Beethoven: the face of evil
From the speculations of Pythagoras about the "music of the spheres" in ancient Greece onwards, most western musicians had agreed that musical beauty was based on a mysterious connection between sound and mathematics, and that this provided music with an objective goal, something that transcended the individual composer's idiosyncrasies and aspired to the universal. Beethoven managed to put an end to this noble tradition by inaugurating a barbaric U-turn away from an other-directed music to an inward-directed, narcissistic focus on the composer himself and his own tortured soul.Now I'm not defending Beethoven out of any real love for the guy, but for me, this is a bit like saying Shakespeare ruined the dramatic form. Maybe the lack of attention is starting to affect these critics' heads?
3 Comment(s):
I have no idea why Mr Evans got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. If Beethoven's music is "a barbaric U-turn", I shudder to think what Mr Evans thinks of today's punk rock scene.
If the 6th Symphony (or the 7th, or 9th) and the Sonatas are barbaric, then all of Western music is as bubbling lava.
He probably thinks Beethoven was responsible for punk rock too. Beethoven was definitely a turning point and not everything that came after has been good but it's not all bad either. If music innovation had ended with Mozart we'd probably all be awfully bored by now.
I wholeheartedly agree with your post. That Evans guy is smoking crack. Or perhaps he woke up constipated that day?
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