BEETHOVEN FESTIVAL

[Amalie]

This Sunday March 14th, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liege (Belguim) will be
re-creating Beethoven's legendary concert of December 22nd 1808 he gave at his Akademie.

More details at: http://www.opl.be


Here is an interesting article on that original concert. http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/1999/12/ppvienna.htm

[v russo]

was that the concert that went on for some 4 hours in the cold and rain and had the famous remark of a friend of Beethoven's who said to the composer, "you know, you really can have too much of a good thing"?



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v russo

[Joy]

Indeed it was! On a very cold night in Dec. with no heating in the concert hall! Can you imagine the lack of comfort that evening, must have been rather miserable. Thank goodness for modern convinences, heating, air conditioning things we sometimes take for granted!

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'Truth and beauty joined'

[This message has been edited by Joy (edited March 10, 2004).]

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Joy:
Indeed it was! On a very cold night in Dec. with no heating in the concert hall! Can you imagine the lack of comfort that evening, must have been rather miserable. Thank goodness for modern convinences, heating, air conditioning things we sometimes take for granted!

Joy, our friends in England may not know what those things are!

[Peter]

Originally posted by v russo:
was that the concert that went on for some 4 hours in the cold and rain and had the famous remark of a friend of Beethoven's who said to the composer, "you know, you really can have too much of a good thing"?

Yes that's the one - I was fortunate last August to attend this in the original venue in Vienna, the Theater an der Wien. It was during the Europe wide heatwave and the temperature at around 37 Centigrade was not authentic!


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'Man know thyself'

[Joy]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
Joy, our friends in England may not know what those things are!

Chaszz, do you mean 'modern conveniences?'


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'Truth and beauty joined'

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Joy:
Chaszz, do you mean 'modern conveniences?'

Yes, the last time I was in London, in the mid-90s, they didn't seem to have much in the way of either heating or air conditioning. Of course, they have Shakespeare, Westminster Abbey, the Elgin marbles, this website, and a lot of other things that more than make up for it!




[This message has been edited by Chaszz (edited March 11, 2004).]

[Amalie]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chaszz:
[b] Yes, the last time I was in London, in the mid-90s, they didn't seem to have much in the way of either heating or air conditioning. Of course, they have Shakespeare, Westminster Abbey, the Elgin marbles, this website, and a lot of other things that more than make up for it!
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Well you know how it is dear Chaszz, We've got Shakespeare, Turner and Elgar.
You've got the finger-lickin Colonel Sanders, Dolly Parton and Donald Duck!.
Ok, Europe may lack air conditioning, but there is a negative correlation between the so called conveniences in life and the culture or civilization of that society.
We musn't forget the great Geniuses like Beethoven and Mozart and Michelangelo produced the highest possible art in the most uncomfortable primitive and even sometimes insanitary conditions.






[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited March 11, 2004).]

[Amalie]

Life in the 1500's.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500's.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a bath tub filled with hot water.
The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and and men, then the women and finally the children - last of all the babies.
By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw out the baby with the bath water".

Houses that had thatched roofs - thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals, (mice and bugs),lived in the roof.
When it rained it became slippery and the amimals would slip and fall off the roof.
Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs".

In those days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Everyday they lit the fire and added things to the pot.
They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the sew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.
Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old".

Those with money had plates made of pewter.
Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach into the food, causing lead poisoning and death!.
This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

England is so old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and take the bones to a "bone-house", and re-use the grave. When re-opening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they then realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string to the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie the end to a bell;
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night, (the graveyard shift), to listen for the bell, thus, Someone could be "saved by the bell", or was considered a "dead ringer"..

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
Yes, the last time I was in London, in the mid-90s, they didn't seem to have much in the way of either heating or air conditioning.

Although I now live in England, I am originally from Australia and grew up there. Coming to London a few years ago I have had to get used to a few things - there is IMO no lack of heating - too much if anything, switched on full blast in the 'between' seasons when it really isn't that cold. But there is a terrible lack of air conditioning, which can make travelling by tube at rush hour on a really hot summer's day a nightmerish experience!

Funnily enough, Australia is the opposite - Sydney is prepared for the heat but not the cold, so you freeze to death on a winter's day where there is NOWHERE with heating, and the air-conditioning is more or less switched on 9 months of the year, which means you sometimes shiver indoors with the airconditoning permanently on full throttle.

But I digress ... back to Beethoven! Talking about hot/cold, is that old story true, that he would pour a bucket of freezing water over his heat to stimulate his mental alertness before he started composing for the day?


[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited March 12, 2004).]

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Amalie:

Life in the 1500's.

That's fascinating, Amalie! Although I remain a little sceptical about that 'midnight shift' story ... are you SURE that's true? It sounds a bit incredible.

As for the stink, I read once that people of the past probably didn't smell that much at all. Apparently when you don't wash for a long period, certain bacteria build up on your body which end up having the effect of producing an immunity to stink. And, I suppose, even if that is not true, since everybody stank it would have seemed normal and nobody would have noticed anyone else.

[Amalie]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Although I now live in England, I am originally from Australia and grew up there. Coming to London a few years ago I have had to get used to a few things - there is IMO no lack of heating - too much if anything, switched on full blast in the 'between' seasons when it really isn't that cold. But there is a terrible lack of air conditioning, which can make travelling by tube at rush hour on a really hot summer's day a nightmerish experience!

Funnily enough, Australia is the opposite - Sydney is prepared for the heat but not the cold, so you freeze to death on a winter's day where there is NOWHERE with heating, and the air-conditioning is more or less switched on 9 months of the year, which means you sometimes shiver indoors with the airconditoning permanently on full throttle.

But I digress ... back to Beethoven! Talking about hot/cold, is that old story true, that he would pour a bucket of freezing water over his heat to stimulate his mental alertness before he started composing for the day?


[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited March 12, 2004).]

Here we have it Steppenwolf, from THE CHARACTER OF A GENIUS - Beethoven in perspective, by Peter J. Davies.
Which I think is probably a reliable Source.

Beethoven Bathing and Shaving.

Like Richard Wagner, Beethoven believed in the invigorating power of cold water, so he submitted himself to frequent ablutions. While composing, when his head felt hot, he was in the habit of going to the washbasin to cool himself with douches of several jugs of cold water, often continuing to hum or roar as he paced the floor. When sometimes the overflow onto the floor leaked through to the apartment below, the hostile complaints from his neighbour obliged his landlord to evict him.
His clumsy,awkward, ungracious movements led to frequent accidents and breakages, so that, for example, he often knocked his inkwell into the piano beside his writing desk. He frequently cut himself shaving, and he was unable to dance in time to the music. Furthermore he had difficulty in cutting the quills of his pens, or sharpening pencils with is awkward, thick fingers, so that he preferred to write with thick pencils, like those used by carpenters.





[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited March 12, 2004).]

[Pastorali]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:


But I digress ... back to Beethoven! Talking about hot/cold, is that old story true, that he would pour a bucket of freezing water over his heat to stimulate his mental alertness before he started composing for the day?


[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited March 12, 2004).]

Steppenwolf
Yes, I think it's true, but I have read he did it after work, to cool down his heated body. However, those of us who are living in older houses (I do) are knowing, these floors wasn't sealed to water and the neighbours down him had daily a rain shower.

[Pastorali]

Thanks for this Amalie! ...still something about sanitary conditions. I believe at that time, poured one the urine out of a bucket simply from the window on the lane down...

That's with the sources of the proverbs is very interesting, we do use these here too.

PS: I also married in June.

[Chaszz]

Thanks for the fascinating account of life in the 1500s, Amalie. Very interesting to see the derivation of those old sayings.

And about the cultural barbarism of America, only too true. I was in no way denying it.
We have only Frank Lloyd Wright, the young Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and one or two others to sustain us. And it was Frank Lloyd Wright who said: "The United States is the only civilization that went from barbarism to decadence without having a golden age in between."