Peter Goldstein writes:

>A few weeks ago I wrote about my coming back to Beethoven after a number
>of years and discovering that I didn't care much for his music anymore.
>Having thought about it for a while, I realize that I completely missed
>the most obvious reason for the change--I'm simply a different person.

I think you mentioned he was the hero of your youth, as he was for Wagner.
I think that says a lot.  Beethoven has also been my hero as a wonderful
rebel, a giant who refused to be subdued.  He is a rebel who shakes his
fist not only at social constrains but seemingly against destiny itself.
I love the story of the prince who tried to get him to play in front of
some Napoleonic officers like a trained monkey, but stormed out in disgust
only to write to him:  'there are thousands of princes and there shall be
thousands more - but there is only one Beethoven!'.

>Although Beethoven has many moods, his music tends to emphasize individual
>struggle and triumph, and those are ideas I just don't find particularly
>compelling anymore.  Mozart is more about acceptance and compassion, which
>is where I am right now; hence my current love of Mozart.

Maybe it is that I am still young enough too prefer Beethovian Sturm und
Drang to Mozartian Light and Love.  I hope I will always remain young
enough for that!  I take solace from that the fact that in his later years
Stravinsky remained faithful to Beethoven and turned not to Mozart (about
whom he never said a kind word in my knowledge) but to Webern.

>Brahms perhaps to the nostalgic side, and so on.  I was wondering what
>people on this list saw as the philosophical essence of various composers,
>and why they felt that certain composers did or did not appeal to them.

Ah yes Brahms.  I have been meaning to write more about the creations of
his younger years, which I love for their Beethovian heroism.  I think he
loses that in his later works.  It was Alfred Brendel who brought this to
my attention when he claimed that the greatest thing Brahms ever wrote was
his first Piano Concerto.  I must confess I often tend to sympathise with
Brendel.  He thinks that the later Brahms loses his earlier harmonic
richness, complexity and adventurousness, tending to use the same sort
of harmony over and over.  One youthful work that always to mind as
representing Brahms as an angry young man is his Lied "Wie rafft' ich
mich auf in der Nacht".  Although even here his anger is already a deeply
introspective one - a burning metaphysical rage against Time itself and
the starry heavens above.  It's the sort of thing that makes me think that
Brahms was a far profounder genius at a much younger age than any composer
I can think of, including Mozart.  I will have to write a separate post on
this one day.

Perhaps this is all but youthful folly but in any case I am someone who
still prefers Beethoven to Mozart, Michelangelo to Raphael, J.S.  Bach to
Handel, C.P.E Bach to J.C. Bach, Gesualdo to Palestrina, and dodecaphony
to tonality.  I love the power of the fantastic in art - demonic though it
may be - and its outpourings in the name of genius.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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