Headline: Don Satz Reveals Sense of Humor All New Mexico Breaks Out In
Festivity

Don quips:

>I have a saying: He who writes the above [cut out] just might find his
>Nielsen collection missing one morning.  As it happens, I do play a
>clarinet.  If Andrew keeps this up, I might not review the remaining
>Nielsen string quartets.  I know how eagerly he's been anticipating my
>insights.

In spite of your "better" sense, see you do have possibilities.  I almost
had a heart attack from laughing at this well-placed grenade.  It did much
damage to my assumption.  This is the sort of defeat that one enjoys.  So
you do have a sense of humor in the immortal tradition of Beethoven's
greatest symphony, one I suspect he most enjoyed writing as you have
obviously enjoyed your own retort.  No other Beethoven symphony should be
rightly taken so lightly, which is why I have enjoyed it all my life.  This
is not the Beethoven with the short-circuit hairdo.  This is Ludwig at home
using every slapstick device from heavy breathing to farting to making fun
of his own Fifth Symphony.

Deryk Barker wrote concerning Satz's lack of enthusiasm for Beethoven's 8th
symphony.  In fact, Don suggested it was Beethoven's biggest failure.

Not correct.  I compared the 8th to the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th, and found
it lacking.  At no time did I compare in any fashion the 8th to any
non-symphonic Beethoven works.  That's an F for Andrew as far as correct
interpretation of my posting.

The only one that really compares in the pleasure it brings, forgetting for
the moment what academic influence Beethoven had on music, is the Sixth.
Now, if you didn't love the Sixth you'd have to be among the walking dead.
There is a symphony even Bernstein, the very good teacher, wasted his time
analyzing for the listener.  Its burden is easy and its yoke just doesn't
exist.  It is atmospheric music you just bathe in.  It looks toward the
impressionists like Debussey and his whole school.  It is almost French in
its absence of philosophic baggage.  But that is why the even numbered
symphonies win out over the big, public-display odd numbered ones, where
like Clinton, Beethoven is driven by his legacy in history.  Sure they are
great.  Not Clinton and Beethoven, but the music.  It is almost as hard
for Beethoven to compose a flop as it is for any of us to compose a
masterpiece.  But he succeeded from time to time.  Wellington's Victory is
almong Beethoven's major setbacks as is all that yelling and screaming and
United Nations-like compulsion of the last movement of the Ninth.

In the Eighth, our boy unites humanity through the universal language of
mirth which doesn't require government cooperation or tax dollars or wars
of liberation and in the last quartets and sonatas in the realization that
humanity as a whole never has a chance.  We are won over quietly one by one
almost as in a Quaker meditation, not free association baloney but intent
focus on a beauty and meaning that is beyond understanding.  They make up
one side of Beethoven, his best side, which transcends the stupid attempt
to divide his music into periods.  That sense is organic; it is growing
from the beginning.  It gives him life as against his anger over the loss
of his hearing until he comes to realize that God--Nature--whatever, hasn't
abandoned him at all.  He has been given a gift through which he can bless
the world as no other composer, except perhaps Bach, has done.  Read J.W.N
Sullivan little essay on Beethoven.  It is a prose poem and doesn't purport
to be a modern-day dry analysis of the Beethoven's spiritual journey.  But
it says so much about Sullivan the listener as Beethoven the composer.

>Forget finding an interpretation that might rescue the mighty Eighth
>for you.  If you don't like humor, you won't find anything redeeming in the
>symphony, THANK GOD.

No, I won't forget it.  Heck, I don't even stop trying with Liszt and
Tchaikovsky.  Besides, maybe there's a conductor out there who also
dislikes humor in music; that interpretation could be the winner for me.

Sure there is that sort of conductor.  Try Maazel, Ozawa, the latter
Karajan, Boulez, but don't go near Karl Bohm, whose performances are always
warm and gentle.

You did good Don.  You created a little masterpiece in your response.  To
hell with whether you review the Nielsen.  Your answer is worth the loss.
Nielsen will survive as he will survive the eclipse of his due place in the
Pantheon of composers.

Good luck with your humor and a wish that it keep bursting out in spite of
yourself.

Andy Carlan