The organ

[AdamSmith]

Very wonderful documentary, composed largely of fascinating comment and observation by the man himself. And rehearsal footage.

 

[AdamSmith]

...After its premiere, the Seventh Symphony was repeated three times in the following 10 weeks; at one of the performances the "applause rose to the point of ecstasy," according to a newspaper account. The Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that "the new symphony (A major) was received with so much applause, again. The reception was as animated as at the first time; the Andante [sic] (A minor), the crown of modern instrumental music, as at the first performance, had to be repeated." The Symphony's appeal is not hard to understand. In scope and intensity, it is fully Beethovenian, and yet it does not place quite as many demands on the listener as does the "Eroica." The ambition of the first movement, beauty of the second, the breathlessness of the scherzo, and relentless energy of the finale did not fail to impress audiences. Beethoven himself called it "one of the happiest products of my poor talents."

 

...Later writers characterized the Seventh Symphony in various ways, but it is striking how many of the descriptions touch on its frenzy, approaching a bacchanal at times, and on its elements of dance. Richard Wagner's poetic account is well known: "All tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart, become here the blissful insolence of joy, which carries us away with bacchanalian power through the roomy space of nature, through all the streams and seas of life, shouting in glad self-consciousness as we sound throughout the universe the daring strains of this human sphere-dance. The Symphony is the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone."

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5481664

[whipped guy]

...After its premiere, the Seventh Symphony was repeated three times in the following 10 weeks; at one of the performances the "applause rose to the point of ecstasy," according to a newspaper account. The Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that "the new symphony (A major) was received with so much applause, again. The reception was as animated as at the first time; the Andante [sic] (A minor), the crown of modern instrumental music, as at the first performance, had to be repeated." The Symphony's appeal is not hard to understand. In scope and intensity, it is fully Beethovenian, and yet it does not place quite as many demands on the listener as does the "Eroica." The ambition of the first movement, beauty of the second, the breathlessness of the scherzo, and relentless energy of the finale did not fail to impress audiences. Beethoven himself called it "one of the happiest products of my poor talents."

 

...Later writers characterized the Seventh Symphony in various ways, but it is striking how many of the descriptions touch on its frenzy, approaching a bacchanal at times, and on its elements of dance. Richard Wagner's poetic account is well known: "All tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart, become here the blissful insolence of joy, which carries us away with bacchanalian power through the roomy space of nature, through all the streams and seas of life, shouting in glad self-consciousness as we sound throughout the universe the daring strains of this human sphere-dance. The Symphony is the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone."

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5481664

And Beethoven certainly selected the "correct" key as well. A major has a certain "sunny" quality. Think other compositions as well by other composers such as Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23 K488, Mendelshon's Italian Symphony, etc.

[whipped guy]

As an addendum to the above post it's interesting how E-flat Major has become know as the "heroic" Key, F-major the "pastoral" key, C-minor the key of stress and struggle, D-minor the key of unrest... Do you think that Beethoven and a few other composers were "on" to something?!?!?

[AdamSmith]

As an addendum to the above post it's interesting how E-flat Major has become know as the "heroic" Key, F-major the "pastoral" key, C-minor the key of stress and struggle, D-minor the key of unrest... Do you think that Beethoven and a few other composers were "on" to something?!?!?

Must have been a Masonic thing.

 

Or the Knights Templars!

[+ honcho]

As an addendum to the above post it's interesting how E-flat Major has become know as the "heroic" Key, F-major the "pastoral" key, C-minor the key of stress and struggle, D-minor the key of unrest... Do you think that Beethoven and a few other composers were "on" to something?!?!?

 

I think it's the other way around - having survived a music history sequence taught by the associate editor of the Beethoven Journal in the past couple of years, the professor said that from the time of the early Baroque going forward there were definite characteristics associated with the various keys. F minor was the key of abject despair; it wasn't that "a few other composers were 'on' to something" - it was the convention of the time and handed down by oral tradition and so well understood that nobody bothered to write it down in textbooks.

 

His take was that he adoption of Equal temperament (which, as has been noted is not the same as "Well" temperament),

so that the actual audible differences between different keys were lessened and the widespread preponderance of composing piano compositions where key choices were made for technical facility - it's actually easier to play scales involving a number of black keys for getting your thumb under - that the correspondence between moods of the piece and choice of key slowly evaporated.

[+ sync]

And Beethoven certainly selected the "correct" key as well. A major has a certain "sunny" quality. Think other compositions as well by other composers such as Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23 K488, Mendelshon's Italian Symphony, etc.

 

As an addendum to the above post it's interesting how E-flat Major has become know as the "heroic" Key, F-major the "pastoral" key, C-minor the key of stress and struggle, D-minor the key of unrest... Do you think that Beethoven and a few other composers were "on" to something?!?!?

 

Must have been a Masonic thing.

 

Or the Knights Templars!

 

A quick question...some time ago I heard (overheard) a musician state that it is generally concurred that the most beautiful key in music is B-minor. I'm curious to know...what are your opinions?

[whipped guy]

I think it's the other way around - having survived a music history sequence taught by the associate editor of the Beethoven Journal in the past couple of years, the professor said that from the time of the early Baroque going forward there were definite characteristics associated with the various keys. F minor was the key of abject despair; it wasn't that "a few other composers were 'on' to something" - it was the convention of the time and handed down by oral tradition and so well understood that nobody bothered to write it down in textbooks.

 

His take was that he adoption of Equal temperament (which, as has been noted is not the same as "Well" temperament),

so that the actual audible differences between different keys were lessened and the widespread preponderance of composing piano compositions where key choices were made for technical facility - it's actually easier to play scales involving a number of black keys for getting your thumb under - that the correspondence between moods of the piece and choice of key slowly evaporated.

Actually you are right, and my tongue was in my cheek when I posted that. Beethoven actually for all his rebelliousness was actually conforming to a certain convention. Yes there were conventions dating back to the Baroque period. It continued into the classical period. At least as far as orchestral music was concerned certain instruments could only play in certain keys... Think trumpets... think D-major... think the great Handelian choruses. Also the classical C-major symphonies with trumpets and drums. Consequently the keys of D and C were associated with pomp, circumstance and triumph. D and C were the most common keys, but there were exceptions such as E-flat trumpets in some Bach works and the most famous of all the infamous F trumpet part in Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto!

 

This subject can get quite complicated as C-major being the simplest key can also be associated with simplicity and naïveté.

[whipped guy]

A quick question...some time ago I heard (overheard) a musician state that it is generally concurred that the most beautiful key in music is B-minor. I'm curious to know...what are your opinions?

It is not the most common key out there for some reason. Well there is Bach's beautiful Mass in B-minor. However, I used to play a Haydn piano sonata that is in B-minor and I just pulled out the music to refresh my memory and it is a very sturm und drang affair, and especially the last movement. So it's not a beautiful piece in the classic sense, but rough and rugged. Ironically the middle moment begins as a gentle and very beautiful minuet, but it is in B-major with a tempestuous middle section in B-minor.

 

Still beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

[AdamSmith]

 

[AdamSmith]

 

This seized me as ideal subject matter for a paper for Jale class Lit 132: Reading and Rhetorical Structures, i.e., Deconstruction 101, taught by 2 profs giving the lectures in tandem:

 

Paul de Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Man

 

and Geoffrey Hartmann https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hartman

 

Each would "deconstruct" for us the previous one's lecture.

 

A glorious adventure into ze mind, ze word, ze world!

 

The key literary aesthetic concept relevant to Chuck's sublime artistry was self-reflexiveness.

[AdamSmith]

Your analysis here BTW applies with equally surgical precision to poetry.

 

It has to do I think with coming up with one idea that actually bears investigating. As versus a scatter of what look like thoughts but are not even.

Strikes me that Inferno is possibly the supreme instance of this.

 

Followed I would insist (annoyingly so ) by the whole corpus of Shakespeare.

 

After that, our judgments get regional and temporal.

[AdamSmith]

Carpenter's F major is, almost humanly unimaginable, worse than Virgil.

 

He manages to turn the rather magnificent (within some limits) Sydney organ into a Mellotron.

[AdamSmith]

His take was that he adoption of Equal temperament (which, as has been noted is not the same as "Well" temperament),

so that the actual audible differences between different keys were lessened and the widespread preponderance of composing piano compositions where key choices were made for technical facility - it's actually easier to play scales involving a number of black keys for getting your thumb under - that the correspondence between moods of the piece and choice of key slowly evaporated.

Equal temperament has been a unique evil to music.

 

The strict technical requirement to get all the three (four, actually) divergent sources ultimately incorporated into the Duke Flentrop organ into harmonic convergence under its 1695 Chaumont temperament was the one sole thing that let it succeed in being able to play with fidelity the four, very different, repertoires it can handle.

[AdamSmith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhLeaFtlCQ8

[AdamSmith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhLeaFtlCQ8

@whipped guy, the 4 singers here, at the very end before the concluding bars, really seem to fail greatly. Do you agree? And if so, wonder why?

 

My ideal performances are (granted all the stuff that comes with them) first Bernstein, and then Schmidt-Isserschedt with the same vocal performers.

[AdamSmith]

Memorable moment: During the fugue, he stopped conducting for about sixteen bars. Just leaned back and listened to it. Fascinating. Scary as all hell, too! I was 20 at the time.

Watching a lot of him, he is the most 'non-interventionist' conductor I've ever seen.

 

To great effect! He gives what technical direction is essential, but lets the performers themselves discover their own most magnificent interpretation of it.

[+ sync]

I have always enjoyed watching the conductors nearly as much as I have listening to the music. In the years that I attended the Riverside Church in New York, Frederick Swann was the Director of Music and Organist. I was transfixed many times watching as he played the most lush/ornamented/spirited accompaniments for the choir while also conducting the choir from the organ console; not just the time, entrances and cut-offs, but the dynamics as well. I suppose for experienced professionals it was all business-as-usual, but it was mesmerizing for me. I don't understand how it is even possible to train for that kind of coordination.

[AdamSmith]

@whipped guy, the 4 singers here, at the very end before the concluding bars, really seem to fail greatly. Do you agree? And if so, wonder why?

 

My ideal performances are (granted all the stuff that comes with them) first Bernstein, and then Schmidt-Isserschedt with the same vocal performers.

Just listened to whole thing. Abjure all above statements.

[AdamSmith]

The Duke Flentrop is in the 1695 Chaumont temperament.

 

Rather than being one of many early steps on the road toward mean tone, it turns out this was instead one of many early, and farseeing, criticisms of the meantone idea. Relevant, aesthetically and far beyond that, to this day.

 

http://harpsichords.pbworks.com/w/page/16830825/Temperament_Ordinaire

 

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~dtl/136126/36hj_chl.html

[whipped guy]

@whipped guy, the 4 singers here, at the very end before the concluding bars, really seem to fail greatly. Do you agree? And if so, wonder why?

 

My ideal performances are (granted all the stuff that comes with them) first Bernstein, and then Schmidt-Isserschedt with the same vocal performers.

 

Just listened to whole thing. Abjure all above statements.

 

Late to the party as is often the case! I just noticed this! The four singers didn't sound half bad to me! So your abjuration has been accepted! Also the chorus is the same on the two recordings that you mention, but not the soloists. The Schmidt-Isserstedt interestingly has Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne who were on the verge of being the hottest duo in opera at the time. I always wondered if the choice was based on marketing, but I do recall hearing the recording at the time it was released and did enjoy it. Actually it probably was an inspired choice as you add in James King and Martti Talvela and you have four strong soloist who could handle anything that Mad Ludwig (who really did not know how to write for the voice) could throw at them!

[AdamSmith]

four strong soloist who could handle anything that Mad Ludwig (who really did not know how to write for the voice) could throw at them!

Most specifically the absurdly impossible coloratura of that third recitativ. Their inhumanly technically assured, and with full great musicianship, navigation of that passage eventually had me wondering, Are they really human like you and me, or some superior alien vocal species?

 

I mentioned reading somewhere that Beethoven told someone that when composing instrumental music, it never occurred to him to think about difficulty of performance, but writing for voice, he had to continually stop and ask himself, Can they sing this?

[AdamSmith]

[whipped guy]

What is hilarious is that the the made up lyrics are actually on a much higher level than those of the Schiller original... Speaking of which we should thank the gods of Elysium that Beethoven did not set the whole thing!

 

Of the lines Beethoven did set here is my favorite:

 

Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben

 

Typical translation : She (Nature) gave lust for life to the lowliest

 

Literal translation: Pleasure was given to the worm

 

Reason enough to be joyous indeed!

[AdamSmith]

What is hilarious is that the the made up lyrics are actually on a much higher level than those of the Schiller original... Speaking of which we should thank the gods of Elysium that Beethoven did not set the whole thing!

 

Of the lines Beethoven did set here is my favorite:

 

Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben

 

Typical translation : She (Nature) gave lust for life to the lowliest

 

Literal translation: Pleasure was given to the worm

 

Reason enough to be joyous indeed!

LMMFAO

 

The national enshrinement of Schiller tells everything.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co