Mike Leghorn writes:
>I consider my ears to be the judge.
Mike has garnered a lot of flak for the above statement and others he has
written concerning his premise that the Beethoven Eroica Symphony has a
musical theme which Beethoven might have known from the Mozart overture.
Although I've kept up with the discussion, I haven't added my opinion
because it's been a long time since I listened to either of the two works.
However, I have been surprised by some of the rather brusque and harsh
responses to Mike's opinion and his reasons.
What leads to me enter the fray is the distinction that has been posted
about the relative merit of the listening experience versus what we can
find in literary reference works, biographies, etc. Of course, the best
path is to follow all references including those of the listening variety.
I often disagree with Mike's views, but I feel sympatico with him
concerning the trust that a person places in his/her ears. I likely
have a skewed view due to my own past academic life when I considered the
'written word' such a valuable source of knowledge. The problem is that so
many 'facts' I read about turned out to be biased views or just flat wrong.
My life as a research assistant in Graduate School just reinforces my
perception that studies are often biased toward the desired results wanted
by those who receive and provide the finanical grants. I worked for two
professors on two different projects, and both men screwed around with the
numbers to meet the goal. I trust my ears and body language much more than
I trust what I read. Folks write all kinds of dribble and self-serving
statements, and that often includes people writing about themselves. Well,
I said my views might be skewed.
Granted, there is no evidence of any kind that Beethoven had any awareness
of that Mozart overture. By the same token, there's no hard evidence that
he didn't.
Scenario: A guy in Beethoven's time takes a business trip and happens to
hear some music which is the overture in question. A few days later, the
gentleman is in Beethoven's immediate vicinity, humming a tune from the
overture. Beethoven hears it and continues going about his business, not
giving the tune any concious thought. When writing the Eroica Symphony
which has many melodies and themes, he injects some of the tune heard being
hummed without giving it any specification in his mind as to the source.
Possible? I just put it out there as an event which could have happened.
I'm confident that not everything that crossed Beethoven's life was written
down for posterity.
It seems to me that Mike has been challenged to provide evidence, beyond
what he hears, to support his premise. Come on folks! This isn't the
academic circuit. The man came up with a connection and enthusiastically
shared it with us. Each of us has the ability to listen to each work in
the same general time frame and make his/her own conclusions about the
merit of the connection without resorting to the 'written word' which won't
conclusively decide the matter either.
If I was Mike, I'd stick to my view unless additional listening changed my
mind or I came across *definitive* information that I was wrong. So far,
I have not read any posting which provides definitive information of any
kind. We can assume the answer is 'no' because of lack of support, but we
can't prove Mike wrong. Some might say that it's Mike's responsibility to
come up with good evidence; others don't need to debunk his premise. But
again, this isn't the classroom or a PHD dissertation, just
good(?)discussion back and forth.
Speaking of similarities in music, I just thought of a Kuhlau piano
concerto I heard which had a musical theme that I'd call quite a match with
a theme from one of the Beethoven piano concertos. Can't prove anything,
but the time frames and logistics are resonable for a possible borrowing.
In baroque music you can catch all kinds of borrowings. Of course,
baroque composers had such compositional demands placed on them that
borrowing constituted a necessity, even borrowing from their own existing
inventory. I borrow all types of ideas from others, but usually end up
wishing I hadn't.
Don Satz
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