There
was a short, pocked-faced, plain-looking man walking
the streets of Vienna in the early 19th century. No
wonder all women he proposed to rejected him and so
he remained single all his life. The poor thing! As
a boy, much to the chagrin of his father, he showed
no signs of being a child prodigy; he was often crying,
as he was forced by his father to play the piano.
And
yet most scholars, musicians, and music lovers worldwide
would agree with this statement: "A universal
genius widely regarded as the greatest composer who
ever lived, Ludvig van Beethoven dominates a period
of musical history as no one else before or since."
(Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume 14, p 737a)
Music
scholars and composers consider these music genres
as the main ones: piano sonata, piano concerto, violin
concerto, opera, mass, symphony, and string quartet.
Most scholars would agree with my evaluation here:
Best
piano sonata ever: Beethoven's Piano Sonata No 29
in Bb, Opus 106, "Hammerklavier" (1817–18)
Best
piano concerto ever: Beethoven's Piano Concerto No
5 in Eb, Opus 87, "Emperor" (1809)
Best
violin concerto ever: Beethoven's Violin Concerto
in D, Opus 61 (1806)
Best
opera ever: Mozart's Don Giovanni. But Beethoven's
Fidelio, Opus 72 (c1803–05; 1814), follows very
closely.
Best
mass ever: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis in D, Opus 123
(1819–23)
Best
symphony ever: Beethoven's Symphony No 9 in d, Opus
125, "Choral" (1822–24), or his Symphony
No 5 in c, Opus 67 (1807–08)
Best
string quartet ever: String Quartet No 14 in c#, Opus
131 (1826).
The
string quartet is my favorite music genre because
it's the most concise and elegant of all music genres—it
expresses deep thoughts and ideas in a few phrases,
just as mathematics expresses the deep secrets of
the universe using a few symbols. The languages of
music and mathematics have the same ground of being.
But even though there have been a few people fluent
in both languages, most music geniuses have not been
great mathematicians and vice versa; Beethoven often
struggled with basic arithmetic.
Furthermore
Joseph Haydn, the father of the string quartet, considered
it as great conversations with nature. And many scholars
consider the string quartet as the pressure cooker
of music, the most demanding musical genre, the brightest
jewel in the crown of music. It is by far the best
medium to write absolute music.
Moreover
Beethoven spent the last two and a half years of his
life writing nothing but string quartets—Opuses
127, 130, 131, 132, and 135—when he was totally
cut off from society because he was stone-deaf. Doesn't
this fact tell us something? He was sensing that his
life on this gorgeous planet was coming to an end;
he loved nature deeply and took long walks to gather
musical ideas, which he jotted down using a carpenter's
pencil. So he zeroed in on the most beautiful medium,
the string quartet, to express abstract, concise,
beautiful musical ideas.
Therefore
"The five late string quartets contain Beethoven's
greatest music, or so at least many listeners in the
20th century came to feel." (The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001, Volume
3, p 106a)
Thus
to me Beethoven is the greatest composer ever and
his String Quartet No 14 is the greatest piece of
music of all time. "...Beethoven next wrote the
most closely integrated of all his large compositions.
From this point of view, the Quartet of C# minor op.
131 may be seen as the culmination of his significant
effort as a composer ever since going to Vienna. The
seven movements [c#—D—(b)—A—E—g#—c#]
run continuously into one another, and for the first
time in Beethoven's music there is an emphatic and
unmistakable thematic connection between the first
movement and the last—not a reminiscence, but
a functional parallel which helps bind the whole work
together. A work of the deepest subtlety and beauty...."
(The New Grove, Volume 3, p 107a)
Copyright © 2005 by Jerry Montero
Jerry Montero
Online Business Professional since 1998
Writer/Editor/Translator/Polyglot
Email: doughmoola@yahoo.com
Website:
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