Because I have been playing a lot of shorter pieces on the piano in the past few months — Spanish Dances by Enrique Granados, Hungarian Dances and waltzes by Brahms, the theme from the Third Man arranged for piano, children's pieces by Tchaikovsky, an arrangement of "La Vie en rose," ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin, Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," etc. — I decided last weekend to begin playing longer pieces again.
Beethoven's later sonatas are less approachable, as I've said before, than his earlier ones. I think it is easier to plumb the young and confident Beethoven who had in some respects a popular conventionality; it is harder for me to figure out what he was thinking of when he composed his later music, which feels more abstract and personal or introverted. At times his later music still has elements of the 'classical' style. But it is classical through the lens of romanticism, or nostalgically classical: so I feel that to really understand it, one needs to scrape beneath the surface and capture the ambiguity in one's interpretation.
Today I tried passages of his 'Halloween Sonata' (i.e. his last sonata; I might be the only person who thinks of it as Halloweenish, but I think it has aspects of the magisterial and gothic Bach organ toccata about it) as well as the Sonata appassionata and the Waldstein Sonata. The last time these I looked at these sonatas regularly must have been around 2008 to 2010. I think I was finally able to hit on a reasonable, original approach today, aside from stumbling over the notes; whereas it quite annoyed me a decade ago that I could only manage bad imitations of excellent performances I had heard on YouTube. When I was a turbulent teenager I found Beethoven's early music quite soothing as it reflected what I felt, and his twilight music might become a friend and companion now.
I've slowly reached the point where I think I need to go 'underground' with my current dissatisfactions in life. It would be too boring and annoying to keep filling people's ears with them; and generally a good way to avoid that is to 'talk' with composers and instruments, instead of with family and friends, and to transmute those thoughts into harmless art.
The other thing is that I have a strong sense that I just need to keep going, and things will become better, and I'll be annoyed in future if I give up now.
Tackling the intellectual culture of Beethoven's sonatas reminded me of reading Aristotle in the U-Bahn lately. Their breadth and gnomic style are, at least, traits that the composer and the philosopher both have, and I suppose that Beethoven's art partook of the political. In Aristotle's Politics he is of course trying to cover a vast subject: political organizations and history in the Greek city-states. He might get a few things wrong. Despite his systematic method, other people might arrive at radically different interpretations from his own; there is more than one truth. It is clear that he is writing as one of many theoreticians that he knew, and not expecting anyone to accept his version as the only version. In that respect I think that 18th-century and other interpreters did him a great disservice in taking his Poetics as dogma rather than suggestion. Not to over-interpret, but this is one reason why I adore what I know of Greek culture much more than what I know of Roman culture: Greek culture often acknowledges that one might be wrong about things, and that even the gods don't always know what they're doing.
In the Politics, in my view, Aristotle even begins to contradict his own words after the first three books or so: I find that he undermines the orthodoxies he has set up about the aristocracy's superiority to the rabble in the first book, by being a passionate advocate of the relative wisdom of the people and a passionate critic of oligarchs' and tyrants' abuses in the later books. Also, the more he tries to define what a polity is, or an aristocracy, etc., the less I am sure what his definition really is, and if he has actually kept the same definition that he used earlier in his work or has changed his mind about it. It makes me feel stupid because I cannot remember his exact thoughts for comparison.
As for Madame de Staël's De la littérature, I have to admit that in weak moments I did agree with her argument that Aristotle's work is partly more a synthesis of accumulated wisdom than a development of own ideas.
One weak moment occurred when I was reading these pearls of wisdom:
Rackham's English translation is much more lucid than the German one from Reclam, if one fills in the places where I've put ellipses; so here is a disclaimer: I'm doing his text a disservice.)
Beethoven's later sonatas are less approachable, as I've said before, than his earlier ones. I think it is easier to plumb the young and confident Beethoven who had in some respects a popular conventionality; it is harder for me to figure out what he was thinking of when he composed his later music, which feels more abstract and personal or introverted. At times his later music still has elements of the 'classical' style. But it is classical through the lens of romanticism, or nostalgically classical: so I feel that to really understand it, one needs to scrape beneath the surface and capture the ambiguity in one's interpretation.
Today I tried passages of his 'Halloween Sonata' (i.e. his last sonata; I might be the only person who thinks of it as Halloweenish, but I think it has aspects of the magisterial and gothic Bach organ toccata about it) as well as the Sonata appassionata and the Waldstein Sonata. The last time these I looked at these sonatas regularly must have been around 2008 to 2010. I think I was finally able to hit on a reasonable, original approach today, aside from stumbling over the notes; whereas it quite annoyed me a decade ago that I could only manage bad imitations of excellent performances I had heard on YouTube. When I was a turbulent teenager I found Beethoven's early music quite soothing as it reflected what I felt, and his twilight music might become a friend and companion now.
I've slowly reached the point where I think I need to go 'underground' with my current dissatisfactions in life. It would be too boring and annoying to keep filling people's ears with them; and generally a good way to avoid that is to 'talk' with composers and instruments, instead of with family and friends, and to transmute those thoughts into harmless art.
The other thing is that I have a strong sense that I just need to keep going, and things will become better, and I'll be annoyed in future if I give up now.
Tackling the intellectual culture of Beethoven's sonatas reminded me of reading Aristotle in the U-Bahn lately. Their breadth and gnomic style are, at least, traits that the composer and the philosopher both have, and I suppose that Beethoven's art partook of the political. In Aristotle's Politics he is of course trying to cover a vast subject: political organizations and history in the Greek city-states. He might get a few things wrong. Despite his systematic method, other people might arrive at radically different interpretations from his own; there is more than one truth. It is clear that he is writing as one of many theoreticians that he knew, and not expecting anyone to accept his version as the only version. In that respect I think that 18th-century and other interpreters did him a great disservice in taking his Poetics as dogma rather than suggestion. Not to over-interpret, but this is one reason why I adore what I know of Greek culture much more than what I know of Roman culture: Greek culture often acknowledges that one might be wrong about things, and that even the gods don't always know what they're doing.
In the Politics, in my view, Aristotle even begins to contradict his own words after the first three books or so: I find that he undermines the orthodoxies he has set up about the aristocracy's superiority to the rabble in the first book, by being a passionate advocate of the relative wisdom of the people and a passionate critic of oligarchs' and tyrants' abuses in the later books. Also, the more he tries to define what a polity is, or an aristocracy, etc., the less I am sure what his definition really is, and if he has actually kept the same definition that he used earlier in his work or has changed his mind about it. It makes me feel stupid because I cannot remember his exact thoughts for comparison.
As for Madame de Staël's De la littérature, I have to admit that in weak moments I did agree with her argument that Aristotle's work is partly more a synthesis of accumulated wisdom than a development of own ideas.
"Ce qu'il écrit en littérature, en physique, en métaphysique, est l'analyse des idées de son temps. Historien du progrès des connaissances à cette époque, il les rédige, il les place dans l'ordre dans lequel il les conçoit. C'est un homme admirable pour son siècle; mais c'est vouloir forcer les hommes à marcher en arrière, que de chercher dans l'antiquité toutes les vérités philosophiques; [...]" (pp. 75-6, Paris: Charpentier, 1860, via Google Books)=~ 'His writing on literature, on physics, on metaphysics, is the analysis of the ideas of his time. A historian of the progress in the various types of knowledge at that time, he edits them; he places them in the order in which he conceives them. He is an admirable man for his century. But searching in antiquity for all the truths of philosophy, is wanting to force men to regress.'
One weak moment occurred when I was reading these pearls of wisdom:
"Es müssen entweder alle über alles, das genau unterschieden ist, urteilen, wobei sie entweder durch Wahl oder durch das Los eingesetzt sind, oder alle über alles, einerseits durch das Los, andererseits durch Wahl; oder daß eben im Hinblick auf einige identische Fälle die einen durch das Los eingesetzt sind, die anderen aber gewählt. [... Und] entweder sind die Richter über alles wiederum aus einigen bestellt durch Wahl, oder einige Gerichte sind über dieselben Angelegenheiten aus durch das Los oder einerseits durch das Los, andererseits durch Wahl, oder einige Gerichte sind über dieselben Angelegenheiten aus durch das Los Bestimmten oder aus Gewählten eingesetzt."* (p. 243, Book IV, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1989)I felt like dashing my brains out on the walls of the U-Bahn train to end the torment, after trying to understand all the grammatical and logical twistings and turnings, in that terrible and intellectually unfruitful paragraph.
(* In English: "[...] they must either appoint from all by vote, or from all by lot, or from some by vote, or from some by lot, or partly in one way and partly in the other—I mean partly by vote and partly by lot [... F]or here again the judges for all cases may be drawn by vote from a certain class, or for all cases by lot from a certain class, or some courts may be appointed by lot and others by vote, or some courts may be composed of judges chosen by lot and by vote for the same cases."[Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 21, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1944. via Perseus.tufts.edu]
Rackham's English translation is much more lucid than the German one from Reclam, if one fills in the places where I've put ellipses; so here is a disclaimer: I'm doing his text a disservice.)
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