tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/beethoven-31506/articlesBeethoven – The Conversation2023-05-21T20:00:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2001722023-05-21T20:00:46Z2023-05-21T20:00:46ZThe great beauty of art is its absence of certainty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515989/original/file-20230317-1658-qsep42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7600%2C5051&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Azzedine Rouichi/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It can be surprising when things are not what they seem. Take books, for example. </p>
<p>I recently finished The Outsider (aka The Stranger) by Albert Camus. I’m told many people read it at a younger age, and to prove the point I was given it by a nephew who’d discovered it as a teenager. </p>
<p>It’s not a particularly long book, yet as I turned the pages it seemed to change, revealing something unexpected. To begin with, I thought it slightly dull: a first-person account of a young Frenchman in Algiers, learning his mother had died. </p>
<p>There follows some rather ordinary reports of him eating, sleeping and, for reasons unknown, feeling constantly tired. He finds a girl that he likes, but doesn’t love. We read about an old neighbour whose dog goes missing, and a younger man who asks him to write a letter. It’s all quite unremarkable.</p>
<p>But after he suddenly shoots a man dead, it’s doubtless a very different book. The portrayal of the lengthy prelude to his trial reveals there are many other things the author has in mind. It seems we are engaged with potentially profound reflections: on ethics, liberty, guilt, religion. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the book rests on a sole question: was the murder premeditated? The characters in the book don’t know. But from our privileged place as witness to the narrator’s inner thoughts from the first page, how could it have been? It’s a tricky position for a reader to be in.</p>
<p>One is led to wonder what it is really about. On the final page, Camus suggests that, rather than feeling the love of the deity to which we should aspire, he senses – and is comforted by – the “tender indifference” of the world. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/loin-des-hommes-we-are-all-first-men-camus-algerians-and-oelhoffens-camus-47005">Loin des Hommes, We Are All First Men: Camus’ Algerians and Oelhoffen’s Camus</a>
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<h2>Not what they seem</h2>
<p>I’ve thought about this a while, and decided it’s a philosophical book.</p>
<p>Yet I’m aware that this might be simply how I’m interpreting these events. Indeed, tracing back through my thoughts, I see that for other readers this is possibly a modest story about a few months in the life of a man. Entertaining or not, he’s not a very appealing man at that!</p>
<p>So things like books can be something other than what they seem: what they are on the surface, and the stories we find within, can be wholly dissimilar. If absolute definitions are problematic, perhaps we can dispense with their application to other things.</p>
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<span class="caption">Books can be other than what they seem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Florencia Viadana/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>Take music, for example. Among my friends who work professionally in the field, some are troubled that what to them is an artform is by others classified as just “entertainment”. </p>
<p>I grew up being used to people seeing music as a less-than-serious pursuit. When in my teens I told my grandmother that I wanted to be a musician, she replied that such a thing would be very nice but asked what I would do for a proper job. </p>
<p>(She meant well, she also played piano.) </p>
<p>So in precisely which ways could music be both entertainment and something that is rich and profound? </p>
<p>If you take a piece of music with a beat and play it with conviction, whether it is an Irish jig or a rollicking Baroque gigue by JS Bach, it can make people want to dance. This is a genuine form of entertainment, and perhaps one of music’s first utilities.</p>
<p>If you assemble some memorable words, a pleasing melody and suitable chords, it can make people want to sing along. This has long been the case in folksong traditions, and continues in popular entertainment cultures around the world. It’s notable that Beethoven found it the best solution when he was searching for an ending to his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ENlstLDhM">final symphony</a>. </p>
<p>Yet there is something truly ineffable about music in its metaphysical otherness. Like the effect of certain fragrances but more compelling, it can transport us back through time. And not just in momentary bursts. Rather, immersed through its duration, music can move us to our inner core. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The strings in an orchestra." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515993/original/file-20230317-386-kfwopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There is something truly ineffable about music in its metaphysical otherness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Larisa Birta/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>Like great authors, creators of music craft narratives of surprising complexity. This can be through the alignment of musical ideas, no matter how small, recurring at pivotal points. Or it can be in the timing of the larger whole, when one encounters a moment of vulnerability where something more exuberant was assumed. </p>
<p>It can be in the ephemeral arc of a melody, or it can be the return to an evocative chord. These things in music that truly speak to us rarely happen by accident. Rather, they reveal the hand of a creative artist, working in one of our most ancient mediums. In the works we hold most highly, it is even believed great music can attain the level of philosophy.</p>
<p>But again, I’m led to ponder how I interpret these events. Tracing back through my thoughts, I see that for other listeners these things might not seem to exist. Could the ears of some be tuned differently to others? Or might these really be just entertaining sounds? </p>
<p>The absence of certainty is the great beauty of it. And sometimes it’s wonderful to be surprised when things are not what they seem. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-pilgrimage-to-the-site-of-paul-klees-hammamet-with-its-mosque-187359">My pilgrimage to the site of Paul Klee's Hammamet with Its Mosque</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200172/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is something truly ineffable about art in its metaphysical otherness.Scott Davie, Deputy Head of School, Senior Lecturer in Piano and Musicology, School of Music, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2035352023-04-12T15:36:04Z2023-04-12T15:36:04ZHow Elvis, Beethoven, Arthur Miller and Kafka narrated their own lives through art<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520069/original/file-20230410-26-8khaho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1759%2C946&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elvis performing live at the Mississippi-Alabama Fairgrounds in Tupelo, Mississippi, 26 September 1956.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elvis_Presley_-_TV_Radio_Mirror,_March_1957_01.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of an author, artist or composer when they create a certain work? Well, you’re not the only one.</p>
<p>In the world of psychology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/que-es-y-como-se-hace-una-psicobiografia-158893">psychobiography</a> is becoming increasingly valuable. It could be defined as the efficient use of psychological theory to turn a subject’s life into a coherent and enlightening story. This research method has traditionally set its sights on politicians, leaders of social movements and artists.</p>
<p>With regards to artists, psychobiographers discover and analyse the evolution of their personality over time and the relationship between this and their work. They even consider how an artist potentially expresses their internal conflicts through art.</p>
<h2>Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe and The Crucible</h2>
<p>Renowned psychobiographer <a href="https://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/faculty-profiles/az/profile.html?xid=10239">James W. Anderson</a>, who studied artists and psychologists throughout his career, published several works on Arthur Miller (1915-2005).</p>
<p>In his article <a href="http://cliospsyche.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Clio_71_Dec_8_November-13-11.pdf">The Psychology of Artistic Creativity: With Reference to Arthur Miller and The Crucible</a>, he shared that the playwright was well aware of the personal burden he had placed in his work.</p>
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<span class="caption">Arthur Miller in a photograph taken in 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_Amerikaanse_toneelschrijver_Arthur_Miller_op_Schiphol,_Bestanddeelnr_919-6131.jpg">Eric Koch / Dutch National Archives</a></span>
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<p>His famous work, The Crucible, tells a story that takes place during the 17th-century trials of women accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. Miller used the plot of the story to convey his own fears and experiences during McCarthyism. This persecution, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s in the United States, saw people accused of being communists tried, arrested and publicly rejected.</p>
<p>In addition to the context of the narrative, Miller stated that the essence of the play was the guilt that John Proctor, the protagonist of The Crucible, felt in his private life. When the play begins, Proctor has had an affair with Abigail, his young maid. It is Abigail, obsessed with Proctor, who accuses his wife of being a witch. So his infidelity is the reason for his wife’s trial. While there were no accusations of comunism in Miller’s life, there were nonetheless parallels between the sentimental themes of the story’s protagonist and Miller’s situation. </p>
<p>By that time, Miller, who was married, had already met Marilyn Monroe and was fascinated by the actress. These feelings made him feel like a real traitor to his wife, and although he tried to forget Monroe, he eventually ended up divorcing his wife and marrying her.</p>
<h2>Kafka was also a son</h2>
<p>Upon reading Kafka’s novella <a href="https://www.kafka-online.info/-the-judgement.html">The Judgement</a>, it is logical to think that there must be some kind of similar conflict in the writer’s real life. That’s what prolific psychobiographer <a href="https://www.pacificu.edu/about/directory/people/todd-schultz-phd">Todd Schultz</a> sustains in his article <a href="https://www.bps.org.uk/volume-29/august/behind-masks">Behind the masks</a>. In the story, a father harshly sentences his son to death by drowning, a wish that the son fulfils by throwing himself into the river.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_His_Father"><em>Letter to his Father</em></a>, published a few years later, Kafka reproaches him precisely for the emotional abuse he suffered, among other things. The author compares himself to vermin, making it clear how his father made him feel.</p>
<p>This, in turn, connects with his great work <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Metamorphosis">The Metamorphosis</a>, in which the protagonist suddenly transforms into an insect, leaving him unable to communicate with his surroundings.</p>
<h2>Elvis’s loneliness</h2>
<p>Elvis Presley mainly performed the musical compositions of others. Although he did not write the songs he recorded, he sometimes adapted the existing ones to suit his own purposes and modified words, phrases and entire lines of some lyrics.</p>
<p>In their chapter entitled “<a href="https://elms.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/98/2014/07/20052Twelve-Ways-single-spaced.pdf">Twelve Ways to Say "Lonesome”: Assessing Error and Control in the Music of Elvis Presley</a>“ in the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/handbook-of-psychobiography-9780195168273?cc=es&lang=en&">Handbook of Psychobiography</a>, Alan Elms and Bruce Heller analyse the interpretation of the song ”<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF5u7b8pAYQ">Are You Lonesome Tonight?</a>“.</p>
<p>Elvis often "ruined” this song during performances, whether he meant to or not. He usually did so by making mistakes in the lyrics or by laughing while singing it. In his last live version, he was on the verge of completely losing it and got to the end of the song with great difficulty.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Elvis performs ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ in the ‘68 Comeback Special, the fifth performance analyzed by Elms and Heller in their studio.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Upon analysing the different live performances of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, Elms and Heller discovered that Elvis made many mistakes performing parts of the song where the lyrics expressed loss of control and vulnerability. When the message implied control and power, however, mistakes were significantly fewer.</p>
<p>In other words, the mistakes Elvis made seemed to have a psychological explanation behind them: Elvis was protecting himself. The singer was very afraid of loneliness throughout his life, and this made it difficult for him to sing the song.</p>
<h2>Beethoven and death</h2>
<p>In <a href="http://editorialsaralejandria.com/producto/ludwig-humor-genio-y-corazon/">my psychobiographical research</a> on the figure of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), it was very difficult to find an obvious transfer of his story to his work.</p>
<p>Beethoven suffered multiple illnesses, some more serious than others. Although he treated all of these with a stoic attitude, on one occasion he did believe that he was dying. He felt that he still had too much to offer the world and that he could not leave.</p>
<p>When he managed to recover, inspired by this experience, he composed one of the most beautiful movements of his entire collection of works: the third movement of his String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, which he called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gumi5pEpOaA">Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an der Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart</a>, translated as “Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Danish String Quartet performs the third movement of Beethoven’s No. 15 Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, (Molto adagio).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Based on experience in different fields, creators, researchers and psychobiographers speak of the near impossibility of separating what one is, what one suffers, what one yearns for and what remains in artistic works. </p>
<p>The reflection, however, is not always so direct or clear, but sometimes more symbolic or metaphorical. And of course, not all artists are aware that they’re even doing it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abigail Jareño Gómez is a member of the "Psychobiography Group of the Psychohistory Forum".</span></em></p>Artists draw on their lives and their conflicts to produce their work. Thanks to psychobiography we can see how.Abigail Jareño Gómez, Profesor de Psicología, Universidad CEU San PabloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024402023-03-23T11:27:11Z2023-03-23T11:27:11ZWe used DNA from Beethoven’s hair to shed light on his poor health – and stumbled upon a family secret<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517132/original/file-20230323-28-r65l6y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C0%2C4582%2C3717&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kevin Brown</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many astonishingly creative people have lived lives cut tragically short by illness. Johannes Vermeer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jane Austen, Franz Schubert and Emily Brontë are some famous examples. </p>
<p>Ludwig van Beethoven’s life was not quite as short; he was 56 when he died in 1827. Yet it was short enough to tantalise us as to what more he might have achieved, had he had better health.</p>
<p>For much of his adult life, Beethoven was frequently tormented by pain and poor health – not to mention hearing loss. He gave anguished thought to these afflictions, especially his hearing loss, and <a href="https://www.labonline.com.au/content/life-scientist/article/beethoven-s-genome-sheds-light-on-health-and-history-248507668">hoped they would</a> one day be understood and the explanation made public.</p>
<p>At times he despaired and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071597/">contemplated suicide</a>; at times he stopped composing altogether.</p>
<p>Entire books have been written on Beethoven’s health, based on records from the time. However, my colleagues and I approached the topic from a different perspective. We asked what clues Beethoven’s genome – his DNA – might provide.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517133/original/file-20230323-22-smm40f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Beethoven lived from 1770 to 1827.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
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<p>We found some answers, and some surprises, as we explain in new research published in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.041">Current Biology</a>.</p>
<h2>Planting the seed</h2>
<p>Our multinational collaboration began with <a href="https://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/news/beethovengenome23/">Tristan Begg</a> – a Beethoven enthusiast and student of biological anthropology, then at the University of California Santa Cruz. </p>
<p>While volunteering at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University, Begg encountered the centre’s director at the time, historical musicologist William Meredith.</p>
<p>The seed of the project was sown then, but it took eight years and the input of several other specialists to develop it to the point of being published. All the complex multidisciplinary collaborations notwithstanding, the only person who has worked full-time on the project is Begg himself, now in his final PhD year at the University of Cambridge.</p>
<h2>Where did the DNA come from?</h2>
<p>It’s very challenging to extract and analyse DNA from the remains of a dead person (or other animal) – much more so than from living tissues. Nonetheless, huge technical advances have transformed the field of ancient DNA studies. </p>
<p>Generally, the best DNA sources from human remains include teeth and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrous_part_of_the_temporal_bone">petrous bone</a> in the skull, but none of Beethoven’s bones or teeth were available to us. </p>
<p>What was available was hair. In Beethoven’s day, it was common to collect locks from famous people or loved ones. Dozens of locks attributed to Beethoven are held in public and private collections.</p>
<p>However, hair without roots is a less tractable source of DNA. This DNA tends to exist in short and sometimes degraded sequences. These have to be painstakingly pieced together, using specialised computer software, to construct as much of a complete genome sequence as possible.</p>
<h2>How do we know the locks are Beethoven’s?</h2>
<p>Our project used samples from eight independently sourced locks attributed to Beethoven. Of these, five yielded DNA from the same male individual, with degrees of damage consistent with origins in the early 19th century. </p>
<p>Working with the ancestry firm FamilyTreeDNA, we traced the ancestry for this person to western-central Europe. We are confident it is Beethoven, since two of the locks exist alongside uninterrupted provenance records going as far back as the 1820s.</p>
<p>Three more locks, genetically identical with the other two, also had good (although not completely uninterrupted) provenance records.</p>
<p>The combination of excellently documented provenances with perfect genetic agreement between five independently sourced samples made it very difficult to doubt these hair samples came from Beethoven.</p>
<p>That left three locks of hair. Two of these were clearly genetically different from the other five: one is a woman’s. We don’t know how these came to be attributed to Beethoven.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517134/original/file-20230323-16-doyl0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our results showed the Hiller lock, previously attributed to Beethoven, actually came from a woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San Jose State University / William Meredith</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the misattributions is significant in itself, because it was the basis of <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/beethoven-dead-lead#">earlier research</a> that concluded Beethoven had been subject to lead poisoning. Our findings show this conclusion no longer stands. </p>
<p>The eighth lock yielded too little DNA to be declared authentic or otherwise.</p>
<h2>What we learnt about Beethoven’s health</h2>
<p>We didn’t expect to find a genetic basis for Beethoven’s most widely known health problem – his hearing loss – and this was borne out. Beethoven had <a href="https://www.pennmedicine.org/for-patients-and-visitors/find-a-program-or-service/ear-nose-and-throat/general-audiology/center-for-adult-onset-hearing-loss#:%7E:text=Adult%2Donset%20hearing%20loss%20is%20a%20form%20of%20progressive%20deafness,educational%20success%2C%20and%20cognitive%20decline.">adult-onset hearing loss</a>, which is only rarely attributable to primarily genetic causes.</p>
<p>He was, however, beset for many years by other health problems – particularly gastrointestinal problems (pain and diarrhoea) and liver disease. </p>
<p>Working with the Bonn University medical genetics team, we didn’t find Beethoven to be especially genetically susceptible to any particular gastrointestinal condition, such as inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, coeliac disease or lactose intolerance (as some <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16015189/#">have hypothesised</a>). Our main discoveries related to liver disease.</p>
<p>We already knew through documentation that Beethoven had attacks of jaundice. Begg’s work has now shown Beethoven had two copies of a particular variant of the <a href="https://www.journal-of-hepatology.eu/article/S0168-8278(16)30084-8/pdf">PNPLA3 gene</a>, which is linked to liver cirrhosis. He also had single copies of two variants of a gene that causes haemochromatosis, a condition that damages the liver.</p>
<p>Quite remarkably, the analyses also revealed Beethoven was infected with the hepatitis B virus in the final months of his life (and perhaps before). Hepatitis B infection <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/liv.12409">may have been</a> common in Europe at the time, but details on this are scant.</p>
<p>What’s more, alcohol consumption may have exacerbated Beethoven’s liver disease risk. There has been controversy regarding the extent and nature of his alcohol consumption, which is referred to – but not quantified – in surviving records. </p>
<p>Begg reviewed the records carefully and concluded Beethoven’s alcohol consumption was likely unexceptional <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK524980/">for the time and place</a>, but may have still been at levels now considered harmful.</p>
<h2>Revelations from the Beethoven family</h2>
<p>There was one more surprise in store for us. As part of our work, we sought to link Beethoven’s genome with those of living members of the Beethoven lineage. To do this we focused on the Y chromosome, which is inherited in the male line only (following a similar pattern to surnames in most European traditions). </p>
<p>Five men with the surname Beethoven contributed their DNA samples. They were not closely related to each other, and were living in present-day Belgium where the surname originates. They all essentially shared the same Y chromosome, which could be put down to descent from a common male ancestor: Aert van Beethoven (1535-1609).</p>
<p>The surprise was that Ludwig van Beethoven’s locks had a different Y chromosome. Having considered other explanations, we inferred that at some point in the seven generations between Aert and Ludwig, someone’s father for social and legal purposes was not their biological father. </p>
<p>But we couldn’t decipher, based on the evidence available, which generation this might have been.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beethoven-250-analysis-of-the-composers-letters-proves-that-creativity-does-spring-forth-from-misery-149771">Beethoven 250: analysis of the composer's letters proves that creativity does spring forth from misery</a>
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<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>We will be making the genome we sequenced publicly available, as there may be more to discover from further analyses.</p>
<p>Beyond Beethoven, our project is an example of wider possibilities opening up in the field of DNA analysis. It shows meaningful results can be obtained even from such unpromising DNA sources as historical hair locks.</p>
<p>To date, population genetics has seldom taken its analyses down to the level of a single individual. This is hard to do, but we show it’s not impossible.</p>
<p>Who might be next? Perhaps someone else about whom there is a distinct question to answer – or even someone who may themselves have wanted that question answered.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Acknowledgments: In addition to lead author Tristan Begg (University of Cambridge), I would like to acknowledge all other co-authors including Johannes Krause and Arthur Kocher (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig), Toomas Kivisild and Maarten Larmuseau (KU Leuven), Markus Nöthen and Axel Schmidt (University of Bonn), and all sample donors including philanthropist Kevin Brown.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have been a student (50 years ago) at the University of Cambridge, and more recently a staff member at the University of Cambridge, a departmental colleague of Toomas Kivisild, and a PhD supervisor of Tristan Begg.</span></em></p>Beethoven was afflicted with health conditions for much of his adult life, and wished for their cause to be discovered and made public.Robert Attenborough, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Bioanthropology, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1694182021-10-07T10:37:35Z2021-10-07T10:37:35ZClues to consciousness: how dopamine fits into the mystery of what makes us conscious – podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425210/original/file-20211007-27-1ems2y0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C49%2C3609%2C2009&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scientists are still puzzling over the mystery of what makes us conscious.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/human-face-on-dark-background-gold-1690467910">Lidiia/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What’s happening in our brains to create consciousness? In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast, we hear from two scientists uncovering clues to this mystery that could help people with severe brain injuries to recover. And the story of how artificial intelligence – and its human helpers – completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th symphony. </p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/615eb6f8cdd5280012b115c3" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="190px"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Philosophers have pondered the meaning of consciousness for generations. But for a long time, scientists didn’t pay the question much attention. And as recently as the 1980s, the science of consciousness <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02207-1#ref-CR9">remained a controversial topic</a>. </p>
<p>That all <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness">began to change in the 1990s</a>, and since then neuroscientists and doctors around the world have discovered tantalising clues about what’s going on in our brains to make us conscious – or unconscious. </p>
<p>Emmanual Stamatakis, who leads the cognition and consciousness imaging group at the Division of Anaesthesia, University of Cambridge in the UK, explains how consciousness seems to work along a continuum. At one end are people in a coma, followed by those under anaesthesia and then an alert person with regular levels of consciousness. “In the last ten years or so, we started extending in a different direction,” he says, by exploring how stimulants such as LSD will “I hesitate saying this: increase your consciousness”. </p>
<p>Stamatakis and his colleagues are currently looking at how brain networks are connected to consciousness. He explains the results of their <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/30/e2026289118.full.pdf">recent study</a> which found the chemical dopamine may play a crucial role. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/consciousness-how-the-brain-chemical-dopamine-plays-a-key-role-new-research-165498">Consciousness: how the brain chemical 'dopamine' plays a key role – new research</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Other researchers are already testing drugs that boost dopamine levels in patients with severe brain injuries. Leandro Sanz, a medical doctor and PhD candidate in medical sciences at the University of Liège in Belgium, talks to us about a randomised controlled trial he’s working on that is testing if molecules that mimic dopamine – called dopamine agonists – could help these patients recover better. “It’s a very active field because if we find the treatment that even has slight improvements in all the patients, that would be a huge step forward,” says Sanz.</p>
<p>In our second story (30m30), we shift from the power and mystery of the human brain to the power of artificial intelligence to mimic it. On October 10 in Bonn, the Beethoven Orchestra will <a href="https://www.telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/world-premiere-the-completion-of-beethovens-tenth-symphony-637336">give the world premiere</a> of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Unfinished 10th symphony. The project came out of a collaboration between computer scientists and musicologists. Ahmed Elgammal, a professor of computer science and director of the Art and AI lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who led the artificial intelligence side of the project, tells us how they did it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-team-of-musicologists-and-computer-scientists-completed-beethovens-unfinished-10th-symphony-168160">How a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven's unfinished 10th Symphony</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Plus, Holly Squire, arts and culture editor at The Conversation in the UK, gives us some of her recommended reads from the past week (44m45). </p>
<p>This episode of The Conversation Weekly was produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/?hl=en">theconversationdotcom</a> or via email on podcast@theconversation.com. You can also sign up to <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter?utm_campaign=PodcastTCWeekly&utm_content=newsletter&utm_source=podcast">The Conversation’s free daily email here</a>.</p>
<p>Musical extracts from the Beethoven 10th symphony project in this episode from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS6h1TKuOrw">Deutsche Telekom</a> and Beethoven’s 9th symphony via <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnUQJZ5ZpNw">YouTube’s Audio Library</a>. </p>
<p><em>You can listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a>, or find out how else to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">listen here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Plus, how a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony using AI. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.Gemma Ware, Head of AudioDaniel Merino, Associate Breaking News Editor and Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly PodcastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1681602021-09-24T12:34:41Z2021-09-24T12:34:41ZHow a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423012/original/file-20210923-15-1tlo28i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C31%2C1902%2C1405&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Throughout the project, Beethoven's genius loomed.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=239318&picture=violinist-playing-with-beethoven">Circe Denyer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Ludwig van Beethoven died in 1827, he was three years removed from the completion of his Ninth Symphony, a work heralded by many as his magnum opus. He had started work on his 10th Symphony but, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071597/">due to deteriorating health</a>, wasn’t able to make much headway: All he left behind were some musical sketches.</p>
<p>Ever since then, Beethoven fans and musicologists have puzzled and lamented over what could have been. His notes teased at some magnificent reward, albeit one that seemed forever out of reach. </p>
<p>Now, thanks to the work of a team of music historians, musicologists, composers and computer scientists, Beethoven’s vision will come to life.</p>
<p>I presided over the artificial intelligence side of the project, leading a group of scientists at the creative AI startup <a href="https://www.playform.io/">Playform AI</a> that taught a machine both Beethoven’s entire body of work and his creative process.</p>
<p>A full recording of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony is set to be released on Oct. 9, 2021, the same day as the world premiere performance scheduled to take place in Bonn, Germany – the culmination of a two-year-plus effort. </p>
<h2>Past attempts hit a wall</h2>
<p>Around 1817, the Royal Philharmonic Society in London commissioned Beethoven to write his Ninth and 10th symphonies. Written for an orchestra, <a href="http://professordeannaheikkinen.weebly.com/uploads/1/6/8/5/16856420/classical_music_form.pdf">symphonies often contain four movements</a>: the first is performed at a fast tempo, the second at a slower one, the third at a medium or fast tempo, and the last at a fast tempo.</p>
<p>Beethoven completed his <a href="https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/first-nights-beethoven%E2%80%99s-9th-symphony-and-19th-century-orchestra?delta=1">Ninth Symphony</a> in 1824, which concludes with the timeless “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooe16ILaPo">Ode to Joy</a>.”</p>
<p>But when it came to the 10th Symphony, Beethoven didn’t leave much behind, other than some musical notes and a handful of ideas he had jotted down.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Piece of paper with musical notes jotted on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422733/original/file-20210922-13-128nrmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page of Beethoven’s notes for his planned 10th Symphony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Beethoven House Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There have been some past attempts to reconstruct parts of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony. Most famously, in 1988, musicologist Barry Cooper ventured to complete the first and second movements. He wove together 250 bars of music from the sketches to create what was, in his view, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090203234337/http://lucare.com/immortal/cooper.html">a production of the first movement</a> that was faithful to Beethoven’s vision. </p>
<p>Yet the sparseness of Beethoven’s sketches made it impossible for symphony experts to go beyond that first movement.</p>
<h2>Assembling the team</h2>
<p>In early 2019, Dr. Matthias Röder, the director of <a href="https://karajan-institut.org/">the Karajan Institute</a>, an organization in Salzburg, Austria, that promotes music technology, contacted me. He explained that he was putting together a team to complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday. Aware of <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-aican-a-machine-that-operates-as-an-autonomous-artist-104381">my work on AI-generated art</a>, he wanted to know if AI would be able to help fill in the blanks left by Beethoven. </p>
<p>The challenge seemed daunting. To pull it off, AI would need to do something it had never done before. But I said I would give it a shot. </p>
<p>Röder then compiled a team that included Austrian composer Walter Werzowa. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-20-fi-24321-story.html">Famous for writing</a> Intel’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ihRPi4wcBY">signature bong jingle</a>, Werzowa was tasked with putting together a new kind of composition that would integrate what Beethoven left behind with what the AI would generate. <a href="https://music.cornell.edu/mark-gotham">Mark Gotham</a>, a computational music expert, led the effort to transcribe Beethoven’s sketches and process his entire body of work so the AI could be properly trained.</p>
<p>The team also included <a href="http://music.fas.harvard.edu/emeriti.shtml">Robert Levin</a>, a musicologist at Harvard University who also happens to be an incredible pianist. Levin <a href="http://journal.juilliard.edu/journal/95031/robert-levin-finishing-mozart">had previously finished</a> a number of incomplete 18th-century works by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.</p>
<h2>The project takes shape</h2>
<p>In June 2019, the group gathered for a two-day workshop at Harvard’s music library. In a large room with a piano, a blackboard and a stack of Beethoven’s sketchbooks spanning most of his known works, we talked about how fragments could be turned into a complete piece of music and how AI could help solve this puzzle, while still remaining faithful to Beethoven’s process and vision. </p>
<p>The music experts in the room were eager to learn more about the sort of music AI had created in the past. I told them how AI had successfully generated music <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.01010">in the style of Bach</a>. However, this was only a harmonization of an inputted melody that sounded like Bach. It didn’t come close to what we needed to do: construct an entire symphony from a handful of phrases. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of man writing in notebook." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422741/original/file-20210922-27-1pquhbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The AI needed to learn from Beethoven’s entire body of work in order to create something the composer might have written.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ludwig-van-beethoven-oil-on-canvas-ludwig-van-beethoven-news-photo/56459034?adppopup=true">Hulton Fine Art Collection/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, the scientists in the room – myself included – wanted to learn about what sort of materials were available, and how the experts envisioned using them to complete the symphony. </p>
<p>The task at hand eventually crystallized. We would need to use notes and completed compositions from Beethoven’s entire body of work – along with the available sketches from the 10th Symphony – to create something that Beethoven himself might have written. </p>
<p>This was a tremendous challenge. We didn’t have a machine that we could feed sketches to, push a button and have it spit out a symphony. Most AI available at the time couldn’t continue an uncompleted piece of music beyond a few additional seconds. </p>
<p>We would need to push the boundaries of what creative AI could do by teaching the machine Beethoven’s creative process – how he would take a few bars of music and painstakingly develop them into stirring symphonies, quartets and sonatas. </p>
<h2>Piecing together Beethoven’s creative process</h2>
<p>As the project progressed, the human side and the machine side of the collaboration evolved. Werzowa, Gotham, Levin, and Röder deciphered and transcribed the sketches from the 10th Symphony, trying to understand Beethoven’s intentions. Using his completed symphonies as a template, they attempted to piece together the puzzle of where the fragments of sketches should go – which movement, which part of the movement. </p>
<p>They had to make decisions, like determining whether a sketch indicated the starting point of <a href="https://www.classical-music.com/features/articles/what-scherzo/">a scherzo</a>, which is a very lively part of the symphony, typically in the third movement. Or they might determine that a line of music was likely the basis of <a href="https://www.classical-music.com/features/articles/what-fugue/">a fugue</a>, which is a melody created by interweaving parts that all echo a central theme. </p>
<p>The AI side of the project – my side – found itself grappling with a range of challenging tasks. </p>
<p>First, and most fundamentally, we needed to figure out how to take a short phrase, or even just a motif, and use it to develop a longer, more complicated musical structure, just as Beethoven would have done. For example, the machine had to learn how Beethoven constructed the Fifth Symphony <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2012/11/19/165495617/beethovens-famous-4-notes-truly-revolutionary-music">out of a basic four-note motif</a>. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="0" data-image="" data-title="Four notes famously serve as the basis for Beethoven's Fifth Symphony." data-size="630502" data-source="Australian Champber Orchestra/YouTube" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QFIqMZcYw" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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Four notes famously serve as the basis for Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QFIqMZcYw">Australian Champber Orchestra/YouTube</a><span class="download"><span>616 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2277/forty-seconds-of-beethovens-5th.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>Next, because the continuation of a phrase also needs to follow a certain musical form, whether it’s a scherzo, trio or fugue, the AI needed to learn Beethoven’s process for developing these forms. </p>
<p>The to-do list grew: We had to teach the AI how to take a melodic line and harmonize it. The AI needed to learn how to bridge two sections of music together. And we realized the AI had to be able to compose <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/coda-music">a coda</a>, which is a segment that brings a section of a piece of music to its conclusion. </p>
<p>Finally, once we had a full composition, the AI was going to have to figure out how to orchestrate it, which involves assigning different instruments for different parts. </p>
<p>And it had to pull off these tasks in the way Beethoven might do so.</p>
<h2>Passing the first big test</h2>
<p>In November 2019, the team met in person again – this time, in Bonn, at the Beethoven House Museum, where the composer was born and raised.</p>
<p>This meeting was the litmus test for determining whether AI could complete this project. We printed musical scores that had been developed by AI and built off the sketches from Beethoven’s 10th. A pianist performed in a small concert hall in the museum before a group of journalists, music scholars and Beethoven experts. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of people stand around a piano player." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422729/original/file-20210922-15-ph1fza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Journalists and musicians gather to hear a pianist perform parts of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ahmed Elgammal</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We challenged the audience to determine where Beethoven’s phrases ended and where the AI extrapolation began. They couldn’t.</p>
<p>A few days later, one of these AI-generated scores was played by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu1GI0QNLSE">a string quartet in a news conference</a>. Only those who intimately knew Beethoven’s sketches for the 10th Symphony could determine when the AI-generated parts came in. </p>
<p>The success of these tests told us we were on the right track. But these were just a couple of minutes of music. There was still much more work to do. </p>
<h2>Ready for the world</h2>
<p>At every point, Beethoven’s genius loomed, challenging us to do better. As the project evolved, the AI did as well. Over the ensuing 18 months, we constructed and orchestrated two entire movements of more than 20 minutes apiece.</p>
<p>We anticipate some pushback to this work – those who will say that the arts should be off-limits from AI, and that AI has no business trying to replicate the human creative process. Yet when it comes to the arts, I see AI not as a replacement, but as a tool – one that opens doors for artists to express themselves in new ways.</p>
<p>This project would not have been possible without the expertise of human historians and musicians. It took an immense amount of work – and, yes, creative thinking – to accomplish this goal.</p>
<p>At one point, one of the music experts on the team said that the AI reminded him of an eager music student who practices every day, learns, and becomes better and better.</p>
<p>Now that student, having taken the baton from Beethoven, is ready to present the 10th Symphony to the world.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="0" data-image="" data-title="A selection from Beethoven's 10th symphony." data-size="3543236" data-source="YouTube/Modern Recordings" data-source-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RESb0QVkLcM" data-license="CC BY-SA" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2276/beethoven-x-the-ai-project-iii-scherzo-allegro-trio-official-video-beethoven-orchestra-bonn.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
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A selection from Beethoven’s 10th symphony.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RESb0QVkLcM">YouTube/Modern Recordings</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a><span class="download"><span>3.38 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2276/beethoven-x-the-ai-project-iii-scherzo-allegro-trio-official-video-beethoven-orchestra-bonn.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This project received funding from Deutsche Telekom.</span></em></p>When Beethoven died, all he left behind were some sketches for his 10th Symphony. Now, thanks to the help of artificial intelligence, the composer’s vision is coming to life.Ahmed Elgammal, Professor, Director of the Art & AI Lab, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1658622021-09-22T17:55:18Z2021-09-22T17:55:18ZWhy Beethoven wasn’t the original punk rocker of classical music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422397/original/file-20210921-5916-1k6oq98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3988%2C2664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Comparing Beethoven to punk rockers is based on the composer's attitude to tradition, but is it an accurate categorization?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last summer, the meme “<a href="https://theconversation.com/was-beethoven-black-a-twitter-meme-reveals-more-about-race-and-music-than-the-composers-origins-143440">Beethoven was Black</a>” was trending online, a trope that drew the iconic composer into <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-beethoven-black-and-why-might-be-wrong-question-ask-180975159/">a 21st century discussion about race and social justice</a>. But there is another curious classical music trope in circulation, one that is actually hard to avoid: Beethoven was a punk.</p>
<p>A cursory search for information about iconic composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt or Stravinsky inevitably yields articles and blog posts proclaiming them the “original punk rockers,” linking them with the infamously brash modern pop music phenomenon associated with bands like the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and The Clash.</p>
<p>What is going on here? </p>
<h2>Punk characters</h2>
<p>Who are the supposed punks of the classical music world? It seems that, for many commentators, any composer who went against the grain in some way was a punk.</p>
<p>British radio station Classic FM, for example, <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/lifestyle/culture/punks-of-classical-music/">provides a short list of classical music punks</a> that begins, improbably, with the medieval nun Hildegard von Bingen. Her wide-ranging chant melodies and settings of risqué texts apparently make her an “anti-establishment figure.”</p>
<p>The list also includes Tchaikovsky, considered a punk by virtue of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pyotr-Ilyich-Tchaikovsky">the emotional effusiveness of his symphonic music</a>. Twentieth century French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez also makes an appearance because he who sought to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/06/pierre-boulez">craft the future of modern music from scratch by vehemently rejecting the past</a>.</p>
<p>In an article for <em>The Guardian</em>, scholar John Butt cites the Reformation, launched by the composer and schismatic monk Martin Luther in the 16th century, as classical music’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/18/the-reformation-classical-musics-punk-moment">punk rock moment</a>.” The rocker and poet Patti Smith asserted that Mozart was a punk rocker because his music exemplified the “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/patti-smith-peyote-dance-album-bruce-springsteen-bob-dylan-mozart-antoine-artaud-a8936716.html">pursuit of the new, of making space, of not being confined or defined</a>.” </p>
<p>In a similar vein, in his 1986 hit “Rock me Amadeus,” Austrian pop star Falco famously characterized Mozart as an 18th century rock star — “ein Punker,” loved by all the ladies for his hard-drinking, punk rock insouciance. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cVikZ8Oe_XA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In ‘Rock Me Amadeus,’ Austrian pop star Falco portrays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a rebel.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The harshly dissonant music of early 20th century Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg is “punk rock,” according to journalist Rebecca Mazzi, <a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/schoenbergs-controlled-chaos/Content?oid=2181661">by dint of its non-conformist rejection of musical traditions</a>.</p>
<h2>Beethoven the punk</h2>
<p>But Beethoven — once again, as a cultural icon who seems able to absorb meaning and interpretation from any and all directions — appears to be the exemplar of a proto-punk. A tongue-in-cheek <em>Entertainment Weekly</em> article <a href="https://ew.com/article/1995/01/27/sid-vicious-and-beethoven-long-lost-twins/">draws connections between Beethoven and the Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious</a>: both “trashed hotel rooms” and composed “anti-monarchy songs.” </p>
<p>Music critic Colin Fleming’s characterizes Beethoven’s eighth symphony as “punk-rock” thanks to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/02/beethovens-punk-rock-8th-symphony/284033/">its quick tempos, boisterously loud passages and overall “pugnacious and punchy” character</a>. The BBC claims that the annual Proms concert is perhaps one of “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zbgy6v4">the oldest punk rock concerts on the planet</a>,” featuring music by Beethoven that 19th-century audiences and musicians often found “challenging.”</p>
<p>Even the scholarly world can’t resist the lure of this trope, it seems: a German press release for musicologist William Kinderman’s very recent book about the political nature of Beethoven’s music describes the composer as a “<a href="https://www.styriabooks.at/download/private/press/import/9783222150524_PT_Kinderman_Beethoven.pdf">Rebell und Punk</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/from-our-partners/9943-rip-it-to-shreds-a-history-of-punk-and-style/">Punk began in the mid-‘70s in the United States</a>, moving to the United Kingdom only to fizzle out by the end of the decade. This notion that Beethoven, along with other big names in the classical music canon, was a punk invites some deconstructing. A key issue is the notion that punk — a very short-lived musical movement (and arguably, a form of lucrative and cleverly stage-managed outrage) — somehow exemplified the “pursuit of the new,” as Patti Smith claims.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Patti Smith performing behind a microphone with long grey hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422482/original/file-20210921-19-1txb7ad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Singer-songwriter Patti Smith, shown here performing in the Netherlands in 2018, called Mozart a ‘punk rocker.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Punk traditions</h2>
<p>Punk rock is, if anything, decidedly regressive. It challenges the ear via its raucousness and its provocative and often obscene lyrics, not through audacious musical innovations. It is sped-up rock ’n’ roll, nothing more. Punk relies on traditional instrumentation — guitar, drums, bass — and traditional rock chord structures.</p>
<p>It rejected the excesses of other '70s-era musical genres — especially progressive rock and disco — by becoming more stripped down, but also more rootsy: punk is, in essence, a rock revival movement rather than an anarchic reimagining or refashioning of music. </p>
<p>The ethnomusicologist Evan Rapport has argued that punk’s true roots actually reside in the blues, and makes the provocative claim that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143013000524">tendency to link punk to the European avant garde constitutes a whitewashing of history that seeks to obscure punk’s origins in Black music</a>, much like the discourse concerning Black composers in the 19th and 20th centuries. </p>
<p>The great classical composers, certainly from Mozart onwards, were admittedly idiosyncratic and individualistic, but whether they were radically anti-authoritarian punks is highly debatable. They may have composed music that sometimes vexed their contemporaries, but they also wrote for the box office, courted patrons, sought popularity and were not artistic anarchists: rather, most understood themselves — even the most irascible, like the arch-modernist Schoenberg — to be part of a larger, continuous cultural tradition.</p>
<h2>Stravinsky, the original punk rocker?</h2>
<p>Notwithstanding the lack of any true affinity between classical music and punk, Beethoven-as-punk-rocker seems to be part of an effort to assert the ongoing relevance and sexiness of classical music, even as performing organizations and venues struggle to stay afloat, and audiences continue to decline. It is the case, alas, that most of us no longer have the right ears and brains for this music, which requires focused attention, musical memory, familiarity with a vast lexicon of expressive gestures and an understanding of how large-scale musical structures are built.</p>
<p>Drawing connections between snarling, three-minute punk songs and Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony in the hopes of simulating interest in the classics and getting bums into seats in concert halls ultimately doesn’t help listeners plumb the depths and navigate the richness and complexities of a half hour-long orchestral work.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a black and white photograph of dancers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422480/original/file-20210921-25-1m2yk94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A posed group of dancers in the original production of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet <em>Le sacre du printemps</em>, showing historical Russian folkloric costumes and backdrop by Nicholas Roerich. The first performance sparked a riot in Paris in 1913.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Sketch Magazine)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we must draw some connecting lines between punk and classical music, I suppose we could look to Igor Stravinsky. The Paris premiere of his 1913 ballet <em>Le sacre du printemps</em> is reputed to have <a href="https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/schoenbergs-controlled-chaos/Content?oid=2181661">sparked a riot</a>, and is lauded as a turning point in the development of musical modernism. </p>
<p>This performance, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2006/05/11/110506_sex_pistols_gig_feature.shtml">like the legendary first gig by the Sex Pistols in 1976</a>, has since become shrouded in myth: in each case, many more people claim to have been in attendance than actually were. Perhaps the “classical music is punk” trope should begin and end there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Carpenter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In popular media, Beethoven is imagined as a punk rocker. But what do these claims reflect about our relationship to classical music?Alexander Carpenter, Professor, Department of Fine Arts, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1518882020-12-16T11:27:42Z2020-12-16T11:27:42ZBeethoven 250: how the composer’s music embodies the Enlightenment philosophy of freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375381/original/file-20201216-17-1p1ugp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6016%2C4016&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beethoven statue in Vienna, Austria. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vienna-austria-1103-beethoven-monument-on-1671544777">Mitzo/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Freedom in Beethoven’s music takes many, frequently overlapping forms. There is heroic freedom in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXjJwxU5WbI">Eroica</a> (1803), freedom from political oppression in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChcrZX2rZ1M">Egmont Overture</a> (1810), artistic freedom and innovation in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJQ32q2k8Uo">Ninth Symphony</a> (1824). </p>
<p>Today, Beethoven’s music remains deeply connected with a true humanism, which has the principles of freedom and self-determination at its heart. </p>
<p>The composer’s music grew out of the age of <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/enlightenment">European Enlightenment</a>, which located human reason and the self at the centre of knowledge. The German philosopher <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html">Immanuel Kant understood enlightenment</a> as the ability to use one’s understanding without the guidance of another. Enlightenment is achieved when we have the freedom to rely on our intellectual capacities to determine how to live. This process of internal legislation based on reason is for Kant equivalent to the principle of free will. </p>
<p>A contemporary of Kant, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/hegel-the-philosopher-who-viewed-history-as-inevitable-progress/a-54707032">Georg Hegel</a> was also a philosopher of freedom, autonomy, reason and will. Hegel, like Kant, understood the free individual as someone who self-consciously makes choices through the action of a will governed by reason. Hegel adds a further dimension of social freedom, which he conceives as the actualisation of free will. In his <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/">Phenomenology of Spirit</a> (1807), Hegel famously describes freedom as “the highest destiny of the human spirit”. </p>
<h2>Music as will</h2>
<p>In its exploration of the freedom of human spirit, reason and will, 18th and 19th-century German thought provides the intellectual context in which Beethoven composed. Beethoven imbibed this spirit, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13272/13272-h/13272-h.htm">writing in an 1819 letter</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Freedom and progress are our true aim in the world of art, just as in the great creation at large. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To understand how the sounds of Beethoven’s music communicate this philosophy of freedom we must reflect on a curious process by which Beethoven’s music came to be heard as the movement of the will itself. </p>
<p>To the German philosopher <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40868/40868-pdf.pdf">Arthur Schopenhauer</a> Beethoven’s symphonies were a direct representation of the will, “a true and perfect picture of the nature of the world which rolls on in … innumerable forms”. </p>
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<p>Schopenhauer’s will draws on Aristotle’s understanding of <em><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/">anima</a></em> (spirit or mind) as the animating or moving principle. As the musicologist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beethoven_Freedom.html?id=6KKNswEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Daniel Chua</a> explains, this Aristotelian idea of will as self-movement is key to 19th-century musical thought. Both freedom and will were understood as movement – and no music evoked this better than Beethoven’s. Through their dramatic motion, Beethoven’s symphonies, in particular, demonstrated the will enacting its freedom and unfolding its destiny.</p>
<p>Following Schopenhauer, the composer Wagner reflected on Beethoven’s music as expressing the will in his <a href="http://users.skynet.be/johndeere/wlpdf/wlpr0133.pdf">1870 centenary essay</a>. He turns instead to the late quartets, praising Beethoven’s C-sharp minor quartet (opus 131) as “the dance of the whole world itself”. In <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51356/51356-h/51356-h.htm">The Birth of Tragedy</a> (1872), the philosopher Nietzsche similarly sees Beethoven’s music as expressing the will. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, a composer who could capture the very essence of human freedom in sound would himself come to be cast in the image of his music and mythologised as a liberator. During his life and after, Beethoven was held up as a <a href="https://www.visitingvienna.com/footsteps/beethoven-statue/">Promethean figure</a> – a creative and defiant innovator, liberating music from convention. </p>
<p>Different writers offered variations on this theme. Wagner describes <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.05?seq=1">Beethoven as Columbus</a>, exploring the sea of music and making new discoveries in the Ninth Symphony. By the 20th century, Beethoven was known as “the man who freed music”, as described in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beethoven.html?id=6AEXAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">the title of a 1929 study</a> by the American biographer and musician Robert Schauffler. </p>
<h2>Freedom as joy</h2>
<p>Of course, nowhere is Beethoven’s legacy of artistic freedom more visible or memorable than in his introduction of the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChygZLpJDNE">Ode to Joy</a>” in the Ninth Symphony, which marks the <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/music/symphony-no-9-d-minor/">first appearance of choral music in a symphony</a>. For some, Beethoven’s musical setting of <a href="https://www.saxonica.com/%7Emike/OdeToJoy.html">Friedrich Schiller’s poem</a> suggests an almost <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5487727">naive joy</a> in human unity and brotherhood. </p>
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<p>The symphony’s chorus also celebrates the meeting of the world with its creator, who “surely dwells among the stars”. This image is often associated with Beethoven’s February 1820 entry in his notebooks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The moral law within us and above us the starry sky. Kant!!!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, Schiller’s poem suggests to Beethoven an image of the will as both human and transcendent. Joy here is the realisation of morality as freedom. </p>
<p>The freedom of the will remains at the centre of Beethoven’s music. And so, 250 years from Beethoven’s birth, his music continues to offer his listeners a freedom that is experienced or echoed in the depths of their innermost selves. Beethoven’s music is the sound of human freedom at its core – the freedom of our minds, spirit or consciousness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aakanksha Virkar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In his work, many heard freedom as espoused by contemporary Enlightenment philosophers, like Immanuel Kant.Aakanksha Virkar, Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1497712020-12-16T10:35:09Z2020-12-16T10:35:09ZBeethoven 250: analysis of the composer’s letters proves that creativity does spring forth from misery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374415/original/file-20201211-20-13jeazo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C104%2C1198%2C795&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven#/media/File:Beethoven.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The notion that artistic creativity and emotional state are somehow related goes back to the time of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/150831-no-great-mind-has-ever-existed-without-a-touch-of">Aristotle</a>. However, it is extremely difficult to quantify the degree of misery (or happiness) of an artist, and even more so if an artist is deceased. In <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v99y2017i4p591-605.html">my research</a> I have found a way to do so by extracting the emotional content from written correspondence.</p>
<p>My research uncovered patterns of emotional wellbeing throughout the lifetimes of creative individuals. During a series of <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/presci/v94y2015i3p443-468.html">research projects</a> on how geographic clustering of composers influenced their creativity, I <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v73y2013i1p94-110.html">found</a> large productivity gains by composers working in locations such as Vienna, Paris and London in the late 18th century to early 20th century. At the same time, it became apparent that in these cities composers have been surprisingly often unhappy or unwell, prompting the question: How do emotional factors influence creativity? </p>
<p>To answer this question I turned to the letters of one of the world’s most famous composers, Ludwig van Beethoven, who wrote over 500 letters throughout his life. Using linguistic analysis software, I was able to reveal how the emotional content of Beethoven’s letters carries the clues to his genius and productivity. I spent months pouring over the letter and creating code, carefully dating each letter. I also spent time distinguishing between different types of correspondent, as he would write differently to family members than to peers or associates. </p>
<h2>Beethoven’s wellbeing over his lifetime</h2>
<p>The graphs below shows Beethoven’s positive emotions (left panel) and negative emotions (right panel) throughout his lifetime. The rise and fall of Beethoven’s positive and negative emotions mirror the events that took place during his life. For example, an increase in negative feelings during Beethoven’s late teenage years corresponds with the deteriorating financial situation of his family. As a result, Beethoven had to help support his family by taking over some of his father’s teaching duties, to which he had “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/beethoven/oclc/38106085">an extraordinary aversion</a>”.</p>
<p>But Beethoven’s fortunes soon improved. He moved to Vienna in 1792 where he experienced high demand for his work, which bestowed upon him increasingly prestigious commissions. The composer’s positive emotions peaked in this period, and his negative moods were in a steady decline.</p>
<p>Around the turn of 1800, the composer’s life changed forever as he discovered that he was becoming deaf. Correspondingly, we observe a temporary increase in negative emotions as well as a draining of positive emotions, which stay very low but stable over the next 15 years of his life. </p>
<p>In 1809, Beethoven experienced a temporary lift in spirits as his financial stability became secured thanks to a generous grant from the court in Vienna. But the good mood did not last long. </p>
<p>In 1815, Beethoven’s brother died after a long illness. As a result, the composer became the guardian of his nine-year-old nephew, Karl, with whom he went on to have a violent relationship. This left Beethoven a broken man. His positive emotions reached the lowest point of his life, while negative emotions kept on gradually increasing until his death in 1827.</p>
<h2>The sad genius?</h2>
<p>Looking at the span of Beethoven’s life, the emotional development of the composer is particularly marked by many dark and sad moments. This is not uncommon for famous artists, but the intensity of hardship is particularly striking in Beethoven’s biography. </p>
<p>While his life may have been pock-marked with misery, Beethoven appears to have successfully channelled his negative emotions into his musical output. What I found is that creativity, measured by the number of important compositions, was significantly increased by his negative moods. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Portrait of a young boy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374461/original/file-20201211-23-5eujm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The composer’s nephew and maker of much of his misery, Karl van Beethoven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_van_Beethoven#/media/File:Karl_van_Beethoven_Miniature_Portrait.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>For instance, a 9.3% increase in negative feelings provoked by an unexpected event, like a death in the family, resulted in a corresponding increase in creativity and the creation of an additional 6.3% of significant works in the following year.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beethoven-250-how-the-composers-music-embodies-the-enlightenment-philosophy-of-freedom-151888">Beethoven 250: how the composer's music embodies the Enlightenment philosophy of freedom</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Finally, you could ask whether there is any particular type of negative emotion that drives the results. For this reason, I have split the negative emotions index into anxiety, anger and sadness, and found that sadness is particularly conducive to creativity. Since depression is strongly related to sadness, this result comes very close to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Brain-Neuroscience-Genius/dp/1932594078">previous claims</a> made by psychologists that depression may lead to increased creativity. </p>
<p>This constitutes an important insight into how negative emotions can provide fertile material upon which the creative person could draw – an association that has fascinated <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2734415/">many</a> since antiquity. But more importantly, on the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, these results show that all the hardship encountered by the composer has determined his prolific output and bestowed upon him immortal, unforgettable fame. So, as he wrote in his letters: “Farewell, and do not forget your Beethoven.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karol J. Borowiecki receives funding from the Danish Research Council. </span></em></p>Assessing around 500 of the composer’s correspondence, we are able to see how a rise in sadness and other negative emotions resulted in increased creative productivity.Karol J Borowiecki, Professor of the Economic History of the Arts, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1434402020-07-30T14:01:02Z2020-07-30T14:01:02ZWas Beethoven Black? A Twitter meme reveals more about race and music than the composer’s origins<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350211/original/file-20200729-15-f0tbon.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C1499%2C1501&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ludwig van Beethoven's friendship with the Black composer George Bridgetower may have led to rumours of Beethoven being Black.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The year 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, and in mid-June this year, he started trending on Twitter. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that Beethoven was popping up on social media platforms, but what was unusual and certainly unforeseen: the claim that “Beethoven was Black.”</p>
<p>Where did this idea come from? The circulation of this trope has no doubt been catalyzed by recent events — namely, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726">the death of George Floyd</a> and the subsequent ascendancy of Black Lives Matter — and by the rigorous debates over race that have since permeated mainstream and social media. </p>
<p>As it turns out, though, Beethoven being of African descent is not a new idea: the notion of the great composer’s secret ethnicity has circulated at the fringes of the media and scholarship for more than a century.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1288215778198720513"}"></div></p>
<h2>Anecdotal evidence</h2>
<p>The original theory of “Black Beethoven” first appeared in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/779545">the popular press in the early 20th century</a>. Much of the anecdotal evidence for this claim is based on contemporary accounts, many of which were collected in <em>Sex and Race</em>, published in 1944 by historian and journalist Joel Augustus Rogers. These accounts present the composer as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/aug/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview12">having the features and complexion of a Black person</a>. </p>
<p>Beethoven was described by some contemporaries as “dark,” “swarthy” or as a “Moor.” This latter term, “Moor,” was used in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to a Muslim person from North Africa or the Iberian peninsula, or more generally a dark-skinned person, and has generated particular interest and conjecture about Beethoven’s race.</p>
<p>Historians have suggested that a member of the Habsburg royal family, Prince Nicholas Esterhazy I, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43591/43591-h/43591-h.htm">even called both Beethoven</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/738738">Joseph Haydn</a> “Moors,” supposedly because of their dark complexions. Such accounts are likely specious. But one possibility is that, if the prince used this term for Haydn (whom he employed as a court composer) or for the young Beethoven, he was using it idiomatically: that is, “Moor” could be a dismissive epithet for a servant. </p>
<p>For some scholars, Beethoven’s music itself, its rhythmic complexity — specifically its syncopation — points towards his hidden ethnicity, as it suggests a knowledge of West African musical practices. A few writers even go so far as to suggest <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2015/jun/09/beethoven-african-roots-beethoven-was-black">the presence of reggae- and jazz-like rhythms in his piano sonatas</a>. Beethoven was Black because his music “sounds” Black; in other words, notwithstanding the unlikeliness of his familiarity with African music or that syncopation was commonplace in European music at that time. </p>
<p>Others cite Beethoven’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/779545">friendship with the Afro-European violinist and composer George Bridgetower</a> as somehow evidence of the composer’s own multiracial identity. </p>
<h2>Friendship with Bridgetower</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of the Black composer George Bridgetower in an oval frame." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/350212/original/file-20200729-23-1ee774h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of the composer George Bridgetower by Henry Edridge, c.1790.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Bridgetower_by_Henry_Edridge,_1790.JPG">(Wikimedia Commons)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, there is no reason to believe that Beethoven was Black: <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/739876">the genealogical evidence going back to the 1400s shows unambiguously that Beethoven’s family was Flemish</a>. Speculative anecdotes from the early 19th century <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.112.117">about his swarthy complexion, broad nose and coarse, black hair are unsourced and racist</a>.</p>
<p>The suggestions that jazzy syncopations in his music somehow derive from African genetics are anachronistic and absurd. Calling a white person with a darker complexion a “Moor” was also not uncommon in the 19th century: Karl Marx’s companions referred to him as “the Moor,” not because of his race, but <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/karl-marx-yesterday-and-today">apparently because of his thick black hair and voluminous black beard</a>.</p>
<p>Pursuing the idea that “Beethoven was Black” <a href="http://doi.org/10.2979/transition.112.117">both whitewashes and blackwashes music history</a>, as African American studies scholar Nicholas Rinehart has observed. Blackwashing makes important historical figures Black for the sake of seeking to validate the cultural contributions of people of colour. Whitewashing refers to the practice of valourizing Black musicians and composers by giving them white referents: a gifted Black composer becomes, for example, the “The Black Mozart” or the “African Mahler” — a mere “footnote” to a white composer, in Rinehart’s words.</p>
<p>Ultimately, it may be Beethoven’s friendship with Bridgetower, and not <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/2020/06/theory-beethoven-was-black-memes-on-twitter-reactions">internet memes</a>, the blogosphere or the Twitterati, that provides a way to productively approach racial politics in classical music.</p>
<p>How many of us, in the 21st century, are even aware of Bridgetower, who was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/742137">an accomplished and well-known violinist in England and Europe during his lifetime</a> and was also the original dedicatee of Beethoven’s famous “Kreutzer” sonata for violin and piano? As the African-American writer and poet laureate Rita Dove insists, Bridgetower might have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/books/03dove.html">become a “household name’ in the 19th century musical world had he not been Black</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5YKmb7_y3E8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Beethoven originally dedicated his composition ‘Violin Sonata No. 9, Op. 47 in A major’ to his friend, the Black composer George Bridgetower (after they fell out, Beethoven later re-dedicated it to violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer).</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Forgotten and overlooked</h2>
<p>Efforts to make Beethoven Black — an awkward dance of trying to examine the issue of race and classical music while simultaneously maintaining the canonic centrality of Beethoven — ultimately obscure the existence and contributions of actual people of colour in the history of music. Black composers like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934719892239">Joseph Boulogne</a>, <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/779387">Samuel Coleridge-Taylor</a> and <a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/40022877">William Grant Still</a>, Rinehart argues, have simply been "forgotten, overlooked and overwritten.”</p>
<p>The “Beethoven was Black” trope trending on Twitter serves the interests of current racial politics and social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, just as it served the Black Power movement in the early 1960s: <a href="https://alexhaley.com/2020/07/24/alex-haley-interviews-malcolm-x/">Malcolm X</a> and <a href="http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_carmichael01.html">Stokely Carmichael</a> both invoked Beethoven’s would-be Moorish ancestry to claim that he — along with other historical figures, including Hannibal, Columbus and Jesus — was a Black man. </p>
<p>If the genealogical or phenotypical pursuit of “Black Beethoven” leads to a dead end, it nonetheless emphasizes the importance of past and ongoing work by Black scholars to research and document the history of music and race. Just as musicology finally embraced feminist and gender theory in the 1990s, providing new and more inclusive ways to examine the meaning and experience of classical music, the recent conversations about “Black Beethoven” points in the direction of fruitful and necessary avenues of inquiry into music history. </p>
<p>This, in turn, may help inform our contemporary cultural dialogues in these turbulent times.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Carpenter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Every once in a while, the story that Beethoven was Black circulates in popular culture, but there’s no evidence to support this claim.Alexander Carpenter, Professor, Department of Fine Arts, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1322712020-03-03T02:20:23Z2020-03-03T02:20:23ZFidelio review: Beethoven’s only opera bristles with contemporary relevance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318210/original/file-20200303-18279-1wzg72q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C2000%2C1326&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WASO/Rebecca Mansell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Beethoven’s Fidelio. West Australian Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Opera and Perth Festival.</em></p>
<p>There’s something disconcertingly compartmentalised about opera – particularly opera in concert. The audience stays lit throughout, and the chorus sit behind the orchestra looking at us looking at them. </p>
<p>Then there’s the surtitles, the amplification of the voices that separates them from their source, the position of the singers across the front of the orchestra, the varying degrees to which they enact the experience of their characters, and the fact they’re all dressed in contemporary clothes not connected to their characters. </p>
<p>Add to this there is something out of time about opera. But maybe that’s just me, maybe it’s just out of my time. </p>
<p>All of these variables were in play as I watched Beethoven’s Fidelio, presented by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO) and Perth Festival in association with the West Australian Opera. </p>
<p>When the narrator (Eryn Jean Norvill) enters and says something like “Imagine a world entirely unlike ours, or maybe it isn’t so different…” the shackles of my preconceptions and discombobulation start to soften. Equal parts storyteller and commentator, Norvill provides the perfect bridge for us to cross over into Fidelio’s world.</p>
<p>As she continues, her words make us imagine a prison, and a prison of “misdirected desires”; a garden and a garden of freedom. Themes of love, imprisonment and freedom run through this work. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ahead-of-his-time-beethoven-still-inspires-129454">Ahead of his time, Beethoven still inspires</a>
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<p>Fidelio is Beethoven’s only opera. Presented here in concert rather than production, WASO’s principal conductor, Asher Fisch, suggested the addition of narrated text to provide a throughline for the audience. Using description and commentary, writer Alison Croggon touches on the tangle of love (both misplaced and perfectly placed) and the themes of corruption and political persecution underpinning this story. </p>
<h2>A bridge between old and new</h2>
<p>The narration provides hooks for the audience to grasp, and historical and contemporary context to remind us how these themes remain as pertinent as ever. </p>
<p>Croggon tracks Beethoven’s <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2019/03-04/napoleon-inspiration-beethoven-third-symphony/">diminishing faith</a> in Napoleon to the way he <a href="https://www.opera-online.com/en/articles/fidelio-a-unique-opera">redeveloped</a> the opera from its poorly received premiere in 1805 to the final version, which was rapturously received in 1814. Then, she writes of illegally detained prisoners, “everywhere, even today, even in this country”, and the work seems to bristle with contemporary, cultural relevance.</p>
<p>Croggan highlights the ways the powerful punish those who tell the truth, and the undeniable truth, “not every wall is visible”.</p>
<p>Standing behind a lectern with script in view, the audience views the narrator differently from the singers who are wholly immersed in the physical act of performing these songs. This divide creates a striking contrast in embodiment. </p>
<p>There are many highlights throughout the evening. The quartet in act one, between Leonore (disguised as the boy Fidelio) (Christiane Libor), Marzelline (Felicitas Fuchs), Jaquino (Andrew Goodwin) and Rocco (Jonathan Lemalu), starts as a delicate interplay between Marzelline expressing her love for Fidelio and Leonore her fear of exposure. It builds into a complex overlap as the other characters join.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/performing-beethoven-what-it-feels-like-to-embody-a-master-on-todays-stage-129184">Performing Beethoven - what it feels like to embody a master on today's stage</a>
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<p>The thrilling complexity of juggling four concurrent points of view makes this quartet an early turning point where all the diverse elements seem to come together. The form settles. Or perhaps I just settle into the form. </p>
<p>Warwick Fyfe is impassioned as the evil prison governor, joined by the 40-strong male members of the WASO chorus in his rousing introduction. His is a visceral performance. From the thump of his footsteps as he enters the stage, Fyfe’s performance supersedes the concert form, giving a peek into how this character could be played in a full production.</p>
<p>When we return from interval, the house lights are slightly dimmed to suggest Leonore’s descent into the underground prison to rescue her husband Florestan (Tomislav Mužek), falsely imprisoned for political reasons. We first see Florestan seated, leaning forward, hands crossed in his lap. This simple staging choice helps encapsulate his suffering.</p>
<p>In the program, Croggan says one of the things that drew her to Fidelio was here was an opera in which the woman doesn’t die. She is, in fact, the hero who rescues her husband. Her reveal as his wife Leonore rather than Fidelio is splendidly performed by Libor, culminating in a beautifully performed duet with Florestan. </p>
<p>To paraphrase Croggan’s narration, “Leonora’s other name is Hope.” This is how the evening ends, full of rousing hope and joy. The crowd hisses with glee at the curtain call of the villain and yells <em>bravos</em> and <em>bravas</em> for everyone else. </p>
<p>The sense of triumph in the room is infectious. Beethoven’s music and Croggan’s images – “the garden is always there waiting for us” – resound as we walk away into the night.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Mercer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new narration written by Alison Croggon and performed by Eryn Jean Norvill comes together in triumph.Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1311582020-02-06T09:40:37Z2020-02-06T09:40:37ZBeethoven or Brexit? Battle for chart domination shows UK’s divided soul<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313722/original/file-20200205-149762-79gsdy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ode to Joy or 17 Million F*** Offs? The people chose Beethoven.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">iku4 via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two songs were vying for the top spot in the UK’s music charts last month. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, also the EU’s “Anthem for Europe”, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2zJ8vaB5jo">17 Million Fuck Offs</a>, by pro-Brexit comedian, writer and commentator Dominic Frisby. </p>
<p>The competition between these two pieces signified a much starker divide than a merely musical one. The melodic passage of the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – originally the setting for a vocal rendition of Friedrich Schiller’s poem Ode to Joy – had been adopted as the European anthem by the Council of Europe in 1972 and in 1985 by the European Community. Pro-Europeans in the UK launched a campaign to get the song into the charts, settling on a recording by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9dLGDCdg3g">André Rieu, with the Johann Strauss Orchestra</a>.</p>
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<blockquote>
<p>O friends, no more these sounds!<br>
Let us sing more cheerful songs,<br>
more full of joy!<br>
Joy, bright spark of divinity,<br>
Daughter of Elysium,<br>
Fire-inspired we tread<br>
Thy sanctuary.<br>
Thy magic power re-unites<br>
All that custom has divided,<br>
All men become brothers<br>
Under the sway of thy gentle wings.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile, Frisby’s song listed some of the more prominent Remain campaigners and told them all where they could go:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was the greatest democratic turnout in British history,<br>
I do not scoff<br>
And when the time came to speak the British said fuck off.<br>
Fuck off.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lyrically and tonally, the two pieces could hardly be further apart, Ode to Joy deriving from a widely acknowledged masterpiece of music in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/common-practice-period">western classical tradition</a> in contrast to Frisby’s ukulele-driven ditty that, by his own account, was written “<a href="https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/01/29/get-17-million-fck-offs-to-no1/">almost by accident</a>”. </p>
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<p>Ode to Joy pipped 17 Million Fuck Offs to the top of the singles download charts, and <a href="https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/ode-to-joy/">scraped into the Top 30</a> of singles overall, with Frisby’s song narrowly missing the Top 40. But the charts aren’t a fixed marker of musical style – and the music itself here was arguably a secondary consideration to the expression of a political point. </p>
<h2>Protest music</h2>
<p>Expressing political views through music isn’t new, of course, and neither is this the first time the charts have been used for that purpose – although the competition between two such bluntly divergent tunes (politically and aesthetically) – and by opposing political campaigns – does represent further evolution in the coalescing of popular cultural and political practice.</p>
<p>It has its roots in popular music’s debates about authenticity and was given extra impetus by frustration at The X Factor’s domination of the top spot at Christmas in the mid-2000s. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/dec/22/hallelujah-leonard-cohen-alexandra-burke">After an unsuccessful attempt in 2008</a> to supplant the TV competition winner Alexandra Burke’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah with Jeff Buckley’s version of the same song, a similar 2009 campaign to get Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name Of – a sweary, angry, rock song – to the top of the <a href="https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/its-ten-years-since-rage-against-the-machine-took-on-the-x-factor-for-christmas-number-1-and-won__27978/">singles chart for Christmas</a> in place of X Factor’s Joe McElderry was a key success for online protest purchases.</p>
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<p>The ideological objections of rock fans about what they deemed to be inferior pop are nearly as old as the music charts themselves. But they are both commercial forms, so these challenges were made easier by changes in the chart process. Once downloads started to <a href="https://www.officialcharts.com/who-we-are/noughties/">count towards chart positions from 2004</a> and social media became ever more pervasive, these technological and market developments put a new tool into the hands of campaigners. It also vastly widened the choice of songs available to them, since they were no longer restricted to what was available in the shops.</p>
<h2>Ding dong</h2>
<p>This technique shifted from pop’s politics to party politics in 2013 when the death of Margaret Thatcher pushed into the limelight a hitherto obscure Facebook page geared towards getting the song Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, from The Wizard of Oz, into the charts to mark the occasion.</p>
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<p>The combination of social media campaigning and the easy, instantaneous purchase of music from 1939, drove the song up the charts. It <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22145306">reached Number Two</a> within a week of Thatcher’s death. </p>
<p>This caused problems for the BBC over how to respond in its chart rundown. The national broadcaster had to live up to its charter obligation to maintain “<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/pdfs/Section_05_Harm_and_Offence.pdf">generally accepted standards</a>” in the face of a song ostensibly celebrating the death of a major public figure. But at the same time it faced objections to it acting as a censor. </p>
<p>The difficulty, as academic researcher on music and censorship <a href="https://www.utu.fi/en/people/martin-cloonan">Martin Cloonan</a> has <a href="http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/63944">noted</a>, is that there <em>were</em> no generally accepted standards in a nation so divided on the death of Thatcher and around a song whose actual content had nothing to do with the matter in hand. The BBC fudged the issue in 2013 and played a snippet of the song in the middle of an explanatory news piece.</p>
<h2>Anger and impartiality</h2>
<p>In 2017, broadcasters took a more explicit line when a chart-oriented campaign pulled matters even further into the political realm in the middle of the general election campaign. Activist band Captain Ska re-mixed their 2015 broadside at David Cameron to feature the then Conservative prime minister Theresa May – using excerpts from her speeches and media appearances and weaving them into a chorus calling her a “Liar, Liar”.</p>
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<p>The BBC and others refrained from playing it, on the grounds that to do so would <a href="https://completemusicupdate.com/article/chart-shows-wont-play-liar-liar-when-it-charts/">be a breach of impartiality codes</a> set out by the statutory regulator, Ofcom. Again, changes to the chart process in 2014 had helped the musical campaign, with streams now counting towards chart position, albeit that many more streams than downloads are required to make an impact.</p>
<p>And once more, accusations of censorship were levied against broadcasters, along with concerns that they were failing in their duty to represent public opinion.</p>
<p>If public opinion in the UK is divided about anything, it’s Brexit. The recent battle for chart supremacy, with rival campaigns, reflects that and is the latest step in what is becoming a part of the furniture in our musical and political culture. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/research-with-party-members-offers-an-important-clue-about-how-to-heal-brexit-divisions-131161">Research with party members offers an important clue about how to heal Brexit divisions</a>
</strong>
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<p>Frisby’s portrayal of himself as “an ordinary bloke who wrote a tune with his mate one day, up against a European colossus” may be disingenuous – he’s an established media performer and published author who, at one point, was <a href="https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/news/5440/dominic_frisby_mp/">selected as a parliamentary candidate</a> for the Brexit party. But this latest salvo in an ongoing culture war highlights the normalisation of the charts as a political tool, and just how at odds with itself Britain has become.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131158/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>An epic battle between the EU anthem and a pro-Brexit pop song was narrowly won by Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1291842020-02-04T18:58:50Z2020-02-04T18:58:50ZPerforming Beethoven - what it feels like to embody a master on today’s stage<p><em>In a series marking the 250th year of his birth, we analyse the brilliance of Ludwig van Beethoven.</em></p>
<p>When Beethoven died in 1827, thousands of pages of highly notated music were bequeathed to posterity. Yet unlike arts such as painting and sculpture, which communicate directly from the artist to the observer, these otherwise silent pages demand resuscitation. They require performance.</p>
<p>From all accounts, Beethoven was an extraordinary pianist. In playing his own compositions, however, he combined two roles that are now necessarily separate: those of composer and performer. </p>
<p>How, then, might one recapture the essence of Beethoven’s music in modern times?</p>
<h2>Playing the part</h2>
<p>Performing music is akin to acting, where words by long-dead playwrights are given new life. It is a subtle art, honed over years, and is successful only when the “voice” of the performer finds alignment with that of the author, neither one cancelling out the other. </p>
<p>Similarly, the role of the performer is distinct and important when interpreting classical music. As with drama it has an added power, as both the content of the music and its performance can be art. When the two synthesise, great music can truly live.</p>
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<span class="caption">The author at the piano.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sydney Dance Company/Jeff Busby</span></span>
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<p>Finding a composer’s individual voice takes careful study, and Beethoven’s music is a notable case. He lived at a pivotal time, when the role of composers evolved from functionaries of courts and chapels to artists in their own right. Famously, he wrote some of the first music considered “absolute” - music conveying something of great significance, without reference to a programmatic story or other form of text. </p>
<p>Through decades of <a href="https://www.abcmusic.com.au/scott-davie">experience</a> as a pianist, I’ve found Beethoven’s music requires a different approach to that of his Viennese contemporaries. With Mozart, it is often best to stand back, to let the composer do the talking. With Schubert one needs patience, and an empathy for moments of simple bliss. </p>
<p>By contrast, Beethoven’s music needs to be championed. One needs to grasp it with both hands, to join in the fight (so to speak), as the following three examples illustrate. </p>
<h2>A virtuoso musician</h2>
<p>Beethoven was a virtuoso at the keyboard, as much of his music attests. There are few works harder to perform at the piano than the famous Hammerklavier sonata, and great dexterity and flair are required in works such as the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas. </p>
<p>Beethoven’s earliest sonatas are dedicated to Joseph Haydn, his “teacher” in Vienna. This could be read as a mark of respect, yet, more cynically, one suspects he was ensuring they caught his eye, for what follows is Beethoven trying to out-Haydn Haydn. </p>
<p>With unassuming simplicity, the C major sonata summarises brilliantly the thematic kernel of its opening movement in just four bars. Yet the phrase simultaneously presents a technical problem that stumps many pianists: clever fingering is required with the right-hand double thirds, or else they’ll never be crisp! </p>
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<p>The movement’s following pages at times require the keyboard to be played as if invoking the force of a full symphonic orchestra, while other passages are more soloistic. The unexpected inclusion of a dramatic solo cadenza highlights further the cross-genre “tease” of the musical content.</p>
<p>It’s masterly stuff, and to succeed in performance it’s beneficial to understand the clever wit of its subtext. This includes both the quick moves between soloist and orchestral roles, and the furtive wink back to <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/guides/beethoven-and-haydn-their-relationship/">Haydn</a>, which seems to say “See what I can do? I have no need of a teacher now”. </p>
<h2>A philosopher</h2>
<p>We don’t often credit the young as capable of profound sentiment, but many of Beethoven’s early works feature moments of the sublime.</p>
<p>Of note is the slow movement of the early Sonata in D major, written when he was 28. However seven years later, the slow movement of the Fourth Piano Concerto reveals Beethoven as a fully matured philosopher. </p>
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<p>The orchestra begins with fierce outbursts, yet the piano is unmoved as it responds. At length, the pianist’s passivity and arching melodic lines gain dominance as the orchestra subsides, only to be momentarily undermined by a solo passage of trembling and unresolved harmony. </p>
<p>Eventually, all conflict resolves. As an exchange, the movement is dialectical in its structure. From the viewpoint of the pianist, it is like participating in Greek tragedy; it’s a role that must be played with great conviction for the powerful drama to succeed.</p>
<h2>A modernist</h2>
<p>Given Beethoven’s iconic status among audiences, it’s easy to forget he was a modernist. Even today, performers flinch at the original final movement of his late B flat major string quartet - a movement that still astounds in its dissonance, and which the composer felt obliged to replace.</p>
<p>Similar glimpses of music’s future lie in other late works, not least the quixotic final set of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagatelle_(music)">Bagatelles</a> for piano, published in 1825. </p>
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<p>In the last piece, the noisy opening recalls the closing bars of the Ninth Symphony, yet this is but a curtain-raiser to the music’s quiet core. The thematic material is disarmingly simple, consisting initially of offbeat, right-hand chords, while the harmony is rudimentary, the static left-hand part suggesting a rustic drone. </p>
<p>This is music that stretches notions of time, even, in places, apprehending minimalism. Yet moments of profundity are swept away, as it slips into a carefree waltz. The eschewing of complexity is prescient.</p>
<p>To perform this piece well is to be transported and transformed, the audience carried to the long-forgotten realm of a composer who, despite the stresses of his final years, appears to have found peace.</p>
<p>Like J. Alfred Prufrock in T. S. Eliot’s famous <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock">poem</a>, it is as if we linger in “the chambers of the sea” for a while. Until the opening bars return to wake us, and we drown.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Audiences know what it’s like to listen to Beethoven’s iconic works - but to play his creations as a concert pianist is to grab the music with both hands and join the composer in a powerful battle.Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1294542020-02-03T02:31:49Z2020-02-03T02:31:49ZAhead of his time, Beethoven still inspires<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313016/original/file-20200131-41476-pj533o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C17%2C3934%2C2598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/netherlands-leiden-media-july-2015-graffiti-300973631">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In a series marking the 250th year of his birth, we analyse the brilliance of Ludwig van Beethoven.</em></p>
<p>Around 1806, Beethoven sought advice on violin fingering from the Italian violinist Felix Radicati in connection with the three great string quartets of his middle period, the so-called “Razumovsky” Quartets, Opus 59. </p>
<p>Radicati impertinently asked whether Beethoven really considered these pieces to be music, to which he airily <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Thayer_s_Life_of_Beethoven.html?id=j8RIq67v51cC&redir_esc=y">replied</a>, “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age!” </p>
<p>And Beethoven was right. His music was for a later age in ways he could scarcely have imagined. </p>
<h2>Enduring resonance</h2>
<p>He would not have anticipated, for example, that English cricket captain Mike Brearley would <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mz9r">whistle</a> the opening cello theme of the first of those very quartets, when walking on to face Australian fast bowlers in 1981. </p>
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<p>Or that, as on 1 October 1959, just before the artistic suffocation of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Tse Tung and Nikita Krushchev would listen to the heroic strains of his Egmont Overture to celebrate the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ObZpCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Beethoven+in+china&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib2aGMiPDmAhWkW3wKHRnoAicQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Beethoven%20in%20china&f=false">tenth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party</a>, a celebration capped off later that month with a joint East German/Chinese performance of his Ninth Symphony in the newly completed Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Overture to Egmont, Op. 84 (Conductor: Kurt Masur with Gewandhausorchester Leipzig). This performance also marked a 20th anniversary of ‘Peaceful Revolution’ and the beginning of the German reunification.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the 250 years since his birth, Beethoven’s music has served myth-making agendas both personal and political, cultural and commercial, noble and nefarious. </p>
<p>He has been depicted in countless artworks, in popular culture and provided <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/54755-5-books-inspired-by-beethoven-s-fifth.html">inspiration</a> for fictional characters in works from Thomas Mann’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34440.Doctor_Faustus">Doctor Faustus</a>, and Romain Roland’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/73322.Jean_Christophe_I">Jean Christophe</a> to Anthony Burgess’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41817486-a-clockwork-orange?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Hv5B126BsV&rank=1">A Clockwork Orange</a>. </p>
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<p>As French poet and novellist Victor Hugo <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hYBAFG01FOsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=changing+image+of+beethoven&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIoMfOte7mAhU0juYKHZJtCTwQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=changing%20image%20of%20beethoven&f=false">said</a>, this is music where “the dreamer will recognise his dream, the sailor his storm, Elijah his whirlwind […] and the wolf his forests”. </p>
<h2>Powerful and personal</h2>
<p>Beyond the mythologising, hagiography and exploitation, the music itself retains a potent power to move listeners in deeply personal ways. </p>
<p>In E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=xiFEAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=howards+end&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-l_Wute7mAhVDIbcAHbRjBXUQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=howards%20end&f=false">Howard’s End</a>, Helen listens to the moment in his Fifth Symphony when Beethoven interrupts the exultant finale with a malignant return of the sardonic Scherzo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olMPeiqoiic">theme</a> — usually a light and jovial musical form. Helen hears in it a confirmation that “the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth”. That, she concludes, is why you can trust Beethoven when he says other things.</p>
<p>Why do listeners, like Helen, continue to find truth in the music’s stirring energy and transcendence?</p>
<p>Although there are as many answers as there are listeners, it is possible to point to some enduring virtues in his music and work habits that offer a glimpse into the mystery of the artistic process. </p>
<p>Beethoven had a capacity to put forward a memorable, well-shaped, malleable, often open-ended idea that announces itself as a kind of proposition. This can be heard famously in the first four notes of his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olMPeiqoiic">Fifth Symphony</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Beethoven’s Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67 played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One doesn’t need musical education or experience to hear how Beethoven builds from those insistent four notes the ensuing tumultuous clamour and stormy intensity. </p>
<p>The same applies to a comparable four-note knocking motive that grabs the listener’s ear just after the opening idea in the Piano Sonata in F minor, the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ2J1eFM-Rs">Appassionata</a>”.</p>
<p>Lenin <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/xxxx/lenin.htm">claimed</a> to know this sonata inside out, and, though other music frequently got on his nerves, said he could listen to it every day.</p>
<h2>Propelled by rhythm</h2>
<p>The memorability of Beethoven’s ideas owes much to their rhythmic definition, energy and elasticity. At times his rhythm is impulsive and disruptive as though refusing to adhere to well-behaved phrases and the constraints of convention.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sviatoslav Richter plays Sonata no.23 in F minor, “Appassionata”, op.57.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His Third Symphony, the “Eroica”, begins with the simplest of bold affirmative ideas – two <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPl4xo0yhlA">emphatic</a> chords. </p>
<p>Yet scarcely has the ensuing theme begun but it is distracted, and Beethoven has to start it twice more before it gains its full stride. </p>
<p>Later in the same movement the opening chords almost grind the music to a halt. Beethoven uses rhythm not just to propel the music but to articulate large-scale form and struggle.</p>
<p>In other works, particularly in his late period (1816 to his death in 1827), he used rhythm to change our experience of time itself, as in the Arietta of his final Piano Sonata, the Sonata in C minor, Opus 111. </p>
<p>A sublimely simple theme is progressively subdivided to reach a peak of jaunty activity anticipating the syncopated rhythms of 20th century jazz, only to break completely to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW9e28bYbJA">moment</a> of radical trance-like stasis. </p>
<p>As Milan Kundera points out in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240976.The_Book_of_Laughter_and_Forgetting">The Book of Laughter and Forgetting</a>, it is as though Beethoven is pointing to 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal’s two <a href="https://academyofideas.com/2016/03/blaise-pascal-the-infinite-spaces-alienation-and-the-wager/">infinities</a> – the infinitely large and the infinitely small.</p>
<p>Early in his career, Beethoven found ways of using harmony to give the impression of leaving the expected path to survey a new unexplored vista. He often used this device just before the close (in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IxSHL8sfQw">Piano Sonata Opus 7</a>, for example). </p>
<p>Listen to the solo violin entry in the central development section (around the 11:02 mark) of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cg_0jepxow">Violin Concerto in D</a> where the soloist returns after a long orchestral tutti, initially repeating the idea she opened with before unexpectedly shifting outwards to an expressive theme in the highest sweet notes of the violin.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with soloist Hilary Hahn.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More than words</h2>
<p>In his book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691050584/beethoven-hero">Beethoven Hero</a> Scott Burnham points out this is music that seems to be telling us something though what it is telling us is, as Mendelssohn put it, too exact for words. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313015/original/file-20200131-41481-1ivh7dy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>It trivialises the music to say, as one of Beethoven’s earliest critics A. B. Marx did, that the opening of the Eroica Symphony depicts Napoleon mounting his steed on the battlefield. </p>
<p>Beethoven had a way of using these resources to convey a narrative of urgent thought, whether intimate or epic. </p>
<p>Beethoven did not arrive at these moments of numinous truth easily. From at least 1798 when he was 28 years old until his death in 1827, he wrote his ideas in sketchbooks, some large for home use (over 30 of these survive in full or in part) and a slightly greater number of handmade books that he carried in his pocket. The magisterial flow of the Eroica Symphony, mentioned above, was worked out over as many as 12 continuity drafts.</p>
<p>Towards the end of his life the process became more intense. Between the completion of the Ninth Symphony in February 1824 and his death in 1827, Beethoven filled at least 1,899 pages of sketches for his five late string quartets and other projects, not counting a further 700 pages of completed scores and copies. This represents over 2,500 densely-packed, often almost illegible pages in less than three years.</p>
<p>Even leaving aside the creative effort involved, two substantial periods of illness in 1825 and 1826/7 and time out for rows with publishers and his nephew Carl (the latter almost ending in tragedy with the nephew’s unsuccessful suicide attempt in 1826), it represents substantial physical work.</p>
<p>Amid his own stormy life, he averaged two and a half pages a day, every single day for 32 months — hieroglyphic postcards for a later age.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter McCallum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Beethoven’s compositions combine power, rhythm and deeply felt meaning - and they did not come easily. The composer was ahead of his time, and he knew it, even then.Peter McCallum, Registrar and Academic Director (Education), University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1286282020-01-30T19:08:16Z2020-01-30T19:08:16ZFriday essay: Beethoven - an icon at risk of overexposure?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311779/original/file-20200124-81403-1j00ola.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C1264%2C835&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Happy birthday Beethoven, 250 this year. Here, artist Ottmar Hoerl's sculptural tribute in Bonn, Germany. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bonn-north-rhinewestphalia-germany-may-14-1599508873">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In a series marking the 250th year of his birth, we analyse the significance of Ludwig van Beethoven.</em></p>
<p>In the centre of Bonn, <a href="https://www.bonn.de/bonn-erleben/beethoven/beethoven-denkmaeler.php%22%22">a bronze statue</a> stands on a pedestal in the Münsterplatz. </p>
<p>The figure is dressed in typical early 19th-century garb, cravat and jacket visible beneath a heavy outer cloak. Protruding from the rough folds, the left hand clutches an open notebook. The right hand holds a pen at arm’s length, the gesture suggesting action momentarily suspended by thought. Above the collar, a face framed by a shock of hair frowns into the middle distance.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311780/original/file-20200124-81411-1ng3r7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Beethoven Monument in Bonn, Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bonn-north-rhinewestphalia-germany-september-25-1390088840">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>This memorial to Bonn’s greatest musical son has been in place since 1845, a reminder that paying tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), whose 250th birthday is celebrated this year, is a practice with its own lengthy history. </p>
<p>The Bonn statue, the first erected to any musician in Germany, was unveiled on the 75th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. It would not be the last statuary tribute to the composer, whose reputation grew ever greater as the 19th century advanced. Thirty-five years later, his adoptive city of Vienna unveiled an even more substantial <a href="https://www.wien.info/en/locations/beethoven-monument-beethovenplatz%22%22">Beethoven monument</a>. </p>
<p>This was followed by Max Klinger’s 1902 sculpture for the Viennese Secession, in which the <a href="https://da.beethoven.de/sixcms/detail.php/35290%22%22">bare-torso composer</a> is literally enthroned. Today, 3D representations in the form of busts and even <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Accoutrements-11256-Beethoven-Action-Figure/dp/B0006FUA3G">action figures</a> are widely available. </p>
<p>The ubiquity of Beethoven imagery reflects his status as a true icon, one of a handful of creative personalities whose achievements have become bywords for the supreme capacities of the human spirit. As he turns 250, Beethoven has been <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/01/beethoven-wasnt-just-historys-greatest-composer-but-also-one-of-its-greatest-human-beings/">lauded</a> as “not just […] history’s greatest composer, but also one of its greatest human beings”. </p>
<h2>Overcoming tragedy</h2>
<p>Even before we try to grasp what makes Beethoven’s musical creations so special, the fact that he continued to write music in spite of his <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Heiligenstadt_Testament">worsening hearing</a> has enshrined him in the broader cultural imaginary as a martyr-magician.</p>
<p>Beethoven’s deafness may have contributed to his legend, but several of works have achieved iconic status in their own right, often spawning complex reception traditions of their own. Some of the most popular, including the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, trace a struggle-to-victory trajectory, on one level a musical metaphor for the way the composer triumphed over his disability. </p>
<p>The Ninth Symphony begins in a dark D minor, and concludes with a D-major setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy, usually seen as a paean to universal brotherhood. As such, it was a fitting choice for a historic December 1989 <a href="https://radio.wosu.org/post/leonard-bernstein-marked-fall-berlin-wall-ode-freedom#stream/0">concert</a> to celebrate the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Yet this work has also been interpreted as a celebration of violence, as was brilliantly but subversively <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4149775?seq=1">brought out</a> in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066921/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1%22%22">A Clockwork Orange</a> (based on Anthony Burgess’s novel).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">For Christmas 1989, Leonard Bernstein led a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with choir and musicians from East and West Germany.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Equally ubiquitous is the Fifth Symphony, famous for its opening <em>da-da-da-DAH</em>, which is obsessively pursued throughout the first movement. </p>
<p>The coincidental relationship of this motif to the <a href="http://www.1728.org/morstest.htm">morse-code pattern</a> for the letter “V” — dot, dot, dot, dash — linked it to Churchill’s two-fingered “V for Victory” salute. This led the BBC to use a version of Beethoven’s motif for timpani at the start of their <a href="https://www.cmuse.org/beethovens-fifth-symphony-and-morse-code/">broadcasts to Europe</a> during the second world war, a blatant challenge to the Germans who otherwise might have seen Beethoven as their property. </p>
<p>In less fraught times, this four-note motif acquired the text <em>le-che con PAN</em> (milk with bread) in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FeyAlegriaGUA/videos/745274425513678/?v=745274425513678">the Spanish-speaking world</a>. Whether intended or not, this serves as fitting commentary on how Beethoven has become the staple diet of orchestras throughout the world.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange makes use of the mythical status that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Straddling the romantic-classical divide</h2>
<p>While Beethoven’s position in the musical pantheon is well-entrenched today (in 2019, he was once again voted Australia’s favourite composer in an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/classic/classic-100/composer/">ABC Classic poll</a>), matters were more equivocal during his lifetime. </p>
<p>The premiere of the breakthrough Eroica Symphony in 1805 left audiences divided: according to a <a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=unpresssamples">contemporaneous report</a>, some believed this was Beethoven’s “masterpiece, […] the true style for high-class music”, while others felt that it illustrated “a completely unbounded striving for distinction and oddity, which, however, has produced neither beauty nor true sublimity and power”.</p>
<p>The idea that Beethoven was “difficult” was only strengthened by the works he produced in the last decade of his life, which (with the exception of the Ninth Symphony) have lagged in popularity behind earlier masterpieces such as the Third to Eighth Symphonies, the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas for piano, the Violin Concerto and so forth. </p>
<p>However, for cognoscenti and many performers, late works such as the last five piano sonatas and the last five string quartets have a special place as rarefied exhalations of the human spirit. </p>
<p>In his celebrated <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/738009">1810 review</a> of the Fifth Symphony, E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote that “Beethoven’s instrumental music unveils before us the realm of the mighty and the immeasurable”. This becomes even more true when we consider the titanic fugue that concludes the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX6WFwQ2PnE">‘Hammerklavier’ Piano Sonata, Op. 106</a> (1818), or the Heiliger Dankgesang movement from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKOY9YuwOg">String Quartet in A minor No. 15, Op. 132</a> (1825).</p>
<p>Hoffmann’s essay also made the important claim that Beethoven was </p>
<blockquote>
<p>fully the equal of Haydn and Mozart in rational awareness, his controlling self detached from the inner realm of sounds and ruling it in absolute authority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was a notable departure from the critical consensus of the day, which viewed Beethoven’s music as a byword for quasi-improvisatory freedom. Hoffmann’s analysis demonstrated that the apparently unbridled emotionalism of the Fifth Symphony was actually underpinned by a rigorous logic of construction. In the intervening two centuries, Beethoven has become a textbook exemplar of formal mastery. Glenn Gould, no uncritical admirer of the composer, neatly summarised these two sides of his art in a 1967 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPDBcdDGrnE">pre-performance talk</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Beethoven is a kind of living metaphor for the creative condition. In part he is the man who respects the past, who honours the traditions [from] which art develops, and while never other than intense and constantly gesticulating with those rather violent gestures which are so peculiarly his own, this side of his character leads him to smooth off the edges of his structure sometimes, to be watchful and even painstaking on occasion about the grammar of his musical syntax. </p>
<p>And then there’s this other side, the fantastical romantic side of Beethoven, which draws from him those unapologetically wrongheaded gestures, those proud, nose-thumbing anti-grammatical moments which, in the context of tradition [and] against the smooth and polished edges of classical architecture, make him unique among composers for the sheer devil-may-careness of his manner. But in the end this sort of amalgam exists for every artist, really; within every creative person there is an inventor at odds with a museum-curator.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This captures the productive tension that existed between Beethoven the classicist and Beethoven the romantic. Without his tendency to strain against the norms of his day, his music would lack that transgressive thrill and the feeling that he was taking the art forward. But without his mastery of structural control, his muse would have risked incomprehensibility. The two are crucial to Beethoven’s achievement, the synthesis he achieved between expressive individuality and formal balance.</p>
<h2>An (overly?) dominant presence</h2>
<p>Significant anniversaries of major composers are typically marked by an uptick in the number of performances of their music. However, the Beethoven market is already close to saturation point. </p>
<p>An Australian composer, Ian Whitney, noted back in 2016 that Beethoven made up <a href="https://ianwhitney.com.au/2015/10/08/beethovapalooza2016/">11% of the repertoire</a> put on by the seven major Australian orchestras in that year, where the entire sum of Australian works heard amounted to only 6%. His <a href="https://ianwhitney.com.au/2019/11/11/australian-content-in-2020/">witty analysis</a> of 2020 shows that the disproportion is even more marked in this anniversary year.</p>
<p>The total eclipse of all things by Beethoven is not uniquely an Australian problem. Back in 2014-15, in cosmopolitan San Francisco, Beethoven <a href="https://irontongue.blogspot.com/2014/08/20th-season-of-risk-taking-san.html">outmatched</a> the combined totals of the second- and third-most played composers (Stravinsky and Mozart respectively) in the local Symphony’s programs. The vain wish to avoid such saturation led Andrea Moore in the Chicago Tribune to call for a <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-ban-beethoven-anniversary-20191230-ukklfgb25baaxcjjiddm3ud76y-story.html">year-long moratorium</a> on Beethoven performances, to be replaced with new music.</p>
<p>While one might have sympathy for the living, squeezed out of the picture by the long dead, a ban on Beethoven is never going to be the answer. Much better is the solution followed by the <a href="https://www.cpproductions.com.au/dates">Opus Now collective</a>, which in recent years put on a series of 16 concerts pairing a Beethoven string quartet with avant garde compositions. </p>
<p>A series of this sort accomplishes much: it resists the ghettoisation of contemporary music into cliquish events and serves to remind both Beethovenians and devotees of new music how radical Beethoven’s works were — and indeed, still are. More than a century after it was written, the Grosse Fuge Op. 133 was <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/works/cc6eba78-85ef-3834-a400-a34e0d8856d9">described</a> by Igor Stravinsky as “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever”.</p>
<h2>The lesser-known Beethoven</h2>
<p>Moreover, when we dig down into the matter, can we really say we know Beethoven all that well? Some of his works have been played to the point of overexposure, but there are plenty of other discoveries to be made. Thankfully the ABC is running a year-long series of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/classic/programs/beethoven-250/">weekly broadcasts</a> with the aim of covering the entirety of Beethoven’s output, pairing major masterpieces with curiosities like his music for mandolin, or for mechanical clock. </p>
<p>One underrated gem that deserves to be better known is the <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/composition/fantasia-for-piano-in-g-minor-op-77-mc0002359159%22%22">Fantasie Op. 77</a> (1809). Scholars think this captures something of Beethoven’s legendary improvisations at the keyboard. Beginning with a precipitate descending scale, answered by a soulful melody, the music continually changes style, tempo and key in the first half: now jaunty, now stormy, with busy passage-work alternating with melancholy Adagio moments and occasional hints of imitation between the hands. Eventually, order emerges from the chaos in the form of a set of variations on a theme in B major.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Just playing around. Scholars believe Fantasie Op. 77 captures Beethoven’s virtuoso improvisation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beethoven’s instrumental music tends to dominate our perceptions, meaning that his vocal music is comparatively less well known (with the arguable exception of his single opera, Fidelio). One piece that is underperformed in the anglophone world is the 1816 song cycle [<a href="https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3515&context=thesesdissertations">An die ferne Geliebte [To the distant beloved], Op. 98</a>] A compact set of six Lieder lasting only a quarter of an hour, Beethoven’s sole song cycle is very different in both size and organisation from the famous later cycles by Schubert (Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise), Schumann (Frauenliebe und -leben, Dichterliebe) or Wolf (Italienisches Liederbuch). </p>
<p>In the first poem by Alois Isodor Jeitteles, the protagonist expresses his yearning for his beloved. Poems 2 through 5 address the clouds, woods and hills separating the two, while poem 6 bids her “accept these songs, beloved, which I sang to you”. </p>
<p>This final song returns to the key and, from halfway through, the music of the first song, giving it a satisfying feeling of coming home. Moreover, unlike his successors, Beethoven binds his cycle into an unbroken whole by writing brief transitional passages between songs. Thus, while the individual songs have a folk-like simplicity to them, the collection as a whole is satisfyingly subtle in its organisation.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A series of six songs expressing yearning for a lover who is far away, the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte resonates with Beethoven’s own frustrated passion for a series of women, including the mysterious Immortal Beloved.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When it comes to Beethoven’s orchestral works, if one were looking for alternatives or supplements to the great series of symphonies, overtures and solo concertos that are concert-hall fixtures, one might reexamine the so-called <a href="https://youtu.be/GjXBKR4iDS8?t=73">Choral Fantasy, Op. 80 </a> (1808), a piece that begins as a solo piano fantasy, turns into a concerto proper and ends as a dry run for the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony. </p>
<p>Another curiosity (whose existence many would prefer to forget) is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_ibES7i-HU">Wellington’s Victory (The Battle of Vittoria), Op. 91</a> (1813). Sometimes called Beethoven’s Battle Symphony, it has rightly been kept apart from the canonic nine numbered symphonies. This is not just a matter of puritan distaste for the very vivid musical pictorialisms (there is, for instance, more cannon fire here than is found in Tchaikovsky’s <em>1812 Overture</em>), but also because Beethoven deliberately chose not to follow the layout proper to a multi-movement symphony of the era.</p>
<p>Beethoven took some well-known themes as his material: Wellington’s forces are represented at the outset by Rule Britannia, and in victory by God save the King, while the French are identified by “Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre” (a French folk tune generally sung in English to the words “the bear came over the mountain”). </p>
<p>While the piece as a whole falls short of the level of compositional craft one finds in the numbered symphonies, the “victory” section has plenty of moments of interest (including a fugue on a hyper-accelerated version of the British anthem), and the unprejudiced ear will recognise its rhetorical kinship with the finale of the Fifth Symphony.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=295&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311782/original/file-20200124-81362-15i41mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A plaque at the house where the composer was born 250 years ago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bonn-germany-circa-august-2019-ludwig-1597501042">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Happy birthday</h2>
<p>And so, 250 years after his birth, Beethoven remains important, and not just for the listening public. The past two centuries are unthinkable without the stimulus his music gave to other musicians: not only was his oeuvre the touchstone for virtually every symphonic and instrumental composer who followed in the 19th century, even today he continues to inspire <a href="https://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Beethoven-2020-anniversary-works-inspired-across-the-centuries/101036">the creation of new music</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LshnjThYXUE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Kronos Quartet artistic director David Harrington has said that when he heard the Budapest Quartet recording of this piece in 1961, “It awakened something for me that no other sound had ever done up to that point, and I had to try to make that sound.”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There should be no begrudging him his place in our concert halls, where an imaginative live performance can render even works as beloved as the Moonlight Sonata, the Seventh Symphony or the “Emperor” Piano Concerto fresh and interesting. </p>
<p>Whether we stick with old favourites, or try to make new discoveries, let 2020 be a year in which we unashamedly indulge in the output of a composer who more than any other has shaped the classical musical landscape we know today. For, as Austrian writer Franz Grillparzer first asked in his funeral oration for Beethoven: “He was an artist, and who shall stand beside him?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This year Ludwig van Beethoven turns 250. Though some of his creations have been overexposed, they are indisputably brilliant. And there are still others waiting to be discovered by music lovers.David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828892019-09-04T19:52:26Z2019-09-04T19:52:26ZExplainer: what exactly do musical conductors do?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281305/original/file-20190626-76717-1g3zjyl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The conductor's role is to communicate with the performers and their audience. Their role is part artistic, part mathematical.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Conductors are a relatively new breed of musician. Only as compositions became more complex circa 1810 (blame Beethoven!) did the actual need for a conductor become more relevant. Conductors were in demand pre-Beethoven, but to a far lesser degree. </p>
<p>As the noted author and music critic Norman Lebrecht has alluded to in his book The Maestro Myth, there remains considerable mystique surrounding conductors, despite the fact that thousands of performance recordings showing conductors “face-on” are now available online. One such example is Sir Simon Rattle conducting Gustav Mahler’s 2nd symphony.</p>
<p>As with all branches of music performance, a conductor’s job is communication, not only musically, but beyond the music. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mahler: Symphony No. 2 / Rattle · City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pre-performance</h2>
<p>A conductor’s communication with an audience begins from the first step onto the concert platform. During the walk to the podium, he or she must not only negotiate safe passage through an often crowded performance space, but also smile, engage with both audience and performers and complete the pre-concert rituals. (The latter include acknowledging audience and orchestra, shaking hands with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concertmaster">Concertmaster</a>, and bowing.) </p>
<p>All this while also concentrating on how the opening few bars of the repertoire needs to be conducted technically and musically. </p>
<p>A conductor will usually be professionally proficient on at least one instrument. He or she must, however, have a strong working knowledge and understanding of all instruments and voices being conducted. The score is fully absorbed prior to the rehearsal stage and is very rarely sight-read on the podium itself. </p>
<p>The choice of concert attire can effectively communicate with audience members during “the walk”. Although formal concert dress for mainstream subscription concerts is still in vogue, other concert portfolios offer more interesting dress options: the sight of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBX0vbtOfQk">Darth Vader, for example</a>, conducting is not unusual! </p>
<p>I use a pair of trusted red stripy shoes to make impact with audiences, a fact noted by reviewers who have compared me to the Bishop of Rome. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183096/original/file-20170823-13274-1yf47s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author in his trusty red stripy shoes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">QYO Finale Concert</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 21st century, conductors are increasingly required to introduce the performance. But eventually, the conductor will turn his/her back on the audience (with the exception of those sitting in choir stalls) and the music will commence. </p>
<h2>What about those arm movements?</h2>
<p>Intense eye contact with the ensemble members is pivotal to the success of most performances. Now comes the almost fabled waving of arms. </p>
<p>This is part mathematical, part artistic. The mathematical refers to the precise time keeping of rhythm, which in turn allows the ensemble to have the greatest chance of performing together. </p>
<p>Many conductors use a baton to help pinpoint this use of time, although some do not. Such an individual choice can vary with the size and style of the repertoire being performed. The beating arm is usually on the individual’s strongest side: I am right-handed, for example. </p>
<p>A major part of the conductor’s role is to accurately show the length of each bar according to the interpretation and theoretical structure of it. A <a href="https://www.mightyexpert.com/what-is-a-bar-music/">bar</a> is a mathematical tool that helps to visually organise the music for the performers concerned. </p>
<p>An avid audience member will notice that most bars have beating patterns that conductors utilise. The beating pattern is dictated by the number of beats in the bar (the usual number of beats would be between two and four). It is defined by a combination of vertical and horizontal beats (the conductor will indicate these by moving their arm up or down or side to side). </p>
<p>The more beats there are, the more complex the pattern becomes. The type of beat pattern is usually dictated by and reflects the rhythmic structure of each bar. </p>
<p>Nearly all bars have first and last beats, respectively known as the downbeat and upbeat (it is rarer for bars to have only one beat). Downbeats move from north to south, and upbeats do the opposite: imagine drawing an imaginary line in the air from 12:00 to 6:00 (downbeat) on a clock, and vice versa (upbeat). </p>
<hr>
<p><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/628/start-and-end.gif?1560396619" width="100%"></p>
<hr>
<p>Both downbeats and upbeats act as a visual aid to performers to check respective points within the bars and scores being played. Upbeats and downbeats visualise bar lines, which in turn mathematically aide the music. </p>
<hr>
<p><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/629/44-timing.gif?1560396619" width="100%"></p>
<hr>
<p>While most bars in music are of similar lengths, this is not always the case, as online recordings of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring will prove. This notorious work has multiple and often changing bar lengths, all of which require high levels of technique and musicality from a conductor. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Leonard Bernstein conducts Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Emphasising Volume</h2>
<p>The beating arm does not only communicate time: it also has the potential to influence degrees of volume. In general terms, the louder the music is, the larger the size of physical gesture used. </p>
<hr>
<p><img src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/630/little-conductor.gif?1560407375" width="100%"></p>
<hr>
<p>A conductor’s whole body helps to communicate the artistic message to an ensemble, and, consequently, to audiences. From head to toe, it can musically influence the performance, via such things as player cues, dynamic control (volume), ensemble balance, and artistic shape. </p>
<p>Communication, whether verbal or otherwise, is a conductor’s business. Without successful communication from the podium, the enjoyment of music making for all concerned, including the audience, is lessened.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Warwick Potter has received funding from the Australian Federal Government via The University of Queensland for an Australian Postgraduate Award (2011 to 2014) funding connected to a PhD program. </span></em></p>A conductor’s role is about communication with performers and their audience. They do so using eye contact, dress, and of course, the fabled waving of the arms.Warwick Potter, Lecturer in Conducting, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/930552018-04-11T20:06:19Z2018-04-11T20:06:19ZHow Beethoven’s ‘mistake’ became one of our most famous tunes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210242/original/file-20180314-113465-128xcq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C2982%2C767&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beethoven monument on the Beethovenplatz square in Vienna, Austria. The monument was unveiled in 1880.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beethoven-monument-on-beethovenplatz-square-vienna-541262710?src=OyPppHflWLARgUNigqV-lw-1-0">Shutterstock</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-37147">Decoding the music masterpieces</a>, music experts explain key works of classical music.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Without question, the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony contains one of the most famous tunes ever written. Since its first performance in 1824, the “Ode to Joy” has been repurposed in endless ways, both reverential and exploitative, from performances at the Berlin Wall to its use in tawdry advertising.</p>
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<p>This final movement, which combines voices and orchestra, is based on Friedrich Schiller’s 1786 poem extolling a humanist theme of universal joy. Beethoven started sketching ideas for a musical setting of the text in his late 20s, and, given an initial admiration for Napoleon, he was likely attracted to the poem’s revolutionary undertones. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-bachs-six-solo-cello-suites-83797">Decoding the music masterpieces: Bach’s Six Solo Cello Suites</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210494/original/file-20180315-104663-1mk4n7k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven when composing the Missa Solemnis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Beethoven.jpg">Joseph Karl Stieler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet the Ninth Symphony is not a work from Beethoven’s rebellious youth. Rather, it is a “late” work. Premiering 12 years after his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies (and three years before his death), it followed a period in which he appears to have struggled with life. His output had dropped, certain works were of dubious merit, and he had endured a humiliating legal wrangle to gain custody of his nephew. In short, he suspected his time as Vienna’s most popular composer had ended. </p>
<p>So, why did Beethoven choose to set this text? Is it an expression of decisive optimism, a sign of deeper reconciliation, or an attempt to convey a message which would otherwise fail through music alone?</p>
<h2>‘Obstreperous roarings’</h2>
<p>Given the powerful questions the final movement of this symphony poses, and the enduring popularity of the famous tune, it is paradoxical that Beethoven thought he had made a mistake. </p>
<p>Following its first performance, he briefly canvassed plans for an instrumental replacement for the Ode to Joy. The symphonic form, as it was then understood, was not only purely instrumental but had also come to signify elemental purity. Arguably, it was a class of music that should rise above matters expressible merely in words.</p>
<p>Yet perhaps a bigger “mistake” was yet to be recognised. In the late days of the so-called “classical” period, a symphony was typically around 30 minutes long. However Beethoven challenged audiences to remain attentive here for over an hour. Similarly, orchestras were not yet as accomplished as later professional ensembles, and the taxing writing for wind and brass players – not to mention the stratospheric vocal lines – were beyond the scope of many. </p>
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<span class="caption">How the most famous bars of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, ‘Ode to Joy’, look in musical notation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott Davie</span></span>
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<p>Despite its commission by the London Philharmonic Society (for a fee of £50), the first performance occurred in Vienna on 7 May, 1824. It followed a petition insisting that the city be the first to hear the new work, circulated by notable supporters. Even with many fans in attendance, however, some negative views were privately expressed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-shostakovichs-babi-yar-82819">Decoding the music masterpieces: Shostakovich's Babi Yar</a>
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</em>
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<p>In London the following year, the Ninth Symphony was greeted by a hostile and conservative press, who suspected the composer’s deafness and old age had led him astray. Influential London music publication the Harmonicon described the performance as a “fearful period indeed”, which put “the patience of the audience to a severe trial”. </p>
<p>While that reviewer believed the work could be saved through massive cuts, the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review was entirely dismissive, carping about the “obstreperous roarings of modern frenzy” in art. </p>
<h2>More than a finale</h2>
<p>Within a decade, however, views about the symphony began to change. Professional orchestras and dedicated conductors – such as Mendelssohn, Berlioz and Wagner – brought order to performances, its substantial length became less remarkable, and it became a universal favourite. Yet the Ninth Symphony, which comprises of four varied movements, is about more than its culminating finale.</p>
<p>The opening of the symphony is famous for the way its powerful principal theme emerges, as if from nebulous obscurity.</p>
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<p>When this theme later returns, fury is unleashed, with pitches given to the lower instruments of the orchestra fundamentally clashing with the overall tonality of the movement.</p>
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<p>As was typical in Beethoven’s music, the closing coda section of the first movement is long, accounting for almost a quarter of its length. One passage has been thought to resemble a funeral march.</p>
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<p>A slow movement would normally follow in a traditional symphony, but Beethoven instead provides us with the humorous Scherzo (literally meaning “joke” in Italian). At first, the broader beats appear to be counted in groups of four… </p>
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<p>…yet as the movement progresses Beethoven plays a little trick, and the beats now appear in vigorous “threes”. </p>
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<p>The slow movement that follows takes the form of “double variations”, where two musical themes interplay in constantly varied form. In it, Beethoven provides a “tease” of one of the tonal shifts that will underpin a significant and revelatory moment in the final movement. </p>
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<p>The structure of the final movement is unique, to the extent that a satisfactory analysis still eludes scholarly consensus. It begins with a powerful dissonance (which Wagner described as a “horror fanfare”), which leads to a kind of double introduction, played first by the orchestra and then with chorus.</p>
<p>The baritone singer’s solo, on lines written by the composer, provides the reason for this, his statement “O Friends, not these tones!” appearing to comment on the reprise of earlier themes just presented by the orchestra. </p>
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<p>Subsequently, the “joy” theme is shared among the chorus and soloists, its treatment increasingly varied. Perhaps the most surprising variation is given a Turkish styling, the percussion instruments reminiscent of an Ottoman military band.</p>
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<p>Some have contended that this slightly farcical music is an ironic comment on the text’s earnest celebration of joy. What, then, might the non-pious Beethoven have had in mind when setting the words “Beyond the stars he surely must dwell”, words that evoke the deity? </p>
<p>It is a moment of radiant timelessness, but is it a statement or a question? The starry skies of a loving Father or, as music scholar <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/beethoven/B41EFA54A79AE247E49476ADA80BE45B">Nicholas Cook</a> has pondered, a reflection on “cosmic emptiness”?</p>
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<p>As with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis - the magnificent large-scale work that preceded the Ninth Symphony - a comparison of the text and how the music frames it can reveal glimpses of the composer’s human face. Yet what is perhaps greatest about music (and this music in particular) is the sublimely “unprovable” nature of the medium. </p>
<p>In one sense, this is just another symphony. At the same time, however, Beethoven has created an entity, one that continues to develop in context and meaning as future generations discover it. </p>
<p>Whatever message it encloses – whatever the poem’s “this kiss for the entire world” might mean – it advances always further from its creator, while never losing its ineffable truth. </p>
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<p><em>Are you a music academic with an idea for a music masterpiece? Please <a href="mailto:%20james.whitmore@theconversation.edu.au">get in touch</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony gave us ‘Ode to Joy’, one of the most famous tunes of all time. But the composer initially thought he’d made a grave mistake with it.Scott Davie, Piano tutor and Lecturer, Sydney Conservatorium Music, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/932372018-03-28T14:19:31Z2018-03-28T14:19:31ZReflections on the historic recordings of an iconic South African composer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211156/original/file-20180320-31596-1qom7gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African born pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephanus Muller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the outside, it looks like a barn. But on entering, you step into a spacious hall with a <a href="http://www.steinway.com/pianos/steinway/grand/model-d">Model D Steinway piano</a> and small recording studio. <a href="http://www.pottonhallltd.co.uk">Potton Hall</a> on the UK’s Suffolk coast is located in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/49ae5227-605a-47a8-9b8e-cd89bf01a97c">Benjamin Britten</a> country. To the north, it’s half an hour from Lowestoft where the composer was born in 1913; to the south, 20 minutes from Aldeburgh where he died in 1976. </p>
<p>It was here, on 15 and 16 February, where <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">Daniel-Ben Pienaar</a> sat down to record, for the first time ever, the complete solo piano music of pioneering South African composer <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434572?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Arnold van Wyk</a>. Pienaar’s work has been critically acclaimed in <a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/">Gramophone Magazine</a> (Editor’s Choice), <a href="http://www.classical-music.com/">BBC Music Magazine </a>(Instrumental Recording of the Month), Britain’s <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/">Sunday Times</a> (Top 5 Recordings of 2011), <a href="https://www.diapasonmag.fr/">Diapason</a> and <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/">Der Spiegel</a>. Van Wyk was part of the beginnings of Western composition in South Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century. He contributed major works to the local classical music canon. </p>
<p>Van Wyk was Britten’s contemporary. He was born in 1916 in the small South African town of Calvinia and died in 1983 in Bellville, near Cape Town. Although he displays influences of Britten in some of his works, he was never part of Britten’s circle. Studying at the <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/">Royal Academy of Music</a>, Van Wyk encountered other important British composers and musicians. Most significant of these to Van Wyk was composer and editor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/nov/03/guardianobituaries1">Howard Ferguson</a>, who became a life-long friend who supported Van Wyk emotionally and financially. Ferguson also edited and published some of Van Wyk’s work after his death.</p>
<p>Pienaar, who was born in South Africa, has been a <a href="https://www.ram.ac.uk/about-us/staff/daniel-ben-pienaar">member</a> of the Royal Academy of Music’s teaching faculty since 2005. As he explains on his <a href="http://danielbenpienaar.com">website</a>, he views the canonic classical repertoire as,</p>
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<p>radically ‘late’ – both with respect to the works themselves, and to the performance traditions and great recorded performances that surround them – demanding an active intervention from the performer.</p>
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<p>This approach, of which <a href="http://www.glenngould.com/biography/">Glenn Gould</a> is perhaps the most famous historical pianistic reference point, situates Pienaar outside conventional notions of “interpretation” that depend on the normative authority of the composer and score. Instead, Pienaar embraces performances, and especially recordings, as radical acts of text creation.</p>
<h2>Against pianism</h2>
<p>Pienaar has recorded extensively, including the complete Beethoven 32 Piano Sonatas, the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2 and the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas. He is the first South African to have done this. </p>
<p>Visiting the Royal Academy of Music in 2014 I was struck by how, during a public lecture, he traversed an expansive piano repertoire without any reference to “style” or “tradition”. Instead, he was concerned with “light” notes and “heavy” notes, and the effect the performer’s choices in this regard had on the logic and creative possibilities of the music. </p>
<p>In a series of lectures in 2017 in Stellenbosch he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10213191062032812&set=a.10203655390326979.1073741841.1283378338&type=3&theater">expounded</a> on these ideas. They represented, to my mind, a fundamental challenge to the 19th century construct of concert <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pianism">“pianism”</a>, a practice born from the crucible of virtuosity, composer geniuses and the development of a concert hall tradition.</p>
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<h2>The Potton Hall recordings</h2>
<p>Van Wyk’s mature solo piano music comprises five works: Pastorale e Capriccio (1948, revised 1955), Night Music (1945-1958), Four Piano Pieces (1965), Tristia (1968-1978) and Ricordanza (1973-1979). Of these, Night Music is the major work. Pienaar’s recording of the solo piano music became the first project of the Arnold van Wyk Centenary Fund which was established in 2016 by the Africa Open Institute. </p>
<p>Pienaar explained to me that he wanted to approach the Van Wyk piano music “on the wilder side of control”, much like Van Wyk himself played the piano. Agreeing with recording engineer Philip Hobbs that they would emulate the sound of the Chopin recording they had produced the previous year in the same hall with the same instrument, Pienaar started the recording session with the Four Piano Pieces. </p>
<p>The Potton Hall Steinway is not an instrument with a transparent, projecting brilliance. It requires hard work to achieve the effortless floating of cantabile (songlike) lines. That makes it difficult to discard some of the weight of attack required for the the fast music.</p>
<p>And it was Van Wyk’s fast music that saw the most perceptible reinvention of Van Wyk in Pienaar’s readings. His tempi were furiously fast, exceeding any of the extant recordings of these pieces by a wide margin. </p>
<p>It was the choice of these tempi that allowed Pienaar to test pianistic control against the energy and rhythmic definition imparted by speed. Whereas Van Wyk’s own technically limited pianism often sacrificed “correct” playing for characterful sculpting of sound, Pienaar’s much superior technique could only approach this pervading sense of musical fragility by exceeding the speed limit, as it were. </p>
<p>In the slower music Pienaar took care to differentiate various characters of slowness: the ruminative <a href="https://www.thefreedictionary.com/parlando">parlando</a> (“music to be performed as though speaking”) of <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8191679/My_country_my_dry_forsaken_country_On_exile_in_Arnold_van_Wyks_NP_van_Wyk_Louws_and_Ovids_Tristia">Tristia</a>, for example, versus the nostalgic lines of <a href="http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/50602">Ricordanza</a> or the ethereally distant qualities of the coda of Night Music. </p>
<h2>Repository of “lateness”</h2>
<p>In a correspondence preceding the historical recording of Van Wyk’s solo piano music, Pienaar wrote to me that he felt a similarity of approach to performing Van Wyk as he did to performing Beethoven or Bach. Even though the solo piano music had never been recorded as a whole, he felt that, as a performer, he was coming “late” to Van Wyk. He was engaging the music at a contemporary point in time as if it had proliferated in meanings and interpretive possibilities. In imagining the realization of these possibilities in Van Wyk’s music (with single exceptions in lieu of a powerful recorded tradition), he rejected certain fictional readings and embraced others. Ricordanza could therefore become a study in musical line (rather than sonority), and the ‘Scherzino’ from Four Piano Pieces an ironic rather than pedagogic study.</p>
<p>It’s an approach that might serve, when the recordings are released and become known, to draw Van Wyk closer to Britten than to the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1q31scq">English pastoralism</a> with which he has been associated. It is also an illustration that goes beyond the naïve and gauche notions of “interpretation” or “entertainment” associated with pianism. It’s therefore set to give full expression to the performer as creative artist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Africa Open Institute receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Nussbaum Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. The recording of the Van Wyk piano music was made possible by a grant from the Rupert Music Foundation.</span></em></p>A new recording of South African composer Arnold van Wyk’s complete solo piano music explores new perspectives.Stephanus Muller, Musicology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659002016-09-22T14:38:20Z2016-09-22T14:38:20ZThe songs of Robert Burns: how we recreated what they originally sounded like<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138794/original/image-20160922-22530-142s974.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alexander Nasmyth's Robert Burns, 1828. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns#/media/File:Alexander_Nasmyth_-_Robert_Burns,_1759_-_1796._Poet_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ae Fond Kiss, Auld Lang Syne, O My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose – all celebrated Robert Burns songs. Many Scots will have a favourite performance, too: maybe <a href="http://www.eddireader.co.uk/music/the-songs-of-robert-burns-deluxe-edition">Eddie Reader’s</a> characterful renditions or <a href="https://songoftheisles.com/tag/dick-gaughan/">Dick Gaughan’s</a> more epic performances or <a href="http://es.redmp3.su/versii-pesni/3988045.20610250.21672679.23197409.23628040.24257971.28291222.20450476/kenneth-mckellar-ae-fond-kiss.html">Kenneth McKellar’s</a> White Heather Club interpretations. </p>
<p>Yet none of these are as the songs would have sounded towards the end of the 18th century. Burns collected and wrote the vast majority of his songs for two rather prestigious collections: the six volume Scots Musical Museum published by Edinburgh printer James Johnson and George Thomson’s opulent Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs. </p>
<p>Both came with rather classical arrangements by the likes of Joseph Haydn and Beethoven, aimed at a highbrow audience. It wouldn’t have been Burns’ farmer friends purchasing such books but rather his subscribers, patrons and merchant friends. Eddie Reader fans might want to brace themselves. </p>
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<h2>The project</h2>
<p>We have been working on Burns’ songs as part of a five-year <a href="http://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/">research project</a> called Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century. To explore where they came from, we enlisted 11 music students to produce 25 recordings using the two original publications as our performance texts (included below are two lesser known songs: Does Haughty Gaul Invasion Threat and Scroggam, My Dearie). </p>
<p>Through a series of workshops they learned what an 18th-century singing lesson would have been like and how 18th-century dress might have affected their breathing or playing. They worked on the songs with professional coaching, using instruments of the time: gut-stringed violins and cellos, harpsichord and an early version of the piano called the fortepiano. To add a sense of period environment, we recorded the performances at Glasgow’s Pollok House – not a venue that Burns visited himself, but one built during his lifetime. </p>
<p>Everyone found it challenging to perform the songs with their original instrumental accompaniments and sometimes they needed to amend things that didn’t work comfortably. Several performers struggled with the keys of the songs – often the singer was having to sing in too high a key or where the melodies ranged between very high and low notes. This was common for fiddle tunes, which were often the melodic basis of Burns’ songs. </p>
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<p>What was really noticeable was how difficult some of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-auld-lang-syne-switched-tunes-en-route-to-world-domination-52556">Thomson accompaniments</a> were. They demanded that players could read music fluently and play to a high level of skill. This would have been a problem for many amateur players in Burns’ day, since these publications were intended to encourage people to play the songs at home. </p>
<p>Incidentally the original compositions were even more complicated: Thomson <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-reception-of-robert-burns-in-europe-9781441170316/">had to</a> ask the likes of Beethoven to supply him with simpler piano parts for the young ladies of Edinburgh. (The Scots Musical Museum songs are musically simpler and not so prescriptive, so there’s more choice in how you perform them.)</p>
<h2>The real Burns needn’t stand up</h2>
<p>There is little doubt that Burns enjoyed and was inspired by a good song whether in his own front room, at the harvest or in his local howff. But after he first visited Edinburgh in 1787 and met James Johnson, he was inspired by performances in the city’s drawing rooms and performed his poetry to people who both produced and bought the song collections of the day. </p>
<p>When he was asked to contribute songs for two of these collections, he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QZonCAXh3O4C&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=%22the+impulse+of+Enthusiasm%22+Burns&source=bl&ots=vZlMafZBO-&sig=hMcSwkD4mYEo3d4GArddUK_8pg4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM7ryF76LPAhXCDsAKHc4yCpcQ6AEIKjAF#v=onepage&q=%22the%20impulse%20of%20Enthusiasm%22%20Burns&f=false">threw himself into it with</a> “the impulse of enthusiasm”, as he put it, contributing many old fiddle standards and in many cases writing entirely new words for them. </p>
<p>All subsequent editions of Burns removed the original accompaniments and published only words with melodies or names of tunes alongside. This enabled lots of different kinds of performances, which meant later Burns enthusiasts could locate the music in a setting more “in tune” with the common man – keeping the songs very much alive in popular music culture along the way. </p>
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<p>There’s certainly nothing wrong with this direction of travel, so long as we recognise how these songs originally sounded. We really hope people will enjoy the songs we’ve recorded, even if these fancy original accompaniments might not be everyone’s cup of tea. </p>
<p>But we are being untrue to the great man if we don’t acknowledge that his songs first appeared to his own public in this way. We ought to pause and appreciate them for what they are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>After the Scottish bard mixed with Edinburgh high society, he started dabbling with Beethoven.Kirsteen McCue, Professor of Scottish Literature and Song Culture, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.