Steve Schwartz wrote:

>...  If you read carefully, you'd realize that I wasn't talking
>about the merits of the music as music at all - simply on Beethoven's
>mastery of string writing, which, if you talk to string players, is less
>than idiomatic.  Does it make a difference to the quality of the music?
>Not at all.  There are plenty of composers who do write idiomatically for
>strings and who write dull music.  To paraphrase Ives, if Beethoven had
>really understood string technique, he might have become Paganini.  The
>point is, again, that even a master has difficulty mastering all aspects
>of string quartet writing.  Players learn to overcome these difficulties,
>because the music's so good.

This talk about LvB's "unidiomatic" string writing reminds me of the old
idea that he "couldn't write for voices." What people who said that really
meant was that much of his vocal writing was damned difficult to sing. Of
course, some folks even feel that he wrote strange stuff toward the end of
his life because he couldn't hear what it really sounded like.

My take on all this is that he was really the Stockhausen or Schoenberg of
his time: he was constantly pushing the limits of what performers could
play or sing, and the limits of what was considered "correct" composing,
because of his prodigious imagination and his indominable drive.  I don't
think for a minute that he wrote "unidiomatically" for the strings or the
voice because he didn't know how.  I believe that he could write anything
he put his mind to; he just refused to write cliches just because they were
idiomatic.  That is what I admire him for.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]