WALDSTEIN: I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT

Off to work. Here's Richard Goode playing the rather eery introduzione/adagio middle movement of the Waldstein sonata. Listening to said sonata in the dark and total stillness of 1:30 a.m. (as I did last night) is one bejesus of an experience. More on this later.

DIABELLI VARIATIONS: IT'S FULL OF STARS

Listening to the Diabelli variations straight through is like launching from earth, journeying into space and eventually passing out of the universe altogether. The first theme and the initial few variations are almost laughably bombastic, but the theme gradually shrinks in relation to the overall soundscape or just the "feelingness" of the set... By Var. X it's "OK, yeah, this is fairly clever. Maybe there's more to this." By Var. XX it's "this is jaw-droppingly sublime, " and the overwhelming vastness of space kicks in. From Var. XXIX through XXXI the original theme's become this little blip journeying to the edge of the universe. Then you have the sudden, shocking XXXII fugue striking like the edge of the universe and the blip goes into some kind of polyphonic/transdimensional journey Space Odyssey style. Then there's the finale XXIII. And the original theme's prominent -- but fundamentally altered. It returns the theme to a concrete reality, but in this ethereal, transcendent, starchild kind of way. So, basically, Space Odyssey is a ripoff of the Diabelli variations. All that, from this silly little line by Diabelli.

SCHIFF TO BRENDEL

Listening to Schiff's lecturette on Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major. He mentions Alfred Brendel's writing on humor in music (oo la la). Tried unsuccessfully to locate a copy online. It's in his Collected Essays. I'll try to get my hands on it.

WHEN THE TONGUES OF FLAME ARE IN-FOLDED / INTO THE CROWNED KNOT OF FIRE

I have now completed my multi-day marathon listening to a complete cycle of Beethoven's string quartets. Among other things, this experience has taught me that I am completely inequipped to write about music of this caliber in any sort of directly responsive, analytical way. My immediate impulse is to write a piece of fiction or parable, but veiling their inadequacy in indirection seems rather cheap (T.S. Eliot, that's a slight dig at you, but its primarily motivated by envy). Therefore, I will say nothing. Except that gosh it makes me want to learn how to play an instrument.

...Although I will say just hearing those late quartet's in sequence was pretty darn sublime.

And... Phase II will involve listening to all of Beethoven's piano sonatas in chronological order. I  found this fascinating series of lectures by Andras Schiff that I'm going to listen to as I go along.

In the mean time, still plugging along in Barry Cooper's Beethoven and reading bits of George Steiner's monograph on Antigones.

PIZZICATO, PIZZICATO LET ME GO

Harpo van Beethoven

Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major (nicknamed the "Harp" quartet because of the extensive use of pizzicato in the first movement) remains my all time favoritest of his middle quartets. The trio of Razumovskys (Nos. 7-9) are famous as the chamberwork equivalent to ol' Ludwig van's Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" (i.e. crazy, groundbreaking and the moment when Beethoven becomes Beethoven). The "Serioso" quartet gets top billing for just how audacious it is. But none of them can beat the "Harp." The first movement's got that strangely satisfying sort of warm, glowing, healthy mellow-but-ebullient thing that only Beethoven really does. The slow movement's sad, tranquil and beautiful. The presto is really just as insane as Beethoven ever really gets: it's Jaws meets Psycho meets skeleton dance meets ragtime, and some. The last movement's this lovely little whirlwind of variations that alternate between explosive emotionality and barely-bottled melodrama. The coda says it all: a sustained, blinding onrush of strings instantly resolves itself at the last (literal) second. That glorious Beethovenian sense of Germanic humor is omnipresent throughout the whole piece.

I would also like to take this opportunity to put forward the theory that Harpo Marx is the reincarnation of Ludwig van Beethoven.

THREE IN ONE

Just a little tidbit from the earsense chamber music database. N.B. that last sentence. Sounds like Music of the Spheres material.

All three of the Razumovsky quartets are conceived on larger scale that even the most noteworthy of their predecessors from any composer. Beethoven’s genius enabled him to do this while, at the same time, strengthening a sense of unity across the greater expanse. Op. 59, No. 1 is famous as the first quartet to omit the repeat of exposition: a false start immediately diverts into an enormous development section with the paradoxical effect of tightening the entire movement into a single gesture. Two of the quartets fuse their last movements together without a break in the music, a further technique of joining separate parts into a larger, unified whole. There are symmetries separated by vast distances such as the beginning and end of the third quartet. It can be argued that there are even specific harmonic relationships between the end of one quartet and the beginning of the next. Many have suggested that Beethoven conceived of the three separate Razumovsky quartets as a unified whole. The vast first movement of Op. 59, No. 1 is not fully balanced until one reaches its magnificent counterpart in the finale of Op. 59, No. 3. Perhaps the three quartets function like a gigantic three movement work with a broad and complex first movement in F major, a tense contrasting movement in e minor, and a bright, exultant finale in C major. A performance of the complete set in a single concert gives this very impression. With the proper preparation for its context within this larger setting, the third quartet acquires a further triumphal radiance. The distinguished scholar Leonard Ratner suggests that all of Beethoven’s quartets may even form a kind of mega-work, a single great narrative that stands apart from all other music in history.

— This may be courtesy Kai Christensen, but there's no signature to be found.

THE WORLD IS MY CLOISTER

John Runciman's King Lear in the Storm

Stuck in the block room all day, which has the sole but happy benefit of allowing me to enjoy Arkangel's King Lear. (That serie's is fantastic btw. Their production of Julius Caesar in particular.)  Thoughts, if such they is or were or are to be:

When I finally produce my silent visual Lear-inspired masterwork, it's going to either started with a sort of atonal trumpet piece (kind of this sad whimpery drawn out demented regal flourish), or just with the first thirty-five-ish second section of Beethoven's String Trio in C minor. Or maybe even just the first four notes. The rest is silence. I would use Rostropovich's version though, but the recording on YouTube's lousy.

Also totally forgot that Gilead's final line "I'll pray, and then I'll sleep" is from Lear, which is bizarre since it's one of my favorite lines from the play. It's fitting, too: in King Lear, which consists entirely of moving lines, one of the most beautiful and moving and haunting is quiet and tucked away in the middle of the storm/play. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. Gilead elevates those little quiet things tucked away in the middle of the storm/life, and then puts the quietest bit of Shakespeare in the position of greatest honor: last.

Still processing if there's any more significance to choosing Lear of all plays. Lear : : Ames? There's the duh quality of coming-to-terms-w/-mortality-at-rather-late-notice -- or perhaps Robinson's suggesting that Ames himself only began to cherish the things he writes about and cherishes after he learned about his heart condition (though the book itself doesn't seem to suggest this (though it was written by Ames)) a la Lear's sort of death-catharsis/catharsis-death. Probs all that and more. Really, it's just another case of I am he as you are me as we are all LearAmesHereComesEverybody together.


Hearing the play also really brings home the amount of times the word "nothing" gets used in the first half. The only thing more terrible than hearing the word used like a drum-beat for the second-half too is hearing its echo. And of course there's "never, never, never, never, never."