Ludwig Van Beethoven

If you don't understand Beethoven, you don't understand music.

LudwigVanBeethoven was the cleaver which sliced Western Classical Music into two factions, each of which claimed to be the legitimate successor to the throne. The PostClassicalComposers? believed that Beethoven showed that the older forms of Classical music could be stretched even farther in their expression, while the RomanticComposers? believed that the form of a composition must not be a contributing factor, since music must express emotions, rather than abstract concepts. Both schools produced many great composers.

It is not clear that Beethoven knew of his influence, although he lived to see a good part of it. If he did know what he did to the art, it is even less clear which camp he would have identified more with. All that remains are his composition books, and the books which his acquaintances and friends used to communicate with him. These only contain the questions, since he could speak until he was quite dead (deaf!), and he didn't feel the need to write answers he could utter.

No composer has been able to match his exquisite control over the expression of music since, although many have tried, and even exceeded him in grandeur, pomp, and sheer volume and size. He was the bleeding edge, and in many ways still is. -- EvanCofsky

Wasn't it Ludwig Van Beethoven, with an a?

So it was. Sorry about that. -- EvanCofsky

Help me out here. I understand that "von" is German, and "van" is Dutch. Wasn't he German, so shouldn't it be "von"?

His family came from the northern part of Germany, where they used to say van, before the hegemony of modern High German.

Actually, I thought his ancestry was Dutch but von went along with a title and wasn't part of a family name even in Germany.

Beethoven is Immortal because he may have been the greatest composer to ever live. Dust off a copy of that old over-played Beethoven's 5th and listen to the first movement again. You've heard that four note theme a zillion times, but this time try to really listen to it. Listen to how he takes the theme and moves it around from left to right between the speakers. Obviously, that's not an electronic cross-fader, that's the theme being passed around from one handful of musicians to the next, from one section to the next. (Beethoven's 9th does even more amazing "fades" because they are smoother and involve a chorus of vocalists) Listen to how the theme is broken up to two notes, as it is passed around. Listen to it disappear entirely. Try to follow those four notes as they intersect with everything else that's going on. Listen to how there is a whole second piece of music with nothing to do with those four notes for a while: a soft and drifty piece, like a mind wandering ... and yet those four notes come slamming back. I've seen a lot of really good jazz, blue grass, and rock and roll "jam bands" and they all are at their best when they all play like they have ESP and come together and fall apart and come together and it is amazing and beautiful and it is what can happen when multiple brilliant players can achieve and share a MentalStateCalledFlow. Beethoven did it alone. -- EricHerman

Or take a really good recording of the Waldstein sonata. The things he could do with a piano were revolutionary.

This poem is still a work in progress ....

     it is to noise 
     what the Sistine Chapel is to light
     what the statue of David is to form
     what Hamlet is to fantasy
     what the Mona Lisa is to mistery
     it is the best that my culture, western civilization, has given
        Beethoven's 9th.

-- EricHerman (Should the last line be simply "The 9th." ?)

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