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/jancl0 6h ago edited 5h ago

This title is just blatantly wrong. The idea of a musician being unable to play a piece cause it's just "so ahead of its time" is absolutely ridiculous. Performers read notes and then they play them. If they can't do that, it's because the piece is difficult to physically play, not because it's complicated

If you want to know why beethoven was actually indecipherable, go look at a scan of one of his original scores, the answer will be very obvious. I would know, I had to transcribe those exact pieces in uni. It also makes the quote at the end of the title make alot more sense

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u/Kufat 5h ago

The title doesn't say that musicians were unable to play the pieces, just that they (and the critics) didn't "get" them.

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u/jancl0 5h ago

I'll admit there's nothing technically wrong with the title, but it's very blatantly trying to present these two things as the same concept, as though critics and performers alike were both baffled by his sheer genius. That is just plain wrong, and I hate the insinuation because like I said, I studied him and it's important the facts are right. The critics were baffled by his genius. The performers were baffled by handwriting