Mike Leghorn wrote:

>Robert Peters wrote:
>
>>Beethoven would have written different music if he had had a loving wife
>>and no hearing problems or had lived just fifty years later.
>
>Robert, you're probably right (although there is no way to prove it).
>Do you know what Beethoven would have written?  Could you describe
>it to a composer so that the composer could transcribe it to actual
>compositions so we could hear what Beethoven would have written?
>
>Of course, my questions are ludicrous.  We'll never be able to lay bare
>the wonder of art.

I guess I find myself in both camps in this discussion.  When I first
heard the orchestral works of Carl Loewe the first thought that came
to my mind was that the music was stylistically close to Beethoven,
but optimistic...perhaps what Beethoven would have written had he not
suffered from depression.  On the other hand Beethoven would not have
been Beethoven without the depression...one could even speculate that
he might not have been a composer were it not for his depression.  I
often wonder why Beethoven, with few exceptions, seemed to be reaching
for the profound...perhaps he was searching for meaning in his own
troubled life.

As to the second point, while I would agree that it is unlikely we will
ever be able to "lay bare the wonder of art," we have already, pretty
well done enough analysis of music to have a sense of the techniques
of harmony, counterpoint and orchestration.

Yet, on the other hand, for those who accept the writings of Schenker...he
came pretty close to laying bare the wonder of art.  I am not one of the
true believers...

Karl