Piano Concertos 2, 3, 4 – Beethoven
“Liberty Leading the People“ (1830)
_________
for everyone, with great gratitude,
who reads me, I mean only to
bring poetry, which is to say,
light
though I’d considered leaving the
Romantic Piano Concertos behind
to explore other areas of the period
in this survey, it seemed unfair,
indeed remiss of me, not to include
the three among my top ten that I
haven’t yet highlighted, Beethoven’s
2nd, 3rd, and 4th Piano Concertos,
Opuses 19, 37, and 58 respectively,
after all, these are where the spirit
of the age, the Zeitgeist, was
constructed, like a building, with
walls, windows, a hearth, all of
which would become a church,
then a Church, and by the time of
Brahms, a very Romantic Cathedral
the foundation had already been laid
by Mozart with his 27, but music had
not yet become anything other than
an entertainment by then, or
alternatively, an accessory to
ceremonial pomp and circumstance,
see Handel and England for this, or
liturgical stuff, see, among many
others here, Bach
but with the turn towards
independence of thought as the
Enlightenment progressed, cultural
power devolved from the prelates,
and their reverent representations,
to the nobles, who wanted their own
art, music, which is to say, something
secular, therefore the Classical
Period, 1750 – 1800, in round figures
then in the middle of all that, 1789,
the French Revolution happened,
and the field was ripe for prophets,
anyone with a message of hope,
and a metaphysical direction, midst
all the existential disarray – the Age
of Reason had set the way,
theoretically, for the possibility of a
world without God, something, or
Something, was needed to replace
the The Trinity, the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, Who had been
seeing Their supremacy contested
since already the Reformation
Beethoven turned out to be just
our man, don’t take my, but history‘s
authentification of it, see the very
Romantic Period for corroboration
in a word, Beethoven established a
Faith, a Vision, not to mention the
appropriate tools to instal this new
perspective, a sound, however
inherited, musical structure – his
Piano Concertos Two, Three, and
Four, for instance, are paramount
amongst a host of others of his
transcendental revelations
briefly, the initial voice, I am here, in
the first movement, is declamatory,
even imperious, but ever
compositionally solid, and proven,
tempo, tonality, recapitulation, the
materials haven’t changed from the
earlier Classical epoch, just the
design, the interior, the
metaphysical conception
his construction is masterfully
direct, the line of music is
throughout ever clear and concise,
despite flights of, often, ethereal,
even magical, speculation, you
don’t feel the music in your body
as you would in a dance, as in the
earlier era, of minuets, but follow
it, rather, with your intellect, you,
nearly irresistibly, read it
but the adagio, the slow movement,
the middle one Classically, is always,
for me, the clincher, the movement
that delivers the incontrovertible
humanity that gave power to the
Romantic poet, who touched you
where you live
Beethoven says life is difficult, and
eventually, at the end of his Early,
Middle and Late Periods, life may
even have no meaning
but should there be someone, he
says, who is listening, Someone –
though implicit is that one may be
speaking to merely the wind – this
is what I can do, this is who I am
and while I am here, however
briefly, I am not insignificant, I
can be worthy, even glorious,
even beautiful, I am no less
consequential, thus, nor
precious, than a flower
for better, of course, or for worse
R ! chard
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