The Notorious LVB 1804-1805

A Little Background Music:

If you want to get technical, we really have to start in 1802, with what is known as Beethoven's "Heiligenstadt Testament":

"Oh, you men, who think or say that I am evil or misanthropic how immensely you wrong me. You do not know the secret reason... For six years now I have been horribly afflicted... Ah how could I possibly admit a weakness in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others? A sense which I once possessed in the greatest perfection? Oh, I cannot do it; so forgive me when you see me retreat when I would have gladly spoken with you... I must live alone as if banished."

Well, someone needs a hug!

Seriously, I'm using this after the pandemic for people I plan to socially distance from permanently.  And the deafness part would not be a complete lie, either. 

And for all we know he could be talking about impotence or flatulence. (Yet yet another conspiracy theory!) 

But no, it's his loss of hearing. It's hitting LVB hard, so he's hitting back even harder, at least on his pianos, which he is literally destroying (hear that Jerry Lee, Leon, Elton?) after banging on them so hard to hear the notes. It's no surprise that he considered suicide. Luckily for all, he didn't go through with it, and instead buckled down and wrote his ass off, while, for all intents and purposes, he wore earplugs.

The Third Symphony:

Technically he started composing it back in 1803. But if you're going to single-handedly shove Classical music into the Romantic period it's gonna take a little while.

He had originally thought of naming it after Napoleon, who had been doing some pretty cool things up to that time. But in 1804, when Nappy named himself Emperor, Beethoven angrily rejected him with the immortal words "Well then, fuck that guy". He renamed it the Heroic Symphony, spelled Eroica, which I misread as Erotica, which shows where my mind was/is.

So it's not Napoleonic or Erotic, it's Heroic, which the woke young people tell me is secret code for Homo-erotic. But hey, so's the whole Western canon, and I think, football, right?

Anyway, he finally gets around to having it performed privately, but the public would have to wait a year. Reminds me of The Basement Tapes.

Or maybe Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, because some people loved it and some hated it. And then years later everybody acknowledged it as a masterpiece and acted like they thought so all along. Like hating Hitler or loving the Ramones.

So how is it?

The first movement starts off with a Bang - On the One, as they say - followed by a mini-crescendo barely a minute in. He continues with all kinds of tricky stop-and-go rhythms, keeping it up for a few minutes,  taking the dare that he can keep this up. He really is the shit at this point.

And it never settles into one single theme. Lotsa little ones, though. (Side two of Abbey Road maybe? Or side one of Low.)

The second movement is the supposedly quiet Funeral March. (Wait, shouldn't that be at the end?) but it's really more pained and dramatic than sad. This is where I think LVB is really dedicating this to himself. To the death of his own hearing. Things wander a bit but not in a boring way. (The White Album?) It just goes its own way, with a slower pace (because funerals are usually upbeat Jaybee?). By the time things pick up, I've changed the volume about thirty times. Very ballsy to go for twelve minutes like this.  But it's gathering momentum.

The third movement takes it from there and clocks in at a relatively short five minutes. striking me as the most traditional-sounding part of this piece. 

The fourth does its level best to kick your ass. and largely succeeds because (gross generalization coming up) it's so much more dramatic and energetic than most classical music that came before. It even plays like movie music for a bit. As if you can really imagine it being used during a battle or chase scene. 

There’s definitely something new and different going on here. It’s like he knows exactly what he wants to do and doesn’t care if - but is sure you will - like it. The rules are out the window, along with his hearing.

One could say he's stretching out, finally becoming himself. Or that since he could no longer hear he had to work harder to make his point. (See those broken pianos above, I guess.) I've even read that LVB's deafness may have "freed" him from being distracted by the musical trends of his day, and thus enabled him to go his own way. As if he wasn't gonna do that in the first place! But I get it.

As shocking in its own way as Stravinsky's Rite of Spring would be a hundred years later, but with a friendlier reception. I guess people weren't such stupid fucking assholes back then. But then again, life's a lot simpler if you've got a bunch of servants or slaves doing all the hard stuff for you, isn't it? And there's no Karl Marx around yet to stir things up yet again (see Napolean). Ah, those were the days! And all those Stravinsky haters would get it out of their system with World War 1.

This one runs longer than the second (which itself was longer than the first). London Calling after Give 'Em Enough Rope?

But after all is said and done I like what I like because I like it, so I still give the edge to the First Symphony.

A-

This must have been pretty wild to see live. See for yourself:

"Beethoven's Third Symphony" with Lenny B conducting

The Notorious LVB: 1802 - 1803

It's 1802, and our friend Ludvig is getting grumpy. He even gets into a fistfight with his brother, who is also his business manager (it's always about the money isn't it?) and they take it to the street, rolling around in the mud. (I'm beginning to really like this guy.)

At least these guys had the class to keep in on the stage:

But then again these blokes not only involve another band but another continent, too.

So what's pissing off Ludvig van? Well, he's starting to realize he's going deaf. This is not you and me in our sixties just having to turn up the volume a bit more. This is a young genius with his whole future in music in doubt. It's understandable that he considers suicide.

The music he premiered in 1803 - mostly written the year before - represents the phase in his career before deafness took over.

Piano Concerto Number 3:

This one's more regal, more Beethovian, and overall less fun than numero uno. 

And the video agrees. Artur/Arthur has that high starched collar that says riff-raff need not apply. And even with us (I assume you're riff-raff, too...) not being in the room Artur/Arthur doesn't seem to be having ANY FUN AT ALL. You wouldn't either if you weren't sure how to spell your own name. But I'll give him this. He gives a shit.

So I'm not saying this is bad. It's just not as playful as the first. And no I don't think it has much to do with Katherina whats-her-name (aside from the fact that she's clearly having a good time). Something is wrong here. Beethoven's losing his hearing and may not even realize it yet. So he's playing it a little safe, even as his abilities increase.

There's a great story about how he was the soloist for the premiere of this piece (more $ that way, you see), and that by then he still hadn't bothered to write a lot of it down, and ended up playing his part from memory. Rehearsals were...tense.  Sounds like a very Dylan thing to do.

Things do pick up at the end of the first movement. And like in the first Concerto the Second movement is that calm oasis before the final movement, which on the whole is okay but not overwhelming.

In short, great for a guy losing his hearing, but just very good in the grand scheme of things.

B+

"Piano Concerto Number Three"

Symphony Two:

This premiered on the same day as the piano concerto! 

It's been said that the odd-numbered symphonies are the best, so it shouldn't be surprising that things aren't a vast improvement from what came before. In fact, it's just as good as number one, just not a quantum leap from it. 

But it is more single-minded, more confident, even with the increasing deafness becoming more apparent. It’s also a little longer than One. LV is stretching out. He knows what he wants to do. He’s emerged with a vision and a complete sense of identity.

And with the first movement, right out of the box, there it is! Kablam! LV is in the house! It's about halfway through when you get that trademark Beethovian seriousness combined with speed, like the early Clash. 

In the first movement, for twelve minutes he wiped the floor with you, but then in the second, for ten minutes, he tries to show you he’s really a sweet guy after all. And convinces you.

In the third movement, things get louder, but not faster. A nice transition.

And in the fourth, it's off to the races, sort of. Fast, slow, loud, quiet - like the Pixies. 

Running thirty-plus minutes - a respectable late-sixties album-length - it's about eight minutes longer than One, which is why I prefer the latter.

If you approach it in terms of vinyl, Symphony One being side one and Symphony Two side two, you might end up thinking Aqualung.

He’s getting better, but the first is still my fave.

 

A-

"Symphony Number Two"

The Notorious LVB: 1801

So our boy is filling out! Looking good and not "scowly" yet. But he is a bit Lennon-y in that this next work was barely done and he starts bitching about it, saying things like "do-over!" So it's all kind of muddy when exactly this was written but I'm going with 1801.

Piano Concerto 1:

Boy, for a piano concerto, there’s a whole lot of everything else going on in it, too. I’m listening for a kazoo right now…

 

So it takes a few minutes before AN ACTUAL PIANO shows up. (Maybe he was late? Okay, piano guy, you're getting an alarm clock for Christmas. Are you happy? Oh, and after the show, you're buying the first round.)

But once there, it goes right to his head and, from then on it's all about him. It's Jerry Lee Lewis before the actual Jerry Lee. He practically gets into a fistfight with the rest of the orchestra. (Doesn't anyone have the guts to fire the guy?? Well, no, because, well, the guy is old Ludvig van.)

So it turns out if all you want to hear is a piano, then you should check out the sonatas, which I have yet to do, so you're on your own.

Anyway, we've lucked out here, because there isn't too much of that fancy pinkie-twinkling they all like to when playing piano and drinking tea. It drives me nuts. If I were the conductor I'd spend the whole time walking around the orchestra like Al Capone, looking for anyone who was doing that, and rapping their knuckles with my baton.

Did you want to hear about the actual music? Well. All. Right.

It’s full to the brim with melody and tempo changes, okay? Ludvig van was most renowned as a piano player when he wrote this, and you can tell he’s already bursting out of that role.

And overall it’s all short and fast - about thirty minutes - so you're not looking at your watch or wishing to burn down the theater. So the rock and roll comparisons, I'd say the first Ramones album, but with a slower start.

And speaking of a cure for getting restless, please check out this performance. If this doesn't make our red-blooded American males fans of classical music nothing will. It will work for lesbians, too I assume. Possibly dead people.

But seriously, the real revelation here is that the pianist is having fun, which up to then was against the law in the Classical music world. There are a couple of parts where she actually shimmies. Watching it made the music more enjoyable and pushed my grade up from a B+.

I guess Neil Young was right. "Live Music is Better" bumper stickers really should be issued. Works for classical music, too!

Maybe especially.

A-

The Notorious LVB: 1800

So it turns out that 2020 was the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. Yeah, I knew that. As of Yesterday! But all this Covidness pushed LVB off the headlines. It's just as well, I would have messed up the math.

Old Ludvig van is popular amongst sociopaths and gets a bad rap as a misanthrope. He would seem to be blowing people off or ignoring them when in fact he was just losing his hearing and became very self-conscious and shy. I think his strategy beats my idiotic "pretending to hear" routine where I nod and smile while someone is telling me their mom just died.

Anyway, on to the music:

First Symphony

I’ve probably listened to this more than any other piece of classical music, both because it’s side one of disc one of the first classical album I ever bought, and that I never got tired of it.

Ludvig Van makes a splash, sort of. It starts out modestly enough, Hadyn in plain sight, then picks up steam. Soon it gets all Moz-arty and finishes with the gusto that seems to say and that ain’t all!

Stately, but with a lot of melody. It isn’t until the fourth movement that you get a real dramatic opening. He’s fast, he’s slow, he’s somber, he’s sprightly, he’s quiet, he’s loud. But he’s not quite Beethoven yet.

So he hits all the marks expected of him, which someone who is about to blow up all those marks ought to do first so people don’t think he’s crazy. Too late, but whatever.

It’s a kitchen sink piece that I’d liken to The White Album, but it’s not nearly as long. It's short and to the point. A rock n roll equivalent might be - depending on your taste the first Monkees, Ramones or Modern Lovers albums, or the American version of Revolver.

And even though it may be my favorite it’s not his peak.

A-

"First Symphony"