Reprising this post on a fascinating and oft-debated issue: Beethoven’s sense of life. To start — three sensitive commentators on the meaning of Beethoven’s music. * Hermann Hesse, the Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, in Steppenwolf, contrasting Mozart to Beethoven (and to Kleist, who committed suicide at age 34): “You have lent a deaf ear to those that […]
Beethoven’s romantic fatalism Read More »
Reprising this awesome quotation from Romain Rolland on Beethoven’s response to his great obstacles: The hammer is not all: the anvil also is necessary. Had destiny descended only upon some weakling, or on an imitation great man, and bent his back under this burden, there would have been no tragedy in it, only an everyday
Romain Rolland on Beethoven’s response to his deafness and depression Read More »
From a letter from Beethoven to Franz Wegeler in Bonn, June 29, 1801: “You want to know something about my present situation. Well, on the whole it is not at all bad … My compositions bring me in a good deal; and I may say that I am offered more commissions than it is possible
Artist as entrepreneur versus patronage — Beethoven and Mozart Read More »
From an account of the famous meeting of the two giants in 1812: Beethoven’s manners were described as rough, like “an unlicked bear,” while “Goethe’s social attitudes were shaped in a more formal age. For Beethoven, 21 years his junior, the only true aristocrats were artists. In the mythology, his disillusionment was clinched by Goethe’s
Goethe versus Beethoven on deference to aristocrats Read More »
Some fascinating glimpses of Franz Liszt, the virtuoso pianist and composer. Biographer Alan Walker writes:
More on how great artists become great: Liszt Read More »
Beethoven, according to biographer Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven: “Wegeler tells us that when a series of lectures on Kant was organized in Vienna in the 1790s, ‘Beethoven didn’t want to attend even once, even under my urging.’ Rather, Beethoven preferred self-education through voracious reading in popularizations of the works of the major thinkers; through rich encounters
How great artists become great Read More »
Reprising this amusing anecdote from Tchaikovsky, by Anthony Holden. Tchaikovsky was traveling from St. Petersburg to Tiflis “via the scenic route, aboard a steamship down the Volga. Concealing his identity from the other passengers, he agreed one evening to accompany an amateur soprano in a romance by Tchaikovsky, only to be told by the singer
Could Tchaikovsky play Tchaikovsky? Read More »
Last year, Ayn Rand Center Europe invited me and and Craig Biddle to Serbia to debate whether Objectivism is an open or closed philosophy. I argued for open and Mr. Biddle argued for closed. A recording of the debate follows. Also following the video frame (or in this PDF) is a transcription of my remarks
Open Objectivism or Closed? Video and transcript of Belgrade debate Read More »
From Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven: “For Beethoven’s German and Austrian contemporaries, the Napoleonic image was especially potent: Bonaparte’s admirers included Kant, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schiller, Goethe, Hölderlin, Wielan, and Klopstock. Grillparzer, in his Autobiography wrote, ‘I myself was no less an enemy of the French than my father, and yet Napoleon fascinated me with a
Napoleon’s German admirers Read More »
Following up on a series of posts about Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Liszt. From Frederic V. Grunfeld’s very good Rodin: A Biography, the answer in the case of August Rodin is education and self education. Rodin was born into a French culture in which the large majority of the population was illiterate or semi-literate. The fact
How great artists become great: Rodin Read More »