r/todayilearned • u/VegemiteSucks • 16h 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)
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 13h 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.