tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67673646504773581742024-03-13T07:56:55.813-07:00ACROSS THE EXTREMESNotes on The Late Period of Beethoven.
By Diego AgullóUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-71734932274870552142010-09-27T16:48:00.000-07:002013-04-30T04:50:34.351-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">A C R O S S <span style="color: white;">_</span> T H E <span style="color: white;">_</span> E X T R E M E S</span><span style="font-size: 130%;">
</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">The late period of Beethoven </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This text is dedicated to Miguel Copón</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><b>INTRODUCTION</b><br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Whoever walks in darkness is less lonely if they sing.
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<br />The challenge is not how one´s own life becomes paradoxical but how one´s own contradictions are the gears of a machine appealing enough to still producing harmonic resonances
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">We usually read about Beethoven´s deafness but it´s not so common to read that Beethoven was speechless. Silence is the language that corresponds to the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">tragic hero.</span></span> <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">What does it mean? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;">Don´t throw away the ladder. </span><br />
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<br />If talking about music is already a difficult task, what makes this task even more difficult in Beethoven´s late period?
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">In 1770 Beethoven, Hegel and Hölderlin were born.</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Is it that art is a way of being in <span style="color: black; font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 100%;">silence</span>? Is music a way of silence? Is it that silence is the language of the artist? <span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Tractatus 7<span style="font-style: italic;">:<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen</span>.</span> </span>But what does Wittgenstein understand by <span style="font-style: italic;">sagen </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">sprechen? </span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Was Wittgenstein a frustrated musician?</span> <span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Schumann asking himself: <span style="font-style: italic;">Should I become a poet or a musician? </span></span></span>
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</span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 100%;">Tractatus 6.522 <span style="font-style: italic;">There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical</span>. </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"></span>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Robert S.Kahn on his book about </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Grosse Fuge op. 133</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">asks<span style="font-style: italic;"> what in God´s name is going on here? Why would anyone write something like this? </span>He </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">collects adjectives that have been given to the Grosse Fuge since it was compossed: atonishing, incomprensible, abstruse, bizarre, unharmonious, extravagant, inconsequential, unplayable, surpasses the bounds of musical performance, tiresome, waste of sound, impracticable, cerebral, repellent, unintelligible, impenetrable, pathological eccentricity.
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<br />The Grosse Fuge received only three public performances in the seventy five years after it was written.
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<br />Adorno perfectly knew that the late period of Beethoven does not permit itself to be spoken about so easily, there is an unusual difficulty in saying precisely what is all about.
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</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven moved house 27 times.</span></span>
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</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">The music of the Beethoven´s late period inhabitates the limits of the world. He not only drew the limits of the language of tonal music but also pushed them and expanded them without going beyond them, without being atonal, This is an example how a musician can undermine a system from inside the system, using tactics, not strategies. Not to suppress tonality but to turn it loose.
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<br />Wittgenstein knew that to define the limits of the language is a difficult task, however, this task should be perform from inside the language, never from outside, basically because the outside means the nonsense and only in case you have a ladder. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">What we cannot speak about, must we play music?</span></span>
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">When Beethoven stopped playing on the piano, someone asked him about the meaning of what he had played. Beethoven´s answer was to play again on the piano the same music. Words are only mediations. Stendhal on his book about Rossini wrote:<span style="font-style: italic;"> the domain of music begins when we are not able to speak. </span>Is music the limit of language? But which language? which music?<span style="font-style: italic;">
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</span>Glenn Gould is dancing.
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">The late string quartets are no longer a dialogue between two </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">reasonable </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">people but rather an internal dialogism. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven translates a microcosm.</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
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<br />To talk about the late period on Beethoven demands to bring into play the solipsism. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractactus 5. The limits of the language means the limits of my world</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">5.62. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said , but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. 5.621 The world and life are one</span>.<span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;"> 5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.) </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Some of the last compositions of Beethoven are still considered as solipsim</span>.
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">The question of the late period of Beethoven is the question about the limits of the world. It´s all about limits, how the limits are drawn</span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">When somebody says: <span style="font-style: italic;">I don´t understand this</span>, means that there is a incompatibility between the limits of this person´s world/language and the limits of what is to be understood</span>.<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> Being more precise, is not about expanding, the limits were already there, but rather lighting a little further.</span> <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">In this sense music can be a mirror if there is symmetry in the limits but much more better if music is rather a lamp</span> <span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 100%;">that <span style="font-size: 130%;">irritates</span> your retina and demands a dilatation of one´s own limits.</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">They are well known the Joseph de Marliave´s words referring to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Grosse Fuge:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">the attitude of mind in which people listen to chamber music must undergo a radical change.</span> Indeed, Beethoven is demanding from the audience another attitude, as Immanuel Kant and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sapere aude</span> (Dare to know), Beethoven says <span style="font-style: italic;">Exaudio aude </span>(Dare to listen) and therefore to know</span>.
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Nietzsche and Adorno were musicians. Can we philosophize without words? Can music be philosophy?</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">But how do we understand music? in the same way as when we say the proposition <span style="font-style: italic;">It´s raining</span></span>? <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Music is not true or false, music can not lie</span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">If I say: I<span style="font-style: italic;">t´s raining </span>while I see the rain out of the window</span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">someone could say: that´s true! But if I go out and immediately I step on the street and a cold drip drills my head before I can say that it rains I will know because my body feels the thrill of raining on my head</span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">I think music is like this, music is much more precise than verbal thought. We can understand music without being able to talk about music</span>.
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Nietzsche: <span style="font-style: italic;">the ear is the organ of fear</span></span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven wasn´t afraid at all.</span>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven was a survivor. The audacity to deepen one´s own spirit, the introspective journey, the inner wealth. Philosopher and musician share the same solitude and both can not integrate in a social environment. Own´s body becomes battlefield and space for research. The artist is the one who experiences dangers, risks.
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<br />Art affects us as life affects us.
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<br />Art intensifies our experience. Art teaches us, makes us see what before we didn´t notice that was already there producing effects. Art is a tool to approach reality and get certain knowledge reaching parts of the experience that without art we could never reach.
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</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_WJpPHg3VaUzma7tMhIfdWxemQrVRz8pD9FYlhSrNEKkpSNztkqSYj52vd4Hd22gEo97s3E3Jkh2M_zTLTiq5sUsc_CspbHGNWUxkYJoTUFkjuC8bTI0ZcEKrYh5fnPY4oUjw4oiHpTY/s1600/beeth.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5631062639275424882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_WJpPHg3VaUzma7tMhIfdWxemQrVRz8pD9FYlhSrNEKkpSNztkqSYj52vd4Hd22gEo97s3E3Jkh2M_zTLTiq5sUsc_CspbHGNWUxkYJoTUFkjuC8bTI0ZcEKrYh5fnPY4oUjw4oiHpTY/s400/beeth.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 331px; width: 400px;" /></a>
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 180%; font-weight: bold;">SUSPENDED TIME: THE ZOOM IN
</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 100%;">Beethoven and Giacinto Scelsi.
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</span>In 1825 the String Quartet op. 132 was composed.</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>During sketching this piece, Beethoven was stricken with an intestinal inflammation, big pain. This body process of illness and recovery affected directly the composition of this quartet. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">The core of this piece is the third movement, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">the Adagio. Beethoven wrote a header for it: <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">or in english <span style="font-style: italic;">A convalescent´s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode</span></span></span>.
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">This Adagio represents Beethoven´s labor of minimizing the musical expression to its essence; it contains only two melodic ideas. He makes us see the structure, is the opposite of using ornaments, music is bare. Beethoven makes<span style="font-size: 180%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 130%;">zoom in</span> in music. The music leaves the striated space of the form to explore with the microscope the pure duration of time.
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<br />Giacinto Scelsi, another solitary man, didn´t suffer from intestinal inflammation but he got into a deep depression</span> <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">after his wife left him. As a therapy for this breakdown, and following neurotic patterns that remind us of Hölderlin, he spent his days with the simple task of playing the same note on the piano. Yes: the same note over and over again. This mystical trance, listening obsessively to the same note brought him to experience that <span style="font-size: 130%;">sound is<span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">spherica</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">l</span></span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">In just one single sound is the entire cosmos. </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Scelsi brought into his music the last quartest of Beethoven and if we listen to the Adagio we find the door that Scelsi went </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">through: to reduce music into its most minimal essence.
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</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">But what happen exactly on this Adagio?
<br />First of all, Beethoven makes unrecognizable the melody. How? The melody almost doesn´t exist because the tempo is extremely SLOW. The length of every single note is dilated, it makes us feel the duration of time sacrificing the melody. Scelsi will take this to the extreme: maintaining the same note all the time.
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<br />Indeed, what Beethoven makes in this Adagio is a reduction </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> process, The phrase is being reduced three times. First from 8 notes into 5. Then from 5 into 3 and finally 3 into 2. </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Time has no direction anymore, there is no past resent and future, it´s like pure time or pure duration. </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Music stops, exists as a sphere</span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">there is no where to go.</span>
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<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TI-rKRt24iI/AAAAAAAAAdg/l3OC8LDxs_E/s1600/Giaconti_Scelsi500750-763239.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516816261594931746" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TI-rKRt24iI/AAAAAAAAAdg/l3OC8LDxs_E/s400/Giaconti_Scelsi500750-763239.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 370px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
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<br />Beethoven, on this quartet makes a special use of the semitone<span style="font-weight: bold;"> (</span>also on the first movement of the op 132, and 131 and the Grosse Fuge), or half note what makes the four lines of the four instruments independent but together. A semitone is the smallest musical interval commonly used in tonal music and it´s consider the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. Semitones are in Scelsi the main motif of his microtonality. Suspended time of the most painful illness but also characteristic of the neurotic behaviour. In 1944 Scelsi´s first quartet represents the beginning of the so called Scelsi´s second period. It´s interesting to mention that Beethoven´s Grosse Fuge appears in a highly disguised form in the first and last movement of his this Quartet. Beethoven´s use of the semitone appears mostly on his Grosse Fuge, this is one of the reason of its dissonance, but also in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliges Dankgesang</span>. If we listen to the 4th movement of First Quartet of Scelsi we can listen to the adagios of the late Quartets of Beethoven:
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5304767%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-L6FLb&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5304767%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-L6FLb&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/scelsi-string-quartet-i">Scelsi String Quartet I</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">arditti quartet</a>
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<br />And now let´s listen to a loop made out of the first notes of the Beethoven´s op. 127 2nd movement:
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5305759%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Q0XIp&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5305759%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Q0XIp&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/loop-op-127-2nd-mov">Loop op.127 2nd mov.</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a>
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven was a freelance musician and wrote three of his late Quartets, asked by Prinz Nikolas Galitzin, for 50 dukats each. On the contrary Scelsi belonged to an aristocratic family and freed him from financial worries. This makes a big difference also in a compossitional level</span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">For instance</span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven´s Grosse Fuge wasn´t accepted by his publisher</span> <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">and he had to write a new finale for the op. 130. The chance to experiment<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> wasn´t so big in the case of Beethoven and this is why his most radical proposals can be found as moments inside his compostions or isolated movements surrounded by more tradicional ones. For instance</span></span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">the 4th movement "alla marcia" that follows the <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliges Dankgesang</span></span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">or simply the finale that replaced the Grosse Fuge</span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">music compossed to content audiences and not to satisfy experimentation</span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Regarding his op 95 Quartetto Serioso, he declared that<span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;">is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public</span></span>. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">This Quartet came to early. Exciting that Mahler had arranged it for use by string orchestra.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 180%; font-weight: bold;">WAVES OF TIME</span>
<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven and Debussy</span>.
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--> <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Of course this ideas about suspended time demand to make a connection between the spheres of Scelsi and the bubbles of Pierre Boulez (See the text I wrote in 2003 about <a href="http://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.html">Memory and Perception in Pierre Boulez</a>)
</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven introduces in music the suspended present and years later a tradition in french music will constittude a thread: Debussy-Messian-Boulez.
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<br />The problem of music from Bethoven becomes the problem of memory.
<br />Beethoven late period went beyond romanticism. Beethoven has been considered the most crucial figure in the transition from classical to romantic, but in fact his music went far beyond that. There is an indubitable bridge between Beethoven´s late period and anti romantic movements of the end of the XIX century. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven draws the end of modernity</span></span>
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Beethoven´s late period critizies Beethoven second period. Beethoven was aware that classicism became fictitius and artificial, too ornamental. That was the indecorum of Beethoven.
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<br />The late period is not about memory but about perception and liberating the imagination, not about depicting a story but producing suggestions, atmospheres rather than linear progressions, music doesn´t move but spins around itself. Time, like ocean waves, doesn´t go anywhere, but it moves, it oscilates rejoicing the tension of the non resolution. What later in the music of Schumann it has been called suspended present, probably the musician that most hated the develops in music.
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<br />Beethoven and Debussy, time seems to be suspended, the ambiguity of Debussy and his floating chords, the so called <span style="font-style: italic;">emancipation of sound, </span>Beethoven drew already the possibility of music to become transformation, to emancipate from the sonata form.
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<br />Waves of time, the music becomes myterious oscillation, is not static like in the op. 132, music moves, not as an sphere but as waves of sound. Here Beethoven foreshadows Debussy.
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086598%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xN0Cz&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086598%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xN0Cz&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movement">Sonata 30. op 109 first movement (John Lill)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">john Lill</a>
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5088178%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-o47j9&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5088178%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-o47j9&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-3rd-movement">Sonata 30. op 109 3rd movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">John Lill</a>
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086483%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-jCQ7s&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086483%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-jCQ7s&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-31-op-110-last-movement">Sonata 31. op 110 last movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">john Lill</a>
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<br />Beethoven foreshadows Mahler dissolving already the Tonality. Beethoven and Bartók, Beethoven and Shostakovich and, why not, Beethoven and Messiaen (specially from the attack of the piano and how music becomes a machine with gears), Beethoven and Scelsi. Beethoven against the ability to memorize.
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">MUSIC ALWAYS WINS</span></span>
<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">ETHICS in Beethoven.</span><span style="font-style: italic;">: <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">It must be!</span>
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</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Beethoven had a very specific aim to communicate a certain Ideas throught his music. Ideas that philosophical as Adorno perfectly understood bringing in Hegel´s philosophy, but also ideas that express a certain Ethics. That means that </span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">in Beethoven´s music, and specificaly in some compositions, there is a message that must be heard. Beethoven believed in the power of music to communicate ethics.
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</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">The REMINDERS</span>
<br />The<span style="font-style: italic;"> O Freunde nicht diese Töne, (Oh friends, not these tones!) </span>from<span style="font-style: italic;"> Ode to Joy </span>(Schiller) </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">of the 9th Symphony represents the most clear sign of the ethical reminders in Beethoven</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">. In this case using text, but this is an exception. <span style="font-style: italic;">O Freunde nicht diese Töne </span>is being expressed throught all Beethoven´s music in many different ways, and specially in the late period is a strong ethical statement towards a <span style="font-style: italic;">logic of Stimmungen</span> which implies variations in affects, temperament, motivation, optimism, fear, illness, weakness, existencial despair, depression, creativity, etc.
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<br />Reminders are just a characteristic of Beethoven´s self consciousness. His music is self aware, music speaks to itself<span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span> The reminder plays the rol of bringing awareness about the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Stimmung</span> that has been dominating so far and brings the possibility for a shift, not only in compositional terms but with a clear ethical intencion: we can decide the mood, we can shift the <span style="font-style: italic;">Stimmung, </span>we can encourage our selves. The motivation depends directly from this<span style="font-style: italic;"> logic of Stimmungen.
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</span><span style="font-style: italic;">Oh friends, not these tones! Rather let us raise our voices in more pleasing and more joyful sounds! Joy! Joy!</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
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<br />Reminders: <span style="font-style: italic;">we shouldn´t forget. </span>The bass section of the orchestra (cellos and basses) are the narrators at the introduction of the Finale of the 9th Symphony. They not only have the task of narrating the summary but also to bring the new section Ode to Joy. We shouldn´t forget that the role of the <span style="font-style: italic;">ground Bass </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">Basso Ostinato </span>was to keep persistently the main idea in order to remember. From Beethoven the problem of music will be the problem of memory.
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</span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE BIPOLARITY</span>
</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">I will not enter into the discussion if Beethoven suffered from manic depression. He had, indeed, many reasons for it, mainly the fact of becoming deaf being a musician. The interesting thing is how on his music this bipolarity exists as a clear choice and not only as an unconscious result of an hypothetical illness.
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Bipolarity means contrast. Being across the extremes. Euphoria to depression, melancholia to joy, weakness to Will to power, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">death to life</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">But also oscillations: JUMPING from one extreme to the other, without transitions, directly to the other side. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">A sudden leap, a shift in the mood can come out of a conscious decision, but not always. Beethoven´s late period<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>abandones the tirany of the form to lead his music trought a kind of logic of affects. The transitions or the developments in the late Beethoven are no longer important.<span style="font-style: italic;">
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Brilliant is the case of the</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> Adagio of op 132, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Heilige Dankgesang</span>: Illness, proximity to death vs. life and Will to Power (creativity). On this Adagio, considered a big prayer but also a sublime meditation, the bipolar phenomenon is bring into play creating a strong contrast between the first section, that represent the illness and proximity of death, and the second section called by Beethoven<span style="font-style: italic;"> Neue Kraft fühlend</span> (with renewed strength). For future texts to explore the relation Beethoven-Nietzsche.
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<br />On his letter to his doctor Beethoven wrote at the end: <span style="font-style: italic;">notes will help who ever is needed. </span>It was the need to create what saved him from the illness, the triumph of joy over pain. Here the dialectical lesson of Beethoven: illness exists as the power to recovery exists.</span></span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">So in fact, the bipolarity is not only dialectical but simultaneous, on this Adagio the extremes are happening at the same time, are combined, crosslinked</span>,<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> illness and inner wealth are now one same single thing. The figure of speech of <span style="font-size: 130%;"><a href="http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2010/10/oxymoron-to-bring-in-idea-of-oxymoron.html" style="font-weight: bold;">Oxymoron</a></span> can be a representation of Beethoven´s bipolarity on its simultaneous fashion.</span>
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<br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliger Dankgesang</span> was actually born within the <span style="font-style: italic;">Molto Adagio</span> of </span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Rasumovsky n.2. </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">This sound track presents both movements one after the other:</span>
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<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6071786%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-n5rtF&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6071786%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-n5rtF&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-59-op-132">op 59 + op 132</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">diegoagullo</a>
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Bipolarity might be also understood as a sudden astonishing change of mood. Going back to the so called early phase, the op. 18 number 6´s last movement, also called <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: red; font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2008/11/la-malincolia-joseph-kerman-referred-to.html">La Malinconia</a></span>, </span>shows already the choice of creating a new type of formal structure mixing and contrasting two opposite kind of materials. This will be repeated later at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Egmont Overture</span>, the coda of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Quartett serioso</span> and in the<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> Op. 135, 4th movement. Bipolarity</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> is already expressed by the header of the movement: Grave-Allegro-Grave-Allegro<span style="font-weight: bold;">. </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Perfect example of the contrast or opposition or inner struggle between despair and joy, this movement is called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Difficult Resolution</span>. </span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Under the introductory slow chords Beethoven wrote in the manuscript <span style="font-style: italic;">Muß es sein?</span> (Must it be?) to which he responds, with the faster main theme of the movement, <span style="font-style: italic;">Es muß sein</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">!</span> (It must be!) This is definitely a big ethic statement for the sake of affirmative Will and self-suggestion.
</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">After presenting the darkness Beethoven brings abruptly a fast unexpected refrain, it sounds even too naive, but it plays the role of calm and stability, center, in the heart of chaos; the identity is assured. But slowly the forces of chaos are finding holes where they can enter. The refrain becomes fragile and unstable until it happen again, the darkness is back, the fear comes in. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Jumping from chaos to the beginning of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart in any moment (</span>Of the Refrain)
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</span></span><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5154720%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-cINCy&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5154720%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-cINCy&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-135-last-movement">Op 135 last movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a>
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5155208%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-aq5Ag&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5155208%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-aq5Ag&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/bipolar2">Op 135 last movement part 1</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a>
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</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 180%; font-weight: bold;">GROSSE FUGE
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sometimes free, sometimes strict</span>
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<br />During the last decade, Beethoven showed a new interest in the discipline of the <span style="color: #3366ff; font-size: 130%;"><a href="http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-post.html" style="font-weight: bold;">fuge</a></span> motivated by a contrapuntal obssesion and a turn towards Baroque music (Haendel and Bach)
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<br />1920´s: first performance after Beethoven´s death (1827) of the op 130 with the Grosse Fuge as final movement.
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<br />Seemingly unrelated outbursts</span>. Assertive, <span style="font-style: italic;">sforzando</span>. The cello trills. Zig Zag. Vigour. Excess of tension. Fortissimo. Frenzy. Bustle. Hurried development:
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"></span>Beethoven creates parallel centers of gravity, intensities, disjointed play of forces. The Grosse Fuge is a big question mark. The Doubt is brought in: music is folded, between two, a critical junction, the themes are broken into pieces. Beethoven opens all the possibilities of certainty.
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<br />We should consider the Fuge in its organic articulation as a texture in uncessant transformation of shapes. Is there a thread?
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<br />PARTS OF THE GROSSE FUGE:</span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
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<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Overture</span>: presentation of the 2 main themes</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">: Theme 1 (<span style="font-style: italic;">unison fortissimo</span> followed by a variation in <span style="font-style: italic;">legato=</span>Theme 1a<span style="font-style: italic;">)</span>, Theme 2<span style="font-style: italic;"> Meno mosso e moderato</span> followed by<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>a variation<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>of the Theme 1, Theme 1b<span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>
<br />- PART 1 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fuge</span>: presentation of the 3rd main theme (counter subject) + variation of Theme</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> 1b as subject. Development, fragmentation and manipulation of subject and counter subject.
<br />- PART 2 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Meno mosso e moderato</span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">: as a counter subject + Theme 1 as subject
<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Allegro molto e con brio</span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">: Theme 1a, scherzo
<br />- PART 3<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Double Fuge</span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">: develop of the Theme 1. Develop of the Theme 3 + Theme 1 + Meno mosso e moderato. End: odd progression of chords
<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Allegro molto e con brio</span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> + fake end
<br />-<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary: </span>recapitulation + Allegro finale of the Theme 3.
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<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TJabvsIWjNI/AAAAAAAAAdo/2freDSzzSgI/s1600/grosse.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518769636991470802" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TJabvsIWjNI/AAAAAAAAAdo/2freDSzzSgI/s400/grosse.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 210px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a>
<br />The fuge as dance. There is something that plays the a constant rol: the rhythm, even if it´s cross-rhythm or syncopated, we still recognize perfectly the determination: the <span style="font-style: italic;">fortissimo</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">sforzando</span>. It´s a static maniacal dance, an inner violent hurried dance. What creates a certain thread are no longer the subjects or counter subjects, niether the thems or melodies but rather a specific determination on the music, a Will to Power.
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<br />Beethoven´s biggest experiment: he burst the conventions of clasical music proposing new statements that will not be followed by the next generation, they will not be social accepted until the XX century.
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<br />The difficulty of the Grosse Fuge is just a matter of time: it requires time beyond any superficial approach. Beethoven is pointing the conventions to make us realize that it´s all about re-organizing the limits of our perception, taste, comprehension. It demands time to get access, requires an effort. It is a process of knowing each other and Beethoven is demanding again an effort from the audience to redefine the limits of what we call perception or understanding.
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<br />I don´t think the clue to approach the Grosse Fuge is to decipher the form or structure but rather to focus on three concepts: <span style="font-size: 130%;">Simultaneity, Fragmentation and Dissonances</span>.
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<br />The Grosse Fuge brings in the following idea: simultaneity of subjects in continuous variation and fragmentation without harmonic requirements.
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<br />The simultaneity can be understood as a competition or an inner struggle between non complementary elements that Beethoven brings them together. But also as a co-existence of the differences. This differences or contrast create the appearance of chaos but it doesn´t, it´s just a complex world.
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<br />The Themes are not only transformed and disguised under multitude of different appearances creating a kind of perspectivism but also undergoing a process of fragmentation. Melodies become paintbrushes, no longer recognizable as a line, they are cut and delocalized.
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<br />Beethoven opens the doors to the dissonances as Samuel Beckett will allow chaos to enter <span style="font-style: italic;">because is the truth. </span>Beethoven´s music becomes less accesible and is not anymore music to please the ears but rather to challenge them. Within tonality, without abandon tonality he expands the limits of understanding music. It´s not that dissonances can also be music but rather there is no music without dissonaces.
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<br />Semitones: harmonic and melodic tension
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<br />The message in the finale of the ninth Symphony, composed one year before said: <span style="font-style: italic;">let´s put aside the dissonances and let´s be friends: </span>agreement and concord<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>But the Grosse Fuge proposes a different message: <span style="font-style: italic;">let´s integrate dissonances because they are the truth. </span>The consequences<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>of questioning the harmony are not to have anymore the impression of an agreement<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>And<span style="font-style: italic;"> sometimes</span> there will be moments of comming together in a certain concord: the unison passage of <span style="font-style: italic;">meno mosso a moderato</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Adagio con brio. </span>In Beethoven the <span style="font-style: italic;">Weltanschauung</span> (World view) is actually dictated by a logic of <span style="font-style: italic;">Stimmungen,</span> a logic of affects<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>
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<br />How to understand community accepting dissonances and differences?
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<br />The<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>gentle and soft section<span style="font-style: italic;"> meno mosso e moderato </span>(lyrical section)<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>brings a peaceful mood, because there is no longer a competition and brings some relief after the long Fuge .
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<br />But is later when the <span style="font-style: italic;">meno mosso e moderato</span> is introduced inside the Fuge, simulatneously with the main theme, with the instructions <span style="font-style: italic;">forte </span>, the gentle becomes assertive and loud because this time there is a competition on going.
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<br />After the meno mosso e moderato part suddenly we arrive in a series of odd progression of chords, each followed by a moment of silence: Uncertainty, expecting the resolution which is abruptly interrupted by the <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegro con brio</span>.
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<br />Beethoven brings together the opposition death-life, depression-will of power, yes, dialectical but he brings them simultaneously, showing that one need the other to exist. And the Grosse Fuge is the expression of that simultaneity (to relate with the <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliges Dankgesang</span>)
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<br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegro molto e con brio</span> at the ent after the trilling section of the end of the moso e moderato: Negociating moods, bipolarity.
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<br />Disonances (existencial despair) against triumph of joy. The Grosse Fuge doesn´t express the disonances of the world (war, illness, proximity of death, depression) but the possibility of the Will to exist inside these dissonances. The Grosse Fuge is a fight.
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<br /><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">What is the difference between a string quartet and and string orchestra? 4 musicians or 12, 21, 60.
<br />It´s interesting to listen to the orchestral version of the Grosse Fuge, how the music becomes crowd and to realize how the music becomes more accessible in its orchestral dimension. There is a difference if we isolate 4 single elements than 4 groups of elements.
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5329387%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-db1Xk&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5329387%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-db1Xk&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestra">Grosse Fuge ORCHESTRA</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">klemperer</a>
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<br />But if we put the two long fuges sections parallel we find a perfect symmetry in terms of length . This track brings both sections together:
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YQve8&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YQve8&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2">Grosse Fuge x2</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a>
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<br />Why have I done something like this? If we double the fuge, if we bend the fuge is not only to find a symmetry but to get a certain experience of how a crowd in fuge would sound like. This case is very different from the string orchestra. Now we have 8 instruments, actually 2 groups of singular elements in fuge. The result is the opposite than with the orchestra. An orchestration of the Grosse Fuge makes the fuge more accesible because each line becomes a choreography for many instruments that repeat the same line. This makes easier to identify and recognize every single line because it has been multiplicated. It´s easier to identify ten pepole moving exactly in the same way than one single person moving on its own way. But the fuge folded on itself makes the chaos bigger and reproduces accurately how a crowd in fuge would sound like. And not only that, if I have increased the chaos was to make more visible that still the fuge keeps an amazing unity. Of course the number of dissonaces are bigger but doesn´t make the whole more dissonant.
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<br />Grosse Fuge for Pianoforte 2 hands:
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</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Animation machine of the Grosse Fuge </span>
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<span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-weight: bold;">SOLITUDE</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Rilke on</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;"> Letters to a young poet </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">describes </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">solitude </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">in the following terms:</span>
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</span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude.
<br />To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">As Maynard Solomon has pointed out<span style="font-style: italic;">, </span>in 1814 Beethoven´s artistic career reached its lowest point with <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">patriotic</span> works such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Wellingtons <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Sieg</span></span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Der <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">glorreiche</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Augenblick</span></span>. On words of Solomon,<span style="font-style: italic;"> these works, filled with bombastic rhetoric and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">patriotic</span> excesses, mark the nadir of Beethoven´s career. In them his heroic style is revived, but as parody and farce. Rather than moving forward to his late style, he regressed to a pastiche of his heroic manner. </span>
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<br />On the contrary, in this year Beethoven reached the highest point of popularity and social connections. It <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">shouldn't</span> be a surprise that at the same time he ended in <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">conformity</span>.
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<br />But later on the<span style="font-style: italic;"> late period, </span>the situation was very different. When Beethoven was isolated from the society, considered as a madman, and not anymore into the musical trends of that moment, he would bring music into a level never known before. Again Solomon pointed out rightly: <span style="font-style: italic;">his music would be created out of the composers imagination and intellect rather than through a combination and amplification of of existent musical trends. In Beethoven´s late style an apparently unprecedented style comes into being, one whose tendencies and formative materials are not <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">readily</span> identifiable in the music of his contemporaries or immediate predecessors.
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</span>The space where Beethoven´s late style was generated had nothing to do with success, fame, personal situation within a social power relations or being supported by patrons. I think his late style was possible because his solitude was vaster than ever. His isolation from society implied an inner trip, a taking care of the world that he carried inside of him. Rilke continues: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">the world that you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">In this sense we must understand Beethoven´s choice. He <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">didn</span>´t bet for success or fame because actually that implied that his music became</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> shabby and his vocation petrified and no longer connected with life</span>.<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> In order to stay alive, and in this sense I call him </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">survivor</span>, <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">he kept alive his artistic career because he placed his solitude above everything else</span> <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">and this is the way the late period should be also understood, as the artistic choice of taking the risk of being beyond social and contemporary world propelled by a self confident impulse from the very deep heavy vast solitude.</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">And here is where <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Beethoven</span> showed his freedom, freedom of following own artistic needs, freedom of placing one´s own solitude above everything else.
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<br />As Fernando <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Pessoa</span> would say: <span style="font-style: italic;">to be a poet is not my ambition, it´s my way of being alone</span>.</span>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
<br /><span style="font-size: 180%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-size: 180%;">MUSIC HAS HOLES</span>
</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">The center is abandoned, the action is moved to the periphery, a hole appears across the extremes</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-size: 180%;">
</span><span style="color: #000099; font-size: 180%;">Adorno and Deleuze</span> together?
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<br />It´s usual to read about the differences between Deleuze and Adorno: for Adorno, reality is necessarily dialectical and irresolvable contradictions, while Deleuze denies the notion of a correct rendering of objective reality and introduces the notion of univicity of being , no dialectical but rather an absolute leap of perception. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">But is it possible to find a common denominator for both philosophers?. First of all, they both invoke the kind of art which resists or defies representation. But going further I will try to show how to apply </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">in the late Beethoven the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze and Guattari´s ideas about music and to connect them with Adorno´s ideas about the late Beethoven.
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<br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">
<br />- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: 130%;">IMPROPRIETY</span>
</span>
<br />Adorno talks about impropriety and unsuitability: what appears in the late period isn´t simply what appears to be. Adorno means appearance of the non appearance: <span style="font-style: italic;">either because its curious inauthenticity or because excessive simplicity, the themes and melodies no longer appear as themselves but as signs of something else. They are cut, disturbed, they are only sketches, possiblities</span>. Understanding themes as subjectivities, in the late period the themes are disturbed, they are in inmanent distant respect themselves.
<br />Beethoven becomes fragile
<br />Tonality is withheld and at the same time broken.
<br />Alienation and schizofrenia.
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<br />The deterritorialization of the refrain (Ritournello) happens for the first time not in Schumann but in the late Beethoven
<br />To relate with the the concept of <span style="color: #000099; font-size: 180%;">Inadequacy </span>in Deleuze (chapter 8 of <span style="font-style: italic;">Logic of sense)</span>, about the floating signifier in Levi-Strauss. Deleuze describes this Antinomia: having two series which are related to each other in continuos imbalance or distance, that implies continuos readjustments.
<br />This continuos imbalance or distance is represented by the idea of <span style="color: #000099; font-size: 180%;">Asymptote</span>.
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<br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">
<br />- </span><span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">DISAGGREGATION</span> of the central principle. Disintegration, dissociation and dissolution of the form. The classical <span style="font-weight: bold;">burs</span>t into fragments, says Adorno. Actually Beckett used also the same image of something that <span style="font-style: italic;">burst out</span> to refer to Beethoven´s Ghost trio<span style="font-style: italic;">: </span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">a hitherto unkown art of dissonances, a weavering, a hiatus, a punctuation of dehiscence,a stress given by what opens, slips away and disappears, a gap that punctuates nothing but the silence of a final ending“ </span>
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<br /><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">What does <span style="font-style: italic;">burst </span>mean? Dehiscence, premature open of a wound or a plant to release its contents.
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The voices are wrapped around each other.
<br />Harmony becomes a forgotten convention because it produces the ilussion of unity.
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<br />Deleuze and Guattari in <span style="font-style: italic;">Thousand Plateaus, Postulates of Linguistics,</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>in opposition to the arborescent type, Beethoven <span style="font-style: italic;">prepares the disaggregation of the central principle, replacing the centers forms of continuous development with a form that constantly dissolves and transform itself. When development suburdinates form and spans the whole, variation begins to free itself and becomes identified with creation.</span> (...)
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<br />Beethoven introducing variations without center in music approach the idea of rhizome that Pierre Boulez will bring into the limits, <span style="font-style: italic;">making audible nonsonorous forces </span>through placing all sound components in continuous variation.
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<br />1819-23 Diabelli Variations op. 120
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<br />Instead by Form, the matter is organized by forces, intensities, the center is disseminated in a net or weave of forces.
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5342688%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-2D16F&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5342688%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-2D16F&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/132-allegro">op 132. 2nd mov. Allegro</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a>
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<br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">- </span><span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">UNIVOCITY</span>
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<br />Against decoration and ornamentation, the late period is excessive simplicity, bare. There is not anymore question and answer, is just one single thing but displaced from itself. It´s not anymore important to exhaust fully the themes. This is what Adorno calles <span style="font-style: italic;">Principle of condensation</span>, forms are rarely consumed, it´s enough to mention/enunciate to exhaust.
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<br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">- </span><span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">HOLES</span>
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<br />Beethoven turns out the hollow space of the sonata form, concave becomes convex.
<br />Adorno also talks about interruptions, hiatus, silences, ruptures, pure tension between the extremes. The technique, instead harmonic transitions, is to JUMP. There are no mediations, only, like in Hegel, through extremes. Music has holes.
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<br />Deleuze in <span style="font-style: italic;">Critical and Clinical </span>describes Beethoven´s Ghost trio: <span style="font-style: italic;">there is a kind of central erosion that first arises as a threat among the bass parts and is expressed in the trill of wavering of the piano, as if one key were about to be abandoned for another, or for nothing, hollowing out the surface, plunging into a ghostly dimension where dissonances would appear only to punctuate the silence</span>.
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<br />On the other hand, the floating signifier needs emptiness to emerge.
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<br />If now we visit Deleuze and Guattari about Holey space in <span style="font-style: italic;">Treatise on Nomadology:The war machine, </span>we are tempted to think that Beethoven was a smith, inventing a holey space within the striated space of the sonata form. Beethoven produces the emergency of the rhizome in the striated space of the classicism.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>
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<br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">- </span><span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;">POLARIZATION</span><span style="font-size: 130%;">.</span>
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<br />Beethoven wasn´t atonal but polarizes the tonality. Dissociation into two extremes: monody and poliphony, with the exception of the fuges.
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze Guattari: Refrain: <span style="font-style: italic;">Not to supress tonality but to turn it loose.</span></span></span>
<br /><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
<br /><span style="font-size: 130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: 130%;">TRANSVERSALITY</span>
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</span>Adorno means pure tension<span style="font-weight: bold;"> across extremes, </span>when unity is just an illusion and the whole a self deception.
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">Deluze about Proust will demand to have the right to incompliteness and to patches: the fragmentation means to exclude the logic unity and organic totality, there is no previous unity but they are an EFFECT, they come afterwards, a posteriori: but the unity appears as a fragment (paintbrush) inside the sistem. Transversality is what makes that </span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">allows each part to keep its difference and at the same time to be connected and to communicate.</span></span> </div>
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<br />- Adorno:<span style="font-style: italic;"> the late period speaks about the language of the archaic, of children of savages and God. </span>Deleuze: only children artists and schizofrenics can inhabitate the inadequacy because there are displaced towards themselves</span></span>.
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
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<span style="font-size: 180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">CODA</span></span>
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<br />Beethoven remains.
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</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">I will never die.</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">This text is dedicated to Miguel Copón.</span>
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Special thanks to Jorge Ruiz Abánades.
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-weight: bold;">BIBLIOGRAPHY</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Aristoteles: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Poética</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Adorno: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Beethoven</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Proust: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">À la Recherche du temps perdu</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Benjamin: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Literarische und ästhetische Essays</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Wittgenstein: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Tractatus</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">,</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze and Guattari: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schyzophrenia</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Proust and the signs</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze:</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;"> Critical and Clinical</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze:</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;"> Spinoza</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">, </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Practical Philosophy</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Deleuze: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Cinema 2. The time image</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Nietzsche: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">The Gay Science</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Leonard B.Meyer: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Emotion and meaning in music</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Anthony Storr: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Music and the Mind</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Robert S.Kahn: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Beethoven and the Grosse Fuge</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Michael Schneider: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Musiques du nuit</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Peter Kivy: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">New Essays on musical understanding</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Antoine Hennion: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">La passion musicale</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Max Steinitzer: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Beethoven</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">E. Fubini: El Romanticismo: entre Musica y Filosofia</span>
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<span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Robert P. Morgan: </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;">Twentieth Century Music
</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Patrick Donnelly:<span style="font-style: italic;"> Grosse Fuge
</span>Jim Merod:<span style="font-style: italic;"> Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile:Audio (Il)literacy, or Beethoven’s Triumphant Despair
</span>Maynard Solomon:<span style="font-style: italic;"> Beethoven
<br />Beethoven´s letters, </span>with explanatory notes by Dr. A.C. Kalischer.<span style="font-style: italic;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhln9vIHtFeMUkTmQA9f3jUlsuvAKcmc2NMk6FmckB-IxUR9imXKvFAn1X1LTwM6Hissw5hYlJqFhkJgwKnDCBw4Lj8btlpGEzVYEnleoCYufbiRy65uGPyJczoRjwDrPv00LmFEEi2Zw/s1600/beethoven.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5631061951427209458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhln9vIHtFeMUkTmQA9f3jUlsuvAKcmc2NMk6FmckB-IxUR9imXKvFAn1X1LTwM6Hissw5hYlJqFhkJgwKnDCBw4Lj8btlpGEzVYEnleoCYufbiRy65uGPyJczoRjwDrPv00LmFEEi2Zw/s400/beethoven.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 197px; width: 400px;" /></a>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">
<br /><a href="http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/">http://lateperiodofbeethoven.blogspot.com/</a>
<br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Beethoven and Adorno</span>
<br /><span style="color: white;">Beethoven and Deleuze</span>
<br /><span style="color: white;">Beethoven and Scelsi</span>
<br /><span style="color: white;">Beethoven Grosse Fuge</span>
<br /><span style="color: white;">Deleuze and music</span>
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</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-4769511663271976922010-09-27T15:39:00.001-07:002010-09-28T06:23:01.726-07:00<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>
<br /><a name="ethics_in_music"></a><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">MUSIC ALWAYS WINS</span></span>
<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >Ethics</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> in Beethoven.</span><span style="font-style: italic;">: <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">It must be!</span>
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<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>Beethoven had a very specific aim to communicate a certain ideas throught his music. I</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">n Beethoven´s music, and specificaly in some compositions, there is a message that must be heard. Beethoven believed in the power of music to communicate ethics.
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-style: italic;">
<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">The REMINDERS</span>
<br /><span>The</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> O Freunde nicht diese Töne, (Oh friends, not these tones!) </span><span>from</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Ode to Joy </span><span>(Schiller) </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>of the 9th Symphony represents the most clear sign of the ethical reminders in Beethoven</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>. In this case using text, but this is an exception. <span style="font-style: italic;">O Freunde nicht diese Töne </span>is being expressed throught all Beethoven´s music in many different ways, and specially in the late period through a <span style="font-style: italic;">logic of Stimmungen</span> which implies variations in affects, temperament, motivation, optimism, fear, illness, weakness, existencial despair, depression, creativity, etc.
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<br />Reminders are just a characteristic of Beethoven´s self consciousness. His music is self aware, <span style="font-weight: bold;">music speaks to itself</span>. The reminder plays the rol of bringing awareness about the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Stimmung</span> that has been dominating so far and brings the possibility for a shift, not only in compositional terms but with a clear ethical intencion: we can decide the mood, we can shift the <span style="font-style: italic;">Stimmung, </span><span>we can encourage our selves. The motivation depends directly from this<span style="font-style: italic;"> logic of Stimmungen.
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<br /></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Oh friends, not these tones! Rather let us raise our voices in more pleasing and more joyful sounds! Joy! Joy!</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>
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<br />Reminders: <span style="font-style: italic;">we shouldn´t forget. </span>The bass section of the orchestra (cellos and basses) are the narrators at the introduction of the Finale of the 9th Symphony. They not only have the task of narrating the summary but also to bring the new section Ode to Joy. We shouldn´t forget that the role of the <span style="font-style: italic;">ground Bass </span>or <span style="font-style: italic;">Basso Ostinato </span>was to keep persistently the main idea in order to remember. From Beethoven the problem of music will be the problem of memory.
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<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE BIPOLARITY</span>
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>I will not enter into the discussion if Beethoven suffered from manic depression. He had, indeed, many reasons for it, mainly the fact of becoming deaf being a musician. The interesting thing is how on his music this bipolarity exists as a clear choice and not only as an unconscious result of an hypothetical illness.
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<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>Bipolarity means <span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">contrast</span></span>. Being across the extremes. Euphoria to depression, melancholia to joy, weakness to Will to power, </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>death to life</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>But also <span style="font-weight: bold;">oscillations</span>: JUMPING from one extreme to the other, without transitions, directly to the other side. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>A sudden leap, a shift in the mood can come out of a conscious decision, but not always. Beethoven´s late period</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span>abandones the tirany of the form to lead his music trought a kind of logic of affects. The transitions or the developments in the late Beethoven are no longer important.</span><span style="font-style: italic;">
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<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>Brilliant is the case of the</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span> Adagio of op 132, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Heilige Dankgesang</span>: Illness, proximity to death vs. life and Will to Power (creativity). On this Adagio, considered a big prayer but also a sublime meditation, the bipolar phenomenon is bring into play creating a strong contrast between the first section, that represent the illness and proximity of death, and the second section called by Beethoven<span style="font-style: italic;"> Neue Kraft fühlend</span> (with renewed strength). For future texts to explore the relation Beethoven-Nietzsche.
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<br />On his letter to his doctor Beethoven wrote at the end: <span style="font-style: italic;">notes will help who ever is needed. </span>It was the need to create what saved him from the illness, the triumph of joy over pain. Here the dialectical lesson of Beethoven: illness exists as the power to recovery exists.</span></span></span></span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">So in fact, the bipolarity is not only dialectical but simultaneous, on this Adagio the extremes are happening at the same time, are combined, crosslinked</span>,<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> illness and inner wealth are now one same single thing.</span>
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<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Op. 135, 4th movement. Bipolarity</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span> is already expressed by the header of the movement: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Grave-Allegro-Grave-Allegro. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Perfect example of the contrast or opposition or inner struggle between despair and joy, this movement is called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Difficult Resolution</span>. </span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Under the introductory slow chords Beethoven wrote in the manuscript <span style="font-style: italic;">Muß es sein?</span> (Must it be?) to which he responds, with the faster main theme of the movement, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Es muß sein!</span> (It must be!) This is definitely a big ethic statement for the sake of affirmative Will and self-suggestion.
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>After presenting the darkness Beethoven brings abruptly a fast unexpected refrain, it sounds even too naive, but it plays the role of calm and stability, center, in the heart of chaos; the identity is assured. But slowly the forces of chaos are finding holes where they can enter. The refrain becomes fragile and unstable until it happen again, the darkness is back, the fear comes in. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-style: italic;">Jumping from chaos to the beginning of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart in any moment (</span>Of the Refrain)
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<br /></span></span></span><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5154720%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-cINCy&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5154720%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-cINCy&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-135-last-movement">Op 135 last movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span>
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<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5155208%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-aq5Ag&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5155208%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-aq5Ag&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/bipolar2">Op 135 last movement part 1</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-39531477013722677082010-09-27T15:38:00.001-07:002010-09-28T15:59:02.880-07:00<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >SUSPENDED TIME: THE ZOOM IN<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:100%;" >Beethoven and Giacinto Scelsi.<br /><br /></span>In 1825 the String Quartet op. 132 was composed.</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>During sketching this piece, Beethoven was stricken with an intestinal inflammation, big pain. This body process of illness and recovery affected directly the composition of this quartet. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>The core of this piece is the third movement, </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>the Adagio. Beethoven wrote a header for it: <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart</span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>, </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>or in english <span style="font-style: italic;">A convalescent´s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode</span></span></span></span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">This Adagio represents Beethoven´s labor of minimizing the musical expression to its essence; it contains only two melodic ideas. He makes us see the structure, is the opposite of using ornaments, music is bare. Beethoven makes<span style="font-size:180%;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >zoom in</span> in music. The music leaves the striated space of the form to explore with the microscope the pure duration of time.<br /><br />Giacinto Scelsi, another solitary man, didn´t suffer from intestinal inflammation but he got into a deep depression</span> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">after his wife left him. As a therapy for this breakdown, and following neurotic patterns that remind us of Hölderlin, he spent his days with the simple task of playing the same note on the piano. Yes: the same note over and over again. This mystical trance, listening obsessively to the same note brought him to experience that <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">sound is <span style="font-size:180%;">spherica</span></span><span style="font-size:180%;">l</span></span></span>. <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >In just one single sound is the entire cosmos. </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Scelsi brought into his music the last quartest of Beethoven and if we listen to the Adagio we find the door that Scelsi went </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">through: to reduce music into its most minimal essence.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">But what happen exactly on this Adagio?<br />First of all, Beethoven makes unrecognizable the melody. How? The melody almost doesn´t exist because the tempo is extremely SLOW. The length of every single note is dilated, it makes us feel the duration of time sacrificing the melody. Scelsi will take this to the extreme: maintaining the same note all the time.<br /><br />Indeed, what Beethoven makes in this Adagio is a reduction </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> process, The phrase is being reduced three times. First from 8 notes into 5. Then from 5 into 3 and finally 3 into 2. </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Time has no direction anymore, there is no past resent and future, it´s like pure time or pure duration. </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Music stops, exists as a sphere</span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">there is no where to go.</span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TI-rKRt24iI/AAAAAAAAAdg/l3OC8LDxs_E/s1600/Giaconti_Scelsi500750-763239.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 370px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TI-rKRt24iI/AAAAAAAAAdg/l3OC8LDxs_E/s400/Giaconti_Scelsi500750-763239.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516816261594931746" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Beethoven, on this quartet makes a special use of the <span style="font-weight: bold;">semitone</span>, or half note what makes the four lines of the four instruments independent but together. A semitone is the smallest musical interval commonly used in tonal music and it´s consider the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. Semitones are in Scelsi the main motif of his microtonality. Suspended time of the most painful illness but also characteristic of the neurotic behaviour. In 1944 Scelsi´s first quartet represents the beginning of the so called Scelsi´s second period. It´s interesting to mention that Beethoven´s Grosse Fuge appears in a highly disguised form in the first and last movement of his this Quartet. Beethoven´s use of the semitone appears mostly on his Grosse Fuge, this is one of the reason of its dissonance, but also in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliges Dankgesang</span>. If we listen to the 4th movement of First Quartet of Scelsi we can listen to the adagios of the late Quartets of Beethoven:<br /><br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5304767%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-L6FLb&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5304767%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-L6FLb&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/scelsi-string-quartet-i">Scelsi String Quartet I</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">arditti quartet</a></span><br /><br />And now let´s listen to a loop made out of the first notes of the Beethoven´s op. 127 2nd movement:<br /><br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5305759%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Q0XIp&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5305759%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-Q0XIp&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/loop-op-127-2nd-mov">Loop op.127 2nd mov.</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span><br /><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Beethoven was a freelance musician and wrote three of his late Quartets, asked by Prinz Nikolas Galitzin, for 50 dukats each. On the contrary Scelsi belonged to an aristocratic family and freed him from financial worries. This makes a big difference also in a compossitional level</span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">For instance</span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Beethoven´s Grosse Fuge wasn´t accepted by his publisher</span> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">and he had to write a new finale for the op. 130. The chance to experiment<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> wasn´t so big in the case of Beethoven and this is why his most radical proposals can be found as moments inside his compostions or isolated movements surrounded by more tradicional ones. For instance</span></span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">the 4th movement "alla marcia" that follows the <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliges Dankgesang</span></span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">or simply the finale that replaced the Grosse Fuge</span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">music compossed to content audiences and not to satisfy experimentation</span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Regarding his op 95 Quartetto Serioso, he declared that<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" > </span><span style="font-style: italic;">is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public</span></span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">This Quartet came to early. Exciting that Mahler had arranged it for use by string orchestra.</span></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-82151439661254231662010-09-22T03:41:00.000-07:002010-09-27T15:40:31.514-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >
<br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >A C R O S S <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">_</span> T H E <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">_</span> E X T R E M E S</span><span style="font-size:130%;">
<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >The late period of Beethoven
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<br />What is Glenn Gould doing on this video?
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<br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" ><object height="185" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KosCjMJG5ks?fs=1&hl=de_DE"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KosCjMJG5ks?fs=1&hl=de_DE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="185" width="400"></embed></object></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Whoever walks in darkness is less lonely if they sing.
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<br />The challenge is not how one´s own life becomes paradoxical but how the own contradictions are the gears of a machine appealing enough to still producing harmonic resonances
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<br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">We usually read about Beethoven´s deafness but it´s not so common to read that Beethoven was speechless. Silence is the language that corresponds to the </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">tragic hero.</span></span> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">What does it mean?</span>
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<br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Don´t throw away the ladder.
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<br />If talking about music is already a difficult task, what makes this task even more difficult in Beethoven´s late period?
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<br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>In 1770 Beethoven, Hegel and Hölderlin were born.</span></span></span></span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Is it art a way of being in <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >silence</span>? Is music a way of silence? Is it silence the language of the artist? <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Tractatus 7<span style="font-style: italic;">:<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen</span>.</span> </span>But what does Wittgenstein understand by <span style="font-style: italic;">sagen </span><span>and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">sprechen? </span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Was Wittgenstein a frustrated musician?</span> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Schumann asking himself: <span style="font-style: italic;">Should I become a poet or a musician? </span></span></span></span>
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<br /></span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:lucida grande;font-size:100%;" >Tractatus 6.522 <span style="font-style: italic;">There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical</span>. </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"></span>
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Robert S.Kahn on his book about </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>the</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Grosse Fuge op. 133</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>asks<span style="font-style: italic;"> what in God´s name is going on here? Why would anyone write something like this? </span>He </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>collects adjectives that have been given to the Grosse Fuge since it was compossed: atonishing, incomprensible, abstruse, bizarre, unharmonious, extravagant, inconsequential, unplayable, surpasses the bounds of musical performance, tiresome, waste of sound, impracticable, cerebral, repellent, unintelligible, impenetrable, pathological eccentricity.
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<br />The Grosse Fuge received only three public performances in the seventy five years after it was written.
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<br />Adorno perfectly knew that the late period of Beethoven doesn´t allow to talk easily about it, there is an unusual difficulty to say precisely what is about.
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<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven moved house 27 times.</span></span></span>
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<br /></span><span>Beethoven late period as the paradigm of the mystical in music, the incomprehensible in music, what we can hardly grasp, almost 200 years is still a mystery. Why so few people dare to write about Beethoven late period? How many artist made a creative response to that period? <span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">
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<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>The music of the <span>Beethoven´s late period inhabitates the <span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">limits</span></span> of the</span> world. He not only drew the limits of the language of tonal music but also pushed them and expanded them without going beyond them, without being atonal, This is an example how a musician can undermine a system from inside the system, using tactics, not strategies. Not to suppress tonality but to turn it loose.
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<br />Wittgenstein knew that to define the limits of the language is a difficult task, however, this task should be perform from inside the language, never from outside, basically because the outside means the nonsense and only in case you have a ladder. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>What we cannot speak about, must we play music?</span></span></span></span>
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<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>When Beethoven stopped playing on the piano, someone asked him about the meaning of what he had played. Beethoven´s answer was to play again on the piano the same music. Words are only mediations. Stendhal on his book about Rossini wrote:<span style="font-style: italic;"> the domain of music begins when we are not able to speak. </span>Is music the limit of language? But which language? which music?</span><span style="font-style: italic;">
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<br /></span><span>Glenn Gould is dancing.
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<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span> </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>The late string quartets are no longer a dialogue between two </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>reasonable </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>people but rather an internal dialogism. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven translates a microcosm.</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>
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<br />To talk about the late period on Beethoven demands to bring into play the <span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">solipsism</span></span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractactus 5. The limits of the language means the limits of my world</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">5.62. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said , but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. 5.621 The world and life are one</span>.<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" > 5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.) </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Some of the last compositions of Beethoven are still considered as solipsim</span>.
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">The question of the late period of Beethoven is the question about the limits of the world. It´s all about limits, how the limits are drawn</span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">When somebody says: <span style="font-style: italic;">I don´t understand this</span>, means that there is a incompatibility between the limits of this person´s world/language and the limits of what is to be understood</span>.<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> Being more precise, is not about expanding, the limits were already there, but rather lighting a little further.</span> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">In this sense music can be a mirror if there is symmetry in the limits but much more better if music is rather a lamp</span> <span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:100%;" >that <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">irritates</span></span> your retina and demands a dilatation of one´s own limits.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">They are well known the Joseph de Marliave´s words referring to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Grosse Fuge:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">the attitude of mind in which people listen to chamber music must undergo a radical change.</span> Indeed, Beethoven is demanding from the audience another attitude, as Immanuel Kant and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sapere aude</span> (Dare to know), Beethoven says <span style="font-style: italic;">Exaudio aude </span>(Dare to listen) and therefore to know</span>.
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Nietzsche and Adorno were musicians. Can we philosophize without words? Can music be philosophy?</span></span></span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">But how do we understand music? in the same way as when we say the proposition <span style="font-style: italic;">It´s raining</span></span>? <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Music is not true or false, music can not lie</span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">If I say: I<span style="font-style: italic;">t´s raining </span>while I see the rain out of the window</span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">someone could say: that´s true! But if I go out and immediately I step on the street and a cold drip drills my head before I can say that it rains I will know because my body feels the thrill of raining on my head</span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">I think music is like this, music is much more precise than verbal thought. We can understand music without being able to talk about music</span>.
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Nietzsche: <span style="font-style: italic;">the ear is the organ of fear</span></span>. <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Beethoven wasn´t afraid at all.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven was a <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >survivor</span>. Humility, poverty and chastity were the effects of his life in isolation. What´s the price? The audacity to deepen one´s own spirit, the introspective journey, the inner wealth. Philosopher and musician share the same solitude and both can not integrate in a social environment. Own´s body becomes battlefield and space for research. The artist is the one who experiences dangers, risks.
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<br />Art affects us as life affects us.
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<br />Art intensifies our experience. Art teaches us, makes us see what before we didn´t notice that was already there producing effects. Art is a tool to approach reality and get certain knowledge reaching parts of the experience that without art we could never reach.
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<br /><a name="suspended_time"></a><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"></span>
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >WAVES OF TIME</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Beethoven and Debussy</span>.
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<br /><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Of course this ideas about suspended time demand to make a connection between the spheres of Scelsi and the bubbles of Pierre Boulez (See the text I wrote in 2003 about <a href="http://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.html">Memory and Perception in Pierre Boulez</a>)
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven introduces in music the <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" >suspended present</span> and years later a tradition in french music will constittude a thread: Debussy-Messian-Boulez.
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<br />The problem of music from Bethoven becomes the problem of memory.
<br />Beethoven late period went beyond <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" >romanticism</span>. Beethoven has been considered the most crucial figure in the transition from classical to romantic, but in fact his music went far beyond that. There is an indubitable bridge between Beethoven´s late period and anti romantic movements of the end of the XIX century. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven draws the end of modernity</span></span></span>
<br />Beethoven´s late period critizies Beethoven second period. Beethoven was aware that classicism became fictitius and artificial, too ornamental. That was the indecorum of Beethoven.
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<br />The late period is not about memory but about perception and liberating the imagination, not about depicting a story but producing suggestions, atmospheres rather than linear progressions, music doesn´t move but spins around itself. Time, like ocean waves, doesn´t go anywhere, but it moves, it oscilates rejoicing the tension of the non resolution. What later in the music of Schumann it has been called suspended present, probably the musician that most hated the develops in music.
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<br />Beethoven and Debussy, time seems to be suspended, the ambiguity of Debussy and his floating chords, the so called <span style="font-style: italic;">emancipation of sound, </span>Beethoven drew already the possibility of music to become transformation, to emancipate from the sonata form.
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<br />Waves of time, the music becomes myterious oscillation, is not static like in the op. 132, music moves, not as an sphere but as waves of sound. Here Beethoven foreshadows Debussy.
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086598%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xN0Cz&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086598%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xN0Cz&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movement">Sonata 30. op 109 first movement (John Lill)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">john Lill</a></span>
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5088178%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-o47j9&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5088178%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-o47j9&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-3rd-movement">Sonata 30. op 109 3rd movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">John Lill</a></span>
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086483%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-jCQ7s&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086483%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-jCQ7s&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-31-op-110-last-movement">Sonata 31. op 110 last movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">john Lill</a></span>
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<br />Beethoven foreshadows Mahler dissolving already the Tonality. Beethoven and Bartók, Beethoven and Shostakovich and, why not, Beethoven and Messiaen (specially from the attack of the piano and how music becomes a machine with gears), Beethoven and Scelsi. Beethoven against the ability to memorize.
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<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >GROSSE FUGE
<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sometimes free, sometimes strict</span>
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<br />1920´s: first performance after Beethoven´s death (1827) of the op 130 with the Grosse Fuge as final movement.
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<br />Seemingly unrelated outbursts</span>. Assertive, <span style="font-style: italic;">sforzando</span>. The cello trills. Zig Zag. Vigour. Excess of tension. Fortissimo. Frenzy. Bustle. Hurried development:
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<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >Proust</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> and Beethoven. Both translate the inner book in the proximity of </span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">death, </span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">what makes to say only what is important to be said and in the only way it could be expressed: rushing and forgetting the ornaments. When there is a need to rush, <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">fragments</span></span> appear to be the best way of composing. The subject can not be expressed in a simpler way than through fragmentation</span>
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<br />Beethoven creates parallel centers of gravity, intensities, disjointed play of forces. The Grosse Fuge is a big question mark. The Doubt is brought in: music is folded, between two, a critical junction, the themes are broken into pieces. Beethoven opens all the possibilities of certainty.
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<br />We should consider the Fuge in its organic articulation as a texture in uncessant transformation of shapes. Is there a thread?
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<br />PARTS OF THE GROSSE FUGE:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">
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<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Overture</span>: presentation of the 2 main themes</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: Theme 1 (<span style="font-style: italic;">unison fortissimo</span> followed by a variation in <span style="font-style: italic;">legato=</span>Theme 1a<span style="font-style: italic;">)</span>, Theme 2<span style="font-style: italic;"> Meno mosso e moderato</span> followed by<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>a variation<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>of the Theme 1, Theme 1b<span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>
<br />- PART 1 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fuge</span>: presentation of the 3rd main theme (counter subject) + variation of Theme</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> 1b as subject. Development, fragmentation and manipulation of subject and counter subject.
<br />- PART 2 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Meno mosso e moderato</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: as a counter subject + Theme 1 as subject
<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Allegro molto e con brio</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: Theme 1a, scherzo
<br />- PART 3<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Double Fuge</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: develop of the Theme 1. Develop of the Theme 3 + Theme 1 + Meno mosso e moderato. End: odd progression of chords
<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Allegro molto e con brio</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> + fake end
<br />-<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary: </span>recapitulation + Allegro finale of the Theme 3.
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TJabvsIWjNI/AAAAAAAAAdo/2freDSzzSgI/s1600/grosse.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 210px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TJabvsIWjNI/AAAAAAAAAdo/2freDSzzSgI/s400/grosse.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518769636991470802" border="0" /></a>
<br />The fuge as <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">dance</span></span>. There is something that plays the a constant rol: the rhythm, even if it´s cross-rhythm or syncopated, we still recognize perfectly the determination: the <span style="font-style: italic;">fortissimo</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">sforzando</span>. It´s a static maniacal dance, an inner violent hurried dance. What creates a certain thread are no longer the subjects or counter subjects, niether the thems or melodies but rather a specific determination on the music, a Will to Power.
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<br />Beethoven´s biggest experiment: he burst the conventions of clasical music proposing new statements that will not be followed for the next generations, they will not be social accepted until the XX century.
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<br />The difficulty of the Grosse Fuge is just a matter of time: it requires time beyond any superficial approach. Beethoven is pointing the conventions to make us realize that it´s all about re-organizing the limits of our perception, taste, comprehension. It demands time to get access, requires an effort. It is a process of knowing each other and Beethoven is demanding again an effort from the audience to redefine the limits of what we call perception or understanding.
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<br />I don´t think the clue to approach the Grosse Fuge is to decipher the form or structure but rather to focus on three concepts: <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Simultaneity, Fragmentation and Dissonances</span></span>.
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<br />The Grosse Fuge brings in the following idea: simultaneity of subjects in continuous variation and fragmentation without harmonic requirements.
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<br />The simultaneity can be understood as a competition or an inner struggle between non complementary elements that Beethoven brings them together. But also as a co-existence of the differences. This differences or contrast create the appearance of chaos but it doesn´t, it´s just a complex world.
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<br />The Themes are not only transformed and disguised under multitude of different appearances creating a kind of perspectivism but also undergoing a process of fragmentation. Melodies become paintbrushes, no longer recognizable as a line, they are cut and delocalized.
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<br />Beethoven opens the doors to the dissonances as Samuel Beckett will allow chaos to enter <span style="font-style: italic;">because is the truth. </span>Beethoven´s music becomes less accesible and is not anymore music to please the ears but rather to challenge them. Within tonality, without abandon tonality he expands the limits of understanding music. It´s not that dissonances can also be music but rather there is no music without dissonaces.
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<br />Semitones: harmonic and melodic tension
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<br />The message in the finale of the ninth Symphony, composed one year before said: <span style="font-style: italic;">let´s put aside the dissonances and let´s be friends: </span><span>agreement and concord</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>But the Grosse Fuge proposes a different message: <span style="font-style: italic;">let´s integrate dissonances because they are the truth. </span><span>The consequences</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span>of questioning the harmony are not to have anymore the impression of an agreement</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span><span>And</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> sometimes</span><span> there will be moments of comming together in a certain concord: the unison passage of <span style="font-style: italic;">meno mosso a moderato</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Adagio con brio. </span><span>In Beethoven the</span><span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Weltanschauung</span> (World view) is actually dictated by a logic of <span style="font-style: italic;">Stimmungen,</span> a logic of affects<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span></span></span>
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<br />How to understand community accepting dissonances and differences?
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<br />The<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>gentle and soft section<span style="font-style: italic;"> meno mosso e moderato </span>(lyrical section)<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>brings a peaceful mood, because there is no longer a competition and brings some relief after the long Fuge .
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<br />But is later when the <span style="font-style: italic;">meno mosso e moderato</span> is introduced inside the Fuge, simultaneously with the main theme, with the instructions <span style="font-style: italic;">forte </span>, the gentle becomes assertive and loud because this time there is a competition on going.
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<br />After the meno mosso e moderato part suddenly we arrive in a series of odd progression of chords, each followed by a moment of silence: Uncertainty, expecting the resolution which is abruptly interrupted by the <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegro con brio</span>.
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<br />Quick summary, recapitulation and final section with the Theme 3.
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<br />Beethoven brings together the opposition death-life, depression-will of power, yes, dialectical but he brings them simultaneously, showing that one need the other to exist. And the Grosse Fuge is the expression of that simultaneity (to relate with the <span style="font-style: italic;">Heiliges dankgesang</span>)
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<br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegro molto e con brio</span> at the ent after the trilling section of the end of the moso e moderato: Negociating moods, bipolarity.
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<br />Disonances (existencial despair) against triumph of joy. The Grosse Fuge doesn´t express the disonances of the world (war, illness, proximity of death, depression) but the possibility of the Will to exist inside these dissonances. The Grosse Fuge is a fight.
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>What is the difference between a string quartet and and string orchestra? 4 musicians or 12, 21, 60.
<br />It´s interesting to listen to the orchestral version of the Grosse Fuge, how the music becomes crowd and to realize how the music becomes more accessible in its orchestral dimension. There is a difference if we isolate 4 single elements than 4 groups of elements.
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5329387%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-db1Xk&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5329387%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-db1Xk&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestra">Grosse Fuge ORCHESTRA</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">klemperer</a></span>
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<br />But if we put the two long fuges sections parallel we find a perfect symmetry in terms of length . This track brings both sections together:
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YQve8&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YQve8&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2">Grosse Fuge x2</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span>
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<br />Why have I done something like this? If we double the fuge, if we bend the fuge is not only to find a symmetry but to get a certain experience of how a crowd in fuge would sound like. This case is very different from the string orchestra. Now we have 8 instruments, actually 2 groups of singular elements in fuge. The result is the opposite than with the orchestra. An orchestration of the Grosse Fuge makes the fuge more accesible because each line becomes a choreography for many instruments that repeat the same line. This makes easier to identify and recognize every single line because it has been multiplicated. It´s easier to identify ten pepole moving exactly in the same way than one single person moving on its own way. But the fuge folded on itself makes the chaos bigger and reproduces accurately how a crowd in fuge would sound like. And not only that, if I have increased the chaos was to make more visible that still the fuge keeps an amazing unity. Of course the number of dissonaces are bigger but doesn´t make the whole more dissonant, it´s just a matter of quantity and not of quality.
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<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></div><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Animation machine of the Grosse Fuge </span>
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<br /><object height="185" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6s0Mp7LFI-k?fs=1&hl=de_DE"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6s0Mp7LFI-k?fs=1&hl=de_DE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="185" width="400"></embed></object>
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" ></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>
<br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >MUSIC HAS HOLES</span>
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>The center is abandoned, the action is moved to the periphery, a hole appears across the extremes</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:180%;">
<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >Adorno and Deleuze</span> together?
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<br />It´s usual to read about the differences between Deleuze and Adorno: for Adorno, reality is necessarily dialectical and irresolvable contradictions, while Deleuze denies the notion of a correct rendering of objective reality and introduces the notion of univicity of being , no dialectical but rather an absolute leap of perception. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>But is it possible to find a common denominator for both philosophers?. First of all, they both invoke the kind of art which resists or defies representation. But going further I will try to show how to apply </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>in the late Beethoven the </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>Deleuze and Guattari´s ideas about music and to connect them with Adorno´s ideas about the late Beethoven.
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<br />- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">IMPROPRIETY</span>
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<br />Adorno talks about impropriety and unsuitability: what appears in the late period isn´t simply what appears to be. Adorno means appearance of the non appearance: <span style="font-style: italic;">either because its curious inauthenticity or because excessive simplicity, the themes and melodies no longer appear as themselves but as signs of something else. They are cut, disturbed, they are only sketches, possiblities</span>. Understanding themes as subjectivities, in the late period the themes are disturbed, they are in inmanent distant respect themselves.
<br />Beethoven becomes fragile
<br />Tonality is withheld and at the same time broken.
<br />Alienation and schizofrenia.
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<br />The deterritorialization of the refrain (Ritournello) happens for the first time not in Schumann but in the late Beethoven
<br />To relate with the the concept of <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >Inadequacy </span>in Deleuze (chapter 8 of <span style="font-style: italic;">Logic of sense)</span>, about the floating signifier in Levi-Strauss. Deleuze describes this Antinomia: having two series which are related to each other in continuos imbalance or distance, that implies continuos readjustments.
<br />This continuos imbalance or distance is represented by the idea of <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >Asymptote</span>.
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<br />- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >DISAGGREGATION</span> of the central principle. Disintegration, dissociation and dissolution of the form. The classical <span style="font-weight: bold;">burs</span>t into fragments, says Adorno. Actually Beckett used also the same image of something that <span style="font-style: italic;">burst out</span><span> to refer to Beethoven´s Ghost trio</span><span style="font-style: italic;">: </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >a hitherto unkown art of dissonances, a weavering, a hiatus, a punctuation of dehiscence,a stress given by what opens, slips away and disappears, a gap that punctuates nothing but the silence of a final ending“ </span>
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span><span>What does <span style="font-style: italic;">burst </span>mean? Dehiscence, premature open of a wound or a plant to release its contents.
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<br /></span>The voices are wrapped around each other.
<br />Harmony becomes a forgotten convention because it produces the ilussion of unity.
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<br />Deleuze and Guattari in <span style="font-style: italic;">Thousand Plateaus, Postulates of Linguistics,</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>in opposition to the arborescent type, Beethoven <span style="font-style: italic;">prepares the disaggregation of the central principle, replacing the centers forms of continuous development with a form that constantly dissolves and transform itself. When development suburdinates form and spans the whole, variation begins to free itself and becomes identified with creation.</span> (...)
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<br />Beethoven introducing variations without center in music approach the idea of rhizome that Pierre Boulez will bring into the limits, <span style="font-style: italic;">making audible nonsonorous forces </span>through placing all sound components in continuous variation.
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<br />1819-23 Diabelli Variations op. 120
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<br />Instead by Form, the matter is organized by forces, intensities , the center is disseminated in a net or weave of forces.
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<br /><object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5342688%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-2D16F&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5342688%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-2D16F&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="81" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/132-allegro">op 132. 2nd mov. Allegro</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span>
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<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >UNIVOCITY</span>
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<br />Against decoration and ornamentation, the late period is excessive simplicity, bare. There is not anymore question and answer, is just one single thing but displaced from itself. It´s not anymore important to exhaust fully the themes. This is what Adorno calles <span style="font-style: italic;">Principle of condensation</span>, forms are rarely consumed, it´s enough to mention/enunciate to exhaust.
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<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >HOLES</span>
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<br />Beethoven turns out the hollow space of the sonata form, concave becomes convex.
<br />Adorno also talks about interruptions, hiatus, silences, ruptures, pure tension between the extremes. The technique, instead harmonic transitions, is to JUMP. There are no mediations, only, like in Hegel, through extremes. Music has holes.
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<br />Deleuze in <span style="font-style: italic;">Critical and Clinical </span>describes Beethoven´s Ghost trio: <span style="font-style: italic;">there is a kind of central erosion that first arises as a threat among the bass parts and is expressed in the trill of wavering of the piano, as if one key were about to be abandoned for another, or for nothing, hollowing out the surface, plunging into a ghostly dimension where dissonances would appear only to punctuate the silence</span>.
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<br />On the other hand, the floating signifier needs emptiness to emerge.
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<br />If now we visit Deleuze and Guattari about Holey space in <span style="font-style: italic;">Treatise on Nomadology:The war machine, </span>we are tempted to think that Beethoven was a smith, inventing a holey space within the striated space of the sonata form. Beethoven produces the emergency of the rhizome in the striated space of the classicism.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>
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<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >POLARIZATION</span><span style="font-size:130%;">.</span>
<br />
<br />Beethoven wasn´t atonal but polarizes the tonality. Dissociation into two extremes: monody and poliphony, with the exception of the fuges.
<br />
<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Deleuze Guattari: Refrain: <span style="font-style: italic;">Not to supress tonality but to turn it loose.</span></span></span></span>
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">TRANSVERSALITY</span>
<br />
<br /></span><span>Adorno means pure tension<span style="font-weight: bold;"> across extremes, </span>when unity is just an illusion and the whole a self deception.
<br /></span></span></span></span></span><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%;font-family:lucida grande;" align="JUSTIFY"> <span style="font-size:100%;">Deluze about Proust will demand to have the right to incompliteness and to patches: the fragmentation means to exclude the logic unity and organic totality, there is no previous unity but they are an EFFECT, they come afterwards, a posteriori: but the unity appears as a fragment (paintbrush) inside the sistem. Transversality is what makes that </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">allows each part to keep its difference and at the same time to be connected and to communicate.</span></span> </p><span style="font-family:Garamond,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b></b></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>
<br />
<br />- Adorno:<span style="font-style: italic;"> the late period speaks about the language of the archaic, of children of savages and God. </span>Deleuze: only children artists and schizofrenics can inhabitate the inadequacy because there are displaced towards themselves</span></span></span></span>.
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>
<br />
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">CODA</span></span>
<br />
<br />Beethoven remains.
<br />
<br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">I will never die.</span></span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">
<br />This text is dedicated to Miguel Copón.</span>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >BIBLIOGRAPHY</span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Aristoteles: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Poética</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Adorno: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Beethoven</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Proust: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >À la Recherche du temps perdu</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Benjamin: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Literarische und ästhetische Essays</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Wittgenstein: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Tractatus</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">,</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Deleuze and Guattari: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schyzophrenia</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Deleuze: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Proust and the signs</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Deleuze:</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" > Critical and Clinical</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Deleuze:</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" > Spinoza</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Practical Philosophy</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Deleuze: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Cinema 2. The time image</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Nietzsche: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >The Gay Science</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Leonard B.Meyer: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Emotion and meaning in music</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Anthony Storr: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Music and the Mind</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Robert S.Kahn: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Beethoven and the Grosse Fuge</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Michael Schneider: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Musiques du nuit</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Peter Kivy: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >New Essays on musical understanding</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Antoine Hennion: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >La passion musicale</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Max Steinitzer: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Beethoven</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">E. Fubini: El Romanticismo: entre Musica y Filosofia</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Robert P. Morgan: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >Twentieth Century Music
<br /></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Patrick Donnelly:<span style="font-style: italic;"> Grosse Fuge</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >
<br /></span>
<br />
<br />
<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Beethoven and Adorno</span>
<br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Beethoven and Deleuze</span>
<br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Beethoven and Scelsi</span>
<br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Beethoven Grosse Fuge</span>
<br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Deleuze and music</span>
<br /></span>
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<br />
<br />
<br /></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-51603562805260911442009-09-28T09:35:00.000-07:002010-09-28T09:36:00.018-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" ></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>
<br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >MUSIC HAS HOLES</span>
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>The center is abandoned, the action is moved to the periphery, a hole appears across the extremes</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:180%;">
<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >Adorno and Deleuze</span> together?
<br /><span>
<br />It´s usual to read about the differences between Deleuze and Adorno: for Adorno, reality is necessarily dialectical and irresolvable contradictions, while Deleuze denies the notion of a correct rendering of objective reality and introduces the notion of univicity of being , no dialectical but rather an absolute leap of perception. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>But is it possible to find a common denominator for both philosophers?. First of all, they both invoke the kind of art which resists or defies representation. But going further I will try to show how to apply </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>in the late Beethoven the </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>Deleuze and Guattari´s ideas about music and to connect them with Adorno´s ideas about the late Beethoven.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">
<br />- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">IMPROPRIETY</span>
<br /></span>
<br />Adorno talks about impropriety and unsuitability: what appears in the late period isn´t simply what appears to be. Adorno means appearance of the non appearance: <span style="font-style: italic;">either because its curious inauthenticity or because excessive simplicity, the themes and melodies no longer appear as themselves but as signs of something else. They are cut, disturbed, they are only sketches, possiblities</span>. Understanding themes as subjectivities, in the late period the themes are disturbed, they are in inmanent distant respect themselves.
<br />Beethoven becomes fragile
<br />Tonality is withheld and at the same time broken.
<br />Alienation and schizofrenia.
<br />
<br />The deterritorialization of the refrain (Ritournello) happens for the first time not in Schumann but in the late Beethoven
<br />To relate with the the concept of <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >Inadequacy </span>in Deleuze (chapter 8 of <span style="font-style: italic;">Logic of sense)</span>, about the floating signifier in Levi-Strauss. Deleuze describes this Antinomia: having two series which are related to each other in continuos imbalance or distance, that implies continuos readjustments.
<br />This continuos imbalance or distance is represented by the idea of <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:180%;" >Asymptote</span>.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">
<br />- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >DISAGGREGATION</span> of the central principle. Disintegration, dissociation and dissolution of the form. The classical <span style="font-weight: bold;">burs</span>t into fragments, says Adorno. Actually Beckett used also the same image of something that <span style="font-style: italic;">burst out</span><span> to refer to Beethoven´s Ghost trio</span><span style="font-style: italic;">: </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >a hitherto unkown art of dissonances, a weavering, a hiatus, a punctuation of dehiscence,a stress given by what opens, slips away and disappears, a gap that punctuates nothing but the silence of a final ending“ </span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span><span>What does <span style="font-style: italic;">burst </span>mean? Dehiscence, premature open of a wound or a plant to release its contents.
<br />
<br /></span>The voices are wrapped around each other.
<br />Harmony becomes a forgotten convention because it produces the ilussion of unity.
<br />
<br />Deleuze and Guattari in <span style="font-style: italic;">Thousand Plateaus, Postulates of Linguistics,</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>in opposition to the arborescent type, Beethoven <span style="font-style: italic;">prepares the disaggregation of the central principle, replacing the centers forms of continuous development with a form that constantly dissolves and transform itself. When development suburdinates form and spans the whole, variation begins to free itself and becomes identified with creation.</span> (...)
<br />
<br />Beethoven introducing variations without center in music approach the idea of rhizome that Pierre Boulez will bring into the limits, <span style="font-style: italic;">making audible nonsonorous forces </span>through placing all sound components in continuous variation.
<br />
<br />1819-23 Diabelli Variations op. 120
<br />
<br />Instead by Form, the matter is organized by forces, intensities, the center is disseminated in a net or weave of forces.
<br />
<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5342688%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-2D16F&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5342688%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-2D16F&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/132-allegro">op 132. 2nd mov. Allegro</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >UNIVOCITY</span>
<br />
<br />Against decoration and ornamentation, the late period is excessive simplicity, bare. There is not anymore question and answer, is just one single thing but displaced from itself. It´s not anymore important to exhaust fully the themes. This is what Adorno calles <span style="font-style: italic;">Principle of condensation</span>, forms are rarely consumed, it´s enough to mention/enunciate to exhaust.
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >HOLES</span>
<br />
<br />Beethoven turns out the hollow space of the sonata form, concave becomes convex.
<br />Adorno also talks about interruptions, hiatus, silences, ruptures, pure tension between the extremes. The technique, instead harmonic transitions, is to JUMP. There are no mediations, only, like in Hegel, through extremes. Music has holes.
<br />
<br />Deleuze in <span style="font-style: italic;">Critical and Clinical </span>describes Beethoven´s Ghost trio: <span style="font-style: italic;">there is a kind of central erosion that first arises as a threat among the bass parts and is expressed in the trill of wavering of the piano, as if one key were about to be abandoned for another, or for nothing, hollowing out the surface, plunging into a ghostly dimension where dissonances would appear only to punctuate the silence</span>.
<br />
<br />On the other hand, the floating signifier needs emptiness to emerge.
<br />
<br />If now we visit Deleuze and Guattari about Holey space in <span style="font-style: italic;">Treatise on Nomadology:The war machine, </span>we are tempted to think that Beethoven was a smith, inventing a holey space within the striated space of the sonata form. Beethoven produces the emergency of the rhizome in the striated space of the classicism.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>
<br />
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >POLARIZATION</span><span style="font-size:130%;">.</span>
<br />
<br />Beethoven wasn´t atonal but polarizes the tonality. Dissociation into two extremes: monody and poliphony, with the exception of the fuges.
<br />
<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Deleuze Guattari: Refrain: <span style="font-style: italic;">Not to supress tonality but to turn it loose.</span></span></span></span>
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>
<br /><span style="font-size:130%;">- </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">TRANSVERSALITY</span>
<br />
<br /></span><span>Adorno means pure tension<span style="font-weight: bold;"> across extremes, </span>when unity is just an illusion and the whole a self deception.
<br /></span></span></span></span></span><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 150%;font-family:lucida grande;" align="JUSTIFY"> <span style="font-size:100%;">Deluze about Proust will demand to have the right to incompliteness and to patches: the fragmentation means to exclude the logic unity and organic totality, there is no previous unity but they are an EFFECT, they come afterwards, a posteriori: but the unity appears as a fragment (paintbrush) inside the sistem. Transversality is what makes that </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">allows each part to keep its difference and at the same time to be connected and to communicate.</span></span> </p><span style="font-family:Garamond,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b></b></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>
<br />
<br />- Adorno:<span style="font-style: italic;"> the late period speaks about the language of the archaic, of children of savages and God. </span>Deleuze: only children artists and schizofrenics can inhabitate the inadequacy because there are displaced towards themselves</span></span></span></span>.
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-1589116122176723702009-09-28T09:29:00.000-07:002010-09-28T09:31:20.210-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;" >WAVES OF TIME</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Beethoven and Debussy</span>.
<br />
<br /><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Of course this ideas about suspended time demand to make a connection between the spheres of Scelsi and the bubbles of Pierre Boulez (See the text I wrote in 2003 about <a href="http://www.diegoagullo.com/2009/06/perception-and-memory-approach-to.html">Memory and Perception in Pierre Boulez</a>)
<br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven introduces in music the <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" >suspended present</span> and years later a tradition in french music will constittude a thread: Debussy-Messian-Boulez.
<br />
<br />The problem of music from Bethoven becomes the problem of memory.
<br />Beethoven late period went beyond <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;" >romanticism</span>. Beethoven has been considered the most crucial figure in the transition from classical to romantic, but in fact his music went far beyond that. There is an indubitable bridge between Beethoven´s late period and anti romantic movements of the end of the XIX century. </span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Beethoven draws the end of modernity</span></span></span>
<br />Beethoven´s late period critizies Beethoven second period. Beethoven was aware that classicism became fictitius and artificial, too ornamental. That was the indecorum of Beethoven.
<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>
<br />The late period is not about memory but about perception and liberating the imagination, not about depicting a story but producing suggestions, atmospheres rather than linear progressions, music doesn´t move but spins around itself. Time, like ocean waves, doesn´t go anywhere, but it moves, it oscilates rejoicing the tension of the non resolution. What later in the music of Schumann it has been called suspended present, probably the musician that most hated the develops in music.
<br />
<br />Beethoven and Debussy, time seems to be suspended, the ambiguity of Debussy and his floating chords, the so called <span style="font-style: italic;">emancipation of sound, </span>Beethoven drew already the possibility of music to become transformation, to emancipate from the sonata form.
<br />
<br />Waves of time, the music becomes myterious oscillation, is not static like in the op. 132, music moves, not as an sphere but as waves of sound. Here Beethoven foreshadows Debussy.
<br />
<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086598%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xN0Cz&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086598%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-xN0Cz&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-last-movement">Sonata 30. op 109 first movement (John Lill)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">john Lill</a></span>
<br />
<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5088178%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-o47j9&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5088178%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-o47j9&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-30-op-109-3rd-movement">Sonata 30. op 109 3rd movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">John Lill</a></span>
<br />
<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086483%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-jCQ7s&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5086483%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-jCQ7s&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/sonata-31-op-110-last-movement">Sonata 31. op 110 last movement</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">john Lill</a></span>
<br />
<br />
<br />Beethoven foreshadows Mahler dissolving already the Tonality. Beethoven and Bartók, Beethoven and Shostakovich and, why not, Beethoven and Messiaen (specially from the attack of the piano and how music becomes a machine with gears), Beethoven and Scelsi. Beethoven against the ability to memorize.
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-32730256512563908362009-09-28T09:24:00.000-07:002010-09-28T09:26:14.269-07:00</span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;">GROSSE FUGE
<br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Sometimes free, sometimes strict</span>
<br />
<br />1920´s: first performance after Beethoven´s death (1827) of the op 130 with the Grosse Fuge as final movement.
<br />
<br />Seemingly unrelated outbursts</span>. Assertive, <span style="font-style: italic;">sforzando</span>. The cello trills. Zig Zag. Vigour. Excess of tension. Fortissimo. Frenzy. Bustle. Hurried development:
<br />
<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;">Proust</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> and Beethoven. Both translate the inner book in the proximity of </span><span style=";font-family:lucida grande;font-size:180%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">death, </span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">what makes to say only what is important to be said and in the only way it could be expressed: rushing and forgetting the ornaments. When there is a need to rush, <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">fragments</span></span> appear to be the best way of composing. The subject can not be expressed in a simpler way than through fragmentation</span>
<br />
<br />Beethoven creates parallel centers of gravity, intensities, disjointed play of forces. The Grosse Fuge is a big question mark. The Doubt is brought in: music is folded, between two, a critical junction, the themes are broken into pieces. Beethoven opens all the possibilities of certainty.
<br />
<br />We should consider the Fuge in its organic articulation as a texture in uncessant transformation of shapes. Is there a thread?
<br />
<br />PARTS OF THE GROSSE FUGE:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">
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<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Overture</span>: presentation of the 2 main themes</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: Theme 1 (<span style="font-style: italic;">unison fortissimo</span> followed by a variation in <span style="font-style: italic;">legato=</span>Theme 1a<span style="font-style: italic;">)</span>, Theme 2<span style="font-style: italic;"> Meno mosso e moderato</span> followed by<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>a variation<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>of the Theme 1, Theme 1b<span style="font-style: italic;">.</span>
<br />- PART 1 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fuge</span>: presentation of the 3rd main theme (counter subject) + variation of Theme</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> 1b as subject. Development, fragmentation and manipulation of subject and counter subject.
<br />- PART 2 <span style="font-weight: bold;">Meno mosso e moderato</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: as a counter subject + Theme 1 as subject
<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Allegro molto e con brio</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: Theme 1a, scherzo
<br />- PART 3<span style="font-weight: bold;"> Double Fuge</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: develop of the Theme 1. Develop of the Theme 3 + Theme 1 + Meno mosso e moderato. End: odd progression of chords
<br />- <span style="font-weight: bold;">Allegro molto e con brio</span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> + fake end
<br />-<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary: </span>recapitulation + Allegro finale of the Theme 3.
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TJabvsIWjNI/AAAAAAAAAdo/2freDSzzSgI/s1600/grosse.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 210px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m3VOmOaEolo/TJabvsIWjNI/AAAAAAAAAdo/2freDSzzSgI/s400/grosse.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5518769636991470802" border="0" /></a>
<br />The fuge as <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">dance</span></span>. There is something that plays the a constant rol: the rhythm, even if it´s cross-rhythm or syncopated, we still recognize perfectly the determination: the <span style="font-style: italic;">fortissimo</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">sforzando</span>. It´s a static maniacal dance, an inner violent hurried dance. What creates a certain thread are no longer the subjects or counter subjects, niether the thems or melodies but rather a specific determination on the music, a Will to Power.
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<br />Beethoven´s biggest experiment: he burst the conventions of clasical music proposing new statements that will not be followed by the next generation, they will not be social accepted until the XX century.
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<br />The difficulty of the Grosse Fuge is just a matter of time: it requires time beyond any superficial approach. Beethoven is pointing the conventions to make us realize that it´s all about re-organizing the limits of our perception, taste, comprehension. It demands time to get access, requires an effort. It is a process of knowing each other and Beethoven is demanding again an effort from the audience to redefine the limits of what we call perception or understanding.
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<br />I don´t think the clue to approach the Grosse Fuge is to decipher the form or structure but rather to focus on three concepts: <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Simultaneity, Fragmentation and Dissonances</span></span>.
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<br />The Grosse Fuge brings in the following idea: simultaneity of subjects in continuous variation and fragmentation without harmonic requirements.
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<br />The simultaneity can be understood as a competition or an inner struggle between non complementary elements that Beethoven brings them together. But also as a co-existence of the differences. This differences or contrast create the appearance of chaos but it doesn´t, it´s just a complex world.
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<br />The Themes are not only transformed and disguised under multitude of different appearances creating a kind of perspectivism but also undergoing a process of fragmentation. Melodies become paintbrushes, no longer recognizable as a line, they are cut and delocalized.
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<br />Beethoven opens the doors to the dissonances as Samuel Beckett will allow chaos to enter <span style="font-style: italic;">because is the truth. </span>Beethoven´s music becomes less accesible and is not anymore music to please the ears but rather to challenge them. Within tonality, without abandon tonality he expands the limits of understanding music. It´s not that dissonances can also be music but rather there is no music without dissonaces.
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<br />Semitones: harmonic and melodic tension
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<br />The message in the finale of the ninth Symphony, composed one year before said: <span style="font-style: italic;">let´s put aside the dissonances and let´s be friends: </span><span>agreement and concord</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>But the Grosse Fuge proposes a different message: <span style="font-style: italic;">let´s integrate dissonances because they are the truth. </span><span>The consequences</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span>of questioning the harmony are not to have anymore the impression of an agreement</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span><span>And</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> sometimes</span><span> there will be moments of comming together in a certain concord: the unison passage of <span style="font-style: italic;">meno mosso a moderato</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Adagio con brio. </span><span>In Beethoven the</span><span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Weltanschauung</span> (World view) is actually dictated by a logic of <span style="font-style: italic;">Stimmungen,</span> a logic of affects<span style="font-style: italic;">. </span></span></span>
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<br />How to understand community accepting dissonances and differences?
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<br />The<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>gentle and soft section<span style="font-style: italic;"> meno mosso e moderato </span>(lyrical section)<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>brings a peaceful mood, because there is no longer a competition and brings some relief after the long Fuge .
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<br />But is later when the <span style="font-style: italic;">meno mosso e moderato</span> is introduced inside the Fuge, simulatneously with the main theme, with the instructions <span style="font-style: italic;">forte </span>, the gentle becomes assertive and loud because this time there is a competition on going.
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<br />After the meno mosso e moderato part suddenly we arrive in a series of odd progression of chords, each followed by a moment of silence: Uncertainty, expecting the resolution which is abruptly interrupted by the <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegro con brio</span>.
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<br />Quick summary, recapitulation and final happy end.
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<br />Beethoven brings together the opposition death-life, depression-will of power, yes, dialectical but he brings them simultaneously, showing that one need the other to exist. And the Grosse Fuge is the expression of that simultaneity (to realte with the Heiliges dankgesang)
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<br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Allegro molto e con brio</span> at the ent after the trilling section of the end of the moso e moderato: Negociating moods, bipolarity.
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<br />Disonances (existencial despair) against triumph of joy. The Grosse Fuge doesn´t express the disonances of the world (war, illness, proximity of death, depression) but the possibility of the Will to exist inside these dissonances. The Grosse Fuge is a fight.
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<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>What is the difference between a string quartet and and string orchestra? 4 musicians or 12, 21, 60.
<br />It´s interesting to listen to the orchestral version of the Grosse Fuge, how the music becomes crowd and to realize how the music becomes more accessible in its orchestral dimension. There is a difference if we isolate 4 single elements than 4 groups of elements.
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<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5329387%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-db1Xk&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5329387%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-db1Xk&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-orchestra">Grosse Fuge ORCHESTRA</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">klemperer</a></span>
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<br />But if we put the two long fuges sections parallel we find a perfect symmetry in terms of length . This track brings both sections together:
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<br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YQve8&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-YQve8&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2">Grosse Fuge x2</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">alban berg quartet</a></span>
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<br />Why have I done something like this? If we double the fuge, if we bend the fuge is not only to find a symmetry but to get a certain experience of how a crowd in fuge would sound like. This case is very different from the string orchestra. Now we have 8 instruments, actually 2 groups of singular elements in fuge. The result is the opposite than with the orchestra. An orchestration of the Grosse Fuge makes the fuge more accesible because each line becomes a choreography for many instruments that repeat the same line. This makes easier to identify and recognize every single line because it has been multiplicated. It´s easier to identify ten pepole moving exactly in the same way than one single person moving on its own way. But the fuge folded on itself makes the chaos bigger and reproduces accurately how a crowd in fuge would sound like. And not only that, if I have increased the chaos was to make more visible that still the fuge keeps an amazing unity. Of course the number of dissonaces are bigger but doesn´t make the whole more dissonant.
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<br />Grosse Fuge for Pianoforte 2 hands:
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<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div></div><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Animation machine of the Grosse Fuge </span>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-665813069864013012008-11-02T12:03:00.000-08:002010-11-02T14:44:52.506-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >LA MALINCONIA</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Joseph Kerman referred to this movement as a<span style="font-style: italic;"> little harmonic labyrinth. </span>Disorientation<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>not only<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>regarding harmony but also in terms of structure.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>The movement starts already with an unusual Adagio and represents one of the first appearances of the bipolarity as a choice in Beethoven. <span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Already the term Melancholie brings in the connotations</span> of oscillation across two extreme moods. There is no transition</span>,<span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> it´s a sudden change into the Allegretto or manic dance. This creates a condicional contrast between the material, which means that both extremes need each other to exist. There is no sadness without its contrary.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">The same type of contrast will happen in the </span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: lucida grande;"><span>Op. 135, 4th movement. Bipolarity</span><span> is already expressed by the header of the movement: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Grave-Allegro-Grave-Allegro. </span></span><span>Perfect example of the contrast or opposition or inner struggle between despair and joy, this movement is called <span style="font-style: italic;">The Difficult Resolution</span>. </span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Under the introductory slow chords Beethoven wrote in the manuscript <span style="font-style: italic;">Muß es sein?</span> (Must it be?) to which he responds, with the faster main theme of the movement, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Es muß sein!</span> (It must be!) This is definitely a big ethic statement for the sake of affirmative Will and self-suggestion.<br /></span><span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: lucida grande;"><span>After presenting the darkness Beethoven brings abruptly a fast unexpected refrain, it sounds even too naive, but it plays the role of calm and stability, center, in the heart of chaos; the identity is assured. But slowly the forces of chaos are finding holes where they can enter. The refrain becomes fragile and unstable until it happen again, the darkness is back, the fear comes in. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: lucida grande;">Jumping from chaos to the beginning of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart in any moment (</span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Of the Refrain) </span><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-2082891099432129032008-10-23T04:48:00.000-07:002010-10-23T04:54:38.372-07:00<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >SOUND SAMPLES</span></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;font-size:130%;" >Loop out of op 127 3rd mov Scherzando vivace</span><br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6330328&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6330328&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/loop-op-127-3rd-mov-scherzando-vivace">Loop op.127 3rd mov. scherzando vivace</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">diegoagullo</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" ><br />op 59 + op 132</span></span><br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6071786&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F6071786&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/op-59-op-132">op 59 + op 132</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">diegoagullo</a></span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-weight: bold;">Grosse Fuge blended</span></span><br /><object width="100%" height="81"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926&secret_url=false"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F5327926&secret_url=false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="81"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo/grosse-fuge-x2">Grosse Fuge x2</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/diegoagullo">diegoagullo</a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-61788107024094258972008-10-08T03:46:00.000-07:002010-10-10T04:01:19.237-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">OXYMORON</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">To bring in the idea of the oxymoron can help to understand the simultaneity of non complementary elements?</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">How to think non complementary elements occurring simultaneously?</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">On one hand, there is Bipolarity in the late Beethoven as the oscillation across two extremes. This case is easy because it´s about which of the elements is first presented: first I show A and then I shift to B, the case of the </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span>Op. 135, 4<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span> movement.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">. But the most interesting phenomenon is the simultaneity of this two <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">elements</span> of a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">series</span>, as happens in </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span><span style="font-style: italic;">The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Heilige</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Dankgesang</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> where the extremes are happening at the same time, are combined, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">cross linked</span></span>,<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> illness and inner wealth are now one same single thing.</span>
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Beethoven and Nietzsche</span></span>
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Letter to Peter Gast, August 1881</span>
<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Thoughts have loomed upon my horizon the like of which I have not known before—I shall not divulge anything about them, but shall remain imperturbably calm. I shall have to live a </span><i style="font-family: lucida grande;">few</i><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"> years longer ! Ah, my friend, sometimes I have a feeling that I am leading a most dangerous life, for I belong to the kind of machine that can </span><i style="font-family: lucida grande;">fly to pieces</i><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">. The intensity of my feelings makes me shudder and laugh once or twice already I have been unable to leave my room for the absurd reason that my eyes were inflamed—by what? On each occasion I had wept too much on my wanderings the day before and not sentimental tears by any means, but tears of joy and exaltation. At such moments I sang and uttered nonsense, filled with a new vision which I had seen in advance of the rest of mankind.</span>
<br /><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } A:link { so-language: zxx } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Nietzsche: Thus spoke Zarathustra. The drunken song</b></span></span><span style="font-family:URWPalladioL;"><span style="font-size:130%;">, </span></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">part 4 chapter 10 </span></span><a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/172.pdf"><cite></cite><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></a> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell?</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity? Hear you it</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">not? Smell you it not? Just now has my world become perfect, midnight</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">is also mid-day,-</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,- go away!</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">or you will learn that a sage is also a fool.</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Said you ever Yes to one joy? O my friends, then said you Yes also to</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">all woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured,-</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">-Wanted you ever once to come twice; said you ever: "You please me,</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">happiness! Instant! Moment!" then wanted you all to come back again!</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">-All anew, all eternal, all enlinked, enlaced and enamoured, Oh, then</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">did you love the world,-</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" align="LEFT"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">-You eternal ones, you love it eternally and for all time: and also to</span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family:URWPalladioL;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;">woe do you say: Hence! Go! but come back! For joys all want- eternity!</span></span></span></p>
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<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-35668771191496089262008-10-06T05:59:00.000-07:002010-10-06T06:28:39.485-07:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Set of Variations</span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><br /><br /></span></span><p style="font-family: lucida grande;">PARTS:</p><p style="font-family: lucida grande;">Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile — Più mosso — Andante moderato e lusinghiero — Adagio — Allegretto — Adagio, ma non troppo e semplice — Allegretto This, the central movement of the quartet, is a set of 7 variations (6 Complete & 1 Incomplete with Coda) on the following simple theme in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Major" title="A Major" class="mw-redirect">A Major</a>:<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beethoven_Opus_131_Fourth_Movement_Main_Theme.jpg" class="image"><img alt="Beethoven Opus 131 Fourth Movement Main Theme.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Beethoven_Opus_131_Fourth_Movement_Main_Theme.jpg" width="463" height="123" /></a><br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-57087671360473082902007-11-08T06:30:00.000-08:002010-11-09T06:24:25.921-08:00<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >BEETHOVEN FUGES </span><span style="font-size:100%;">
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">During Beethoven´s last decade there was a contrapuntal obssesion. Going back to Barroque music (Bach and Haendel).</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">Education with Albrechtsberger: background in counterpoint</span>
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<br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;">List of Fuges:</span>
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<br /><meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-family: lucida grande;">- 1805: Fugato Eroica Symphony
<br />- 1808: String Quartet Rasumovsky n.3 4th mov.
<br />- 1811: Fugato 7th Symphony Allegretto
<br />- 1815: Cello sonata op. 102 n.2 Allegro fugato.
<br />- 1816: Piano Sonata op. 101
<br />- 1816-17: String Quintet in D minor
<br />- 1817-18: Piano Sonata Hammerklavier, Finale.
<br />- 1821: Piano Sonata op. 110, Finale
<br />- 1824: Missa Solemnis, Et vitam venturi
<br />- 1824: 9th Symphony, Finale
<br />- 1825-26: Grosse Fuge op 133
<br />- 1826: String Quartet op 131, Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo </p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6767364650477358174.post-71883181673498153322007-11-04T09:56:00.000-08:002010-11-16T13:37:04.613-08:00<div><object style="width:420px;height:297px" ><param name="movie" value="http://static.issuu.com/webembed/viewers/style1/v1/IssuuViewer.swf?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true&documentId=101116135130-19f51953c499409b8f34f4f06332564c&docName=acrosstheextremes&username=Diegonante&loadingInfoText=Across%20the%20extremes&et=1289943355952&er=5" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"/><param name="menu" value="false"/><embed src="http://static.issuu.com/webembed/viewers/style1/v1/IssuuViewer.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" menu="false" style="width:420px;height:297px" flashvars="mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true&documentId=101116135130-19f51953c499409b8f34f4f06332564c&docName=acrosstheextremes&username=Diegonante&loadingInfoText=Across%20the%20extremes&et=1289943355952&er=5" /></object><div style="width:420px;text-align:left;"><a href="http://issuu.com/Diegonante/docs/acrosstheextremes?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true" target="_blank">Open publication</a> - Free <a href="http://issuu.com" target="_blank">publishing</a> - <a href="http://issuu.com/search?q=late%20period" target="_blank">More late period</a></div></div><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >Solitude<br /></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Rilke on</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" > Letters to a young poet </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">describes </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >solitude </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">in the following terms:</span><br /><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude.<br />To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours - that is what you must be able to attain</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">As Maynard Solomon has pointed out<span style="font-style: italic;">, </span>in 1814 Beethoven´s artistic career reached its lowest point with <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">patriotic</span> works such as <span style="font-style: italic;">Wellingtons <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Sieg</span></span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Der <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">glorreiche</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Augenblick</span></span>. On words of Solomon,<span style="font-style: italic;"> these works, filled with bombastic rhetoric and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">patriotic</span> excesses, mark the nadir of Beethoven´s career. In them his heroic style is revived, but as parody and farce. Rather than moving forward to his late style, he regressed to a pastiche of his heroic manner. </span><br /><br />On the contrary, in this year Beethoven reached the highest point of popularity and social connections. It <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">shouldn't</span> be a surprise that at the same time he ended in <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">conformity</span>.<br /><br />But later on the<span style="font-style: italic;"> late period, </span>the situation was very different. When Beethoven was isolated from the society, considered as a madman, and not anymore into the musical trends of that moment, he would bring music into a level never known before. Again Solomon pointed out rightly: <span style="font-style: italic;">his music would be created out of the composers imagination and intellect rather than through a combination and amplification of of existent musical trends. In Beethoven´s late style an apparently unprecedented style comes into being, one whose tendencies and formative materials are not <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">readily</span> identifiable in the music of his contemporaries or immediate predecessors.<br /><br /></span>The space where Beethoven´s late style was generated had nothing to do with success, fame, personal situation within a social power relations or being supported by patrons. I think his late style was possible because his solitude was vaster than ever. His isolation from society implied an inner trip, a taking care of the world that he carried inside of him. Rilke continues: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >the world that you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">In this sense we must understand Beethoven´s choice. He <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">didn</span>´t bet for success or fame because actually that implied that his music became</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> shabby and his vocation petrified and no longer connected with life</span>.<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"> In order to stay alive, and in this sense I call him </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:lucida grande;" >survivor</span>, <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">he kept alive his artistic career because he placed his solitude above everything else</span> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">and this is the way the late period should be also understood, as the artistic choice of taking the risk of being beyond social and contemporary world propelled by a self confident impulse from the very deep heavy vast solitude.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">And here is where <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Beethoven</span> showed his freedom, freedom of following own artistic needs, freedom of placing one´s own solitude above everything else.<br /><br />As Fernando <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Pessoa</span> would say: <span style="font-style: italic;">to be a poet is not my ambition, it´s my way of being alone</span>.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0