Beethoven & Co.

Undoubtedly, Symphony No. 3 A Pastoral Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Again, we have Beethoven to thank for expressly Romantic concept of a pastoral symphony, with, ironically, Vaughan Williams' symphony representing a post-WWI swan song of the form.

Even Williams' later work in a similarly melodic and reflective manner (e.g. Symphony No. 5), shows a striking difference. The social dissonance of the post war period becomes fully incorporated into a style that reflects some of the many cross-currents of musical thought that came into fruition at that time.

But Symphony No. 3 is not there yet - rather it is a first attempt to reconcile the Romantic tradition with the modern phenomenom of mass slaughter through the medium of a modal, folk-tune influenced, elegy. As such, it still conveys a sense of wide-eyed innocence come face-to-face with horror, and a recoiling into older and calmer thoughts in an attempt to assimilate these unwelcome events.

I recently listened to a fascinating BBC radio play recreating the last days of Franz Schubert. On his death bed, Schubert requested and received a performance of this ethereal work.

The play suggests, and quite reasonably in my opinion, that Schubert believed that the Beethoven quartet would cure him of his terminal syphillis. The play cleverly interweaves a commentary by the performers of the piece (the Coull Quartet) with the dramatization giving a simultaneous musicological and dramatic flavor to the performance.

It works very well as a play, but in truth the music, even played only as excerpts in this case, simply overwhelms the drama. The spiritual power of Beethoven manifested in this (and the other late quartets) is as direct a route to God (or the transcendent stream of life) as you will find. No wonder Schubert craved a performance before his death - one can only hope that the performance eased his passage into the afterlife. I suspect it did.

For år tilbage var der en lokalradio i min hjemby, som kørte en udsendelsesserie med det navn, som min titel henviser til: Musik i kjole og hvidt. Der lå afgjort ingen dybsindigheder gemt i navnet. Udsendelserne handlede simpelthen om klassisk musik.

Jeg husker ikke, om der egentlig blev sagt noget særligt; men jeg tror nok, at udsendelseslederen simpelthen spillede nogle plader fra sin personlige samling og sagde nogle få (og temmelig banale) ord om hvert musikstykke.

Og man havde altså valgt et navn, der gav et ganske klart signal. Man betonede en påklædningsmæssig konvention hos mandlige klassiske musikere, der intet har med selve musikken at gøre. Man cementerede den uhyggelige fordom om, at denne musik er for et højere borgerskab, der længes tilbage til de gode gamle dage, da der virkelig var klasseforskelle.

Intet kan være fjernere fra sandheden. Når klassisk musik virkelig lever op til sit navn, er den frigjort fra alle samfundsmæssige skel.

As far as I can see this is so far the only group in the Opera Community that deals with socalled classical music, mainly but not exclusively European classical music. I believe that puts a special responsibility on me as the creator of the group. I need to try to answer some questions that I might not need to deal with if there were more groups in the same category.

The first of those questions is the banal one:

What is classical music?

I have chosen to answer this question the easy way by creating two links in the first paragraph to articles that give comprehensive answers.

And then I get to the second question, the one from the title:

Why listen to classical music?

My own answer to this is:

To gain better insight in the fundamental laws of existence

I suppose that this may be a real shocker for some readers, but I mean quite literally what I say. The central fact is this one:

Music of high quality contains wisdom. It also contains beauty and health, but for me the possibility of gaining wisdom is the most important. Quality music is an important tool in the quest of coming closer to understanding the principles of existence.

And you will find lots and lots and lots of high quality music if you dive down in one of those musical traditions that have won the name of being classical.

I may return with a more comprehensive answer to the question later, but for now this will have to do.

Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert have much in common. If we look at their lives and their works we see a shared unity of time, place and action though not quite in the sense that Aristotle used the phrase.

Considering the fact that they have so much in common it is rather surprising that so many people love Beethoven's music but distinctly dislike Schubert's. I have wondered about this and I believe that I may have found a useful explanation. The short version is:

• Schubert was one of the greatest "blues" composers in classical music. Of course not in the strict sense of the musical term, blues, but more in a psycological sense.
  
  
• Beethoven was not at all a blues composer.

But let's get back to what they have in common:

The time

Franz Schubert was born when Beethoven was a successfull young composer and died only a few months after Beethoven.

The place

Schubert was born and lived his entire life in Vienna. Beethoven had moved to Vienna before the birth of Schubert and stayed there for the rest of his life.

Musical style

Both were influenced by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and what you might call standard Viennese classical style in the early phases of their careers as composers. Later on they both went their own ways.

Some of the elements in Beethoven's music in his second period are significant influences in Schubert's late music. Perhaps this is most obvious in their string quartets. Beethoven never really continued in the "symphonic" style of quartet writing that he used in the Razumovsky quartets op. 59, but Schubert followed that line in his last quartets and his string quintet.

Love of nature

Beethoven's deep love of nature is well-known and well documented and shows in his music too. This may not be true of Schubert to quite the same degree, but still he chose lots of texts for his songs that show love of nature.

Political opinion

Austria at their time was a police state. Schubert on one occasion very nearly got himself arrested by the political police. His song, Die Forelle, is a political allegory. And there are many indications that Beethoven in spite of his close relation to Viennese nobility was a strong proponent of political freedom.

Religion and spirituality

There can be absolutely no doubt that Schubert was a deeply religious man. Beethoven's attitude may have been more independent of conventional Catholic ecclesiastical views, but there are countless evidences of his spirituality.

Illness

Illness played a defining role for their lives and for their works as composers. But now we have reached a point where their conditions of life did not only show similarity but also a defining difference:

• Beethoven was hit by deafness at an early age, a disaster for a composer that has ruined the lives of other composers who were not personalities of Beethoven's formidable calibre. But Beethoven rose to the challenge and used it to become an even greater composer than he already was.
  
  
• Schubert was infected with syphilis.

The fundamental difference

What are the special qualities of Beethoven's music? There are many, but there are a few that are especially interesting in this context. I believe that the most central and important ones are these:

• Purity. There is never one single moment of something demonic or otherwise unhealthy in his music.
  
  
• Dignity. Absolute dignity. Not all of Beethoven's music may be of the very highest quality (he wrote lots of dances of little significance), but he is always completely honest in his music. And there is never the slightest trace of something that might be interpreted as self pity. Pain and sorrow, yes, but nothing to suggest that he ever felt sorry for himself. This last point is what caused me to write in the beginning that Beethoven was not a blues composer.

And what about Schubert? I won't go into details, but I do believe that I find significant contrasts to Beethoven here.

• In many places in Schubert's late music I seem to hear something morbid and demonic. Evidences of a world in breakdown.
  
  
• There are also traces of something that I tend to interpret as self pity though this may not be fair on Schubert. This is why I called Schubert a blues composer.

In short: Beethoven's music is always completely healthy. Schubert's is not. This difference mirrors the difference between their illnesses.

• It is a very good guess that Beethoven's deafness may partly have been a result of his attempts to press his excellent hearing sense to the extreme in order to gain the ultimate understanding of music.
  
  
• Schubert's syphilis was a result of not being able to control his desire for sexual pleasure.

I love Schubert's music dearly, but I do understand that some people feel uneasy with it. And their reaction may have something to do with what I have written here.