This has been our musical journey so far this year.
Although he wrote far less music than many of his contemporaries and predecessors, it is argued that Beethoven produced music that was somehow richer: richer, simply because in ‘struggling for every note on the page” as one critic put it, he “transcended form and reinvented small forms and blew up the symphony forever thereafter”.
Beethoven as the bridge between the “classical and the “romantic ” periods of composition was the subject of this morning’s musical exploration. Bookending the programme with the overture to and the finale of “Fidelio” – the only opera Beethoven produced (and 10 years nearly in the making at that) – we traced his work sequentially from early to later by opus numbers including excerpts from the range of instruments and genres for which he composed.
A number of ‘significant’ compositions were deliberately omitted from this morning’s session with a mind to a larger celebration of Beethoven’s contribution to music around the time of the 250th anniversary of his birth next year.
From solo to septet and sonata to symphony, you can view our morning’s presentation, complete with Youtube links to the various performances, on the Music Appreciation page of the U3A website.
Would you like to read the class notes for this session?
Ludwig Van Beethoven - Music Appreciation Class notes Friday March 8
Bill Squire