Peter Goldstein:
>Back in the late 60s and early 70s, when I first went crazy for classical
>music, Beethoven was my god.(...)
So was mine also, and still is.
>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.
Something similar happened to me when I was 22 or 23. I became
increasingly interested in ancient music, and all my favourites from other
times (Mahler included) were faded out a little. Later I returned to
Beethoven, and my veneration reached not only the former state, but grew
furiously. I had absorbed a lot of music meanwhile, but all that music
drived me to Beethoven again, as all paths drives to Rome. Probably the
same will happen to you.
>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.
I rediscovred Beethoven through some of his works that were still unknown
to me. Those works led me back to my former favourites, and then I saw
them with a new light. Webern, Schoenberg and Bartok helped in this
process.
>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.
Those are just symptoms of the need of a "Beethoven break". Just take a
rest.
Pablo Massa
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