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Multimedia Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 28, 2010
Often times clichés are clichés for very good reasons. The power and beauty of Beethoven's Ninth is a prime example of this. There's something tremendously touching in itself about the fact that the handful of notes that form the cathartic "Ode to Joy" sequence have pulled upon heartstrings so universally over the centuries.
I perpetually rediscover how amazing this symphony is nearly every time I'm exposed to it. It truly invokes the sentiment expressed by a quotation from Kant which was found scrawled in Beethoven's notebooks during the same period that he was composing the symphony:
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
It sounds painfully passé and sooooooo played to go on pontificating about engaging The Sublime through the strains of "Ode to Joy" but I really think actually listening to it dissolves this jaded numbness like clockwork--mind-blowing clockwork. At least for me.
In my final semester of college we listened to The Ninth and examined it in deep detail, covering music theory and all of the other aesthetic, historical and philosophical details within it and I found that I fell in love with it and Beethoven's corpus generally in a more profound way than ever before.
The very fact that the man was completely deaf while composing this and performing it is an amazing fact to behold that adds an additional dimension of heartstring-tugging on top of what the carefully placed vibrations invoke on their own. This singular, riveting fact reminds me of a beautiful three chord song by the band Low entitled "When I Go Deaf":
When I go deaf
I won't even mind
Yeah, I'll be all right
I'll be just fine
I'll stay out all night
Looking at the sky
I'll still have my sight
Yeah, I'll still have my eyes
And we will make love
We won't have to fight
We won't have to speak
And we won't have to lie
And I'll stop writing songs
Stop scratching out lines
I won't have to fake
And it won't have to rhyme
When I go deaf
When I go deaf
When I go deaf
When I go deaf
I perpetually rediscover how amazing this symphony is nearly every time I'm exposed to it. It truly invokes the sentiment expressed by a quotation from Kant which was found scrawled in Beethoven's notebooks during the same period that he was composing the symphony:
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."
It sounds painfully passé and sooooooo played to go on pontificating about engaging The Sublime through the strains of "Ode to Joy" but I really think actually listening to it dissolves this jaded numbness like clockwork--mind-blowing clockwork. At least for me.
In my final semester of college we listened to The Ninth and examined it in deep detail, covering music theory and all of the other aesthetic, historical and philosophical details within it and I found that I fell in love with it and Beethoven's corpus generally in a more profound way than ever before.
The very fact that the man was completely deaf while composing this and performing it is an amazing fact to behold that adds an additional dimension of heartstring-tugging on top of what the carefully placed vibrations invoke on their own. This singular, riveting fact reminds me of a beautiful three chord song by the band Low entitled "When I Go Deaf":
When I go deaf
I won't even mind
Yeah, I'll be all right
I'll be just fine
I'll stay out all night
Looking at the sky
I'll still have my sight
Yeah, I'll still have my eyes
And we will make love
We won't have to fight
We won't have to speak
And we won't have to lie
And I'll stop writing songs
Stop scratching out lines
I won't have to fake
And it won't have to rhyme
When I go deaf
When I go deaf
When I go deaf
When I go deaf
Displaying 1 of 1 review