I've been expanding my musical horizons for many years now. As a kid I listened to rock and roll exclusively - I grew up in the rock era after all. From the time I first heard "She Loves You" up until the mid-80s - i.e. from the arrival of The Beatles until Bruce's heyday, rock and roll was it for me. I still own about 800 vinyl LPs, almost all of it rock and roll. I lived with my older brother for a lot of those years growing up and he had another 300-400 albums. So we pretty much covered the era. Indeed, I had an encyclopedic knowledge of the music and its history, and opinions on all of it.
But I lost interest somewhere in the mid-80s. Since I was a young teen I'd been constantly searching for new music: reading about it, listening to it, flipping through albums at the record stores - it made up a large part of my life. But by 1985 I was nearing thirty and nothing new interested me. I'm sure I changed along with the music but I think the music changed more than me. After all, I still love and listen to the old stuff. But post 1980s, modern music devolved into nihilism and vulgarity, pap and formula. So I dropped out, just about all at once. As I said, knowing what was happening in that world once took up a good portion of my time but I pay zero attention to it now, and haven't for twenty years. My impression of it now from a distance is that it's pure garbage - childish, talentless, tuneless. The twenty-somethings of today listen to music that my generation would have sneered at.
So I had to look back and - since I'd pretty much covered rock and roll - I also had to look elsewhere. The advent of CDs and the Internet helped. It spurred record companies to look back in their vaults and release all of the golden old gems that had been sitting silent for years. Now, just about all of recorded music history is available to anyone who can access amazon.com. A music lovers treasure trove.
I've mentioned my introduction to classical music in this space before and I spent a good deal of time in the early 1990s researching and listening to it. I now have a deep appreciation of classical - especially Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. I listen to some others here and there - Shubert, Haydn, Brahms, Johann Strauss, - but the big three dominate. They are the most popular composers for good reason. I've heard it said that Mozart could make choirs of angels envious, and who would disagree? As for J.S. Bach, there is something holy about his music, even his secular music, as if God tapped Bach to be the vehicle to tell all the world, in musical terms, about His grace and beauty. Beethoven (to continue the religous metaphors) simply accepted God as his peer. He creates in his music an elevated world in which good always triumphs over evil, beauty over decadence. You can feel Beethoven hovering above his creations, ready to exact justice on the enemies of the divine. There is a grand majesty in his work. But why listen to me regarding Beethoven? Read this rollicking appreciation from H.L. Mencken, a section from his Prejudices series:
It was a bizzare jest of the gods to pit Beethoven, in his first days in Vienna, against Papa Haydn. Haydn was undeniably a genius of the first water, and, after Mozart's death, had no apparent reason to fear a rival. If he did not actually create the symphony as we know it today, then he at least enriched the form with its first genuine masterpieces - and not with a scant few, but literally with dozens. Tunes of the utmost loveliness gushed from him like oil from a well. More, he knew how to manage them; he was the master of musical architectonics. But when Beethoven stepped in, poor old Papa had to step down. It was like pitting a gazelle against a bull. One colossal bellow, and the combat was over. Musicians are apt to look at it as a mere contest of technicians. They point to the vastly greater skill and ingenuity of Beethoven - his firmer grip upon his materials, his greater daring and resourcefulness, his far better understanding of dynamics, rhythms and clang-tints - in brief, his tremendously superior musicianship. But that is not what made him so much greater than Haydn - for Haydn, too, had his superiorities; for example, his far readier inventiveness, his capacity for making better tunes. What lifted Beethoven above the old master was simply his greater dignity as a man. The feelings that Haydn put into tone were the feelings of a country pastor, a rather civilized stockbroker, a viola player gently mellowed by Kulmbacher. When he wept it was with the tears of a woman who has discovered another wrinkle; when he rejoiced it was with the joy of a child on Christmas morning. But the feelings Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and the was a touch of hell-fire in his mirth.
It is almost a literal fact that there is not a trace of cheapness in the whole body of his music. He is never sweet and romantic; he never shed conventional tears; he never stikes orthodox attitudes. In his lightest moods there is the immense and inescapable dignity of the ancient prophets. He concerns himself, not with the transient agonies of romantic love, but with the eternal tragedy of man. He is a great tragic poet...
I've gotten off track again but I couldn't resist sharing the Mencken excerpt. To wander a bit more off my trail: has America ever had a greater prose stylist than Henry Mencken? It's not just that each sentence he writes has a logical essence to it that builds upon and adds to what came before it. It's that those sentences have a pulsing rhythm that seem to pour forth from him in a steadily increasing tempo, the logic and rhythm always in perfect harmony. The cumulative effect of reading Mencken is not unlike that of listening to Beethoven; he was the most musical of writers (he was an amateur musician himself) not in the sense that it was sweet or pretty, but in the sense that his prose had a rhythm, a beat. Reading Mencken is a vibrant pleasure.
Back to Beethoven. My favorite works by him are as follows: the first two movements of the Eroica (the third symphony), though especially the first; the whole of the C minor (the fifth symphony), though, again, especially the first movement; the slow movement of the seventh symphony; the entirety of the ninth; the first movement of the violin concerto; both the fourth and fifth piano concertos in their entirety; too many of the piano sonatas to mention; the entirety of the Archduke piano trio. I've more to go in my exploration of Beethoven - for instance, his string quartets, which many believe represent the pinnacle of his achievements. But those above will do for now.
This post is getting long so I will close this off for now and pick it up later with my discovery of the joys of the American popular song. But I'll add one more note re: Beethoven. As Mencken points out, he understood the dynamics and rhythms of musical composition better than anyone had before him. His music moves like no one else's had. If you're a lover of rock and roll and just getting started on classical music, Beethoven may be the best place to start. Pick up this recording and listen to the Fifth Symphony's first movement. Now, in this day and age, the first movement has been parodied to death but the recording I've directed you to gets beyond the parody to the essence of the music. It's the best version out there. Anyhow, put it on the CD player and turn up the volume. I defy you to sit still.
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