The Heiliger Dankgesang at Thanksgiving

[GregMitch]

Of course, we must all agree that this is the greatest thanks giving piece ever written, and I'll be posting the music at Huffington Post to mark the occasion, as I do every year (to surprisingly great applause there, I might add). I will post that link here after I do it. In the mean time, your own thoughts?

Certainly one of the highlights of the past year in NYC was actor Stephen Dillane's performance of T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," followed by the Miro Quartet playing the work that inspired the poems, the opus 132. Then, a few months later, at the Rubin Museum in New York, the Shanghai Quartet played the Heiliger Dankgesang movement as part of a program reflecting on the museum's exhibit of Tibetan art on death and the afterlife. So: I give thanks for all that.

[Peter]

Excellent timing for this post, although we do not celebrate thanksgiving here in the UK, but what a lovely idea in this day and age especially when so much is taken for granted and as a right.

Beethoven's hymn has to be the best example of his interest in ancient music and is I think directly related to his work on the Missa Solemnis when he almost certainly had access to Glareanus's Dodeachordon which was in the Lobkowitz library - he would have been researching the Dorian modality of the 'Incarnatus' and would have come across the remarks that the Lydian mode was rarely used because of the tritone F-B. He uses the Lydian mode in strict style and actually originally wrote in the score "NB this piece always has B natural instead of B flat".

[Chris]

Thanks for the idea - I listened to it, and found it excellent Thanksgiving music at a time when everyone is already eager to break out the Christmas carols!

[GregMitch]

Here is the link to my Huffington Post piece, as promised. Some good Comments there.

Another at The Nation.

[Peter]

Here is the link to my Huffington Post piece, as promised. Some good Comments there.

Another at The Nation.

Thanks for that - interesting to read about your 'late' discovery of Beethoven and the impact this can have on people. The Heiliger Dankgesang is I think typical in a way of the hymn like quality Beethoven was exploring in the slow movements of his later works - you have a similar quality in the Variation theme of Op.109 and the quartets Op.127 and Op.135 which I'm sure influenced Mahler in the finale of his 3rd symphony.