knotslip wrote:First, I was just curious if many of you dislike a movement of a symphony or only like 1 or 2....In other words, they are almost like individual works and it seems like it would be easy to dislike a particular movement of an entire symphony or other work. I haven't found one yet that I dislike...
Is there a particular instrument that you dislike?
Who is your favorite composer and why? And what single piece/work/CD/etc. would you most like to have if it was all you could have for a period of time -
Well ... my answer to that second question is "pan pipe" and (to some degree) "the harp." If Heaven is filled with pan pipe and harp music, I'll take an alternative.
As for favorite composer? Too vast a question to answer definitively. I cherish the masters: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. I wouldn't want to be without their music. I
could live on a desert island with my Bach box from Brilliant Classics (the "Complete Works") ... but most desert islands I'm familiar with have poor electricity and even worse stereo systems. So maybe I'll just take a guitar along and play for myself what I want. (If I find only a pan pipe or harp on that island, I'll jump into the sea and take my chances with the currents and the sharks.)
That first question proves interesting to me. I agree with the posters who argue for the integrity of a multi movement work such as a symphony or sonata. And I agree that composers aren't always as successful with one movement of a work as they may be with another. But here's my comment: When I was young and foolish and possessed only a very limited record collection, two of my fondest works were Beethoven's Fifth and Tchaikowsky's Sixth Symphony. Two great pieces. Right? Well ... I couldn't stand the second movement of either work -- within the context of the full symphony. To my uninformed ears, neither second movement "fit" the rest of the symphony. (Yet, I somewhat enjoyed each piece separately -- the Beethoven contained a lilting melody that reminded me of Pat Boone's "Tammy" theme, and the 5/4 meter of the Tchaikowsky proved intriguing to my Dave Brubeck/Paul Desmond "Take Five" loving sensibilities).
In any case, for several years through my teens and early college years I refused to play those second movements. I would skip the record player's tone arm over those pieces and continue from movement one to movement three (and I absolutely loved the third movements of both works!). What it seems I couldn't get was "Why would such great composers include so alien a movement in their integral, cohesive form?"
Yeah. I was dumb.
It wasn't till I was in a graduate school Psych class, assigned to read a "new book" by Betty Rollin titled
First You Cry, that I understood. The book proved revelatory, not just because I learned about breast cancer and how women feel during the experience, but because I gained my first real comprehension of what we call today "the stages of grieving". First you cry. Then you deny, etc. etc.
I had heard that the famous Beethoven motif of da da da DUM (those ominous three Gs and an E-flat) was "fate knocking at the door." And I suspected that the Beethoven of the "Heiligenstädter Testament" was ranting about his impending deafness in that Fifth Symphony. But it was the Rollin book that brought the Symphony into focus for me, for I finally understood that Beethoven intuited the stages of grieving long before they were codified. First you cry.
Recall that strange little oboe solo that appears "Adagio" in measure 268 of the first movement, at the start of the Recapitulation. What is that? It's a tear drop, of course. More precisely, it's a lachrymosa, such as those found in English composer John Dowland's collection "Lachrimae 1604." What does a tear drop sound like? Listen to Beethoven's oboe solo in the first movement of the Fifth.
So ... fate comes knocking at Beethoven's door, and he is bitter, angry, upset, annoyed -- all those things that struck Betty Rollin when she learned she was diagnosed with breast cancer. We have all either been through a similar experience, or we can imagine it. And first you cry.
Beethoven's tear is telling. One drop from the master, but it's enough. He's not the kind of guy who weeps broadly. But he is human, too, and so he goes on from that initial battle between Fate (da da da DUM) and Beethoven (Listen to the second theme once, and see if you also hear the phrase: "Ich bin Ludwig van Beethoven" repeated over and over -- the Beethoven theme!) to -- you guessed it -- denial. Which is why I disliked that second movement. It seems absent of the Fate motif. Where is the "da da da DUM" I used to ponder during that music? Why would Beethoven, who knows more about musical integrity than anyone, dispel with the great "fate" motif in his FIfth Symphony? I stopped listening to the movement because I didn't understand that Beethoven was denying. That's why the Fate theme is absent.
It's brilliant Beethoven. And I show just how moronic I was.
In any case, the fate motif returns in that third movement -- the confrontation, the struggle, and in the last movement, the triumph, in which the Beethoven theme overcomes the Fate theme and comes to the positive assertion that Fate shall not dominate Beethoven, because, as the composer insists: "I am Ludwig van Beethoven!"
So what about Tchaikowsky's Sixth? Well ... after I understood the Beethoven Fifth, and my reason for not listening to that second movement, it became clear what Tchaikowsky was writing about too. The same thing.
No, not deafness. Tchaikowsky's fated problem was something else, something he struggled with a lifetime -- his homosexuality. And for Tchaikowsky, the fate motif was not something that blatantly knocked at the door. Rather, it was insidious, sly. Like a snake it slides in under the door. Listen to the first four notes of Tchaikowsky's Sixth. THAT is one slimy fate theme.
What about the tear drop, the lachrymosa? Compare the second theme of Tchaikowsky's Sixth to that little oboe theme by Beethoven. See the similarity? Three descending notes, a little turn of four notes, a rise and then descent of three more notes -- exactly what Beethoven notates. Beethoven is one teardrop. Tchaikowsky, maven of emotion, is a well-spring of tears. They gush forth like blood in a Greek tragedy. Tchaikoswky himself
is the tears.
And that second movement? How about Russian wedding music. What better way to deny one's homosexuality than to marry, which Tchaikowsky did, for a brief time, and it almost resulted in his suicide. You can look up the story. It's fascinating. And that second movement, a movement of denial, does not "fit" with the remainder of the work, in exactly the same way the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth doesn't fit. Tchaikowsky was rewriting Beethoven, but doing so on his own terms, which we'll see.
THe third movement, then, is the struggle. Like Beethoven's Fifth's third movement, it features wild scale passages of struggle. Brilliant stuff, and one of my favorite movements of any piece.
Which brings us to the finale. Unlike Beethoven, Tchaikowsky could not triumph over his fated situation. He is taken over by it. Fate and the tears become too much, and they destroy the composer.
What? He died a few days after the premier of the Symphony? And under mysterious circumstances? Is the Sixth Symphony (a rewrite of Beethoven's Fifth) Tchaikowsky's suicide note?
Something to ponder.
In any case, that's my response to your first question. We might not always understand what the composer means, but we should give the composer the benefit of the doubt. What we think
may be a weakness may instead by a consciously composed strong point.
You see, to me good music, classical music (serious music),is philosophical, and the composers were philosophers. They use music as their medium to express the human condition. Great playwrights are philosophers, too -- they use the drama as their medium. Great painters are philosophers -- they use graphic art as their medium. It's not just about notes and keys and instrumental colors -- which is the impression one often gets from reading critical commentaries on music. It's about the soul of what it means to be human.
In another thread on this board I wrote that Beethoven was inescapable. What I meant was that Beethoven provides us with possibilities in his music. He opened the door to new ways of expression -- ways that came not from academic study of musical forms and techniques, but from the heart. William Wordsworth the English poet born in the same year as Beethoven, 1770, did the same thing in verse. Wordsworth, too, is inescapable. He, like all great artists, shows us possibilities. He does not explore every possible way. That is up to those who come after. But he does lay an inescapable groundwork.
In any case, I somewhat envy you being a "noobie" to this area of classical music. I envy your experience of being able to hear so many great pieces for the first time. I can never again hear Beethoven for the first time, but I can seek out new music. Which is one of the reasons I enjoy this listening hobby. There are certainly many ways to be a worse human being.
All the best to you.
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SONNET CLV--
I'm very interested to see your replies. 
). However, I usually stubbornly stick it out and listen to the whole symphony. Now, on the other hand, there are certain symphonies that flow together so majestically that listening to one movement alone would miss the "purpose" of the work. Schubert's Great C Major symphony, Brahms' Second, and of course, Beethoven's Fifth immediately come to mind.
