disagree with me.

[This message has been edited by Chris (edited January 31, 2004).]

[Pastorali]

Originally posted by Pastorali:
1814, Beethoven wrote in his diary book:

"God is immaterial, therefore it goes over each term; since he is invisible, then he cannot have a shape. But from what we become more aware of by his works, we can close that he is eternally, all-powerfully, all-knowing and pervasive. Which he is free from all desire and lust that the powerful one is he alone. No larger one is than he..

(Sorry, if alienated... )

Why have you any doubt, or debatting about the bible? Is this quote not saying all about Beethoven's view? In my eyes it does. Along with the Pastoral symphony (and others...) you got Beethoven's answer. Maybe it's more spiritually then religious...

[Steppenwolf]

Beethoven certainly did have a deeply spiritual side to his nature, and he certainly believed in God. He was no atheist.

However, it appears that his view of God, like that of many very intelligent and open minded people, was rather vague and ill-defined. He was, unlike Bach, who can with certainty be labelled a pious lutheran, a man of the enlightenment, and so open-minded, universal, and free from the narrow dogmatic confines of any one religion in particular.

What can be said with near certainty is that he was never dogmatic about the subject. He did not reject Christianity expressly, but nor did he subsribe literally to the narrow and absolute confines of Christian fundamentalism (meaning, in this sense, Biblical literalism). I have no doubt that, even putting the issue of his Catholicism to one side, a modern evangelical or born-again Christian would consider that Beethoven wasn't a 'proper' Christian - he was too open minded, he was too interested in other religions (like Buddhism), and he wasn't obsessively fixated on the personality of Jesus Christ - rather he saw beyond the narrow confines of sect and dogma to Deity, and Divinity Itself, as a universal.

[kenneth]

My comment have been frequently by opus 131.

Whay bother wrigthing the mass then??

I see I have written the wrong opus...it was op 86 i ment.

[v russo]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Beethoven certainly did have a deeply spiritual side to his nature, and he certainly believed in God. He was no atheist.

However, it appears that his view of God, like that of many very intelligent and open minded people, was rather vague and ill-defined. He was, unlike Bach, who can with certainty be labelled a pious lutheran, a man of the enlightenment, and so open-minded, universal, and free from the narrow dogmatic confines of any one religion in particular.

What can be said with near certainty is that he was never dogmatic about the subject. He did not reject Christianity expressly, but nor did he subsribe literally to the narrow and absolute confines of Christian fundamentalism (meaning, in this sense, Biblical literalism). I have no doubt that, even putting the issue of his Catholicism to one side, a modern evangelical or born-again Christian would consider that Beethoven wasn't a 'proper' Christian - he was too open minded, he was too interested in other religions (like Buddhism), and he wasn't obsessively fixated on the personality of Jesus Christ - rather he saw beyond the narrow confines of sect and dogma to Deity, and Divinity Itself, as a universal.

perfectly said. I think these comments alone summize the whole question posed at the outset.



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v russo

[Opus131]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Beethoven certainly did have a deeply spiritual side to his nature, and he certainly believed in God. He was no atheist.

However, it appears that his view of God, like that of many very intelligent and open minded people, was rather vague and ill-defined. He was, unlike Bach, who can with certainty be labelled a pious lutheran, a man of the enlightenment, and so open-minded, universal, and free from the narrow dogmatic confines of any one religion in particular.

What can be said with near certainty is that he was never dogmatic about the subject. He did not reject Christianity expressly, but nor did he subsribe literally to the narrow and absolute confines of Christian fundamentalism (meaning, in this sense, Biblical literalism). I have no doubt that, even putting the issue of his Catholicism to one side, a modern evangelical or born-again Christian would consider that Beethoven wasn't a 'proper' Christian - he was too open minded, he was too interested in other religions (like Buddhism), and he wasn't obsessively fixated on the personality of Jesus Christ - rather he saw beyond the narrow confines of sect and dogma to Deity, and Divinity Itself, as a universal.

Thanks for expressing my feelings in proper english...

[Andrea]

"It was not the fortuitous meeting of the chordal atoms that made the world; if order and beauty are reflected in the constitution of the universe, then there is a God."
--Diary, 1816.

"He who is above,- O, He is, and without Him there is nothing."
--Diary.

"Go to the devil with your "gracious Sir!" There is only one who can be called gracious, and that is God."
--About 1824 or 1825, to Rampel, a copyist, who, apparently, had a little too obsequious in his address to Beethoven. (As is customary among the Viennese to this day.)

"There is no loftier mission than to approach the Divinity nearer than other men, and to disseminate the devine rays among mankind."
--August 1823, to Archduke Rudolph.