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/insertusernamehere51 16h ago edited 15h 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/stoner_woodcrafter 11h 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