Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5, an appreciation by Leon Botstein

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Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5, an appreciation by Leon Botstein발음듣기

Speaking about Beethoven is hard because his name is so famous.발음듣기

And the romantic image of Beethoven is so engrained in our memory.발음듣기

Some of it is pretty true, that he was quite eccentric and mad and impolite, and unpredictable.발음듣기

He was also, and that's very important, deaf.발음듣기

And he was deaf when he wrote this symphony.발음듣기

It's very important to remember, because a musician who is going deaf is losing his purpose for life.발음듣기

This symphony is very closely related to thoughts of suicide that the composer had, which he confided in a famous private letter.발음듣기

He was also a great virtuoso, which means he expected to have a brilliant career and he came from a pretty tough family with a drunken father who was a musician.발음듣기

The important thing is to realize that he came to Vienna in 1791, the year Mozart died.발음듣기

He studied with Haydn, but he wanted to become the heir, as in any dynasty.발음듣기

He wanted to be the next big star in this world of classical music, which was dominated by patrons, kings and queens and counts and royalty and aristocracy. And they were all amateurs.발음듣기

So he was writing for his patrons. They were really the public.발음듣기

It wasn't really a large public out there.발음듣기

People who subscribed to music magazines, but there was no public concerts in the ordinary sense. He put on concerts himself.발음듣기

In fact, the concert that was done when the Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was premiered, together with the Sixth Symphony, it was a public concert.발음듣기

But that public is a really elite public.발음듣기

It's Park Avenue and the Gold Coast of Chicago, and just a couple of people. And that's it.발음듣기

So it's not a mass public as we know it.발음듣기

But he's communicated to them and he's showing how good he is at something new.발음듣기

We think of classical music always as people listening to things that they already know, that are old.발음듣기

That wasn't the case in the early 19th century.발음듣기

In addition, there was a tradition of symphonies that were sort of battle symphonies that entertained people.발음듣기

There were no moving pictures, so people sat around and they half-listened to something tell a story in a very tone-painting way, illustrative way.발음듣기

You hear birds, you hear cannons, and stuff like that.발음듣기

Now he comes up with the idea he's going to do something that is going to impress his patrons, and that also expresses, in a way, his own sensibility.발음듣기

So his personal subjective feelings becomes the subject of the symphony in his mind, which is why the first great review of this symphony called it really the high point of romanticism, because here is this subjective personality expressing himself, and he does it with utter brilliance and economy.발음듣기

He takes this very simple musical idea.발음듣기

It's like a game, like an improvisatory game.발음듣기

You take the simplest musical idea, four notes, and can you make a castle out of four notes? And indeed he does.발음듣기

The first movement, which is its most famous movement, is a dense, absolutely compact, brilliant one long sentence, with no periods, no commas.발음듣기

Sounds like it's periods, commas, they're only semicolons, you know.발음듣기

And the whole thing is like a one paragraph, one sentence. One breath, and it's over.발음듣기

And it is mind-shattering because it's completely unexpected and novel. He was fearless.발음듣기

In addition, he wanted to make a symphony that was not made of separate pieces.발음듣기

He didn't want, like, a meal.발음듣기

He didn't want the soup and then came the main course, and then some other course, then came the dessert.발음듣기

No. He wanted to have something that would go all together.발음듣기

If you look carefully at the symphony, you discover it has almost one pulse.발음듣기

There's sort of a tick-tock of the first movement becomes really the tick-tock of the second movement, which becomes the tick-tock of the third movement, which becomes the pulse of the last movement. And he does something.발음듣기

He fuses the third and fourth movements together.발음듣기

Therefore, he makes the job simpler.발음듣기

He doesn't have four pieces to put together and four movements. He's got only three, really.발음듣기

And the first is so startling, goes by so quickly, by the time you recover from the second, you're in the last piece, which are the third and fourth together, right?발음듣기

And it ends in a blaze of glory, sort of these hammer blows of these C-major chords at the end.발음듣기

Starts in dark minor and opens triumphantly in major.발음듣기

It's somehow so electrifying, so startling, that it is ...발음듣기

And so memorable that everybody has chosen it as his or her favorite emblem.발음듣기

In the Second World War, the opening is for victory. Both sides use it.발음듣기

You know, nobody can own this.발음듣기

This is like a slippery snake which you never can grab onto. It always changes its colors.발음듣기

It's a piece that went rapidly into the literature as the most famous symphony written.발음듣기

It is simply unforgettable, and it never wears out its welcome.발음듣기

There are generations where it was performed very slowly, and then, there is now a new fashion, very quickly, the first movement.발음듣기

Whatever tempo you take it, fast or slow, you can't kill it. It beats you every time.발음듣기

It is simply baffling how imaginative the composer is in using so little, and how unexpected the rhythmic punctuation, the use of silence, and the dramatic aspect of it.발음듣기

This is the first time the symphony wakes up and is a dramatic essay.발음듣기

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