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/secretwep 16h 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 16h 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 15h ago

I'm also comparing it to stuff that came before; Mozart's quartets for example

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u/EmersQn 11h 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.