Music and other four letter words; 22; Joy 2: Beethoven's Op. 111

University of Utah radio presents music and other four letter words. Here is your host associate professor of music at the University of Utah Paul bad of you. And at this point. It becomes obvious to us that all that's not

going be well with a simple tune in C major. Why. Because it's suddenly a C-minus and Haydn's skeletal tune with which you began the second movement of his surprise symphony is due for some kind of spiritual upset I guess we would say. We're here for a reason. France USA hiking up a nice men of the 18th century who seems to have had his own fair share of domestic up evil. Passionless disorder and lack of tranquility manages to have sublimated all that money came to the writing of music and not to have felt that that the musician was in. Any way entitled to talk about himself. But rather to generalize his emotions to bring them into some kind of perspective with things commonly felt by men. And if it came to writing a piece of music even formally in such a and apparently rigid scheme as a theme upon which one would make variations that he should also do that according to some general plan general

procedure general symbolic method. Begin with a tune which isn't much of a structure in two parts. Repeat each of the parts set up some kind of expectation which will be reassuring. That kind of securing device for the auditor. Embellished the tune from time to time to enhance its beauty. Let it undergo some semblance of the sister to trial people upset if you will but make it all come out right in the end because that's the way things really happen. And this isn't phony. It might be. It might be sort of Walt Disney ish. To some people even living in the 18th century but to Haydn it seems not to have been phoning it it's just one of those felicities of experience that what Haydn devoutly believed was a rather simple Austrian Hungary and peasant happened to coincide with a general

generally held point of view in the society that nothing was really all that bad and that it would all work out in the end. He doesn't however feel that he is expected to explore all of the possibilities for our people which might be implicit in this term. And in that respect he differs from Beethoven who succeeds him imminently. This particular movement of this particular symphony strikes me as passingly relevant to a work that I think you want to listen to very carefully today and as a last piano sonata of Beethoven in C minor major of the key also of this movement that you just listened to by Haydn. And go we don't have time to play the whole of the brain. So not all of us one hundred and eleven which is number thirty two of Beethoven's piano sonata as we do have time to listen to the closing movement which is the C major movement in which follows

upon one of those typical Beethoven movements in which. Motor energy has been unleashed and and we are exhausted pretty much as a result of all of the dynamism which seems to be in here and in us as it has been symbolized and processes of counterpoint. And and rhythmic continuity in the first movement of that some not. The impulse of both Haydn and Beethoven is similar in both of these works these sets of variations that is to begin with a fairly stereotyped tune which is not especially interesting and which is very simply an skeletally conceived to set up something like an expectation of repeat it so that one feels the formality of it and is secured somehow to that expectation. Little by

little to drop the lines of demarcation to stop the exact repetition is to lose the way. If we had listened further in the movement by Haydn it would appear that at some point he begins as he usually does to expand to be discursive to lose the exact symmetry or shape of things but to get back in good time and somehow bring this out all right in the end. Beethoven doesn't come back quite so formally regularly as Haydn does because it is not his point to bring those back especially much to carry us off. That is to me to see all of the contrariety which is implicit in this tune to make it suggest to us all of the pupils which it can and do are and then to bring it safely through to some place where we are. At peace again and recognize that this is pretty much in keeping with what we said the last time round about the search for some

musicians by way of music through music as a kind of counterpart actual experience. To say. I haven for themselves and for us which is that point that Hopkins speaks of where those storms. Were. Bark which could be driven fearful and even that only a far can come to rest and somehow find its tranquility. Beethoven's music and therefore sets out to do what some people thought was impossible but which he knew wasn't. Handel he said was the greatest of composers. That was because I suppose he didn't really know all that much music by Bach. But then. Handel would be the greatest of composers for Beethoven because he too dealing with secular or apparently secular worldly images and experiences succeeds in

transcending them and carrying us through them as Beethoven does through his own musical symbols to some place where there is all the most rightness and peace and serenity through the storm. Why.

This has been music and other four letter words featuring Paul Bennett associate professor of music at the University of Utah. Music and other four letter words is a production of University of Utah radio executive director Rex Campbell. Series director Gene PAC. This series is made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. World.