Why do some many of the comments about the variations of the opus 111
sound like walking on broken glass.  If we have to look carefully around us
to say Beethoven knew how to walk with a jaunt and a hip swing, no wonder
we can't seem to get the music to click with the young.  And so many of
the comments reflect an initial reaction that the performer were "doing
something to the music." Why? Because it made us see stars, lifted us up
to a mystical joy that comes in the pit of the stomach, that "yeah, man!"
feeling.  It is like a hypochondriac afraid of being happy.  There are
14,000 thousand quivering "that's my feeling." No one would hesitate to
come right out and say the Appassionata is dark and emotional.

It isn't whether the op. 111 is jazzy, it is which-ironically with the
exception of the most maudlin and popular-so are almost all the sonatas.
And his string quartets, from the very earliest, the sudden jumping for joy
in the slow movement of the op.  18/2 which presages the slow movements of
the op.  127 and 132 and the whole of the op.  135 with the exception of
the slow movement.  Serkin and his friends made a private tape of the
2nd piano concerto's Latin beat.  Did they really think they, too, had
discovered something new in the music? The Consecration of the House
swings as does the Egmont and the King Stephen.

It isn't we who are interpreting our rhythmic experiences back into
Beethoven.  Jazz, not syncopation, was there all the time.  We just hadn't
become hooked on these rhythms and so missed them like the schnook who
can't get the beat and so he can't dance.  That's why certain blacks assume
Beethoven must have been one of them.  Who else could write such pure swing
in the middle of sedate Europe?

It's jazz, real jazz, no one is pulling anything over on you.

Andy Carlan