Reception history

[Quijote]

Reception history : another grandiose term! Nah, it simply means the study of how music was "received" (perceived) historically. The point, my dears, is that one day in the future this forum will be used as "source material". Imagine : 200 years hence, some poor PhD student will be researching material for his/her thesis on "reception history" and will inevitably find our forum preserved in whatever format, and all of our postings will be examined in some future light. What a responsibility for us !!

Dear future researcher : I stand by all my postings (my name is "Philip").

Vive Beethoven !!
And, er, Vive Varèse !!!

[Quijote]

Dear future researcher : Cage is dead, and Beethoven is well dead, too. Will this do? Or should I elaborate? May I please become a footnote to history? Oh go on, be kind to me ...

[Quijote]

May I just ask at this juncture if you think Beethoven had "an eye" for the future? Did he have "a historical perspecitve"?

[Megan]

May I just ask at this juncture if you think Beethoven had "an eye" for the future? Did he have "a historical perspecitve"?

Yes, I think Beethoven saw himself as a new man, one of the new men of the post French Revolution era, free from what he saw as the dead weight of the past, heralding a new world of freedom, as in the the opening of the prison scene in Fidelio.
He was , I think, incredibly naive politically, but that was really because his great creative spirit saw everything as one and no barriers or differences between peoples.

We have seen enough of futuristic people, indeed Communism enslaved many millions with that kind of idea of man. There was Soviet man that was supposed to be the new product of Darwinian class struggle.

[Quijote]

I agree with you Megan, Beethoven was politically naive. Many composers are (or have been), and your references to the Soviet model of communism are well worth developing (as Richard Taruskin has done in this book : The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays, University of California Press, London, 2009.
Utopian or totalitarian? Is there - in essence - any difference?

[Bonn1827]

Yes, Beethoven most definitely did have an "eye" for the future. Or was that comment about "not for you, but for later ages" merely apocryphal?

Whilst I was listening to some late piano sonatas again recently - particularly the last - the penny suddenly dropped. Today he would have been a jazz artist extraordinaire, with his incredible variations and rhythms. I think THAT is the general direction in which he was heading, with these last incredible piano sonatas. I guess people have said that about Bach often enough, but with LvB there is a kind of experimental feel and flavour to the music which strongly suggests jazz-like extemporization. This only makes me love LvB more because it shows his push beyond his own era.

[Bonn1827]

Also, Philip 2 of Spain: I think there's a great difference between "utopianism" and "totalitarianism", since the latter only is a particularly institutionalized response to the former - minus the idealism. Look at the utopianism in Shakespeare's "The Tempest", for example.

[Quijote]

Cor blimey, Megan and Bonn! I ask the questions, you two give the answers! We make a good team !

[Quijote]

Yep, Ludwig would very probably have been a jazz pianist. Dig the image : Beethoven in some Soho jazz bar (late 50s or so), fag in mouth, glass of whisky on the piano, glaring at the audience who were asking him for some "number" or other ...).

[Quijote]

Time for a sketch :

LvB : Himself
Ronnie Scott : Himself
Assorted jazz personalities : Themselves.

Scene : Ronnie Scott's, Soho (London) 1962.

Michael (drunken spectator) : Hey, Louis, play us a Bagetelle, will 'ya?
LvB : Go to hell, dumbkopf!
Scott : You're fired, Louis, we need the paying customers, for Christ's sake!
LvB : You can go to hell, too, little Englander ! (Straps Ronnie Scott to piano and flings him - plus piano - at the audience).
Audience : Wow, a happening!
John Cage : Get out of here, you've not heard anything yet!
Arnold Schoenberg : Vas? You haf no ear fur musik, John!
LvB : You neither, cretin. (Flings whisky glass at Schoenberg's head).
The police : 'Ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's goin' on 'ere, then? Enough of this dissonance! You're all off to the clink to cool off. Oy, you! What's your name?
LvB : I am Beethoven. Whilst there may be many princes, there is but ...
The police : Yeah, yeah, cut the crap, anarchist trouble maker! And my name's Bonaparte, OK?
LvB : Vas? (Rips up ancient manuscript that happens to be in his jacket pocket)

Fin.

[Quijote]

Dear future researcher : whilst there may be many forum administrators, there is only one "Philip". Thank you.

[Bonn1827]

Very amusing, but shouldn't it have gone something like this:

John Cage: Oh well, some music is better than NOTHING I guess. I've got 4
minutes 33 seconds in which I can expand on this!! Remember,
"nothing comes from nothing"!!

Arnie Sch: Vas ist das? Ich hore gern zu Nus-sink!! Too many notes!

LvB: Notes? Ich habe mein konversationshefte fur dem notes!!

[Quijote]

Shows promise, Bonnie. You need first to attend my "school". The "material" is there, I grant you, but the delivery ...

[Quijote]

Mon école est très élite, ma chère Bonnie. Few are admitted ...

[Bonn1827]

Perhaps you're feeling the same as Pip in "Great Expectations" after my literary foray?

"I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it anymore"!!!