Don Satz asks with disbelief:

>I consider the 9th Beethoven's finest symphonic accomplishment.  There's
>so much going on in the first movement; I usually find something new every
>time I listen.  The frenetic 2nd movement is one of the most exciting
>scherzos I've ever heard.  The 3rd movement is very beautiful, and the
>4th is probably my favorite symphonic Beethoven.
>
>What is it about the 9th that bothers you?

I thought you, especially, would keep to Nielsen.  You mentioned how much
you liked his quartets.  You were going to give us your impression of them
all.  Then, you, too, veer off the subject.  Poor Nielsen.  Not interesting
enough? (-J

Alright, my aside on Beethoven's Ninth:

If Beethoven himself had the same high opinion of his Ninth as you do, the
last quartets would have been bloated Bruckner-like symphonies with choral
finales.  Instead, he abandoned extension for compression.  Poor Beethoven,
he really did want to share love both as Eros and agape.  His whole life
was a search for the right musical expression of this love of women and
mankind.  The Ninth is a noble failure.  For Beethoven it is maudlin and
the last movement embarrassingly trite.

Then he really heard Bach and Handel and found his language.  It began
with the Eighth Symphony.  Although the Eighth is late, it is one of the
shortest, because it is compressed and built on gestures rather than fully
developed themes.  The last period really begins with "the Concentration
(sic) of the House Overture, a round that keeps chasing its theme.  Or
perhaps the last period opened with the piano sonata, Op. 101, surely
it is secure by the hymnlike and modest Op. 109.

The second and third periods overlap.  The Ninth Symphony looks back.
The Beethoven symphony collapses in on itself.  In the Eighth, Beethoven
took his symphonies as far as they could go.  No one since has produced
a symphony as full of power and meaning so concisely as the Eighth.

As we just learned in Kosovo peace cannot be imposed by force, even the
forces of screaming singers and a huge chorus.  Brahms "German Requiem"
turns its back on the Ninth.  General peace comes from personal peace.
Every work in the third period expresses that theme, summed up by
Beethoven's exasperated but also humorous remark about his last landlady
troubling him for the rent with "Muss is sein, es muss sein." [Must it be.
It must be.].  We inch toward brotherhood through our patience for each
other's faults.

Andrew E. Carlan
Speaking up for Nielsen