Turkish Delight

[Michael]

Interesting little article on the possible origins of Beethoven's "Chorus of Dervishes". I must say the Beethoven audio example is very slow. I have three versions of the piece and two of them are performed at easily twice the speed:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.p...hes-2010-07-11

The resemblance between the original and Beethoven's seems to me to be very slight.

[Quijote]

Interesting little article on the possible origins of Beethoven's "Chorus of Dervishes". I must say the Beethoven audio example is very slow. I have three versions of the piece and two of them are performed at easily twice the speed:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.p...hes-2010-07-11

The resemblance between the original and Beethoven's seems to me to be very slight.

Interesting article* you found there, Michael. I agree, the resemblance is very (very) slight, and as far as I am concerned it has only to do with semitonal inflection at certain points in the melody. In the Beethoven, the melodic material is wider (and includes a very classical-cum-Mozartian "raised 4th"). Beethoven's "take" on an "exotic" theme is no more "Turkish" than Bizet's Carmen is "Spanish".

(*) Where on earth do you find such articles? Do you subscribe to some sort of Internet Beethoven article search service, or what?

[Quijote]

Though to continue the above, the "semitonal" inflection in Michael's 'Turkish' web reference above, the interval is not always purely a semitone, unlike the Beethoven extract given. Which is, as Michael points out, rather slow. I don't have the score. What was Beethoven's tempo marking?

[Michael]

(*) Where on earth do you find such articles? Do you subscribe to some sort of Internet Beethoven article search service, or what?

Just click onto Google news and type in "Beethoven". Or anything else, for that matter.