Word: beethovens
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...Beethoven's reputation is what you might call secure--except, apparently, in China. Recently, under the scrutiny of the Music Institute of the May 7 Central Arts Academy, he has been found decidedly wanting. The new Chinese position describes Beethoven as a "19th Century capitalist composer" whose music reflects unhealthy ideals. Beethoven is said to be a counter-revolutionary political force, "just the right thing for a handful of class enemies inside and outside the country...
...earlier broad attacks on Beethoven and Schubert were more clearly directed at the music itself. The criticism goes beyond the notion that the class and status of a composer affects the music he writes. Social conditions obviously govern any artist's work, but in instrumental music it isn't always' clear that the finished product conveys any more than abstract emotion to the listener. Music is the purest form of art. When the writers of the late 19th century Aesthetic movement wished to avoid the moral questions posed by their own art they tried to imitate the social indifference...
Thus while the opening movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony suggest some wild, overwhelming power to almost everyone, there is no way to say what the power represents. Beethoven described the opening theme as "fate knocking at the door." He dedicated another symphony to the memory of the great man he thought Napoleon had once been. Fate, individualism, the strength of a great man--these are the ideas a traditional 19th century mind brings to the work. But if these ideas were foreign to the listener the music could just as easily suggest the drama of collective action or revolutionary...
...more cogent criticism of Beethoven is that, at least in his late works, his art is elite, accessible only to a few, and therefore that it helps maintain divisions within society. Late in his life, Leo Tolstoy wrote that "great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone." He condemned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (though not his Fifth) because he felt it was exclusive. Tolstoy thought it would bring those people "specially trained to submit themselves to its complex hypnotism" together and divide them from the rest of mankind. In Tolstoy...
CURRIER SCR--Erica Klemperer, violinist, in recital, Music of Beethoven, Dvorak, Bach, Ravel, Smetana. Free. Sunday, February...