Word: beethovens
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...Tragic Overture,” is a story of unfulfilled expectations—a dark and nervous piece of music haunted by lyrical dreams of tenderness. Like Beethoven’s third symphony, the “Tragic Overture” opens with two solitary chords. Unlike Beethoven, however, whose opening to his third symphony is bold and heroic, Brahms’ second chord is built unsteadily on a note one step above the tonic and is missing the third entirely. This foreshadows the unmistakable loneliness and emotional dissonance that runs through the entire piece...
...Beethoven slowly lost his hearing, his thoughts turned to suicide. He wrote a surprisingly frank testament in 1802, confessing his frustration at hearing nothing but silence. Tempted to take his own life, Beethoven wrote, “it was only my art that held me back.” Remarkably, his flood of new compositions...
...social skills, on the other hand, rapidly receded. Beethoven squabbled with his friends, and he tried to smash the head of one of his noble patrons with a chair. Fortunately for him, the aristocracy was forgiving. They gave him a generous stipend that plunged in value after the occupation and departure of French soldiers in 1809. That year, his prodigious works slowed to a trickle after he fell for a banker’s wife, Antonie Bretano, whom he referred to as “my Immortal Beloved...
...be—Beethoven would die unmarried, and he knew it. So when his brother Casper became terminally ill, Beethoven pursued sole guardianship of Casper’s son Karl, much to the chagrin of the mother, Johanna. The composer drifted toward insanity, accusing Johanna of prostituting herself and convincing himself that Karl was in fact his own son. Johanna eventually hauled Beethoven into court, where witnesses testified about his incompetence as a guardian, and the court exposed his lack of nobility despite the Dutch predicate “van.” The composer was publicly humiliated...
...heard it before (or at least seen the unspeakably horrible Starz movie network commercial that uses it), the music is undeniably majestic. Morris writes that “for the rest of the century, symphonic composers would struggle in vain to write anything that sounded bigger.” Beethoven, deaf and facing the orchestra, did not realize the audience was enthusiastically clapping until a teenage soprano turned him around...