Hooliganism

[Chaszz]

Here's a story that will no doubt raise a lot of hackles here. Of course I do not agree with it. One cannot single out Beethoven for a shift that was happening in all the arts at the time, literature a lot earlier than music. I wonder if he has any experience of other arts, and would he blame the same developments in modern painting znd literature on Beethoven also?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...500951,00.html

[Peter]

Thanks for that article - fortunately I'm in good humour today and I had a laugh! Of course I totally disagree with him and thought he is obviously some early 19th century critic reincarnated! Here is a link to a far more balanced view:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/frida...492581,00.html

------------------
'Man know thyself'

[ruudp]

Quote from the article.
In A Clockwork Orange it is the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that echoes in the mind of Alex whenever he indulges in one of his orgies of violence. Alex's reaction may be rather extreme, but he is responding to something that is already there in this dark and frenzied setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy; the joy it invites one to feel is the joy of madness, bloodlust and megalomania.

How dare hey!!!!
I think it´s a laughable bunch of words aswell but still...are there people whom take that man seriously??let´s hope not.

[Amalie]

I find Mr. Dylan's view of Beethoven both superficial and inaccurate.
Far from being narcisstic, Beethoven showed a trancendence in his music indeed that belies the label narcisstic.
Mozart and Haydn's music reflects the world of the Ancien Regime that was being demolished as Beethovens career got started so his musical and external realities were rather different to these two great genius's.
Beethoven's concern however, with what one might call the eternal verities like Bach, Mozart and Haydn were. So really it is not true to say he had a non pythagorean view of music. Sure, his personallity comes across a lot more that Mozarts does, but that is really a mark of his genius in that he could infuse his very self into the most sublime and tremedous harmony western music has ever been capable of.
Mozart did something like this, but by effacing his own personality to a large extent, though his last symphonies are I think, a testamony in their dark cause to the desperate circumstances that ended Mozarts life.
Mr. Dylan is also rather ungracious in failing to recongnize the great effect that Beethoven's deafness had on him, that would necessarily force him in on himself , but we only have to listen to his late string quartets 0p. 131 etc.. to realize how uniquely gifted Beethoven was, and what heights he could soar to, which no one before or since, in my view, has been capabe of.
Oddly it strikes me that despite a week of Beethoven programming, Mr. Dylan has really not listened to enough, or properly the music of Beethoven.
The problem with later musicians was that perhaps that they identified with the romantic 'artist is all' figure of Beethoven, but frankly we are never likely to be in the same league musically as him.
As much as I admire Brahms, I think he contributed to this unhealthy view of the artist as outsider or in conflict with society. In literature there is a great galaxy of English romantic poets ,, all writing around Beehoven's time, and all pretty much first rate genius's,, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelly, etc. but 100 years later when Tennyson tries to strike the same romatic pose, it looks a bit ridiculous, so with the successes of Beethoven.

------------------

~ Courage, so it be righteous, will gain all things ~

[Chris]

Ha! I thought this thread was going to be about soccer (er...football!).