Happy Beethoven's Birthday!

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py3ak

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Amid the tumult of life, it's all too easy to forget the most important thing ever to happen in December.

Beethoven is justly renowned for his piano music, his symphonies, his concerti, his overtures, and his string quartets. To help you celebrate today, here is something a little different:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KnXVgHs7Vw

Feel free to post your own favorites below.
 
Yes, Elizabeth, the violin concerto is instantly gripping. The dialog between soloist and orchestra is wonderfully eloquent.

How I shudder to remember that as a callow youth I sold my recording of Beethoven's sonatas for cello and piano. It was to buy books, but surely there ought to have been some other alternative.
 
He was from a Roman Catholic background, and occasionally makes religious references in his writing. However, if he had any very definite doctrinal views I haven't heard about it. You could listen to his Missa Solemnis, but it won't necessarily indicate his own opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06PPhF2tX1g
 
Everyone should try working the Google Doodle (www.google.com) puzzle today. Lots of fun. You have to arrange the music sheets of well known pieces of Beethoven's works in proper order to continue with each part of the animated storyline.
 
One of my favorite early piano sonatas is Op. 10 No. 3. As for the later ones, Op. 109 is absolutely gorgeous. He also broke all the "rules" for sonata form in 109, but made it work. Paul Lewis does a really good job with them, although his style is better accommodated with a modern piano than what Beethoven would have produced on his piano-forte. I can't help but think Beethoven would have liked it since he was often dissatisfied with the limitations of the piano-forte.
 
Thankyou for the tips, Ruben and Raymond. I don't think I'm any closer to the answer. I can't access that book in Aust. and I am hopeless at picking a thirty second adaptation out of an eight minute piece.

There is a tune in the Scottish split-leaf Psalter called "consolation" said to be adapted from Beethoven. I thought it was called Beethoven in my older book, but I may have been mistaken. Anyway, that was the tune about which I was hoping to gain information.
 
It seems there are multiple tunes called "consolation." In the book Raymond referenced it is said that the tune "Consolation" presented as 94 in the UPP (United Presbyterian Psalter, I imagine) is a "ridiculous perversion" of the finale from Beethoven's quintet for piano and winds. That can be heard at 22:10 of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik-ggFpX07M

It sounds like you'd have to adapt it pretty heavily to make it singable by a congregation.
 
There is a tune in the Scottish split-leaf Psalter called "consolation" said to be adapted from Beethoven. I thought it was called Beethoven in my older book, but I may have been mistaken. Anyway, that was the tune about which I was hoping to gain information.

The tune CONSOLATION, also called CONTEMPLATION and EMMANUEL, is indeed adapted from Beethoven.

From Scottish Church Music: Its Composers and Sources (1891):
EMMANUEL or IMMANUEL, No. 402 S.H., 63 in S.P., 71 in F.C.H., and 94 in U.P.P. (there named "Consolation"), is a ridiculous perversion of the Theme of the Finale of his Quintett, Op. 16.

Here played:
[video=youtube;w9hOwsdFHsg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9hOwsdFHsg[/video]

A very sweet tune indeed, though I don't quite agree that the psalter tune is a 'perversion' of it!

I'm quite fond of SARDIS, adapted from Beethoven's Romance for Violin, Op. 40.
 
He was from a Roman Catholic background, and occasionally makes religious references in his writing. However, if he had any very definite doctrinal views I haven't heard about it. You could listen to his Missa Solemnis, but it won't necessarily indicate his own opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06PPhF2tX1g

I remember reading once that, on his good days, Beethoven was a deist. On his bad days, he was little more than an animist. Let's hope neither was true.
 
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