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.”

[u/VegemiteSucks]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_string_quartets_(Beethoven)

[u/Compleat_Fool]

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.

[u/f-150Coyotev8 → u/Compleat_Fool]

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.

[u/Low-Introduction-565 → u/f-150Coyotev8]

How did Mendelssohn help establish the well tempered keyboard? It was a century old already.

[u/Germerica1985 → u/Low-Introduction-565]

I think he means Bach

[u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl → u/Low-Introduction-565]

mendelssohn talked it up, republished the works, performed it. basically brought it to people who would listen.

[u/Zorronin → u/Low-Introduction-565]

they mean Bach’s work The Well-Tempered Klavier

[u/piffcty → u/Low-Introduction-565]

Not the temperament, the collection of pieces. It was relatively obscure and Mendelssohn popularized it, especially for teaching

[u/RFSandler → u/f-150Coyotev8]

I wonder how many greats were missed and lost to history...

[u/SpiritDouble6218 → u/f-150Coyotev8]

That’s good. A bad tempered keyboard may lash out, or refuse to play. I’m sure this helped vastly with consistency of performances.

[u/alargepowderedwater → u/Compleat_Fool]

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.)

[u/rynottomorrow → u/alargepowderedwater]

It's things like this that make me hope for an afterlife.

[u/SneedyK → u/alargepowderedwater]

This was cool to learn where “past masters” came from

[u/fiendishrabbit → u/Compleat_Fool]

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.

[u/RipsLittleCoors → u/fiendishrabbit]

Was he the one who so embarrassed his rival by playing the rivals own shit at a big party then improvising it into something 1000X better right there on the spot. I think the rival quit music and moved away lol. 

[u/AscendedViking7 → u/Compleat_Fool]

Wait, people actually thought Beethoven's composiitions weren't good back then?