Beethoven, 'tune-off'

[John deLaubenfels, TD 211.13]

> It's so... SHORT, it's hard for me to tell whether the tuning
> seems right or not.

Yes, I know. I've posted something about this.
I'll eventually get around to finishing it.

> (please note the extreme irony in my complaining
> that your sequence is too short, I who am virtually unable to
> play keyboard from a score...).

Yeah, well, I don't play anything in from a keyboard either,
because I don't have one anymore (all stolen). I use the
click-the-mouse-on-the-staff-one-note-at-a-time method.
Slow and painful, but it (eventually) gets the job done,
and my durations are always accurate! :)

One thing that really infurates me about MIDI sequences that
many others make (as downloadable from Classical MIDI Archives,
for example) is that they play them in on a keyboard with
lots of rubato, but their sequencer has no way to keep track
of where the beats fall, so when you look at the MIDI sequence,
the rhythmic notation looks nothing like the original score.

This lessens the value of their future use and modification
for me.

I use lots of rubato in the Tempo window to do all that,
retaining the original meters and rhythms.

> I actually like Beethoven's mad spirit, except that it seems not
> fully leavened with sweetness most of the time. Brahms can be
> every bit as stormy as Beethoven, but he always mixes in some
> wonderful lyricism.

I have to disagree there. I think the impression of the
never-lyrical Beethoven is a perception resulting from inaccurate
performance. Give a listen to the 'Cavatina' slow movement from
his Bb Quartet op. 130 (Beethoven himself cried when he thought
about this movement - it's one of the most deeply moving pieces
I know of), or for a more well-known example, the slow movement
from the 9th Symphony.

Of course, you didn't say that Beethoven is *never* lyrical,
and I think that often a whole movement may lack lyricism,
but it fits in with his 'program'. One thing Beethoven's music
has more than most other composers's is a profound logic and
a sense of inevitability.

I didn't mean to imply that I disagree about Brahms.
However...

> (which MAY be because Brahms had a steady stream of girlfriends,
> whereas poor Beethoven was apparently celibate most or all of his
> life...)

I'm not so sure about that. No-one knows for sure, and the
facts about this will probably never be discovered, considering
all the research that's been done into Beethoven's life by now.
But its on the record that there were *many* women who were
attracted to him, even tho he was considered ugly and somewhat
crazy. He himself was frequently under the delusion that he
had found a 'suitable mate' (to use Partch's words...).
Most of the time the reason the 'wedding plans' fell thru
was simply because of a difference in social standing: Beethoven
associated with members of the aristocracy, and these were all
aristocratic women, while he was but a lowly composer...

> Do you like the idea of a "tune-off"? Do you have any complete
> MIDI (single-voice) sequences you would like to see bent?

Sure. There's some piano stuff of mine on my 'List of Works'
webpage that you might try retuning:

Springtime Rag
Etude in F#
Sonatina
Waltz

When you say 'single voice', do you mean also 'one track'?
Some of these may have more than one track, but they are all
one voice, so the tracks could be combined into one if necessary.

-monz

Joseph L. Monzo monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
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monz@juno.com wrote:

> I have to disagree there. I think the impression of the
> never-lyrical Beethoven is a perception resulting from inaccurate
> performance. Give a listen to the 'Cavatina' slow movement from
> his Bb Quartet op. 130 (Beethoven himself cried when he thought
> about this movement

I'd cry too. But mostly because I share Cage's views aboutBeethoven [who?].

Folks - don't ever buy into that garbage about east coast composers
being European influenced! It's a bunch of snot.

> --

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