WHAT DO U THINK?????

[MCS]

Originally posted by PDG:
I don't understand this. If kids don't like something, they are more likely to vandalise it, not less. No? Maybe Ontario wants a load of Alex-types roaming around!

I guess they figured the music would act as a sort of repellent.
I can vouch for the fact that this idea actually works. Many of the clothing stores for teenagers in the local mall constantly play some sort of hideous "music" characterized by thump-thump-thumping of the bass and little else. Enduring it for more than a few seconds is actually painful. It certainly keeps me out.

Mary

[oboe_15]

I would have to say I do love ALL of Beethooven, and it is hard to decide which of his pieces to love the most. But what makes the peices more compelling to add to your soul is Beethovens' life! You only have to know a small portion on his life to understand what he went though and how hard it would have been!

Beethoven has been said to be a musical genius and indeed he was just that! I sometimes think that I need Beethoven in the morning more than water, air and food. Thats what makes it hard to choose Between the composers great abillty to have an audience on the edge of their seat at the intro of the 5th symphony and nearly hav them in tears of sorrow in his opera. No other composer has made such a wide diversity of pieces from such a hard lived life!

Beethoven rocks!

oboe_15

[kerryblue]

Originally posted by amy summers:
What is ur favourite beethoven piece??
plz tell me,i hope 2 include this in my project.

I think one's favorite LVB composition changes as one ages. As a youngster I loved the 5th symphony. As a young adult I loved the 9th, whereas now as a middle-aged man I love and revere the string quartet opus 132. For me the 132 quartet is the acme of musical composition; nothing like it was composed before or can be composed again.

Hope your paper turns out well.

Regards

[Immortal Beloved]

Originally posted by amy summers:
What is ur favourite beethoven piece??
plz tell me,i hope 2 include this in my project.

9th symphony and appassonate sonata

[Immortal Beloved]

Originally posted by oboe_15:
I would have to say I do love ALL of Beethooven, and it is hard to decide which of his pieces to love the most. But what makes the peices more compelling to add to your soul is Beethovens' life! You only have to know a small portion on his life to understand what he went though and how hard it would have been!

Beethoven has been said to be a musical genius and indeed he was just that! I sometimes think that I need Beethoven in the morning more than water, air and food. Thats what makes it hard to choose Between the composers great abillty to have an audience on the edge of their seat at the intro of the 5th symphony and nearly hav them in tears of sorrow in his opera. No other composer has made such a wide diversity of pieces from such a hard lived life!

Beethoven rocks!

oboe_15

rock on my friend! *high fives* I love him so much...and fortanily I can't live without him!

[PDG]

Originally posted by kerryblue:
I think one's favorite LVB composition changes as one ages. As a youngster I loved the 5th symphony. As a young adult I loved the 9th, whereas now as a middle-aged man I love and revere the string quartet opus 132. For me the 132 quartet is the acme of musical composition; nothing like it was composed before or can be composed again.
Hope your paper turns out well.
Regards

I agree about op.132 - it is my favourite, also. It's interesting that Beethoven himself considered op.131 in C sharp minor to be his finest; he got annoyed if anyone questioned him on this.

[oboe_15]

I personally don't have a favourite piece written by Beethoven because he wrote so many pieces, however, my music Teacher and her husband are FANATICAL about his violin concerto. I am not sure what one exactly but I know for sure that it is the one with the five timpani beats (almost like an anacrusis to the piece) and it is one of the longest he ever wote. And if Beethoven only wrote one violin concerto (I have a feeling he did because my teacer always refers to it as THE concerto, and not an opus number on the end) well then that is the one I am talking about.

From oboe_15

[oboe_15]

I personally don't have a favourite piece written by Beethoven because he wrote so many pieces, however, my music Teacher and her husband are FANATICAL about his violin concerto. I am not sure what one exactly but I know for sure that it is the one with the five timpani beats (almost like an anacrusis to the piece) and it is one of the longest he ever wote. And if Beethoven only wrote one violin concerto (I have a feeling he did because my teacer always refers to it as THE concerto, and not an opus number on the end) well then that is the one I am talking about.

From oboe_15

[PDG]

I meant my favourite String Quartet, but we're talking about smidgeons of difference (there's that word again) between any of them.

Yes, there's only the one Violin Concerto.

[Peter]

Originally posted by PDG:
I meant my favourite String Quartet, but we're talking about smidgeons of difference (there's that word again) between any of them.

Yes, there's only the one Violin Concerto.

Not forgetting the early incomplete concerto in C (WoO5) which will feature on the rare Beethoven page of this site soon.

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

[Michael]

There is also a fragment of a violin concerto in C major (WoO5) which is extremely powerful and attractive. Only 259 bars have survived, but three attempts have been made to complete the piece. The most recent one, published by Wilfred Fischer in 1972, sticks closest to the original material.
It's a great "guess the composer" piece!
In its compositional technique it has been described as worthy of being placed alongside the First Symphony.
There is no direct evidence that B noted down any other movements but one of the two famous romances might possibly have been the slow movement, both of them being set in an appropriate key, but neither of them seem to match in style the existing fragment.

Michael

(I've just noticed that I am referring to the same piece as Peter has just done. Didn't mean to jump the gun on this.)

[This message has been edited by Michael (edited 06-19-2001).]

[dice45]

Hello Amy, PDG, kerryblue,

interesting that Beethoven himself preferred the op.131.

But first to Amy's question: I cannot decide which LvB opus I like best, this changes often. I listen the most frequently to:
Among the piano sonatas:
op.106 (Hammerklavier)
op.111
op.54 (Appassionata)

among the string quartets:
op.59 (Rasoumovsky quartets)
op.131
op.132

among the symphonies:
slight preference for the 5th, but I like them all.

As a youngster, I loathed the 5th but this was because I listened to wrong conductors. Apart form that, my preferences from the youth have been widened a bit but there is no work I stopped to love. My understanding for the 5th symphony, the Hammerklaviersonata and the late string quartets grew later.

Good success with your paper, Amy!

Originally posted by kerryblue:
I think one's favorite LVB composition changes as one ages. As a youngster I loved the 5th symphony. As a young adult I loved the 9th, whereas now as a middle-aged man I love and revere the string quartet opus 132. For me the 132 quartet is the acme of musical composition; nothing like it was composed before or can be composed again.
Hope your paper turns out well.
Regards

answered by PDG:

I agree about op.132 - it is my favourite, also. It's interesting that Beethoven himself considered op.131 in C sharp minor to be his finest; he got annoyed if anyone questioned him on this.

I am no musician, structural properties of the score remain hidden ot me; so I can only judge from the listener's chair: op.131 certainly is very hard to grasp for the musicians.
This can be said for all Beethoven string quartets, the later the SQ, the worse it becomes and IMO op.131 is particularly difficult to perform.

Even my preferred ensemble, the Budapest String Quartet goofs on this opus, slight goofs admittedly, but even they do not manage to make all the mood changes fit seamlessly together or let appear all the moods plausible and coming from one mind in the same hour. However they do a mighty fine job compared from what I heard from other ensembles.

What is apparent to me that the BSQ goofed on different positions depending whether one listens to the 1st recording (1940) the 2nd (around 1954) and the 3rd (mid 60ies).
So they have struggled during their whole time of cooperation, for more than 20 years to mount this monster-like opus together in a way noone finds glued or welded seams. They did not fully succeed.

I have come to the experience that if a composer's work seems to be inferior, usually the performance is the cause.
So I do not dare to judge which opus, the op.132 or the op.131 is the eternal masterpiece, "... acme of musical composition; nothing like it was composed before or can be composed again", before I listened to performances I believe as plausible and integral in both intellectual and emotional respects. Before I can judge the opus, performance must be "adequate".

In this respect, Beethoven's own preference for the op.131 is a hint for me which reinforces the attitude described above. Thanky you, PDG!

My own humble work (engineering) has a lot of creative activities in it and there is one field I have acquired a certain local mastership (although I still fell like an apprentice, just knowing what he doesn't know yet), so I can tell: few other people can understand the whole structure created by the originator and noone knows the weeknesses and strenghts of his work better than the originator himself.
So I presume it is with Beethoven, too.

BTW, I just have speechless admiration for the op.132, kerryblue, but I feel the op.131 remains a deep secret.

For a mental sandbox game, please consider string quartets as the "inventor's workbench" of the composer; SQs often have been considered as such (look at W.A.Mozart's SQ#19 C-major K.465, "Dissonanzen-Quartett"). I guess that op.131 is an experiment on this workbench fully understood LvB but by few other people else.

Greets,
Bernhard

[joel fienen]

Hi Amy

My favorite Beethoven piece would half to be the 9th Symphony. Last year I gave a performance of it at a small college. I sang in a group called the minnesota valley chorale and it was the most thrilling piece I have ever sung. When you listen to Beethoven don't you get the feeling he is in the room with you?

Bye
jfienen

[Immortal Beloved]

Originally posted by joel fienen:
Hi Amy

My favorite Beethoven piece would half to be the 9th Symphony. Last year I gave a performance of it at a small college. I sang in a group called the minnesota valley chorale and it was the most thrilling piece I have ever sung. When you listen to Beethoven don't you get the feeling he is in the room with you?

Bye
jfienen

I had the feeling to of beethoven watching me playing the piano.