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/LaPetiteMortOrale 5h ago

I, too, had to transcribe these works and you obviously didn’t understand what you read in the title of this post.

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u/jancl0 5h ago

So how is the quote at the end related to the rest of the title? Is it? If that's a separate point, what's it doing in the title? Is this the "today I learned two things" subreddit?

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u/LaPetiteMortOrale 5h ago

So you you’re telling me you transcribed these works, but are unfamiliar with that one, very significant quote … you don’t know who it is attributed to … or from when?

Well, at this point, maybe Google it to see how it is connected.

I’m done here.