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Beethoven’s Molecular Growth, and Why He’s Probably the Greatest Composer Who Ever Lived
In the Charles Eliot Norton lectures, Leonard Bernstein analyses Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, and highlights one of Beethoven’s greatest strengths as a composer: [The 6th Symphony] exemplifies that special molecular growth process of his, the incredibly ongoing quality of his music, whereby motifs, or parts of motifs, can become attached, or detached, in infinite numbers of […]
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Repetition in Beethoven’s Symphony No.6
Many commentators remark on the amount of repetition within the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No.6. Antony Hopkins, in his book The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven, sees it as another metaphor for nature: One of the most notable characteristics of the entire first movement is its exploitation of repetition, the repetition of pattern that we […]
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Video: Glenn Gould Plays Excerpts From Beethoven’s Symphony No.6
I discovered this short Japanese film about Glenn Gould on YouTube in which he discusses how he removes himself from the city in order to get away from ’emotional escalation’. At the start is a clip of him playing excerpts from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in a transcription for piano by Franz Liszt – skip […]
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Video: Disney’s Fantasia and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony
Terry Teachout’s heart-warming post about music that makes him smile (scroll down to ‘Make Me Smile’) reminded me that the Disney film Fantasia had a whole sequence devoted to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral Symphony. I couldn’t remember that much detail about it, so went searching, and what do you know but I found […]
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Beethoven – Classical or Romantic
Was Beethoven a Classical or a Romantic composer? The 6th Symphony seems to present the strongest case for the latter – it’s a programmatic work, and program music is a distinctive element of much romantic music. It was written in 1808, just three years after Wordworth finished his 13-book Prelude, when the romantic movement in […]
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New Look Culture Club
Yes I’ve changed the look of Culture Club to this Cutline theme. I’ve come to regard the old Fleur de Lys theme as a bit ‘fusty’, whereas this has a more contemporary feel. All views from are welcome – please leave a comment. I’ll be changing the image in the header from the default city […]
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Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 and Wordsworth’s The Prelude
The Culture Club has chosen for its next session to discuss Beethoven’s 6th Symphony and Wordsworth’s two-part Prelude of 1799, because both are related to the countryside. While reading around the subject, I came across this quote which reveals a deeper link between the two. This is from Richard Osborne’s chapter on Beethoven, from the […]
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Fine Art on YouTube
Terry Teachout, the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, has effectively created a cultural video-on-demand site from material uploaded on YouTube. Read his article about it at WhoseTube? ArtsTube – WSJ.com. Quote: YouTube, like the other new Web-based media, is a common carrier, a means to whatever ends its millions of users choose, be […]
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Nature and Spirituality in William Wordsworth’s Poetry
Jonathan Wordsworth (a descendant of William Wordsworth), in his introduction to the Penguin edition of the four texts of the Prelude by William Wordsworth, makes interesting notes on the evolution of the poet’s view of nature and spirituality. He traces these thoughts from Tintern Abbey, where Wordsworth talks of a pantheistic divine presence – ‘the […]
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J.B. Priestley on William Wordsworth
This quote from J.B. Priestley really struck a chord with me: ‘A good deal of [Wordsworth’s poetry], perhaps most of it, is very dull, like a long walk on a grey day. But just as somewhere on that walk there might be a sudden and superb flash of beauty, so in Wordsworth’s poetry there are […]