smokerblog

Right, lovely melodic Beethoven lead the way to atonal music. If only people would stop that damn innovation crap, we'd always have the same perfect music we used to have!

holy cow, I haven't read the article yet, but I disagree with it on so many levels, I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight. I'm getting dizzy pondering the circular, tangled logic that must have gone into it.
the only role of music is in its quest to connect itself to math? ugh, that is pre-dark ages talk, literally.

Ted

That is a strange quote from an even stranger line of thought. Taking another perspective, we could see Beethoven in the vanguard of creative artists seen as self-sufficient artisans, just as unwilling to rely on the patronage of the rich and royal for their livelihood as most adults are unable to stay on living at home with mom and dad.

To develop independent sources of income, Beethoven rented concert halls, hired an orchestra, wrote the music, sometimes directed rehearsals and often starred as conductor and/or piano soloist - then collecting his share of the box office receipts.

Neither Haydn nor Mozart before him had much success with that approach. They wrote brilliantly but ultimately had to satisfy their wealthy patrons and their particular audiences with each artwork performed in their names. That kind of contractual arrangement - effectively the "employment" of the person as artist - necessarily affected both the form and content of the works produced.

Beethoven left home for Vienna to become a musical superstar - and he succeeded. His evident talents as musician and composer could not be ignored. He then used that stardom as a wedge, forcing the concert-going public to hear his musical ideas whether they liked them or not.

Reading any Beethoven biography reveals an artist obsessed with his social and personal independence, his artistic integrity - and with maintaining absolute control over his own compositions, their forms, their content, their publication, sales - even their public performance.

Labeling this extraordinary revolution in the status of creative artists within their respective societies as an "inversion" suggests that the writer may find as much artistic value in mass-produced commercial goods as in unique works of art. If his idea of a great meal has the words "TV Dinner" printed on it, arrives frozen or comes from a can, good luck to him.

As for the "...awful atonal music of Schoenberg and Webern...," some of us find music which deliberately challenges ear and mind involving, exciting and, more often than not, excellent in form, content and effect. Rather than mimic the works of their predecessors, Schoenberg, Webern and (almost all) other serious composers provided - and continue to provide - inwardly-derived expressions in the universal medium - music - giving us unique works of limitless variety whether or not the Emperor ordered them.

Ed

Ed, good point about Bethoven's rejection of patronage. I'm sure that the author of that article would not accept your premise w/r/t tv dinners, though. He would no doubt harken back to some golden age when people would hunt for themselves and grow worm-infested potatoes in their back yard. That, or forage for nuts and berries.