Beethoven a composer without feeling for the piano?

[Joy]

Originally posted by Sorrano:
And then again, some of the more popular melodies in all of classical music comes from Beethoven. The bagatelles contain wonderful melodies and not just the more popular ones such as Fur Elise.

You're right Sorrano. I love listening to the bagatelles, they are wonderful. WoO 54 comes to mind. His Ecossaises, (WoO 83) and Contredanses (WoO 14) I also particularly enjoy.


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'Truth and beauty joined'

[AndrewMyers]

Originally posted by urtextmeister:
I think Beethoven could write beautiful tunes with the best of them, but, for his own mysterious reasons often chose to write less than elegant melodies. Wasn't he setting up a dichotomy between the mundane and sublime?

I am hinting at some of my favorite themes: irony and conflict.

There's often a contrast between the first and second theme in a sonata form movement - with a 'masculine' first subject contrasted with a more 'feminine' second subject.

Suggestions for Beethoven's most beautiful melodies then? i don't know the Bagatelles myself - I must check them out.

I'll start the ball rolling - there's a wonderful subsiduary theme in the first movement of the Eroica, played on woodwinds - it appears about halfway through and is very melodic - contrasts wonderfully with the arpeggio first theme.

There's also a great woodwind melody in the first movement of the fourth ...

And the second theme of the fourth piano concerto is wonderfully lyrical- also on woodwinds!

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by AndrewMyers:
There's often a contrast between the first and second theme in a sonata form movement - with a 'masculine' first subject contrasted with a more 'feminine' second subject.

Suggestions for Beethoven's most beautiful melodies then? i don't know the Bagatelles myself - I must check them out.

I'll start the ball rolling - there's a wonderful subsiduary theme in the first movement of the Eroica, played on woodwinds - it appears about halfway through and is very melodic - contrasts wonderfully with the arpeggio first theme.

There's also a great woodwind melody in the first movement of the fourth ...

And the second theme of the fourth piano concerto is wonderfully lyrical- also on woodwinds!

And in the 1st movement of the 3rd symphony there are some very wonderful lyrical moments (alas, but short) in the transitions between themes.

[Beyond Within]

Beethoven was the master of structural thinking, so his aim may not have always been great, elaborite melodies. In fact, the greatest melodic genius, Mozart, wrote some rather generic melodies in the last movement of the Jupiter. But the complex structure moves it to the highest possible level of quality. However, when Beethoven wanted to, he could write great melodies. To me the greatest melody of all time, perhaps the most famous "Ode to Joy" was written by him. Yet it came as the fourth movement in a symphony, where the first movement is comprised of simple motifs.

[urtextmeister]

The "ode to joy" theme is a pleasant enough little tune, square, predictable, clear tonal tendencies.
The greatness of the finale is what he did with this simple little tune. The thrill of listening to this symphony is "will this little tune survive?" It apparently does (does joy really win out at the end of this symphony--have we erased all the bitterness?)

Sometimes it seems to me that there is almost an arbitrariness to how Beethoven selected tunes.

Could it be that Beethoven's tunes were like his life circumstances--doled out by fate and left for him to reconcile.

[Rod]

Originally posted by urtextmeister:

The "ode to joy" theme is a pleasant enough little tune, square, predictable, clear tonal tendencies.
The greatness of the finale is what he did with this simple little tune. The thrill of listening to this symphony is "will this little tune survive?" It apparently does (does joy really win out at the end of this symphony--have we erased all the bitterness?)

Sometimes it seems to me that there is almost an arbitrariness to how Beethoven selected tunes.

Could it be that Beethoven's tunes were like his life circumstances--doled out by fate and left for him to reconcile.

Eh??

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by urtextmeister:



Sometimes it seems to me that there is almost an arbitrariness to how Beethoven selected tunes.

If you study the sketch books you might find that there is very little arbitrariness, rather a slow methodical development of ideas until they are just right.

[urtextmeister]

Allow me to obfuscate my point even further:

Greatness often involves a certain amount fragmenting of the personality. In the early part of his career, Schumann claimed that music came from one of two alter egos, Florestan and Eusebius. Later he wrote down music coming from angels; Yeats wrote a whole book that he claimed was dictated by the spirit world. Perhaps all of this is a way for the artist to avoid taking responsibility for the actual raw material they are working with.

I'm not saying Beethoven was quite like that, but I think he delighted in taking any tune, whether it was the Diabelli theme or the Ode to Joy theme and transforming it and reconciling it (or trying to reconcile it) with the musical world around it. The tune almost seems unimportant compared to his treatment of it. It could be dictated by the angels or picked out of a hat.

Metaphorically, I see a parallel between this and Beethoven's awareness of his own humble beginnings in life contrasted with his self-made greatness.

That's all I was trying to say.

[Beyond Within]

Well it seems like your belittling the quality of the ode to joy melody, by saying "The tune almost seems unimportant compared to his treatment of it. It could be dictated by the angels or picked out of a hat."

Beethoven spent several years honing that melody, you see it in sketchbooks long before the 9th was completed. Its a lot more deliberate than some randomly generated arpeggio sequence. I also dont hear what your hearing. That melody is given magnificient prominence in the final movement of the 9th. he presents it in various forms, but never does it fall by the way side or is subsumed in other ideas.

[ruudp]

Originally posted by Beyond Within:
Well it seems like your belittling the quality of the ode to joy melody, by saying "The tune almost seems unimportant compared to his treatment of it. It could be dictated by the angels or picked out of a hat."

Beethoven spent several years honing that melody, you see it in sketchbooks long before the 9th was completed. Its a lot more deliberate than some randomly generated arpeggio sequence. I also dont hear what your hearing. That melody is given magnificient prominence in the final movement of the 9th. he presents it in various forms, but never does it fall by the way side or is subsumed in other ideas.

how right you are,
The same can be said from his tune of his last sonata 2nd movement..It's off a deceiving simplicity but sketches revealed that beethoven struggled to find such a simple theme...Don't dismiss it for it's simplicity as being banal..

Regards,
Ruud

[urtextmeister]

I don't mean to belittle the "ode to joy" theme. Maybe I am taking my point too far in using words like "arbitrary."

A certain pulitzer-prize winning composer once told me that the entire first movement of the fifth symphony could have been written with the famous motive inverted and it would be the same piece.
(At the exact moment of writing that, I heard frogs croaking the opening of the fifth symphony on a cartoon my daughter is watching. The synchronicity of is scary).

The point he was making was that the greatness of that movement lies in the treatment of the theme rather than the theme itself. I think it is a similar case with the ninth.

The ode theme appears in hymnals. Apparently one can plug in religious words easily. Would Beethoven be famous if he had only come up with this tune? I don't think so. I think it is a fairly ordinary tune, but it fit with Beethoven's plan for the symphony and it fit with the words.

OK. He toyed with this theme in his sketchbooks. I can't believe Beethoven spent a lot of time and effort on this one simple tune, however. Maybe it took a while to find the right tone of simplicity and directness.

I guess I wouldn't call this ode theme banal, but simple to the point of being ingenuous.

I think he did take themes that were banal, sometimes even a bit ugly and used them to work through what he considered contradictions in the universe. One can point to the sketchbooks and say that themes were not arbitrary, but sometimes they appear that way.

Beethoven was not a composer who sat down and wrote the most beautiful and elegant tune that he could and then sat down and wrote another. I think most would agree with me on this point?