• Home
  • Biography
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Press Kit
  Jai Jeffryes, Pianist - NYC

Thayer's Beethoven

12/22/2013

1 Comment

 
Thayer's Life of Beethoven has been sitting on my shelf of books to read since college. I finally pulled it out all these years later and dove in. It isn't easy. It's a scholarly research work. It reads like geneology research, which it is. There is no narrative or dramatic thrust.

As dry as the reading is, a picture forms and musical insights emerge. When he was a youth, Beethoven was an organist. In today's terms you would say that was his gig. He worked a lot as an organist to support his livelihood. That bears keeping in mind as his musical thinking develops.

At 17 he made a trip to Vienna and met and played for Mozart. His studies were soon interrupted by his mother's illness, but at some point he heard Mozart play.

Czerny later recounts Beethoven's impressions of Mozart at the piano: "he had a fine but choppy way of playing, no ligato." Czerny adds that Beethoven played this way at first, treating the pianoforte like an organ. (Thayer, p. 88)
So here we see a road to one of Beethoven's musical priorities. Formative years as an organist, a pianist role model, and the synthesis of his view of how piano tones should connect.
1 Comment
Peter Amsel link
6/9/2014 06:02:59 am

If you would like an excellent companion to Thayer, which provides a great amount of insight into the mind of Beethoven and his compositional process through the pathologies afflicting the man I would highly recommend "Diagnosing Genius" by Francois Martin Mai (http://books.google.ca/books?id=Q3k_93lKztkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false) - the book looks at the various illnesses that Beethoven was treated for in his lifetime and reflects on the possible pathological issues he may have actually faced (rather than what was suspected by the practitioners of the day).

One of the things that I found terribly interesting is that Mai speculated (with a great amount of deductive reasoning involved and evidence based scholarship) that Beethoven suffered from both fibromyalgia AND bipolar affective disorder - which are two things that I have been living with for the past twenty-five years (not that I`m comparing myself with the great master).

Mai also examines the effects that Beethoven`s tragic personal life had on his composing, as well as other factors that may have robbed the world from who knows how many great pieces ... the thought is quite tragic if you think about it.

Personally, I think it is a must read for anyone interested in the music or life of Beethoven - you will never listen to his music the same way again (and that`s a good thing, believe me).

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    July 2015
    November 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    July 2011

    RSS Feed

    Tweets by @PnoJai
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.