Hi Peter
Hope it's a nice bar. Here are a couple of devout questions -
>in them the author no longer
>views himself as a kind of servant whose duty is to supply beautiful music
>to people for their for consolation and delight, but as an "artist"
>revealing to the world the profundity and suffering of his soul. The
>art-work has ceased to be ornamental.
Beethoven's later work seems also to me an occasion for delight (I don't
believe that art offers consolation, since no art work has ever consoled
me in certain dark nights of the soul. When you most need it, it's
completely ineffective). But are you confusing here what Beethoven was
doing with what was said about it by subsequent commentators? What in
the music itself is stating the profundity and suffering of his soul and
his status as "artist" any more than, say, Mozart's Requiem? (Is that the
suffering and profound artist also?) Aren't the innovations in the
quartets musical as well as expressive, even primarily musical (by which
I mean, crudely, technical, given the intimate relationship between the
necessities of technique and expressiveness)?
Which is to say, I am not quite sure what you mean by "ornamental" and
why Blake is more ornamental than Beethoven, apart from discerning a
reaction against Romantic Genius, which I gather is not ornamental.
Certainly I wouldn't want a Genius on my mantelpiece, although I've no
objection to Beethoven's music in my cd player.
Best
Alison
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