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.
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:
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