Happy Birthday Ludwig

I spent most of my college career listening to classical music. I took around 10 music classes in college, though I can't read a note. I once memorized an entire opera in Italian. So I should have remembered that today was the 234th birthday of one of my favorite composers, Ludwig van Beethoven. Of course I didn't but luckily NPR was there to remind me.

My real introduction to classical music was the 1984 movie "Amadeus", easily one of my top 4 favorite films. I've seen the movie over 50 times and can recite the lines along with actors, mimicking facial expressions and hand gestures. I didn't see the movie till I was 10 but I remember being dumbstruck by the music I heard. And soon after I received the soundtrack as a Chanukah present, cementing my love of this heavenly music.

It wasn't until I was older that I really appreciated anyone else apart from Mozart. Sure I had dabbled in Baroque, because really, who wouldn't love Bach? But my first and only true love was the tragic figure of Wolfgang M., who died young but left such a dazzling legacy. It took my first boyfriend to open my eyes to the world of Beethoven. I remember we were once sitting in the lobby of some hotel, waiting for the rain to stop, and debating our favorite songs. He asked me which piece of music I would never grow tired of hearing. Being all sorts of young and naive at that point I thought and answered "Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes". A good song but not one of infinite value. His response was a quick "Beethoven's 9th". Oddly, I knew the basic tune that everyone knows but not much more. At his urging I slowly started listening to the piece. It was soon after the I fell head over heels for the boy and for the music.

One of my goals in entering college was to take a class purely on Mozart and just my luck, one was offered second semester of my freshman year. Though I was well versed in Mozart's concerti, symphonies and operas, the man wrote over 600 pieces of music and I learned a lot that semester. However it was not until the next semester when I took a class purely on Beethoven that I learned more than just how to interpret the pieces. Over the course of that semester I learned about Beethoven's less than perfect life, his struggle against...pretty much everything including his famous deafness. And along with this life history, I heard pieces to complement it. He wrote symphonies that pushed the boundaries of what a symphony should be, breaking the bonds of the classical format. The first movement of his 3rd symphony was longer than most other composer's entire 4 movement works. In the 5th, he took a basic rhythm and made it one of the most recognizable beats in the world. His singular opera, "Fidelio", while the story itself was heavily flawed and endearingly naive, featured the most beautiful quartet I have ever heard. The ideals of brotherhood and love that he treats so reverently in the 9th have it roots even there. His late piano sonatas and concerti show a depth and a sadness almost unbearable. But we all know it was in his 9th and final symphony that his true genius was revealed.

Wagner once wrote that all of German music was clearly leading up to him, from Bach through Beethoven. He cited the fact that in the 9th, Beethoven had to eventually use words to express the desired emotions. A bit egotistic if you ask me. However he was right and Beethoven did seem to need that poem by Friedrich Schiller to articulate his feelings. The beginning of the fourth movement quotes a bit from each of the previous 3 and one commentator has said that when the Bass said "O Freunde nicht diese Tone" (Oh friends not these tunes) it's as though he is rejecting the motives from the 3 prior movement because they do not properly proclaim his beliefs. He is successful with the simple folk tune of An Die Freude, which builds and builds till it becomes the truly triumphant ode to joy that transfixes all who hear it. The rest of the movement when played correctly makes one believe that maybe there is such a thing a bliss, no matter how fleeting.

Mozart had "Amadeus" but poor Beethoven had only the exceedingly poor film, "Immortal Beloved". They tried so very hard to give the man his due, but achieved only a visually stunning movie with a soaring soundtrack and a script that should have been burned. The maestro, as he was repeatedly referred to, deserved better. My boyfriend at the time, the same one who had introduced me to the joys of Beethoven, insisted we see the film. I had forced him to watch "Amadeus" and though he did agree that it was remarkable, he believed that a biopic about his musical idol would clearly be superior. Alas, the movie was awful, even he could see that. But I will never forget sitting in the balcony of a theatre on 68th and Broadway, hearing the second movement from Beethoven's 7th fill the cavernous auditorium and my usually stoic significant other taking my hand as slow tears trickled down his face. Things didn't end well for us but I can never forget the man who cried at Beethoven. And I'll always thank Beethoven for giving me such a moment.