Beethoven's "Hammerklavier"

[Tarantella]

I've had to rise from my slumbers because I have this amazing sonata on my I-Pod (Pollini) and how in the name of God is anybody meant to prepare for sleep under such circumstances?

Having recently decided this IS my desert island piece of music for all time, I just cannot get over the last movement - no, I neither can nor ever want to get over it. Words such as astounding, miraculous, complex, dynamic, terrifying, devastating, phenomenal, moving, excruciatingly beautiful, expansive, just don't seem adequate. This student of the English language is trying to find the right ones.

I feel a curious mixture of ecstasy and pain when listening to the "Hammerklavier", for some inexplicable reason. Depression is never far away, but one never loses the sense of wonder with Beethoven - particularly when he's in this kind of form - never, ever.

The last movement of Opus 106, "Largo, Allegro Risoluto", is the apogee of art music, IMO. I adore Beethoven's 'take-no-prisoners' style. It's such a hard act to follow once you've been to the mountain-top, and with ever-increasing difficulty I search for another 'mountain'. That's how this work affects me.

I love this quote which I saw at an alpine display in Innsbruck last year and which seems to describe my own feelings about this work: "Astonishment and delight brings reason to a standstill".

[Felix]

Well, I took the score Hammerkavier around with me today and my reason has been brought to a standstill.

I absolutely share your enthusiasm for this I would almost say monsrously beautiful work and it's wonderful to share such enthusiasms with others. I wantedto listen to it this evening but feel too frail for its immense power. I will listen on another day. I'm sure I'm making the mistake of trying to understand and this leaves me like the 'Kuh vor dem neuen Tor.' the bovine facing a new gate. I did manage with my music group to help them follow the Appassionata and the Waldstein - but there are such enormous extensions and spaces in the Hammerklavier. My first impressions are of a super energetic Fugue at the end and a much more pacific slow movement, even, despite some surprising modulations, the harmony seems to remain quite simple, a forerunner, perhaps, of the purest simplicity in the theme of the second movement of the of the last Sonata. Sitting through a live of performance of the H. slow movement I'll never forget how I was transfixed by its lyricism.

In the fugue I can begin with recognizable figures: the theme that runs on in ever changing semiquaver variations, the figures played in 6ths and, the trill which almost becomes a main theme the new calmer theme which is drawn into the melée.

As usual my time is limited and I'm being fetched by a friend in a moment.

Regards and enjoy, enjoy in your own way.
Felix

[haydnguy]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

I've had to rise from my slumbers because I have this amazing sonata on my I-Pod (Pollini) and how in the name of God is anybody meant to prepare for sleep under such circumstances?

Having recently decided this IS my desert island piece of music for all time, I just cannot get over the last movement - no, I neither can nor ever want to get over it. Words such as astounding, miraculous, complex, dynamic, terrifying, devastating, phenomenal, moving, excruciatingly beautiful, expansive, just don't seem adequate. This student of the English language is trying to find the right ones.

I feel a curious mixture of ecstasy and pain when listening to the "Hammerklavier", for some inexplicable reason. Depression is never far away, but one never loses the sense of wonder with Beethoven - particularly when he's in this kind of form - never, ever.

The last movement of Opus 106, "Largo, Allegro Risoluto", is the apogee of art music, IMO. I adore Beethoven's 'take-no-prisoners' style. It's such a hard act to follow once you've been to the mountain-top, and with ever-increasing difficulty I search for another 'mountain'. That's how this work affects me.

I love this quote which I saw at an alpine display in Innsbruck last year and which seems to describe my own feelings about this work: "Astonishment and delight brings reason to a standstill".

It's been awhile since I listened to it. I will also listen to it, this time, with more "alertness".

[Noseeum]

Being a fairly fanciful type, I see Beethoven undergoing something like a metamorphosis in his understanding of himself and the cosmos, expressed in the piano sonatas beginning with Opus 90. He is feeling his way in 90 and 101. In 106 he has progressed to the point where the 'garden' is before him, he only has to explore it. He enters the garden in the first two movements, explores it in the largo - and expresses his epiphany in the finale. The last three sonatas are his attempt to give the world an inkling of his discovery.

[Copied from a 'private message', on the why not[?] principle.]

[Quijote]

Originally Posted by Noseeum

Being a fairly fanciful type, I see Beethoven undergoing something like a metamorphosis in his understanding of himself and the cosmos, expressed in the piano sonatas beginning with Opus 90. He is feeling his way in 90 and 101. In 106 he has progressed to the point where the 'garden' is before him, he only has to explore it. He enters the garden in the first two movements, explores it in the largo - and expresses his epiphany in the finale. The last three sonatas are his attempt to give the world an inkling of his discovery.
[Copied from a 'private message', on the why not[?] principle.]

Blimey! If Op. 106 is a garden (to use your similie), Beatrix Potter left it to the rodents just after the opening bars. At bar 40 or so (I'm making this all up) the fox catches and rips apart the soft furry animal (shall we call it sonata form?) who tries unsuccessfully (to fugue) to flee away.

[Musaeus]

I think I can hear Beethoven digging furiously in certain movements, occasionally tugging ferociously at weeds (which he then hurls over the fence into somebody else's sonata), smiting a stone with his spade, or even his foot at one or two points, which makes him run frantically round the lawn. But then, once more, all is calm, and he smiles at his work, just as we do.

[Noseeum]

There are soooo many clever members here. Maybe that's why it's called brightcecilia?

Whatever it is, the air's too rarefied for me.

[ReinerTorheit]

Originally Posted by Musaeus

I think I can hear Beethoven digging furiously in certain movements, occasionally tugging ferociously at weeds (which he then hurls over the fence into somebody else's sonata), smiting a stone with his spade, or even his foot at one or two points, which makes him run frantically round the lawn. But then, once more, all is calm, and he smiles at his work, just as we do.

That's odd. I can hear him playing the piano.

[Quijote]

Originally Posted by Noseeum

There are soooo many clever members here [...]

Not me, I assure you. Nothing wrong whatsoever in the way you "see" this sonata, by the way. I think we would all agree it's a pinnacle in the western art canon.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Quijote

Not me...

Me neither! But if clever people want to post here -- brain-boxes who play chess for relaxation and read Proust to their partners in bed -- why not?

I can scurry round cracking jokes about drunk brass players while they discuss propositional calculus and how to build a faster than light machine. Where's the problem?

Why can't thickos and MENSA types rub along? It's very much part of the Brightcecilia "project" that they should...