The A-Z Beethoven Quiz (rules of the game)

[PDG]

I don't hate them, Mike, honest. I just think most are extremely trite and they're not even Beethoven compositions. However, maybe if one of 'em had been written about my home town, I might just take a more charitable position, thus:

"Oh, Sunny Gosport, to be there by the sea, fair laddie", WooOO 6,243 no.5.

[Michael]

I don't hate them, Mike, honest. I just think most are extremely trite and they're not even Beethoven compositions. However, maybe if one of 'em had been written about my home town, I might just take a more charitable position, thus:

"Oh, Sunny Gosport, to be there by the sea, fair laddie", WooOO 6,243 no.5.

I don't wish to be pedantic, but "Sunny Gosport" is WooOO 5a (Hess 50091) - as you should know.

Seriously, Beethoven also turned up his nose at the tunes when he was first presented with them, but he was gradually won over, and it did influence him. Just listen to the third movement of the Piano Trio, Opus 70, No. 2.
If you still can't stand the tunes, just listen to the "backing track".

More seriously, we don't have to like everything. You can't understand my ambivalence about Schubert - and neither can I.

[PDG]

You can't understand my ambivalence about Schubert - and neither can I.

Yes, I can. Schubert is "Beethoven without salt," you said, and I understand what you mean. I don't rate Schubert in anything like the same league as Beethoven as a composer, but the folksong arrangements do not, in my view, add anything to the man's greatness.

Peace and love...

[Michael]

Yes, I can. Schubert is "Beethoven without salt," you said, and I understand what you mean. I don't rate Schubert in anything like the same league as Beethoven as a composer, but the folksong arrangements do not, in my view, add anything to the man's greatness.

Peace and love...

Thanks for the "peace and love". But I'm afraid Ringo has destroyed that phrase forever.

[Quijote]

P = Pest (the other side of Buda), where if I'm correct Beethoven was.

[Sorrano]

Q is for Quijote, for creating this fun game!

[Quijote]

Really scraping the barrel now, Sorrano, aren't you? The only Beethoven related element we can draw from this appalling entry on your part is that Beethoven was considered to be dark looking like a Spaniard, and died in the Black Spaniards House. Or something like that.

[PDG]

R = Rest. The 5th Symphony starts with a rest (a bit like the guy you employ to lay your new driveway)...

[Quijote]

S = Sotto voce, as instructed to the strings in the Marcia funebre of the Eroica.

[Michael]

"Ta-ta-ta Ta-ta-ta" (and these really are the words!) WoO 162.
For a long time it was believed to have been written by Beethoven but was then discovered to be a fraud by that scoundrel Schindler!
Very disappointing - Beethoven really should have written it.


(Looking at the above the next day - I think it may have been used already.)




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[Megan]

I think the Don has given up checking on repeats.
Just sayin.





U

Beethoven Unbuttoned.


In his respected and entertaining guide to Beethoven's symphonies, British musicologist
George Grove said of the Eighth Symphony: "The hearer has before him not so much a
piece of music as a person." That person, of course, is Beethoven himself, but not the
serious, brooding artiste of his portraits. No, the Eighth is a musical image of the
composer in the mood he called "aufgeknöpft" — "unbuttoned." In his "unbuttoned" state,
Beethoven was given to explosive pranks — once up-ending a bowl of pasta over a
waiter's head at a favorite restaurant — silly puns, and practical jokes on his friends
accompanied by howls of laughter. And in the summer of 1812 when much of this
Symphony was written, he was often in this antic mood.

[Michael]

Vigny, De Alfred. French poet and philosopher who was influenced by the religious element in Beethoven's music.

[Quijote]

W = Währing Cemetery (today the Schubertpark), where LvB was first buried.

[Michael]

Xtraordinary work, the Ninth Symphony - full of Xcitement. It sends one into a state of Xstacy .......

(Must take a Xanax now ......)





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[Quijote]

Time to dispense with the 'XYZ's? What do we think? PDG?