Word: beethoven
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...hundred years ago, on his death bed, Ludwig van Beethoven whispered: "Applaud, friends, the comedy is finished." An immortal, it has been said, knows nothing of his immortality...
...London, all the symphonies, chamber music compositions, his only opera Fidelio, were offered. In Boston, at the exact moment of his death, the chimes of Tufts college rang the choral melody of the Ninth Symphony, while chapels, concert halls and symphony orchestras responded with other Beethoven music. In New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, New Orleans, Portland, it was the same. The next day, Sunday, churches of all sects, worshiped in his music. Perhaps the comedy was finished, for every tribute grand enough to be fitting the memory Ludwig van Beethoven consisted of the music created...
Critics, offering comprehensive reasons for his immortality, saw no prospect of his music's passing. Said the "Trenton Tough," George Antheil, he of the "Ballet Mecanique" and the panic-striking propeller (TIME, March 21) : "Beethoven is my hero especially on account of form." Said Music Critic William James Henderson: "The supremacy of tone art lay for him [Beethoven] in the identity of form and substance, of matter and embodiment...
...everyone knows, was regarded as a second-rater during part of the 18th Century, and various imbeciles set themselves to the job of editing and improving him. Even Bach had his twilight, and it took a Mendelssohn to rescue him. But only fools have ever questioned the mightiness of Beethoven-and not many fools...
Well might these admiring unorthodox critics be greeted with a smile from Ludwig van Beethoven, whose deaf ears rang with the Ninth Symphony for 25 years before he entrusted it to the world, who recreated the kettledrum rhythm of the Agnus Die so often that he wore holes in thick paper, who "stood on ground long ago trod by Aristotle who held that the highest art should appeal to the intellect through its perfection in form...