The life of Beethoven

00:00:00

John Banther: I'm John Banther, and this is Season 2 of Classical Breakdown. From Classical WETA in Washington, we take you behind the music. In this episode, I'm joined by Classical WETA host, Bill Bukowski. We explore the life of Ludwig van Beethoven, which was filled with groundbreaking music, but it was also tragic. From his first composition to his world- changing Symphony No. 9, we listened to samples of his music and tried to better understand the life of one of the greatest composers. All right, Bill, I've got a pop quiz. It's multiple choice, but are you up for it?

00:00:38

Bill Bukowski: Sure, why not?

00:00:39

John Banther: Okay. Who said the following quote? " The daily grind exhausts me." Okay. " The daily grind exhausts me." Was it A, me five minutes ago? Was it B, you 10 minutes ago? Was it C, Beethoven in 1823? Or was it D, everyone on Earth who has ever existed?

00:00:59

Bill Bukowski: Kind of a trick question, isn't it?

00:01:00

John Banther: Yeah, kind of, yes.

00:01:01

Bill Bukowski: The answer is obviously D.

00:01:03

John Banther: It's obviously D, but of course, Bill, the answer is always C. Right?

00:01:06

Bill Bukowski: Oh, okay.

00:01:07

John Banther: So it's all kind of true, but Beethoven did say that in 1823 to his nephew, Carl, and I like that, I can imagine them sitting down for a coffee and a cafe in Vienna, and he's just telling his nephew, " The daily grind exhausts me." It brings Beethoven down to our more mortal level that even he too would succumb to these humanistic issues.

00:01:29

Bill Bukowski: Which I think is just about right since that's exactly the kind of person. He was talking to us and still is down through the years.

00:01:37

John Banther: So we're going to go through the life of Beethoven who has become basically the most recognizable name in classical music. So Beethoven born in December, baptized on the 17th in 1770. He died March 26, 1827. For a little musical context, Bach had died just 20 years earlier before Beethoven was born, and Mozart was born just 14 years ahead of him. He was born in Bonn to a lineage of musicians. His father was a singer in the royal court. His grandfather, the same name, Ludwig van Beethoven was a singer in the royal court and even the music director for a while. It was pretty clear early on that Beethoven wanted to be a musician, wasn't it?

00:02:23

Bill Bukowski: That's what I hear, yes. I think back then, studying music was the thing that a lot of people really wanted to do.

00:02:31

John Banther: Yeah, especially, of course, in Vienna, basically the hub for music in Europe, especially at this point. He gets this early interest in music. His father is his first teacher, which is tragic in its own way because his father was actually abusive and he was an alcoholic. He was very, very strict with Beethoven, very stern, " You have to study these basics." Beethoven would learn those and want to improvise on something, and his father would scold him. His father would wake him up in the middle of the night when he would come home drunk with a friend, make him perform for them. It wasn't a great environment for Beethoven.

00:03:09

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, in essence, he was the opposite of Leopold Mozart, who he was trying to follow in terms of, you've got a son who's got some talent, let's nurture that talent. But Beethoven's father, I think, went the complete opposite direction that lay uphold went, and it was not a good thing.

00:03:28

John Banther: No, it wasn't. Eventually, his drinking would cost him his own job and his father would die early as well. Beethoven was studying. He was working with the court organist in composition, and we can go ahead and listen to what is the first composition ever written by Beethoven, and it is a set of nine variations on a march by Dressler. Let's hear a little bit of it. How fitting is it that the first bit of a first real composition from Beethoven starts in C- minor?

00:04:18

Bill Bukowski: Yes, that's right, one of his favorite keys. I think the other thing too, that's interesting in that it's an instantly recognizable tune. It was the first time that we see Beethoven taking a well- known tune and having some fun with it, doing some variations on it. He would do this throughout his career.

00:04:33

John Banther: Yeah, and he was only 12 years old, and already, well, first Beethoven, he's a virtuoso. He's a prodigy at the keyboard from an early age. So it seems like he has what you can call, I guess, a typical childhood. There's not too much written about besides that his father is trying to make him into this Mozart figure in terms of this prodigy that everyone should adore. He has his typical childhood issues. His father, unfortunately, as we've already said, was abusive, but he makes his first big trip in 1787. Beethoven is now 16 years old, and he goes to Vienna. It goes into a big debate in question, and that is, did Beethoven ever meet Mozart?

00:05:18

Bill Bukowski: That is a good question. You hear a lot of different stories connected with that. What's the real truth there?

00:05:25

John Banther: The real truth is that we have no real evidence that the two ever met. We think of Beethoven now, of course, this godly figure in music, when he was 16, he was a prodigy, but great keyboard players in their teens where it wasn't super rare or something. So it's also, you have to think, would Mozart have really cared to hear this young nobody coming in from Bonn?

00:05:49

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, exactly. Maybe he, Mozart, had heard a number of wonderful young keyboard players too.

00:05:55

John Banther: Yeah, there's no of the two meeting, but that doesn't mean Beethoven perhaps didn't actually see Mozart while he was in Vienna. He could have perhaps seen him at a concert. We know later on, and we'll get into these conversation books that Beethoven used when he was really almost completely at a loss of hearing, that someone asked, " Hey, you met Mozart was a good piano player," and that's all we really have. So it's possible he saw Mozart. It's possible he heard him in a concert, but-

00:06:24

Bill Bukowski: There's just no hard evidence.

00:06:25

John Banther: There's no hard evidence. There's not even real evidence of his time in Vienna. It may have been a couple of weeks, it may have been a few months, but we do know that it was cut short because he had to go back home to Bonn because his mother was very sick, and she died shortly thereafter from tuberculosis. But there's another figure isn't there in Vienna who is the master of music at this time. I think of Haydn. Haydn actually met Beethoven, not in Vienna, but in Bonn on his way to London. I love just the serendipity of this meeting because if Beethoven's grandfather had not moved to Bonn, Beethoven wouldn't be in Bonn and Haydn would not have met him. So perhaps Beethoven in another life would've been a shoemaker or a furniture maker or something like that.

00:07:18

Bill Bukowski: It's interesting to think too, and I'm thinking too about did Beethoven meet Mozart when really back then, the much more important meeting would've been Haydn. Haydn, at that time, was the most famous musician in Europe, and that would've been a more significant meeting anyway as, of course, we know that it wasn't just a meeting, it ended up there being a teacher- pupil relationship.

00:07:41

John Banther: When Beethoven was 21, he would then move to Vienna to study with Haydn. Haydn, as you just said, is this mega popular person in classical music now, but their relationship wasn't as cordial or it just wasn't as loving as I think we would've hoped it would've been.

00:08:00

Bill Bukowski: More chalk and cheese than anything else, I think.

00:08:03

John Banther: Because Haydn was really pushing on Beethoven counterpoint, some of the basics of composing, and perhaps Beethoven felt he was beyond that at this point and wanted to do other things, and he studied with some other composers in Vienna. But what I love about art and music, especially, when you learn the rules, you know exactly how to break the rules.

00:08:26

Bill Bukowski: Right. Exactly, and Beethoven certainly knew how to break the rules.

00:08:31

John Banther: He's still known at this time, not as a composer, but as a virtuoso pianist, isn't he?

00:08:37

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, and isn't that what he wanted to do? That was what he was really set out to do was to be a musician, a touring musician.

00:08:44

John Banther: No, exactly. He was a virtuoso and was common at that time, he was also composing. That was part of being a well- rounded musician. So we can look at some of his, well, first, his real Opus 1, and that is the first work he would have published, something that he thought would represent himself, and it is a piano trio. I think, Bill, you can tell us here what's happening between these instruments. Perhaps one is more favored than the other.

00:09:16

Bill Bukowski: Well, certainly in that little passage there, the piano is the star.

00:09:37

John Banther: Oh, yeah. It was clear Beethoven's writing this piano trio, but he's writing it for himself at the keyboard. He would be showing off and really displaying the virtuoso qualities of himself and of the keyboard. But this still, at this time when he's 25 years old, it still sounds like Beethoven, but really, it's following Mozart. It's following Haydn.

00:10:03

Bill Bukowski: What's interesting too about that it is in that style, but the piano player is playing with a great deal more assertiveness and force and energy than we normally expect to hear from say a Mozart or even Hadyn.

00:10:18

John Banther: I think it was also Beethoven's style of playing all the things you just said, which actually helped develop the actual piano, the instrument, because it was much smaller. It sounded much more tinker- y than it does today, back then.

00:10:33

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, and there was always stories about in later years, Beethoven would be playing the piano and damaging them because he was playing with just a little too much force.

00:10:41

John Banther: Oh, yeah. So he's 25 years old, and before he's 30, we can listen to a couple of his number one works, his first piano sonata, his first string quartet and his First Symphony. Here is a little bit of the opening to his first piano sonata. We can already hear in that opening, well, that first part that those notes going up to the top, what do we call that?

00:11:21

Bill Bukowski: Mannheim Rocket.

00:11:22

John Banther: Mannheim Rocket. That is following right in the classical tradition, and that's something we talked about in the What is a Symphony episode. He's following in the footsteps still of Haydn, of Mozart with these openings. It's a nice arpeggio, and it's setting the scene, it's setting the mood. Later on, we can listen to a bit of the fourth movement, he goes in just an extreme example in using the piano. Something that Beethoven did was he used the full range of the keyboard.

00:12:09

Bill Bukowski: Right. Right. As you're hearing this, you can even hear in your mind future sonatas that he has yet to write like the great Moonlight Sonata, for example.

00:12:17

John Banther: Oh, yeah.

00:12:17

Bill Bukowski: Beethoven was a very distinctive player even then.

00:12:22

John Banther: Yes, and like the Moonlight and like Fir Elise, he's able to just right from the beginning of the beginning of pieces to paint just a very descriptive and colorful picture in the music in a way that I think composers before even at this point weren't quite doing as well. It was, I don't want to say superficial, but it wasn't to the depth of emotion that Beethoven was grabbing.

00:12:48

Bill Bukowski: No, he definitely grabbed the romantic spirit as it was just being born there.

00:12:53

John Banther: Here's a little bit of his String Quartet No. 1 in the first movement, a characteristic opening we've heard from other works so far.

00:13:19

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, inviting people in to pay attention. The music grabs you because the way it stops and then starts again, it's interesting.

00:13:28

John Banther: Yeah, and we'll listen to a little bit of the fourth movement here, and this, I think, really paints the picture of, at this point, who Beethoven is as a musician and a composer. It's very nice, and it's a string quartet, but I don't hear a string quartet. I hear Beethoven at the keyboard. This sounds like he wrote something for the piano and then he said, " Oh, I got to write something out for the string quartet," and he wrote it out. I hear Beethoven at the keyboard here.

00:14:09

Bill Bukowski: Fascinating.

00:14:09

John Banther: The way the voices are, the way the notes are put together, it sounds... well, I feel like I can hear Beethoven. Now already with his First Symphony something is changing. This opening is different than other openings of symphonies up to this point in that we have even the first chord, it's like it's asking a question.

00:14:30

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, it's like a cadence that you would hear at the end of a musical phrase rather than at the beginning.

00:14:35

John Banther: Here's that chord. It's like we're going somewhere.

00:14:43

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:14:43

John Banther: This isn't complete, this is tension.

00:14:44

Bill Bukowski: And what happens next, right.

00:14:47

John Banther: He has this question and answer. Up to this point with especially symphonies, the opening is it can, of course, be in a minor key, but it's also, as you said, inviting you in. It's setting the scene and giving you an answer, " Hey, this is what this is." But right at the start, he asks you this question and then there's a response.

00:15:06

Bill Bukowski: I get this impression from Beethoven with all of his music, that he's not just writing something to be played in the background. He's writing something that he wants people to be participants in.

00:15:44

John Banther: Yeah. A lot of music is written for banquets, for dinners as background music, but Beethoven following, I guess, Haydn towards the end with these symphonies premiering in London, it's something serious in that we should be listening to closely. Now he's 31 years old, and according to Beethoven for a few years now, he's noticed problems with his hearing. I think it's like a hiss, maybe similar to tinnitus, but it's becoming a problem and now he's 31. He's come to realize having gone through several doctors that this is hearing loss, and this is likely permanent, and it will likely get worse.

00:16:28

Bill Bukowski: Imagine getting news like that from your doctor when you're 31 years old and your career is in music.

00:16:36

John Banther: Beethoven is absolutely devastated. He's despondent. I think this is where we start to really misunderstand Beethoven, and that is because he seemed so aggressive, so cold, so uninviting at times, and that was because he was for years trying to hide his hearing loss. The doctor said, " Okay, you need to come to terms with this. Go to Heiligenstadt," which is basically just a little country suburb right next to Vienna. " Rest your hearing, rest your mind and come to grips with this." This is where we have this, what we call Heiligenstadt Testament, but really it's a will. He's writing out his own will, and he's 31 years old, and he contemplates even taking his own life. It's quite a long document, but I've compiled here big excerpts and, we'll hear them read by Classical WETA's Nicole Lacroix.

00:17:32

Nicole Lacroix: " Oh ye men who regard or declare me to be malignant, stubborn or cynical, how unjust are ye towards me. You do not know the secret cause of my seeming so. From childhood onward, my heart and mind prompted me be kind and tender, and I was ever inclined to accomplish great deeds, but only think that during the last six years, I have been in a wretched condition, deceived from year to year with hopes of improvement, and then finally forced to the prospect of lasting infirmity. For me, there can be no recreation in the society of my fellow creatures, no refined conversations, no interchange of thought, almost alone, and only mixing in society when absolutely necessary, I am compelled to live as an exile.

If I approach near to people, a feeling of hot anxiety comes over me, lest my condition should be noticed. For so it was during these past six months, which I spent in the country, ordered by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as much as possible. But how humiliating was it when someone standing close to me heard a distant flute and I heard nothing, or a shepherd singing, and again, I heard nothing? Such incidents almost drove me to despair. At times, I was on the point of putting an end to my life. Art alone restrained my hand. Oh, it seemed as if I could not quit this earth until I had produced all I felt within me.

So I continued this wretched life, wretched indeed, with so sensitive a body that a somewhat sudden change can throw me from the best into the worst state. So let it be, I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my heart fate not withstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later yet even then, I shall be happy for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering? Come when thou wilt, I shall face thee courageously. Farewell, and when I am dead, do not entirely forget me. This I deserve from you, for during my lifetime, I often thought of you and how to make you happy."

00:20:05

John Banther: It's incredible to think of Beethoven, this massive figure having just these awful moments, these awful times, this anxiety, this despair to the point where he writes something like this.

00:20:20

Bill Bukowski: In contemporary practices, this would be considered journaling. People that have an issue or something, the counsel is to write it down, get it down on paper, write it down, write your thoughts down. But what's interesting about this is this a letter, this isn't just musing or a diary entry. This is actually in a letter. If you really come right down to it, he's speaking to us, to everyone. He was speaking to the people, the music lovers then, and he's speaking to us today.

00:20:49

John Banther: The thing is, no one knew about this until after Beethoven died.

00:20:53

Bill Bukowski: Right. That's also something remarkable to think about too. This was something that he was writing down for the future. He was talking to us. Really, when you get right down to it, he was talking to somebody, that some other person that immortal beloved or whatever name you want to put to it, it's really quite remarkably a very personal statement too. It's also all the more remarkable that nobody read it until after his death.

00:21:19

John Banther: So far, we've explored what we call the early period in Beethoven's life and in his composition. Now after he is in Heiligenstadt, he's written this testament and he finds this renewed purpose of, " I live for the art. I welcome death, but if I don't write everything I need to write, it comes a moment too soon." We're going to get into his middle period right after this.

00:21:44

Bill Bukowski: October is passion month on Choral Showcase, and on Sunday, October 11th, we'll hear Beethoven's only oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, a very humanistic portrayal of Christ's personal struggle at the garden of Gethsemane. We'll hear a new recording of this work featuring conductor Leif Segerstam on Choral Showcase. I'm Bill Bukowski, and I hope you'll tune in Sunday night, October 11th at 9: 00 on Classical WETA.

00:22:14

John Banther: So Beethoven returns to his home from the countryside quietness of Heiligenstadt, and he comes back with renewed purpose, and that is to compose, to write music. As we get into his middle period, this is where we find his biggest works, most of his biggest works, most of his most recognizable works. Now there's this really interesting book that I highly recommend. It's called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Basically, it's a compendium of just so many artists, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, and so on. It's someone who has through either their own journals or research or accounts have put together the routines that musicians and composers in this case had. Beethoven was very, very particular in his day. He woke up at dawn and he would get straight to work, but first he would have to have a cup of coffee. Now, how many beans are in a cup of coffee, Bill?

00:23:12

Bill Bukowski: I have no idea. I'm not a coffee drinker. I couldn't tell you.

00:23:15

John Banther: Well, according to Beethoven, it's 60. It's 60 beans. He would count them out, and that is how you made your coffee.

00:23:21

Bill Bukowski: Now, as a coffee drinker, is 60 beans a strong cup or a weak cup or somewhere in between?

00:23:26

John Banther: I guess it depends on the size of the bean, but this is not unusual today. I know plenty of people on Instagram posting how many grams of water they use for their coffee, exactly how many grams and the grind of the beans. So Beethoven is almost ahead of his time, I think, with his very particular coffee tastes.

00:23:46

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, but just imagine him making an order at Starbucks.

00:23:49

John Banther: No, I would not want to be waiting on him-

00:23:52

Bill Bukowski: Barista, yeah.

00:23:52

John Banther: ... at a cafe. No, no, no. So after his 60- bean cup of coffee, he's working basically straight to 2: 00 or 3: 00, early afternoon. This is super common for a lot of artists, wake up and work straight into lunch. He would have lunch, and then he would do something that so many composers have done and that is go on long walks. He would walk through Vienna. He would walk through the countryside, and he always had something with him, didn't he, to write down little melodies and ideas?

00:24:20

Bill Bukowski: Right, 'cause you never know when inspiration will strike.

00:24:22

John Banther: According to Beethoven, I'm sure this is a little bit of a hyperbole, but he said he remembered every single melody he ever thought of, and he could recall them at an instant. The interesting thing is Beethoven was, if you look at his manuscripts, when he was composing, it looks like a disaster. It looks like modern art. Everything is scratched out. There's ink everywhere because he would revise, revise, revise, and change and change and change almost distilling music down to its essence and then expanding it from there.

00:24:53

Bill Bukowski: Phenomenal composer with all those musical ideas in his head just rushing around and trying to get written down.

00:25:00

John Banther: Yeah, and he would often do that on these long walks. Then he would have a simple dinner and then go to the theater, a concert or a rest, enjoy a pipe, and it was bed by 10: 00. Now that's a pretty orderly schedule, but his life, and his apartment, it wasn't very orderly, was it? It was pretty dirty, his house.

00:25:20

Bill Bukowski: That's what I've heard, yeah, that he was not the best tenant, let's just say.

00:25:25

John Banther: He splashed water everywhere. It would go down into the people's apartment below.

00:25:30

Bill Bukowski: Food left uneaten on tables and chairs and on the floor.

00:25:35

John Banther: Even worse, a chamber pot full under the piano.

00:25:39

Bill Bukowski: No, let's not go there.

00:25:40

John Banther: No. So a lot of his big works come from this period and looking already to his big Symphony No. 3, the Eroica symphony, this has a little bit of a backstory, doesn't it, with Napoleon?

00:25:53

Bill Bukowski: Yeah. The story was that Beethoven was an admirer of Napoleon. Napoleon, like Beethoven, came from the Hinterlands. In a time of the enlightenment where that celebrated the individual people, and the power of the individual people, Napoleon was somebody that Beethoven really admired, only to a certain point, though. When somebody started putting on airs, that's when Beethoven got his back up, and this was a classic case.

00:26:21

John Banther: He even scratched out or tore up the paper, the front of the manuscript that had Napoleon's name written on it.

00:26:29

Bill Bukowski: After Napoleon had declared himself Emperor.

00:26:31

John Banther: Yes. I love the opening to this symphony. If his First Symphony opened with posing a question with this unresolved chord, what is this?

00:26:49

Bill Bukowski: That's an opening that just grabs you right by the throat.

00:26:53

John Banther: To think a lot of introductions in symphonies at this time were to bring you in, to get you used to the themes. The idea is people would talk right at the beginning of concerts?

00:27:04

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, it was not uncommon back in those days. Nowadays, concert halls tend to be quieter spaces. But back then, people would be talking, carrying on, enjoying food or drink or whatever and then the music would start.

00:27:18

John Banther: This would, I imagine, really shock some people when they hear this for the first time. There's almost no introduction. These two huge E- flat chords, and then it continues with an arpeggio. The music is outlining those chords. For me, I feel like it's just this flower or a seed, and the entire symphony evolves from just this simple E- flat, major chord. Even actually right from the beginning, he starts adding in notes that are nowhere near E- flat major like C- sharp. Adding that in the first couple of seconds, I think, was probably pretty revolutionary for the time.

00:27:54

Bill Bukowski: Exactly, and then the journey begins. But once he's got you with those two opening chords, then you're off on the ride. The door is opened and away you go.

00:28:05

John Banther: Beethoven's music has been used in pretty much any manner you can imagine, especially in the last century with television, film, music sampling, even actually with his Third Symphony, the tragic assassination of JFK.

00:28:22

Bill Bukowski: Yeah. There was a story that I believe it was the Boston Symphony was giving-

00:28:26

John Banther: Yes.

00:28:26

Bill Bukowski: ... a concert the afternoon that JFK was murdered, and the conductor read the news out. The piece that they played in memoriam was the slow movement from the Symphony No. 3.

00:28:38

John Banther: Right, the-

00:28:38

Bill Bukowski: The Funeral March.

00:28:39

John Banther: Yes. I actually have the audio of that radio broadcast, and I'll put it on the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. But you hear everyone just gasp and shriek in the horror of it. But you can tell that they've heard it, but they don't believe it. Then Erich Leinsdorf says, " We're going to play the Funeral March from Beethoven's 3rd," and he starts playing it right away. You hear the despair. Beethoven's music has been used in so many ways in comfort or solace or anything. That symphony is also huge because there's not two horns, but there's three horns. At the time it was, " Well, what are you doing? You're adding even more brass." That brings us to his Symphony No. 5, where he uses not just more horns, but for the first time, and I'll say, I really think it's the first time that trombones are used in a symphony. They sit here for the whole time and they come in the last movement, but his Fifth Symphony is pretty remarkable. I think this might be the most recognizable little motif at the beginning.

00:29:44

Bill Bukowski: In all of classical music, yeah, certainly. Also, that opening motif was used during the Second World War. It's Morse code ...-.

00:30:14

John Banther: Right.

00:30:14

Bill Bukowski: It was used to announce a news bulletin. As a matter of fact, the allies used it and the access powers used it as well.

00:30:22

John Banther: Right. In Morse code, it's the letter V and it's still used. I'm a nerd. I love Morse code and I use it every day, and it's still used every day in bulletins, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah right at the start. So his Fifth Symphony is remarkable. I wish we could listen to the whole thing. There's something else that I think Beethoven does here, and that is, oftentimes, you hear the strings do something and then the winds do something right, a column response-

00:30:52

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:30:52

John Banther: ... kind of thing? Beethoven flips it around. He has the horns introduce a line that the strings then take and evolve on a little. It's so subtle, but I think at the time, even a lot of the audience, especially the people who were musicians at the time would definitely notice that.

00:31:26

Bill Bukowski: Right. Exactly.

00:31:28

John Banther: Okay, so we've heard some of his big symphonies. Well, actually let's listen to his No. 6 a little bit. This has a story that goes with it, doesn't it?

00:31:36

Bill Bukowski: Yeah. This gets back to Beethoven taking his long walks in the country, as you mentioned a little bit earlier.

00:31:42

John Banther: We call it his Pastoral Symphony, and there's different movements with different names. The first one, " Arriving in the countryside with happy feelings when movement is storm." What I find remarkable, Bill, is that he starts the opening, we'll listen to it now, and that's you definitely hear this, exactly what it sounds like, " Arriving in the countryside with happy feelings." There's this drone of a shepherd instrument in the beginning.

00:32:22

Bill Bukowski: There's a warm, bright sound to that too I think that just carries you with him. You know that Beethoven was... you can tell just how much he enjoyed nature walks.

00:32:31

John Banther: That's why I think it's so remarkable that just a few years before he was writing in this Heiligenstadt Testament how it was just humiliating that in the distance he heard a shepherd singing, or the person next to him did, and he couldn't hear anything. Now he's writing about arriving in the countryside with happy feelings.

00:32:50

Bill Bukowski: He's taking what he couldn't hear and making it better.

00:32:54

John Banther: We can get to some of his big piano works now. His piano Sonata No. 21, the Waldstein, and this was dedicated to his patron Waldstein, wasn't it?

00:33:05

Bill Bukowski: Yes.

00:33:06

John Banther: I think Beethoven, he can write these lullabies. They sound like lullabies, but again, Beethoven goes much, much deeper with it. It gets to your heart and your soul, and then you can change it around and turn it into something else just a minute later. So I have two examples here that we'll hear, this lullaby and then what it sounds like a minute later. It goes from a lullaby to this anthem that makes you... It's inspiring. It almost sounds also like there's multiple people at the piano like one person can't play that.

00:34:13

Bill Bukowski: I was just thinking the same thing myself. The cascades up and down the keyboard-

00:34:16

John Banther: Yes.

00:34:16

Bill Bukowski: ... there's got to be somebody else in there.

00:34:18

John Banther: Yeah, that's why it's so much fun to when you hear these works and then see someone perform them, and then you can see how they move their hands to make it sound like two people at the same time. The big piano sonata is Waldstein, also Apassionata. Trills are very big in Beethoven's music, isn't it? You hear trills a lot in his piano music especially, but also later on in his orchestra stuff, but the Apassionata-

00:34:47

Bill Bukowski: A very turbulent work, I think it's about the best way to describe that. The energy and the frustration that Beethoven must've been feeling at times, I think, leaks out in this particular work.

00:35:26

John Banther: Again, it sounds like two people sometimes.

00:35:28

Bill Bukowski: Again, that's, yeah, Beethoven definitely putting the musicians to work.

00:35:32

John Banther: The low end, he's exploring the whole range of the keyboard. Here's what I mean by I think he broke pianos playing the end of this.

00:36:03

Bill Bukowski: Another example, too, of the musical ideas coming so fast and furiously.

00:36:07

John Banther: I can imagine someone's grandmother in the front row at this patron's concert being offended by the sudden loud sounds she's never heard before.

00:36:15

Bill Bukowski: Exactly. Yeah.

00:36:17

John Banther: There is a date in history that must have been one of the greatest dates, I think, for classical music. December 22, 1808, Beethoven puts this huge concert together.

00:36:29

Bill Bukowski: This is a remarkable concert. Just imagine, if you will, now, the premieres of his Symphonies 5 and 6, examples of which we just heard, the Piano Concerto No. 4, the Choral Fantasy for piano, chorus, and orchestra, just imagine a concert with all of that.

00:36:46

John Banther: It was four hours long, too. They do not know how lucky they were to hear that concert 5 and 6, the Piano Concerto and The Choral Fantasy. You just know there was some guy who watched it, who saw the concert, didn't get it, and then later at the pub was like, " Nah, it was okay."

00:37:06

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, or could you imagine somebody getting up and leaving in the middle of it?

00:37:08

John Banther: Oh, my gosh, I didn't think about that.

00:37:10

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:37:10

John Banther: How could you? We heard the 5 and 6. The Choral Fantasy is a work I really didn't know until recently. This is really fascinating. It's a solo work for keyboard, but also has solo singers and a choral. How would you describe it even?

00:37:31

Bill Bukowski: This is one of those Beethoven works from time to time that you hear that you think Beethoven is trying something new, " Let's see if this works." It's like working something out. " Let me see if this works." Like the Triple Concerto, or Piano Trio Concerto, if you will, or the Choral Fantasy, it's like, what in the world is he trying to do? It sounds like a simple rhapsody for piano and orchestra, and it turns into something quite different. It's a one- off in his Opus collection, but at the same time, it points the direction towards the future, especially when you hear the actual choral piece itself at the end.

00:38:09

John Banther: I like that. It's like a prototype.

00:38:11

Bill Bukowski: Exactly.

00:38:11

John Banther: He's testing it out, " Does this work? I don't know. Let's find out." He's 38 years old, so his hearing loss, and the thing is his hearing loss wasn't like a volume knob. It didn't just go down. The noise floor was getting higher, the higher pitches, he was losing. He couldn't hear high notes on a flute or an oboe. He heard rumbles. It just sounded like a loud rumbling sound. Even I've heard that if you shouted at him to hopefully get him to hear what you're trying to say, it would be horrible. The sound would be something, I guess with your neurology, it would actually amplify this horrible, rumbling, screeching sound in your head.

00:38:54

Bill Bukowski: Just imagine how frustrating that would be for a composer and a musician.

00:38:59

John Banther: What would people say, they go to see a concert, well, Beethoven can't hear, what could he write? Not understanding, of course, you write and you hear the music in your head. But I want to hear more of this Choral Fantasy. I think a lot of people haven't heard this.

00:39:15

Bill Bukowski: It's a very rare work, actually.

00:39:17

John Banther: It's a rare work, and when I first heard it, I thought, " Why does this sound like Ode to Joy, but we're always taking the wrong-

00:39:25

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:39:25

John Banther: ... turn to get to the street?"

00:39:26

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:39:27

John Banther: So we can build up to this with a few examples. Here is a little bit of the Choral Fantasy.

00:39:50

Bill Bukowski: When I first heard that, I was like-

00:39:51

John Banther: What is that?

00:39:51

Bill Bukowski: ... " What does that remind me of?" Right?

00:39:53

John Banther: Yeah. It's like, " What is this? What am I listening to right now?" Then it goes on a little further.

( singing)

If you're not convinced, this happens just a little bit later towards the end.

( singing)

It's just remarkable.

00:40:45

Bill Bukowski: That's one tune that I'm really glad Beethoven didn't just let go.

00:40:48

John Banther: Yes, and that's the thing, Beethoven wouldn't just let go. He would find an idea, and as this prototype, he realizes, " No, it's not done yet. I need to revise more. Rip it up again, do this, do that," and over, I think 15 years later, we would get his Ninth Symphony. He also mentions it in a letter, which I'll mention later on as well. So this is towards the end of what we consider what we call his middle period or his heroic period. Well, the music sounds actually quite heroic, but it's also the bulk of his big symphonic and chamber music output.

00:41:30

Bill Bukowski: Beethoven was working very, very hard. From very beginning when he set out to compose and compose music that meant something not just to him but to the future, he was very busy and he kept very busy. Some of his greatest works, as you just said, come from this particular time period.

00:41:48

John Banther: We're going to get into his late period and his final years right after this. Classical Breakdown is made possible by Classical WETA. Join us for the music anytime day or night. To listen live, just go to our website, classicalweta. org or download our app. It's free in the app store. So we get into what we call his late period, and he's still composing, but he has a decline in his composing. Throughout this period, he has family issues, his brother gets sick and eventually, his brother dies. He tries to take custody over his nephew, Carl. It becomes a very turbulent time, almost returning to his childhood, the trauma and issues he had growing up.

00:42:34

Bill Bukowski: Right, and leaving him far less time to compose as he would've liked, I'm sure.

00:42:39

John Banther: Yes. Patrons were so important. Perhaps his most important or his biggest patron is the Archduke Rudolf. Beethoven is 40 years old, and he writes this trio, which we call the Archduke Trio, and it is super performed then and today. It was basically instantly loved, and he also taught this Archduke music like how to compose even.

00:43:05

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, he was an interesting character. He was the youngest son of the emperor and eventually went and took holy orders, but he was a pupil of Beethoven and by accounts, he was a very congenial fellow. Beethoven was not the kind of person that would get along with somebody of an ego that was very much like his. That just would not have worked. But Archduke Rudolf was very loyal and very generous, and Beethoven returned that loyalty and the generosity with the music that he wrote for him.

00:43:37

John Banther: These patrons rallied around Beethoven saying, " Hey, stay in Vienna. Keep composing. We will pay you with no strings attached, almost, just stay and compose."

00:43:47

Bill Bukowski: That in and of itself, too, was a relatively new thing at the time. The model that everybody was looking for before, Mozart and Haydn, was for steady employment. Haydn got it. Mozart did not. Beethoven didn't care a fig for steady employment, just as long as the money kept coming in and he could write what he wanted, when he wanted and premiere it how he wanted to.

00:44:11

John Banther: I heard that Beethoven was even just awful to some of his patrons, screaming at them, calling them names. There's one count of him calling someone a pig or something, and it was almost like, " Okay, Beethoven, all right, I'll see you tomorrow. Don't forget we have lunch."

00:44:27

Bill Bukowski: Right. His friends knew when to pull back and let him get it out of his system, so to speak. Beethoven did not have patience for foppery or pretension. He was also not the kind of person who would take abuse from his social betters very well.

00:44:46

John Banther: Yes, I recall he said to one patron, or it was a prince, " You are a prince. You are born into this by chance. There will be thousands of princes. There is one Beethoven."

00:44:59

Bill Bukowski: He was right.

00:45:00

John Banther: Exactly. Here is a little bit 'cause I want to listen to some of this in his later period of his Archduke Trio. The scene, again, I'm always obsessed with the openings of Beethoven's work. The scene that is instantly painted transports you to somewhere completely different. Then the rubato, the slowing down of the temple, it's free for a moment where each instrument gets to make a little statement before going on.

00:45:53

Bill Bukowski: It's interesting, Beethoven doesn't just invite you in, he takes you by the hand or sometimes by the arm.

00:45:59

John Banther: I like that. Yeah. That said, you're either going by the hand or by the arm, wherever it is in the music, Beethoven, he is taking you there. A few years later, he's in his mid- 40s now. He has a celebrity endorsement for a metronome.

00:46:13

Bill Bukowski: No kidding?

00:46:14

John Banther: Yes, in 1817, that's great. But also in 1814, Beethoven made his very final public performance actually playing the performance of the Archduke Trio that we just heard. That was his final performance 'cause his hearing was completely gone to the point where he could not perform with other people.

00:46:31

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:46:32

John Banther: Then a few years later, he gets a celebrity endorsement for a metronome. I find that so funny. I would love to see an ad for this metronome, " Clicks better than ever before." The question is, now with Beethoven having totally lost his hearing, he can't be the musician, the virtuoso in terms of playing with others, we have his music because of that.

00:46:55

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:46:56

John Banther: Would he have composed as much if his hearing was fully there and he could just do his performances?

00:47:03

Bill Bukowski: Exactly. Exactly. When certain sounds are lost to you, where do you go? Well, you try to make new ones. One sense was closed, but the other sense, his compositional sense reached further than it probably would've.

00:47:17

John Banther: I think his Hammerklavier sonata, if his earlier works for the piano, were demanding, I don't know what this was. The piano was braced extra well or something, because there's huge demands on the instrument in this work.

00:47:32

Bill Bukowski: What's interesting about that, too, is the nickname itself, Hammerklavier is more of a guide or a direction, like, " This is the kind of piano you need if you're going to play this work successfully."

00:47:55

John Banther: Those chords at the beginning, they're massive in commanding. They're actually kind of simple, I think. It's different voicings of a B- flat major chord, but they're hard to play like that. Then all of a sudden it goes to something so soft and intimate drawing you into the music.

00:48:13

Bill Bukowski: Right. You can also hear why you need that particular kind of piano, probably closer to the modern concert grand that we are familiar with, one that can play the complete dynamic range that he's calling for there.

00:48:25

John Banther: Yes, he for sure had a hand in developing all of that. The end displays really what he's doing with trills. Up to this point, trills were kind of an ornament. If you repeated a section, you might add ornamentation like a trill. In Mozart's time and before, it was something that added more flavor into the music. Beethoven advances this to a new degree, and it's not just this little ornament. It's a technique in playing and also a technique in developing the music as well. Here's the end, which I think, really drives home these trills. When you see this in concert, I think like Beethoven would, pianists come out of the seat when they play these chords sometimes. They lift out.

00:49:39

Bill Bukowski: That's right. That's right.

00:49:41

John Banther: Some of his biggest final works in his later period where now he's in his early 50s, his hearing has declined. He's using these conversation books, and that is, we have hundreds of pages compiled where he would carry these around with a pencil. If you wanted to ask him a question or speak to him, you had to write it down on the paper, but Beethoven was still able to answer you verbally. So we have just a huge amount of resources, but none of the answers that Beethoven gave. One of those questions being, " Hey, you met Mozart, right? Was he a good piano forte player?"

00:50:17

Bill Bukowski: And we don't know what the answer was.

00:50:20

John Banther: We don't know what the answer was, or I think one was also, " Is it a cantata or a mass? What are you working on?"

00:50:24

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:50:25

John Banther: It's like, we don't know. But we do know he's 52, 53, and he completes his Missa Solemnis, the Solemn Mass. Right?

00:50:35

Bill Bukowski: Right. That was another work that he dedicated to the Archduke, and it was also another work that took the idea of some compositional form and just completely sent it off into outer space.

00:50:50

John Banther: How was it very different, I guess, from a mass of Hadyns or before?

00:50:55

Bill Bukowski: It was probably never really designed for liturgical use. It was definitely designed for the concert hall, which at its root, most masses were meant to be played in churches for a service. Beethoven, that wasn't the idea. It was, " Let's do a solemn mass and let's do it the way Beethoven wanted to do it." It's a grand work, almost superhuman.

( singing)

Yeah. Could you imagine your church today performing a Gloria quite like that?

00:51:45

John Banther: Right. How many more decades would go by before a composer for writing a mass or anything for voice and orchestra like that? Even, I think Brahms, this German Requiem, yes, in burials, but this is-

00:51:58

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, it even also points ahead, I think, to the one other work that I would compare it to would be Verdi's Requiem, also not designed for a church, more for a-

00:52:07

John Banther: Right.

00:52:07

Bill Bukowski: ... concert hall, and also being grander than any kind of Requiem than anybody had ever heard before.

00:52:13

John Banther: Right.

00:52:13

Bill Bukowski: The same thing with the Missa Solemnis.

00:52:14

John Banther: This Missa Solemnis, It was premiered in April of 1824. The next month he would premiere what many would then consider the greatest symphony ever composed, the final symphony Beethoven would leave us with, and that is his 9th. Had a big successful premiere in Vienna, but Beethoven actually wanted it somewhere else, didn't he? He was getting tired of the Viennese audience.

00:52:40

Bill Bukowski: He was getting a little annoyed with Vienna. Vienna historically, from even back before Beethoven came along afterwards, the musical audiences there were very fickle, always looking for the next new thing. The new thing at this particular time was the operas of Rossini. Now, I don't know what Beethoven thought of Rossini, but I know that he was annoyed with the Viennese over passionate response to Rossini, and so he wanted to write something completely different again.

00:53:10

John Banther: He was writing in letters to one of his students, his secretary, Ferdinand Reese, I believe in London, saying, " Hey, I want to do this. I've got this symphony, and let's do it in London. "

00:53:20

Bill Bukowski: Right, exactly, so take it away from Vienna. If Vienna's not interested in what Beethoven's doing now, let's find someplace that is.

00:53:27

John Banther: But the problem is Beethoven already in his early 50s, he's getting pretty sick. His health is not well. It was always, " Wait for me next summer. Okay, another month, just give me time." He never actually went to London, which is sad in its own sense, but he just wasn't physically well enough to get there.

00:53:46

Bill Bukowski: Right. I think the other thing too, that there were also enough still of Beethoven's friends and patrons that said, " No, no, no, do it here. We'll help you."

00:53:56

John Banther: That's right, 'cause they were still very interested in keeping him there. In one of these letters where he writes to a music publisher in Leipzig, this is just a little bit before, and he's writing from Vienna. He says this, " I must, alas, now speak of myself and say that this, the greatest work I have ever written is well worth 1000 florins." That in that time was just multiple yearly salaries for people. Beethoven continues, " It is a new grand symphony with a finale and voice parts introduced solo and choruses, the words being those of Schiller's immortal Ode to Joy in the style of my piano forte, Chorale Fantasia," that Choral Fantasy we heard, " only of much greater breadth. That's an understatement.

00:54:46

Bill Bukowski: To say the least, to say the least. So is 1000 florins when you come right down to it

00:54:52

John Banther: With the opening of this symphony, Beethoven is, he's always doing something new. His Third, we had that kind of explosion. In the Fifth, we have that just immortal figure. In the Sixth, we have that countryside and this, we almost start from nothing.

00:55:08

Bill Bukowski: It starts from nothing, exactly.

00:55:09

John Banther: So we'll listen to a little bit of this now. I have not changed any of the volume or dynamics, so don't turn your headphones all the way up 'cause it will get loud, but it starts so soft. You will lean in, " Did the music start?" Then it's monumental.

00:55:56

Bill Bukowski: Yes, but the other interesting thing too, this gets back to what you were saying earlier about his earlier symphonies, the raw material is right there from the very first notes. You can barely hear them, but these are going to be what you're going to be hearing as the symphony progresses.

00:56:11

John Banther: Yes, and it is as we'll hear the Ode to Joy. It's that evolution of the melody that he thought of 15 years earlier. There's so many moments in here where the more I listen to them, the more I start to hear other composers. So here's the opening to the second movement. Again, it's that bombastic opening, the timpani in between explosive between the strings.

00:56:47

Bill Bukowski: That keeps pushing it along. To me, it sounds almost like a dance of death.

00:56:50

John Banther: I think that's it. It sounds like one of those Franz (foreign language) moments.

00:56:56

Bill Bukowski: Right.

00:56:58

John Banther: He makes you lean into the music. He presents you these dance of death moments in that second. This is the introduction that we get for the Ode to Joy, and it's similar in the opening in that we almost start from nothing. It is just a simple little seed of that musical idea.

00:57:36

Bill Bukowski: A perfectly- formed little tune as well, and this is the payoff. This will be the payoff. This is what the symphony has been building to from the very beginning.

00:57:54

John Banther: But what he's doing here, which I just love so much, the harmonies are changing. It's new. It's being led by the trumpet, but that rhythm and the timpani, that is from his Choral Fantasy. That hitting on certain beats, I just love that. The end of it, though, the final moments, I think, are extraordinary because at this point, you've got symphonies of his that end with big chords. Symphonies sometimes end in people are playing all the same note. Here, it's almost like you're being shot out of a cannon off a cliff with a very final moment. It's remarkable.

00:58:51

Bill Bukowski: We've arrived.

00:58:52

John Banther: We've arrived. Now, Beethoven at this premier, he's not conducting it, but he's up at the stage beating time to the conductor and the conductor before they started playing, said, " Do not pay attention to Beethoven at all. Don't look at him. Don't go with him. Go with me and it's going to be okay." He had conducted earlier, it was just a disaster 'cause he couldn't hear, and so they weren't following. The conductor says, " Don't follow him at all."

00:59:22

Bill Bukowski: Think of it too, this music was completely new to these musicians.

00:59:27

John Banther: Yes.

00:59:27

Bill Bukowski: Forget the audience for a minute. The musicians have to play it first, and it was completely new to them and I'm sure very puzzling.

00:59:33

John Banther: Puzzling, and then at the end, this just insane triumph of an ending. The audience is, they love it, right?

00:59:42

Bill Bukowski: They're going wild.

00:59:44

John Banther: They're going wild. They're cheering. They're clapping. Beethoven doesn't know it.

00:59:47

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, he's still facing the musicians. He's still paging through the score, and he's still beating time.

00:59:53

John Banther: He's still beating time, and he doesn't know this. Then the soprano, she has to go over to Beethoven and then turn him around to see the audience, and that's just-

01:00:04

Bill Bukowski: That's so poignant.

01:00:06

John Banther: It's so poignant. Just imagine, I don't think she would never really live to understand how we see that today of just one of the most unbelievable moments where Beethoven's Ninth Symphony finishes and this woman who had no idea that this would happen, that Beethoven would just not even know, and she would have to go over and turn him around and show him the response.

01:00:27

Bill Bukowski: Right.

01:00:29

John Banther: It's not too long after this that Beethoven starts to really get sick, but just before he's bedridden, he starts to write some more string quartets. We call them his late quartets. Now, Bill, I think Beethoven left his audience purposefully with the Symphony No. 9. Here it is. I have written what I need to write for this medium. Now, I feel like he is looking to the future and future audiences with these string quartets. Some of them don't make sense now.

01:01:03

Bill Bukowski: Right.

01:01:04

John Banther: What about this fugue that he writes? A lot of composers have even said this will remain contemporary forever. How do you feel about this?

01:01:14

Bill Bukowski: That's a good way to put it.

01:01:15

John Banther: Right.

01:01:15

Bill Bukowski: That's a good way to put it. People are still wrestling with this and what it means. I've heard opinions on both sides, some saying it's very profound, others are saying it's nonsense. You really have to listen to it if you can, and make your own judgments if you can follow along with it. Even his publisher persuaded him. It was supposed to be the finale to one of his quartets, and the publisher persuaded him to write another finale and keep this one separate.

01:01:41

John Banther: Yes, and this grand fugue would be, it's standing on its own own legs, so to speak. Just try to follow along. Here's a little bit. What's going on here?

01:02:11

Bill Bukowski: Search me.

01:02:12

John Banther: I feel like, Bill, if you had written this and you showed it to me, I would just be like, " How you doing, Bill?"

01:02:19

Bill Bukowski: Well, of course, I'm no Beethoven.

01:02:20

John Banther: "You're doing okay? Take next week off. Just relax a little."

01:02:27

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, it was actually very politic that his publisher didn't just tell him to throw it away. He just said, "Let's try something else here."

01:02:34

John Banther: " Yeah, that's great. That's great. Okay, well..." Unfortunately, it's shortly after this, that Beethoven, he really gets sick. He's 55 years old, I think, by the time he's bedridden, then a few months later he would die. But in his final months, he was in bed and he was conscious, but he had, I believe jaundice and fluid retention. His heavy, heavy drinking, of course, had caught up with him. He had a lot of friends and patrons and publishers come by to visit him in his final moments. It sounds like it was actually still busy, although he was bedridden.

01:03:15

Bill Bukowski: Folks knew, I think. Folks knew the end was coming.

01:03:18

John Banther: There's a story of a publisher who, I guess, just naively, they sent him as a present, " Hey, here's a case of wine." The famous quote is, Beethoven was laughing and said, " Pity. Pity, too late."

01:03:33

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, far past the time when he could actually enjoy it.

01:03:38

John Banther: That brings us to his death at the age of 56, still on the younger side by today's comparison, but certainly much longer than Mozart to only live to his early 30s. It makes you ask the question, well, what do you play at someone's funeral when that person is Beethoven? What music?

01:04:03

Bill Bukowski: That's a good question.

01:04:05

John Banther: What's actually played is just a very simple and humble thing that he wrote 14 years earlier, and that is a couple of... Equali for four trombones. Basically, Equali instead of a string quartet of violins, viola and cello, you have equal voices, like all violins. He wrote Three Equali for four trombones. The first and third were performed at his funeral, and there were alternating choral arrangements of them sung alternating back and forth. The second one was actually sung by just a small male choir at his grave site. Now, pretty remarkable, almost on the nose, who would follow in his footsteps, who actually was a pallbearer, and that's Franz Schubert, wasn't it?

01:04:54

Bill Bukowski: That's interesting too. Schubert was a great admirer of Beethoven's. Even in Schubert's own Ninth Symphony, he makes a little tip of the hat to the choral finale to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Also, sadly, Schubert would not live far past Beethoven's death.

01:05:10

John Banther: That's right. Now, what is it like in the decades to come? I know a lot of composers were almost afraid to write a symphony to be compared to Beethoven, or I think they joked with Schubert, " Oh, that's just Beethoven's 10th"-

01:05:25

Bill Bukowski: Right.

01:05:25

John Banther: ... kind of thing.

01:05:26

Bill Bukowski: Right, or that they said the same thing about Brahms's first. It's like he set the bar very high, and composers could either approach it, touch it, try to go beyond it or just ignore it completely. But he set the bar and he set the standard, making the symphony to be an expression of a very personal nature.

01:05:47

John Banther: Beethoven lived an incredibly rich musical life, but obviously, it was very difficult. It wasn't easy. It was hard for him. As we saw in this Heiligenstadt Testament, he had anxiety, he had issues with how he might be perceived as a composer or a musician who had the greatest ears of all time to then not have the ability to hear at all, and he struggled his whole life.

01:06:13

Bill Bukowski: Yeah, and I think too, the other thing about Beethoven is that I don't think that he really left anything uncompleted the way other composers have. I don't think that that was the case with Beethoven. I think he said what he needed to say, and we're still wrestling with it. We're still enjoying it, and we're still finding it challenging and inspiring today.

01:06:32

John Banther: We can leave it with this: Beethoven, as we saw with his patrons, he knew how to throw an insult, right? I think his musical insults were even better. Now, Bill, if I wanted to call you the donkey of all donkeys, I might write something like this. This is a little something he wrote. It's 20 seconds long, Esel aller Esel, basically, donkey of all donkeys, and here it is.

01:07:21

Bill Bukowski: Once again, Beethoven gets the last word.

01:07:23

John Banther: Yes. That's the donkey, hee, haw, hee. I just imagine him sitting down, he wrote that in five, 10 minutes, laughed and said, " All right, I got to go to lunch," that kind of thing. Well, thank you so much, Bill. It's hard to navigate the life of someone like Beethoven, but I love your insight and everything we've talked about.

01:07:42

Bill Bukowski: John, it's been my pleasure.

01:07:45

John Banther: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown. For more information on Beethoven, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. If you have any comments or ideas, send them to classicalbreakdown@ weta. org. I'm John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from Classical WETA.