The Great Fugue

[jamesofedinburgh]

These are good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Beeth...3982147&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Qu...3982204&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-St...3982225&sr=1-9

[Michael]

Can anybody recommend the best book to read regarding the late LvB quartets, as I can buy books from Amazon with the Aussie dollar above "parity" at the moment. It's a great time to be buying things from the USA for Aussies!!

Basil Lam's survey of the quartets is superb. It was part of a series of BBC Guides that came out in the seventies. They are two small paperbacks, each under a hundred pages, but very thorough. They are available on Amazon for prices ranging from five or six pounds to one penny (!) if I am reading the page correctly. (If you scroll down a bit, you will see the two books going for £.01. I don't understand why people would bother to sell something for that price. Maybe they make it up on the postage, so check that carefully.)
Please note that there are two books: Part one deals with the quartets up as far as the "Harp", and Part two with Opus 95 and the late works.
I can also recommend the Joseph Kerman book that James has listed.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_...+Lam&x=16&y=13

[Bonn1827]

Thank you very much, "JoE" and Michael. I will investigate this today.

[jamesofedinburgh]

Yes, one of the 3 I listed is the Basil Lam book. It is available as a single volume (that is the version I have) but I have also seen it in two separate volumes as Michael notes. Lam clearly loves the music and writes well, pointing out many interesting details that send one back to the music and the scores.

[Michael]

Yes, one of the 3 I listed is the Basil Lam book. It is available as a single volume (that is the version I have) but I have also seen it in two separate volumes as Michael notes. Lam clearly loves the music and writes well, pointing out many interesting details that send one back to the music and the scores.

Sorry, I didn't spot the Basil Lam book in your listings. I have a book on the symphony in which Lam spends about seventy pages discussing each of Beethoven's nine, without a using a single bar of musical notation. Amazing.

[jamesofedinburgh]

How strange! Perhaps the editors wanted a book that could be read by those who cannot read music. He's normally pretty good with documenting his ideas.

Do you like the Sullivan biography of Beethoven? It has no musical examples but I think it tackles the essence of late Beethoven.

I also like Mellers 'Beethoven and the Voice of God' though it is a bit long. The chapter on Opus 111 is wonderful.

William Kinderman's 'Beethoven' is also a very fine book.

Mellers and Kinderman have a great many musical examples.

[Michael]

How strange! Perhaps the editors wanted a book that could be read by those who cannot read music. He's normally pretty good with documenting his ideas.

Do you like the Sullivan biography of Beethoven? It has no musical examples but I think it tackles the essence of late Beethoven.

.

I have read the Sullivan book more times than I can remember and it always repays the effort. It's more a history of Beethoven's "spiritual" development than a strict biography. The trouble is, I read it long before I became acquainted with the bulk of Beethoven's compositions and I'm afraid, in one particular case, it coloured my thinking - in advance. Long before I heard the Hammerklavier sonata, I had formed certain ideas about the slow movement, which is described by Sullivan as "the deliberate expression, by a man who knows no reserves, of the cold and immeasurable woe in whose depths, it would seem, nothing that we could call life could endure".
Well, everybody is entitled to his/her opinion, but, I mean - wow! No wonder I was afraid to listen to that work for some years. It took me a long time to rid myself of my preconceptions about it and realise that Sullivan was both right and wrong about the Largo. There are indeed icy depths but also great warmth and humanity. That's what you get when you are dealing with Beethoven.

[jamesofedinburgh]

I have read the Sullivan book more times than I can remember and it always repays the effort. It's more a history of Beethoven's "spiritual" development than a strict biography. The trouble is, I read it long before I became acquainted with the bulk of Beethoven's compositions and I'm afraid, in one particular case, it coloured my thinking - in advance. Long before I heard the Hammerklavier sonata, I had formed certain ideas about the slow movement, which is described by Sullivan as "the deliberate expression, by a man who knows no reserves, of the cold and immeasurable woe in whose depths, it would seem, nothing that we could call life could endure".
Well, everybody is entitled to his/her opinion, but, I mean - wow! No wonder I was afraid to listen to that work for some years. It took me a long time to rid myself of my preconceptions about it and realise that Sullivan was both right and wrong about the Largo. There are indeed icy depths but also great warmth and humanity. That's what you get when you are dealing with Beethoven.

Yes, I agree with you, you 'got it in one' as they say. Where do you begin a list of Sullivan's howlers - with Opus 106, of course. The slow movement expresses great pain but there is far more to it than that. As to the fugue being a place where 'no life can be found' (or words to that effect) I simply cannot agree with him. It takes an awful lot of life to play it!

Eroica - he disparages the slow movement at the expense of praising the (admittedly super-extraordinary) Allegro con brio, indicating that the funeral march is 'too formal' and does not enable Beethoven to create a piece that is fully true to his experience. I speculate that Sullivan stops listening after the exposition of the march and episode, because the majestic fugato clearly breaks down inconsolably in wailing grief while the end of the movement simply dissolves which seems very truthful. All of which prepares for the scherzo which has been described as 'homeric funeral games' which I think is very apt - so Sullivan misses the powerful link between movements by which an entire work becomes something greater than sum of its (often very great) parts.

Opus 127 - he doesn't even mention this! or if he does he takes the 'it's merely music' line which is infuriating - this quartet may not have quite the sense of mystery of opus 130 - 133 but it is their equal in every sense.

Fifth symphony - he seems to wish that Beethoven had written a one movement tone poem (the first movement) and hardly has time for the remainder. (Isn't the scherzo the predecessor of Mahler's 'night music' scherzos? Particularly when it comes back pizzicato. There is something utterly haunting and uncanny about the piece which Hoffman picked up in his essay on the Fifth which remains a magnificent piece of criticism.)


However, these little peculiarities can be forgiven because the overall picture is accurate and convincing. No one else has written such a meditation on Beethoven and it is invaluable and very moving. It has also been in print continuously since it was published almost 80 years ago, that speaks for itself. And while the book may lack any of the academic virtues, it also lacks the academic vices that all too frequently come up - indifference and lack of real enthusiasm to the topic, frigid lack of response to beauty masquerading as objective appraisal, patronising tone towards the 'uninitiated'.

[Michael]

Brilliantly expressed, James. Damn it, now I have to read the book once again when I should be taking down the Xmas decorations.

[jamesofedinburgh]

At least it's a short book so you should be back to the Christmas decorations by now!

[Bonn1827]

I've been listening again, tonight, to the Heiliger Dankgesang and it has brought me to my knees. What I noticed with this particular listening (and this may be old news to many of you) is the lack of cadential points throughout. This music seems to anticipate Richard Wagner and his restless music which always seems to be actively avoiding a cadence, a stop, and with a constantly moving, changing harmonic superstructure. (In fact, Wagner's music seems to move forward harmonically rather than melodically or rhythmically. I hope this makes sense!)

With the HD, Beethoven's musical line seems continuous, restless, and this must be part of its meaning. I can think of no other work of his, except perhaps the Grosse Fuge, where this sense of the music having found no resting place is so pervasive. The ending seems to literally die away. It is simply glorious and I would love to have some of our eloquent contributors to these boards add their comments!!

[jamesofedinburgh]

99.9% agreement here, I find the HD extremely restful therefore I don't feel it as restless. But I would agree that the music is 'restless' in that there are no cadences and everything flows over the bar line. I think some critics do not appreciate the middle section enough - the first variation of the chorale - because after all, the concluding section is just a miracle of music and the initial statement of the chorale in the context of the quartet is a tremendous surprise. However, I think it is in this middle section that the 'restless' (let's agree to use this as a quasi-technical shorthand for non-cadencing) aspect is established and the mood to me has always seemed to be exceptional and unique. One listens to Renaissance choral music - modal - and to chorale preludes - Bach and baroque - but there is nothing like this. It is unique.

BTW Stravinsky professed to dislike this movement (although he was so warm in his praise of much of late Beethoven that he can be forgiven). He said that the 'triple decker sandwich' of the slow music alternating with fast sections does not work. Well - I was listening to his Requiem Canticles the other night, and what do I hear? - slow music bumping into fast music. Another case in point - the Symphony of Wind Instruments - alternates chorale-like sections with much faster interludes. This was a hallmark of Stravinsky's style - or, I should say, one of his 'styles'.

Grosse Fugue - yes, that piece is quite restless as well as 'restless'. Beethoven made an intriguing note in his diaries about how an opera based on antiquity should have music where the dissonances do not resolve (presumably until the end) as this would 'reflect a more barbarous time before the development of our music'. The link to Wagner's style is obvious. The GF has been linked to mythology specifically Pan - whether or not there was any operatic idea to do with Pan, and whether this had anything to do with the GF, I do not know.

[Bonn1827]

With the "triple decker sandwich" comment perhaps Stravinsky was referring to the medieval conductus, based as it was on a (plainchant) cantus firmus. This would create such an effect, except the later motet with its tenor and 3 different texts might be closer to what he means.

I'm not a musical "Darwinist", so I don't subscribe to the view - attributed to Beethoven, perhaps in your private email to me JoE? - that all musics preceding the classical period were on some kind of evolutionary path and a trajectory towards 'greatness' and 'complexity'. No, I think music is intrinsically beautiful in any period (except the avant garde) and ought to be taken on its own merits.

I also take the point about Arts Council grants - made elsewhere - and its culpability in developing a "handouts" mindset, thus allowing music too often to become the esoteric prerogative of academics sans audiences!! Doomed to failure, I say. Anyway, can Britain (deeply and seriously indebted) really afford it any more? This is "end of Empire" debt levels we're talking about...!

[Bonn1827]

It refers to the evolutionary process - defined by Darwin - where primitive things evolved into more complex and sophisticated life forms. Some people believe medieval or renaissance music was 'primitive' and just a rung on the evolutionary ladder leading to more highly developed and complex music to the Classical Period. I prefer to think of each musical stage as being unique and having its own intrinsic beauty and value.

Today I've been listening to Vaughan-Williams "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" (speaking of renaissance) and this is just an exquisite piece of music. It seems to bare the ultimate "countenance Anglaise", if you will, and surpasses anything of that nature composed by, for example, Dunstable. There is something so uniquely English about R V-W, and I guess its the fact that he also incorporated folk melodies into his music.

[The Dude]

Yes, I agree with you, you 'got it in one' as they say. Where do you begin a list of Sullivan's howlers - with Opus 106, of course. The slow movement expresses great pain but there is far more to it than that. As to the fugue being a place where 'no life can be found' (or words to that effect) I simply cannot agree with him. It takes an awful lot of life to play it!

Eroica - he disparages the slow movement at the expense of praising the (admittedly super-extraordinary) Allegro con brio, indicating that the funeral march is 'too formal' and does not enable Beethoven to create a piece that is fully true to his experience. I speculate that Sullivan stops listening after the exposition of the march and episode, because the majestic fugato clearly breaks down inconsolably in wailing grief while the end of the movement simply dissolves which seems very truthful. All of which prepares for the scherzo which has been described as 'homeric funeral games' which I think is very apt - so Sullivan misses the powerful link between movements by which an entire work becomes something greater than sum of its (often very great) parts.

Opus 127 - he doesn't even mention this! or if he does he takes the 'it's merely music' line which is infuriating - this quartet may not have quite the sense of mystery of opus 130 - 133 but it is their equal in every sense.

Fifth symphony - he seems to wish that Beethoven had written a one movement tone poem (the first movement) and hardly has time for the remainder. (Isn't the scherzo the predecessor of Mahler's 'night music' scherzos? Particularly when it comes back pizzicato. There is something utterly haunting and uncanny about the piece which Hoffman picked up in his essay on the Fifth which remains a magnificent piece of criticism.)


However, these little peculiarities can be forgiven because the overall picture is accurate and convincing. No one else has written such a meditation on Beethoven and it is invaluable and very moving. It has also been in print continuously since it was published almost 80 years ago, that speaks for itself. And while the book may lack any of the academic virtues, it also lacks the academic vices that all too frequently come up - indifference and lack of real enthusiasm to the topic, frigid lack of response to beauty masquerading as objective appraisal, patronising tone towards the 'uninitiated'.

How can we get this dude back onto the forum? What a brain, and I loved the absolutely relevant last sentence: "frigid lack of response to beauty masquerading as objective appraisal." Yes, frigidity in academic writing and criticism - he's nailed it!! This dude is insightful to the max!