Back in the late 60s and early 70s, when I first went crazy for classical
music, Beethoven was my god.  I got to know practically everything he
wrote, and there was never any doubt in my mind that he was the greatest
of them all.  He had the dramatic power, the emotional depth, the grandeur,
the intellectual rigor.  He had the ability to elevate, to evoke joy,
terror, triumph, sadness--you name it.  I loved other composers, too, and
sometimes even listened to them more than Beethoven, but for many years
LvB was for me the heart and soul of classical music.

Well.  About 15 years ago, for a variety of reasons (all of them
insufficient), I began to drift away from CM.  For over a decade, I did
very little listening.  About 2 years ago, I came back with a vengeance,
listening with all my old voraciousness, ready to rediscover my old
favorites and find some new ones.  And I discovered, to my horror, that
I don't like Beethoven anymore.  I suppose I can admire his virtues from
the outside, but he no longer reaches me.  Mozart has his emotional depth
without any of his self-conscious earnestness; Bach has his grandeur
without any of his bombast; Haydn has his intellectual rigor with a great
deal more wit; Verdi has his dramatic power with a great deal more beauty.
His early works seem bloated--how could I have ever preferred them to the
best of Haydn and Mozart? His middle works seem pretentious--how could I
have ever seen the endings of the Eroica and the Fifth as anything other
than ridiculous? His late works seem sterile--how could the Hammerklavier
ever have moved me? Even my all-time Beethoven favorites, like the sonata
Op. 111, the quartet Opus 59, No. 1, the Grosse Fuge, the Eighth Symphony,
leave me cold.  Everything seems so labored, so unnatural, so forced, so
willed instead of felt.

I realize this may be just a phase, and in a couple of years I'll be back
loving Beethoven.  But right now he's a bore--and a loud and pretentious
one at that.

So--is there anyone out there who has ever felt this?

Peter Goldstein