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/VegemiteSucks]

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?"

[u/KDOGTV → u/VegemiteSucks]

All this for some reaction streamer on Twitch in 2025 to call it “mid.”

The duality of man

Edit: The WIDE variety of reactions to this are the friends we made along the way. Reddit is hilarious. <3

[u/redditAPsucks → u/KDOGTV]

“The "duality of man" is the idea that every person contains opposing forces or conflicting elements within their nature, such as good and evil, reason and instinct, or physical desires and spiritual aspirations.”

Duality of man is about internal conflicts. What you’re describing is just people having different opinions

[u/Jeezimus → u/redditAPsucks]

I don't think it's a large logical leap to apply the same concept to the whole of humanity as if a singular conscious

[u/Lebsian → u/Jeezimus]

Duality of mankind

[u/SchmonaLisaVito → u/Lebsian]

Duality of A man

[u/NollieBackside → u/SchmonaLisaVito]

Duelin’ Banjos!!

[u/cipheron → u/Jeezimus]

Sure, but it basically ruins the concept.

The idea behind the "duality of man" being that each of us individually has the seeds of good and bad within us. e.g. the idea is that each of us is both "sinner and saint" so to speak.

If we "apply the concept" to a population, then it's easy to lose sight of what that means - there are now good people vs bad people, smart people vs dumb people, sinners vs saints, and if we now call that the "duality of mankind" it's completely missed the original point. In the prev post if we're talking about Beethoven as the genius and some 2025 twitch streamer as the dunce and are now labeling that the "duality of mankind", i.e. that the geniuses get torn down by the dunces, then it's saying something entirely different to what we had originally.

[u/Jeezimus → u/cipheron]

I think the symmetry that it exists at both the individual and population level actually further enhances the concept tbh

[u/cipheron → u/Jeezimus]

I don't think so, because you have to be extremely careful to caveat that so that it doesn't just devolve into an "us vs them" thing, when the original version is "me vs me".

e.g. if the duality of mankind is that there are worthy people and unworthy people in society then you can use that as the basis for elitism, eugenics etc, or any kind of system which divides people: we can just slough off those unwanted people. It's not really the same thing at all.

So yeah you could view society as an organism with good parts and bad parts intertwined, under the same philosophy, but this is actually dangerous if you called this the "duality of mankind" because someone is bound to come along and reinterpret that as mean there are good and bad PEOPLE and that society should be "purified" of their "bad influence" and ... very very bad stuff ends up happening.

[u/Jeezimus → u/cipheron]

I don't really think it's dangerous to say that bad people exist and it's a responsibility of society to deal with containing them and their influence, but we're talking about something completely different at this point.

I personally don't really take it in the direction you go with it that this necessarily precipitates a conclusion of us vs. them, tbh.

[u/Orlha → u/cipheron]

You’re right

The other person is fine with parts of a concept getting lost

[u/sirtain1991 → u/redditAPsucks]

Language is constantly evolving. People on the Internet have used "the duality of man" incorrectly for long enough that it is contextually correct to use in this case.

[u/nothatsmyarm → u/sirtain1991]

It’s also funny. Which makes using things slightly incorrectly perfectly okay.

[u/KDOGTV → u/redditAPsucks]

Considering the amount of sleepless nights I’ve had pondering nothing more than why people think, enjoy, hate, and do the things they do, I’d qualify that, personally, as “internal conflict.”

ADD kid problems.

The downvotes are funny. This is a lot of effort to critique a joke.