String Quartet no 15 in A minor, opus 132 – Beethoven
“The Garden of Earthly Delights“ (1510 – 1515)
____________
if I’ve been spending a lot of time on
Beethoven, it’s that, apart from
besides him Napoleon, no one else
dominates in the public imagination
the early 19th Century, there is no
one else of such comparable
importance
let me also point out that when
Nietzsche identified his model for
the Übermensch, Superman, it was
not the French General, the French
Emperor, however formidable,
however illustrious, he named, but
Beethoven
Nietzsche had already understood
that in the future, a future where the
idea of God had been put into question,
an issue which had begun irreversibly
with the splintering of the Catholic
supremacy, when the several
Protestantisms, Lutheran, Calvinist,
Anglican then, presented differing
opinions of each their vehemently
defended deity, the eventual
resolution would be inescapably up
for metaphysical grabs, which set
philosophers, scientists, poets in
search of answers, which by
definition must be as varied as
there are voices
the outcome was the eventual
declaration of human rights before
the court of international opinion
as the ruling moral consideration
above the demands of any one
faith
Nietzsche‘s pronouncement was that
a powerful opinion could therefore
sway very populations towards its
vision, however ultimately
sometimes dire, Nietzsche was
therefore blamed for predicting,
for instance, Hitler, as though
Nietzsche were himself responsible,
rather than prescient
one of his books, indeed, entitled
“Beyond Good and Evil“, illustrates
the breakdown of the traditional,
which is to say Christian, moral
order, powerful people will take us
where they want to, for better or
for worse, he prophesied
therefore, note, the very present
but there is also Beethoven, the
incandescent prophet, Charles
Darwin, the biologist, who
changed the way we understand
ourselves, Sigmund Freud, who
pushed that understanding even
further, Albert Einstein, who gave
us an alternate picture of the
universe, John Lennon, who
called upon us all to “Imagine“,
Princess Diana, who demonstrated
what it was to be good in a world
that was losing its compass, each
shaping by force of personality
our present age, their future
all was not, by their examples,
lost, in other words, some of our
leaders would be benevolent,
verily even inspiring, despite the
prevalence in their midst, the
existential threat of, nefarious,
indeed ruthless, and, too often,
appalling, despots, a category
too long to even begin to list
here’s, however, Beethoven doing
again his stuff to inform the tenor
of his time, his 15th String Quartet,
another forceful and foundational
step towards the world that lay,
before him, ahead, our world, for
better or for worse
R ! chard
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