Richibi’s Weblog

   “Primavera“ (1478) 

         Sandro Botticelli 

                 ___________

it’s 1809 and Beethoven rules, essentially,
the musical environment, he’s setting the 
standard, the tone, for the century to 
come and no one is anywhere close to 
challenging his authority, music students 
will remember Carl Czerny, Muzio Clementi, 
for instance, but none of these, however 
noteworthy, contemporaneous composers, 
are even part of, anymore, the recital 
curriculum, think of Salieri and Mozart, 
for instance, without their mischief, who’s 
heard recently of any Salieri 

we’re not in Kansas anymore, this is the 
start of the Romantic Era, four movements,
but not one of them is a minuet, a signature 
element in a Classical composition, nor 
could you, would you want to dance to 
any of them

and this is where Beethoven starts to talk
rather than sing, music that you don’t just
listen to but read, note the disjointed 
rhythms that interject rather than court,
if you’ll pardon the Classical reference, 
from the very beginning of each 
movement, of each, indeed, recapitulation, 
music that is not at all genteel, but rousing, 
commanding

how does he do this

note that his rhythms don’t fall on the 
anticipated beat, they’re off, and 
therefore disconcerting, you need to 
get your bearings

then a motive, a musical idea that, as 
the word suggests, motivates, like a 
key to start an engine, will have an
odd, rather than an even, number of 
notes, like trying to fit a square into   
a circle, or a circle into a square, a 
tricky combination for balanced, by
definition, bar lines, one’s intellectual 
functions are thus activated, one 
doesn’t rest in the comfort of a 
prescribed cadence, but confronts 
the rocky, though constantly 
astonishing, even miraculous, road 
of Beethoven’s invention, adventure, 
if, of course, one’s into that 

instead of Mary had a little lamb, in
other words, we’re hearing, a little  
lamb has Marie, accent on the 
wrong syllable, though here we 
might call her Mary, she calls her 
lamb Mouton, not unsurprisingly, 
and it’s always, day after day, 
beside her, which Beethoven then 
sets, as idiosyncratically, to music

he’s, in other words, toying with 
tempo – note the caesurae, the 
pregnant pauses in a melody, the 
multiplication of tempi throughout 
the work as a whole, which imply  
a narrative, a story, especially 
without the traditional, and 
diversionary, dance element 

tonality remains essentially stable, 
despite unusual juxtapositions, odd
intervals – the tonal reach along the 
musical scale, A to G, between two
successive notes – which is to say, 
we’re not yet at Stravinsky

but I find it interesting to observe 
that recapitulation, the third 
Classical imperative, along with 
tempo and tonality, remains 
uninterrupted, not even 
questioned, indeed forcefully 
reinvented 

can there even be music without 
recapitulation, I wonder, whereas 
the other two have since lost their 
immutability – I’m not sure, I’ll have 
to check

thanks wholeheartedly for stopping 
by

R ! chard