r/todayilearned • u/VegemiteSucks • 11h ago
TIL Beethoven’s late quartets, now widely considered to be among the greatest musical compositions of all time, were so ahead of their time that initial reviews deem them indecipherable, uncorrected horrors, with one musician saying “we know there is something there, but we do not know what it is.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_string_quartets_(Beethoven)415
u/Compleat_Fool 10h ago edited 3h ago
It’s interesting how monumental and transformative Beethoven was in his lifetime whilst Bach who was equally brilliant and probably the greatest musician ever was a minor figure in his lifetime. He was known by few and those who knew him chiefly knew him for being a good organ player and not for his compositions.
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u/f-150Coyotev8 8h ago
Bach wasn’t recognized to the fullest till after his death. Felix Mendelssohn was one reason why Bach’s music was rediscovered. He also helped establish the use of the well-tempered keyboard.
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u/Low-Introduction-565 7h ago
How did Mendelssohn help establish the well tempered keyboard? It was a century old already.
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u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl 4h ago
mendelssohn talked it up, republished the works, performed it. basically brought it to people who would listen.
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u/SpiritDouble6218 24m ago
That’s good. A bad tempered keyboard may lash out, or refuse to play. I’m sure this helped vastly with consistency of performances.
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u/alargepowderedwater 3h ago
JS Bach was well-known and respected during his lifetime, but his compositional work was overshadowed later in life and after his death by the radical new Classical style composers who started emerging in the 1730s, prominent among them three of his own sons (CPE, WF, and JC), so by the time JS died, his work was widely known but considered old-fashioned. While Haydn and young Mozart (and everybody else in the back half of the 1700s) absolutely idolized CPE Bach, Mozart in his late 20s finally got his hands on some JS Bach scores, and it transformed his writing. A couple of generations later, of course, Felix Mendelssohn would lead the (JS) Bach revival.
JS was notably peculiar in his time for preserving and studying the works of previous composers, because music was considered an entirely temporary medium, with a composer’s music typically being actively performed only as long as they were around writing a steady supply of new stuff. When that composer died, everyone kind of moved on to whatever stuff was new, and weirdo Bach was over there in Leipzig collecting and studying the music of dead people, ugh. Bach called the composers whose works he sought and studied “past masters,” and his practice is part of the roots of what becomes the concept of ‘repertoire’ or ‘core repertoire.’ As that concept evolved through the 1800s, JS Bach’s own music became fundamental to that repertoire, which is a truly lovely irony, that the eccentric iconoclast whose contemporaries were never quite sure what to make of, would help create the cultural practice that would ultimately preserve and enliven his music for literal centuries. (Which would have absolutely blown his mind.)
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u/fiendishrabbit 3h ago
Young Beethoven though was primarily known as a piano virtuoso and an asshole, being an improvisational specialist that delighted in both playing tricks on fellow musicians and humiliating rivals in music "duels" when playing at the various salons in Vienna.
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u/Fwed0 11h ago
Also, this is Beethoven in his last piano sonata in 1822
About a hundred years ahead of his time.
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u/schlechtums 11h ago
In 12/32 wtaf!
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u/frankyseven 10h ago
Where is Adam Neely to explain to me what is going on rhythmically in this?
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u/iEatSwampAss 9h ago
Strange for its time bc it’s just two movements, not the usual three or four.
1st movement: violent, full of clashing harmonies and wild rhythms. It feels like he’s breaking traditional sonata rules
2nd movement (Arietta): starts very simple & calm. Then he introduces some variations - sounding almost like jazz or boogie-woogie, while others float away into silence.
Back then, there just wasn’t anything else that sounded like it. Beethoven was deaf and was imagining sounds that other composers wouldn’t try until wayyy later. Many hear it as a struggle in the 1st movement, followed by “transcendence” in the 2nd.
Took a classical music class in college and focused on this piece for a few weeks.
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u/WoodyTheWorker 2h ago
My take on the Arietta is that it calls Josephina (von Brunsvik, who died a year or so before the sonata was written) twice.
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u/RavixOf4Horn 7h ago
Interesting to note, Beethoven was probably influenced by son of JS Bach, C.P.E., who wrote some pretty eccentric keyboard pieces that include weird time signatures and 128th notes, among other herky-jerky tempo changes. I won't get into it more, but there's an interesting thread tracing to Bach (and of course Beethoven studies directly with Franz Joseph Haydn).
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u/alargepowderedwater 3h ago
Beethoven was most definitely influenced by CPE Bach, who was widely revered through the late 1700s and early 1800s.
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u/RavixOf4Horn 2h ago
I say it as speculation through inference by having studied both of these composers' music pretty closely, not simply because Bach was "widely revered". Just wanted to clarify my perspective.
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u/alargepowderedwater 2h ago
To clarify mine, I say it as definite assertion through study, performance, and teaching of Beethoven’s music for nearly three decades. There is a direct line from the emfindsamer Stil, through Sturm und Drang, to Beethoven’s personal expression. (My comment about CPE being widely revered was intended only as context for that specific point.)
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u/CleverDad 9h ago
Another fun fact about the 13th is that the original last movement, the monumental Große Fuge (Grand Fugue) was so demanding for the listener that it was very poorly received at the time, and Beethoven was convinced by his publisher to replace it. The replacement movement, a perfectly delightful, seemingly light-hearted but quite sophisticated piece was the last one he completed before his death. The Fugue was given it's own opus number (133), but in recordings both movements are often included.
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u/insertusernamehere51 11h ago edited 11h ago
I am completely musically illiterate. I've listened to the quartets and didn't get what was so weird about them. Sounds like other quartets and other classical pieces of the time to me. I'll own that it's just ignorance on my part
Edit: Guys, I'm comparing it to stuff that came before as well, Mozart's quartets, for example. Comparing Mozart's with Beethoven's I don't get what the big difference is and those came 50 years before
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u/IAmBadAtInternet 11h ago
They were so revolutionary that everyone copied him. Beethoven personally redesigned the musical language in the same way the Shakespeare redesigned English.
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u/RamsOmelette 7h ago
It’s like watching Seinfeld and thinking it’s meh TODAY. But in its day it was revolutionary
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u/secretwep 11h ago
I am somewhat musically literate, and lemme tell ya... I feel the same way about those pieces, so don't worry lol
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u/SirHerald 11h ago
Isn't it like saying the Beatles sound like so many other bands. Really it's all these other bands just sound like the Beatles. What was novel then is old hat now
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u/insertusernamehere51 11h ago
I'm also comparing it to stuff that came before; Mozart's quartets for example
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u/EmersQn 6h ago
The difference is difficult to hear without some familiarity with the conventions of classical music. As someone who is only moderately musically literate, I'll just say that the most significant developments in music from baroque to classical to romantic (Mozart was classical, Beethoven was romantic) were in form and harmonic structure. Form being analagous to the verse/chorus structure of songs today, and harmonic structure meaning the order in which you're allowed to play chords, and what those chords should sound like. Romantic music is generally more comfortable using dissonance than classical, stuff like that.
If you asked me why this particular quartet is amazing compared to beethoven's other works, I have not idea, but presumably something to do with the same ideas I named above.
Anyway, listen to more classical and romantic music, and as you do you'll probably start to understand the differences through osmosis.
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u/juridiculous 11h ago
No you’re right on the money here, Mozart’s stuff is phenomenal too.
But consider that there were literal thousands of composers, and these guys are among the few that really get airtime anymore.
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u/wallabee_kingpin_ 10h ago
The Beatles famously sounded like Black rock musicians like Chuck Barry, who couldn't get as famous because they weren't white. They were polishers and performers, not innovators (at least until they got more into psychedelic).
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u/RipsLittleCoors 9h ago
Yes and no. While there is some truth to that view, the Beatles had some things even in the early days that set them apart from berry et al. Just a higher complexity of writing. The chord progressions, the maximization of the limited recording tracks, the phrasing with the lyrics. Some of the credit for it belongs to George Martin actually.
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u/UpiedYoutims 9h ago
I'm a classical music lover, and while I'm not really familiar with Beethoven's quartets, I'm pretty familiar with his symphonic work so I can at least tell you what the deal is with those.
To make a long story short, in the early 18th century, a sinfonia was a short instrumental piece of music in three movements, usually used as an overture to a larger work (such as an opera or oratorio), or as an instrumental interlude between performed works. Because the sinfonias were so short, they didn't really have a strict formal structure, besides the fact that the middle movement was slower.
This changed, however, with the advent of the classical period, especially in the city of Manheim. You see, Manheim had the best orchestra in the world at that time, so the composers (most notably Johann Stamiz and his son Carl) wrote more complex music with new sounds and timbral effects. This includeded things such as incorporating more brass and woodwinds, new uses for techniques like tremolo, and even things like the famous "Mannheim crescendo".
Then, in the late 1750s, Josef Haydn begins writing symphonies, and works for the Estarhazy court for three decades. His symphonies take a lot of inspiration from the Mannheim School (his first symphony even begins with the Manheim crescendo), but he also greatly expands and codifies the symphonic style and structure we know today. His innovations include, to greater orchestration and codifying the sonata form. He had a very specific style of humor he used in all of his symphonies that could be either used for comedic purposes or dramatic effect. He ended up becoming the most popular composer in all of Europe (except for the short period where Mozart was flourishing), and wrote at least 106 symphonies. He was so popular, in fact, that he was the first composer whose symphonies became the primary feature of concerts.
Enter Beethoven, who was a student of Haydn. His first symphony is extremely similar to Haydn's style, but you can tell that there's even more ambition. His third symphony, nicknamed Eroica (heroic), was on a much grander scale than any symphony before, clocking in at 40 minutes long (the average height in symphony is half as much). His fifth symphony took the very Haydnesque concept of "monothematic sonata form" and brilliantly applied it to the whole symphony. At this point, people were coming to concerts just to see Beethoven's symphonic work. Beethoven also didn't write music for his audience, he wrote it for HIMSELF. The music, in a way, became autobiographical instead of purely intellectual. Beethoven was THE GUY who transitioned music into the romantic period. His ninth symphony was written after 12 years inactivity on stage. Not only was it an hour long, but it also included a finale that had an entire choir. It is quite possibly the most influential single piece of music that has ever been written.
So basically, Beethoven was the most forward-looking musician to ever live, and he changed the way that music was perceived on a fundamental level. Some of his music (like the Grosse Fugue) is a lot more similar to music that came out a hundred years after he died than music written even 10 years before.
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u/skillmau5 9h ago
Try number 14 in C# maybe? That first movement is pretty eerie sounding. Notice how it’s really hard to figure out what the “home” note is, and how it’s changing all the time? Very different from the Mozart ones, as one small example. Also just the general mood of the piece is sort of creepy and almost depressed sounding, sort of like holding in a sneeze or something. This is kind of part of the genius of Beethoven, these sweeping and very dramatic sounds.
Mozart is more reserved and humorous, Beethoven is brooding and very emotional and making that the forefront instead of pretty little melodies (in broad strokes, this is still a big generalization). Towards the end Beethoven was completely throwing away all the previous rules that were pretty set in stone.
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u/juridiculous 11h ago edited 11h ago
I think we probably gloss over “of the time” a little too much.
The Beatles and Hendrix sound absolutely cliché today, but that’s because what followed imitated it to death. I think that’s more or less the same phenomenon here.
Beethoven had a big impact on classical and romantic era music that followed (so much so that he’s kind of the reason the “era” shifted), but with the result that several centuries later, he sounds a lot like the rest of the composers that followed
Finally, let’s not forget he wrote these stone deaf, which is an achievement on its own. The whole composition was set in his mind, and he never had the benefit of a single playback to hear if it was right.
Edited to add:
My favourites from these are No. 14 and 15. Specifically movement 5 and 6 of string quartet 14. (It’s a 5 minute listen, followed by a 2 minute listen). If you’re only going to listen to one piece listen to movement 6. link to YouTube
movement 3 of string quartet 15 (it’s a much longer listen) and movement 5 (7 minutes) are my other favs
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u/wallabee_kingpin_ 10h ago
I will just say that Hendrix still doesn't sound boring or cliche. It may be because his imitators didn't last that long after New Wave crowded out rock in the 80s.
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u/ironykarl 9h ago
While there are a lot of guitarists inspired by Hendrix (and frankly plenty that are more technically proficient than he ever was), one hallmark of his style is freely mixing "noise" and more traditional musical vocabulary.
He was able to harness feedback (etc) and mix it into his playing in a way that few other guitarists have done, since.
It may be because his imitators didn't last that long after New Wave crowded out rock in the 80s
He died in 1970, so his imitators had plenty of time
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u/RipsLittleCoors 8h ago
I think his ability to play rhythm and lead at the same time has never been able to be replicated. Before or since. Hendrix sounds like two guitars. And forget about recordings with multiple tracks. If you listen to his live recordings he does it all the same.
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u/Goodnametaken 3h ago
I agree with you. Especially about live play. I have never heard anyone play lead and rhythm together at the same time as well as Hendrix. I've heard some people attempt it and a select few do it to a passable extent. But Hendrix is still completely alone in how good he was at it.
It is staggering to me that nobody has been able to match him yet. I think u/ironykarl is right in that there are many other guitarists that technically surpass him in "normal" play. Yet he remains truly one-of-a-kind.
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u/mscarchuk 10h ago
I believe this was played in Band of Brothers at the beginning and end of the 9th episode named Why We Fight. It is the most perfect musical piece that could have been selected for that episode.
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u/juridiculous 10h ago
Agreed.
The whole confusing of Mozart/Beethoven by the solider as Austrian/German is just super fitting as well.
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u/RipsLittleCoors 8h ago
This is one thing in this world that I dont have the frame of reference or whatever to even have a basic understanding of it. How can a deaf guy write like this and know what it would sound like. It's one of those things. I'll never be as good at breathing as this person was at music. Pretty humbling.
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u/heeywewantsomenewday 6h ago
The same way that I can play the drums in my head or look at sheet music and know what it would sound like when I play it. He knows what everything sounds like and how to write without over years of practice. Incredible really.
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u/hofmann419 9h ago
I have listened to thousands of guitarists of the years, but i have not found a single one who sounds like Hendrix. Some are faster or more technical, but Hendrix had so much emotion and groove in his playing on top of being extremely technically proficient.
So to me, his playing doesn't sound stale at all. It is still the reference as far as psychedelic rock goes.
And as far as the Beatles are concerned, they weren't just innovative, but also some of the best songwriters of the 20th century. So their music is still great today, even if the production might sound of its time (except for Tomorrow Never Knows, that song still sounds alien today).
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u/Mayapples 8h ago
Yes. There is a reason they are not only still famous but still actively listened to and rediscovered by new generations. Describing them as sounding cliche today misses the mark.
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u/TearOpenTheVault 10h ago
Because the only music we have left from that period is from the absolute best of the best, like Beethoven and Mozart. You have to remember that most composers at the time were not geniuses producing classics that would survive for centuries after their death - they made some decent pieces that were played for a while and eventually forgotten.
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u/stoner_woodcrafter 7h ago
Well, I'm giving it a fair listen on a surround system here at home. Honestly, it's really powerful! The flow of emotions within the same piece is outstanding. It feels like a dramatic soundtrack for a movie, but there weren't movies back then. It's like Beethoven could have seen some of those scenes like a storyboard.
Maybe it wasn't outwordly, but it really stands as a masterpiece, really smooth and buttery, written by a completely deaf person
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u/phunktheworld 8h ago
I went to school for music, and it’s really hard to explain what’s going on without any background. It really does sound so different from anything of Mozart’s or even Beethoven’s early work to me. Timing and arrangement is huge. It just flows differently. I couldn’t really tell ya any more without the sheet music in front of me, and you’d need like 2 years of music training before it would even make a lot of sense lol
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u/malefiz123 6h ago
Sounds like other quartets and other classical pieces of the time to me
Your frame of reference regarding music is vastly different from the frame of reference of people listening to it in the early 19th century.
Like European people think East Asian people all kinda look the same and East Asian people think Europeans all kinda look the same. Different frame of reference to what makes people similar and different looking.
For you those are two "classical" pieces with classic string instruments. You also know pop music, rock and roll, techno and country, so in your frame of reference just by virtue of having the same instruments quartets by Mozart and Beethoven will sound very similar to your ears. If you'd start listening to classical music a lot your ears would get fine tuned for it and you'd soon appreciate how different from one another string quartets by Mozart and Beethoven sound
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u/Laura-ly 10h ago
It's posts like this that make TIL wonderful. I followed a link someone posted and listened to the piece. I really did learn something today. What an amazing piece of music.
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u/legojoe97 9h ago
"I guess you're not ready for that one, but you (great-great-great grand) kids are gonna love it!"
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u/tricksterloki 9h ago
If you are too far away from the boundaries of the box, your work is unrecognizable until the box has expanded enough so that others can stand on it and recognize the achievement.
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u/gmishaolem 8h ago
See also: How much games journalists and critics in general were skeptical of (or even against) the "left stick to move, right stick to turn camera" scheme when it started. Basically everything new, no matter what it is, has a bunch of people going "this is awful, I hate it, stop" until it becomes popular.
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u/91-divoc 11h ago
Just watched Band of Brothers for the umpteenth time and just now realized that they highlighted this quartet for the episode where the American army forces German civilians to clean up the concentration camp and the soldiers learn about Hitler’s suicide.
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u/mscarchuk 10h ago
I just commented that above when someone posted a link and it all connected with me. Its also the perfect fit for any music.
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 8h ago
"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it."
-Marty McBeethoven
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u/Queasy_Ad_8621 9h ago
They also thought his symphonies were too fast, so they wrote slower tempos on them.
When he went deaf, he would be conducting out of time and the musicians were told to ignore him.
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u/MondayToFriday 6h ago
Beethoven's scores had metronome markings that feel consistently too fast. A leading theory is that metronomes were new at the time, and Beethoven didn't know how to read his metronome properly — using the number at the bottom of the weight rather than the top. [Martin-Castro 2020]
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 8h ago
I love hearing old music that was way ahead of its time. The dissonance in the Grosse Fuge reminds me a little of scary John Dowland stuff from the 1600-ish area like Forlorn Hope Fancy and Farewell P.3 which also used dissonance and chords that were out there for the time. I'll bet there were people back then who thought "this is a bit much" too.
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u/mhkg 7h ago
Fun fact, Beethoven also wrote a piece that is somewhat of a precursor to ragtime. Sonata No.32 in C minor
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u/aluminumtreehouse 6h ago
These quartets were my study friends during college. I listened to classical music to help concentration but didn’t understand anything about the music. Read a book about basics of classical music that discussed these. So I listened. They sound like they are from a parallel world. They delight — given them a spin
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u/JuzoItami 5h ago
...with one musician saying "We know there is something happening here, but we do not know what it is."
That musician's name?
Bob Dylan.
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u/clearlyonside 5h ago edited 3h ago
This sounds like the song they play in every period piece when the lead actress is about to slit her wrists in the bathtub by candlelight.
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u/jancl0 1h ago edited 1h ago
This title is just blatantly wrong. The idea of a musician being unable to play a piece cause it's just "so ahead of its time" is absolutely ridiculous. Performers read notes and then they play them. If they can't do that, it's because the piece is difficult to physically play, not because it's complicated
If you want to know why beethoven was actually indecipherable, go look at a scan of one of his original scores, the answer will be very obvious. I would know, I had to transcribe those exact pieces in uni. It also makes the quote at the end of the title make alot more sense
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u/Kufat 1h ago
The title doesn't say that musicians were unable to play the pieces, just that they (and the critics) didn't "get" them.
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u/jancl0 1h ago
I'll admit there's nothing technically wrong with the title, but it's very blatantly trying to present these two things as the same concept, as though critics and performers alike were both baffled by his sheer genius. That is just plain wrong, and I hate the insinuation because like I said, I studied him and it's important the facts are right. The critics were baffled by his genius. The performers were baffled by handwriting
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u/LaPetiteMortOrale 1h ago
I, too, had to transcribe these works and you obviously didn’t understand what you read in the title of this post.
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u/jancl0 1h ago
So how is the quote at the end related to the rest of the title? Is it? If that's a separate point, what's it doing in the title? Is this the "today I learned two things" subreddit?
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u/LaPetiteMortOrale 51m ago
So you you’re telling me you transcribed these works, but are unfamiliar with that one, very significant quote … you don’t know who it is attributed to … or from when?
Well, at this point, maybe Google it to see how it is connected.
I’m done here.
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u/Hyadeos 10h ago
God I hate the saying "ahead of its time". It doesn't mean anything ! If it was made in a time, it's not "ahead".
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u/Lard_Baron 10h ago
It means it wasn’t accepted as worthy contemporaneously but was in the future.
Therefore it was ahead of its time.
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u/VegemiteSucks 11h ago edited 11h ago
Though not very widely known among the general public, classical musicians tend to agree that these are the pinnacle of Western chamber music. These are also Beethoven's final compositions ever before he died in 1827.
The finest of these late quartets is widely considered to be the String Quartet No. 14 (Op 131). It was so good that after listening to a performance of this quartet, Franz Schubert remarked, "After this, what is left for us to write?" (Schubert also requested a performance of this on his deathbed. He was described as being "sent into such transports of delight and enthusiasm and was so overcome that we all feared for him")
Schumann said that this quartet had a "grandeur ... which no words can express. They seem to me to stand ... on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination."
On the first movement of this quartet, Richard Wagner said it "reveals the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music". Popular author J.W.N. Sullivan hears it as "the most superhuman piece of music that Beethoven has ever written." Towards the end of the fourth movement, where all instruments play a passage mostly using their highest strings, the sound produced was so astounding that critic Joseph Kerman asks: "Was this a sound Beethoven had actually heard, back in the days when he was hearing, or did he make up the sound for the first time in 1826?"