Spohr's opinion of Beethoven's Ninth

[spaceray]

Did he really think it "monstrous,tasteless and trivial"?

[Gurn Blanston]

Originally posted by spaceray:
Did he really think it "monstrous,tasteless and trivial"?

Dunno, hadn't heard that, but I would not be surprised, given that contemporaries, especially those who are following a different path musically, often "underappreciate" what someone else has done, and lest we forget, until that point in time, nothing remotely resembling the d minor had ever been written, so he did not have the advantage of our perspective. Rather than writing all this, I would have sooner said "Spohr who?", but too many people would have thought I was serious and given his biography! ;-)
Regards, Gurn

[spaceray]

Here are some of Louis Spohr's words on Beethoven,"I consider him one of the most gifted composers,but only for instrumental
music,not for vocal music,in which he did not fare very happily.Harmony,counterpoint,eurhythm,and particularly musical esthetics,he did not seem to have overly much at heart;hence his larger works are defaced by occasional trivialities."

Louis who indeed!
Beethoven might have been deaf but clearly something was wrong with Louis ears!

[Andrea]

Here is more from the mouth of Louis Spohr on Beethoven's Sym.'9:

"But I am not of the number, and freely confess that, I have never been able to relish those last works of Beethoven. Yes! I must even reckon the much admired Ninth Symphony among them, the three first movements of which, in spite of some solitary flashes of genius, are to me worse than all of the eight previous symphonies, the fourth movement of which is in my opinion so monstrous and tasteless, and in its grasp of Schiller's Ode so trivial, that I cannot even now understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it. I find in it another proof of what I already remarked in Vienna, that Beethoven was wanting in aesthetical feeling and in a sense of the beautiful."

Here's a bit of data on Louis Spohr from the book "Beethoven: Impressions By His Contemporaries"--

"The inpressions of Beethoven which Spohr recorded in his autography belong to the most vivid we possess. Louis Spohr (1784-1859) frankly confessed his inability to comprehend Beethoven's music of the last period. He attributed Beethoven's ``esthetic aberrations´´to his deafness, but apparently it never occurred to Spohr that his own ears might have been at fault. Considered in his time either the equal of Paganni as a violinist or second only to him, Louis Spohr laid much greater stress on his importance and fame as a composer. As such, his popularity generations ago certainly was not inferior to that of Beethoven. His music was much more chromatic and much more romantic than Beethoven's. Hence, in a way, more modern, but such externaly of style do not determine the longevity of music-the music of Beethoven, by far the greater genius, lives...and that of Spohr, apart from his ever-valuable violin concertos, is dead."

[Gurn Blanston]

Andrea, you are splendid, you have saved us again! BTW, I have heard and admired several of S's concerto, they are indeed fine. I did NOT realize his talent as a violinist though, this was news to me.
Thanks,
Gurn