How Beethoven’s 5th Symphony put the classism in classical music

Source: Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding
Published: Sep 17, 2020
Author: Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding
Post Date: 2020-09-17 09:09:31 by Ada
Views: 4114

To many, Beethoven’s most famous work is a symbol of exclusion and elitism in classical music.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony starts with an anguished opening theme — dun dun dun DUNNNN — and ends with a glorious, major-key melody. Since its 1808 premiere, audiences have interpreted that progression from struggle to victory as a metaphor for Beethoven’s personal resilience in the face of his oncoming deafness.

The famous first movement of the Fifth doesn’t do much for me, but the finale …

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#1: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed, Lod (#0)

As we all know, straight white men are obsessed with dressing appropriately and policing everybody else into dressing appropriately, unlike women, LGBTQ+s, and people of color. Whoever heard of a gay man or a straight woman or a person of color who was into dressing up?

Oh …

Well, here are 10,000 appropriately dressed people of color, no doubt some of them LGBTQ+-, having a blast with the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony:

If the 4th movement of Beethoven's Ninth is White Man's music, then the Japanese are Whiter than Americans.

Ada posted on 2020-09-17 11:12:37   Reply   Private Reply

#2: BTP Holdings    To: Ada (#0)

The famous first movement of the Fifth doesn’t do much for me, but the finale …

The fags at the florist shop I made deliveries for as a young man were into Opera.

The owner of that shop said the country music I listened to was "the worst music this side of Nashville."

He had been married a one time and had a very pretty teenage daughter. I bet she is married off by now. ;)

BTP Holdings posted on 2020-09-17 11:28:47   Reply   Private Reply

#3: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#1)

If the 4th movement of Beethoven's Ninth is White Man's music, then the Japanese are Whiter than Americans.

Quite possibly true -- Japan hasn't seen the extreme cultural decadence America emobodies so it's easy to imagine orchestras are faring better there. Not long ago I heard that the average age of attendee at 'David Geffen' Hall was over 70!

Good article -- offbeat little thing. Am always glad to see fave 'political' sites doing culture. Alas, it's inevitable that Beethoven is thus pilloried by well-paid psychos. I'm sure they know the black militants have been claiming him for decades now but don't give a damn -- 'my agenda right or wrong'. (Incidentally he has frizzy hair in a silhouette of him at about age 12.)

"As you perpetuate the idea that the giants of the music all look the same" -- considering their work the pinnacle of western civ it's funny how un-caucasianic the great composers often appear. The top Central European is clearly about half negro, something only I would ever notice. Anybody know who? ;)

Yes -- Asians and western culture. Beethoven was banned in China under Mao and I say this was because Ludwig Van is really all about FREEDOM -- yeah, like us!* When his music was finally allowed in the PRC after the 1980s thaw, heady reports said Chinese orchestras went so crazy about the new discovery they played him way too fast ;)

Ludwig van was passionate about the social equality then aborning and contemptuous of the rigid class system that had always prevailed. Ironically this is the only treatment I've ever seen of the revolutionary spirit in music of the Romantic era...

https://www.marxist.com/beethoven-man-composer- revolutionary190506.htm

It's not bad at all, considering! Wonderful short book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1249020.Beethoven

Candidly I'm gonna agree with the great Mr. Sailer about the 5th. The 1st mvt is great but the finale is glorious. When I was a kid a wonderful TV series of orchestras performing symphonies had the beginning of this 'Allegro / Presto' as its theme, with a pic of (?) the Brandenburg Gate for the visual tag.

Beethoven is very great -- toweringly great. Even the personalities and character of these geniuses is (OK, are) a priceless gift from lost worlds!

------------

*Well.... NOT like us. But so much more so than the others as to be breathtaking.

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-17 15:52:02   Reply   Private Reply

#4: NeoconsNailed    To: BTP Holdings (#2)

You're a country fan! A real fag field ;)

https://theweek.com/articles/494728/country-musics-not-secret-gay- history

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-17 16:14:46   Reply   Private Reply

#5: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#3)

The top Central European is clearly about half negro, something only I would ever notice. Anybody know who? ;)

Beethoven . . .Mozart . .? Obviously not Wagner.

Great post.

Ada posted on 2020-09-17 16:20:03   Reply   Private Reply

#6: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#5)

No..... Romantic era, wrote one of the top symphs ;)

Wagner the great Teutonist despised by jews was almost certainly hemi- Semite himself, and had an.... interesting face. ("This ugly little man" -- The Gift Of Music)

Thanks.

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-17 16:32:03   Reply   Private Reply

#7: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#6)

No..... Romantic era, wrote one of the top symphs ;)

Tell!

Ada posted on 2020-09-17 19:29:20   Reply   Private Reply

#8: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#7)

Another hint: he's prolly the only one of the glory days of like 1820- 1920 who spent time in the US and incorporated folkish American, some say negro, themes into his work. Dead giveaway!

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-17 20:29:34   Reply   Private Reply

#9: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#8)

But Dvorak didn't have kinky hair!

Ada posted on 2020-09-18 09:47:47   Reply   Private Reply

#10: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#9)

Doesn't have to ;)

www.tunefind.com/artist/antonin-dvorak

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-18 11:39:34   Reply   Private Reply

#11: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#10)

Might just be a bad picture. This one doesn't show such a broad nose.

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Ada posted on 2020-09-18 17:02:47   Reply   Private Reply

#12: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#11)

Yes it does -- slitely different angle and liting.

When you want something to be (un)true, you really go to town on the case ;)

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-19 02:12:30   Reply   Private Reply

#13: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#12)

When you want something to be (un)true, you really go to town on the case ;)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. IOW how does a black get to Czechoslovakia in the early 19th century. If Dvorak was half black, which of his parents was all black?

Ada posted on 2020-09-19 09:34:19   Reply   Private Reply

#14: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#13)

There's far more blackness in European history and faces than most ppl ever notice. jews alone are said to be 20% on average.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin#Ancestry

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-19 10:02:30   Reply   Private Reply

#15: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#14)

There were blacks in Spain and black seamen in ports like Liverpool. But Czechoslovakia?

Ada posted on 2020-09-19 21:25:19   Reply   Private Reply

#16: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#15)

Dijew read the Pushkin story? His GGF was 'an African page kidnapped to Constantinople as a gift to the Ottoman Sultan and later transferred to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great'. He can't have been the only case -- I've seen others, can't remember which.

Recall plz my studied opinion that Germany and Sweden show considerable Africanism in their faces. The classic 'aryan' countries ain't so 'aryan' as all that -- and this goes way back before the 3rd world invasion.

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-20 00:49:58   Reply   Private Reply

#17: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#16)

Recall plz my studied opinion that Germany and Sweden show considerable Africanism in their faces. The classic 'aryan' countries ain't so 'aryan' as all that

How and when did the Africans get to Sweden and Germany? More important, what does the DNA show? (Assume you are not going back 42,000 years to "out of Africa")

Pushkin and a few others were flukes. Their genes didn't get spread around Europe like Attila's were.

Ada posted on 2020-09-20 10:04:37   Reply   Private Reply

#18: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#17)

Did the Vikings tour the Mediterranean?

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-20 20:37:05   Reply   Private Reply

#19: Dakmar    To: NeoconsNailed (#18)

Did the Vikings tour the Mediterranean?

Norman conquest of southern Italy

Dakmar posted on 2020-09-20 21:20:44   Reply   Private Reply

#20: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#18)

Did the Vikings tour the Mediterranean?

Yes indeed. Norman French, Vikings with a veneer, conquered Sicily.

The Swedes toured Eastern Europe via the rivers and got all the way to Constantinople. Might have picked up black slaves there.

However, that doesn't mean that traceable African DNA made it back to the Scandinavian heimland.

Ada posted on 2020-09-20 21:58:51   Reply   Private Reply

#21: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#3)

Beethoven according to Peanuts

Ada posted on 2020-09-21 09:45:47   Reply   Private Reply

#22: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada, Dakmar (#20)

Wikip sez they raided northern Africa, and its population was surely blacker 10 to 13 centuries ago than today.

yes, Italy. It's only 100 mi. from Africa and its population has been clearly mixed for many centuries. Once these genes hit the continent they can go wherever they like. Carthage was a major white folks civilization in N.A.

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-21 12:53:29   Reply   Private Reply

#23: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#22)

North Africa wasn't all that black way back when. Just looked at one of those black history websites which tend to exaggerate black influence, and here's what it says about blacks in central Europe and Scandanavia:

Africa and Africans have had an influence on European thought and culture far disproportionate to the size of the small black population (which, for example, approached 150,000 in the Iberian peninsula in the 16th century, and by the 18th Century amounted to just several thousand in France, a few thousand in the Netherlands, and several hundred scattered through Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia.

Source: www.blackpast.org/global-...ry-europe-hidden-history/

Ada posted on 2020-09-21 13:56:39   Reply   Private Reply

#24: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#21)

Amazing -- his little cartoon hands are actually playing that music.

Not to say the individual fingers, but think of them going to the trouble. Asa kid I enjoyed seeing what LvB he was playing by the musical staves carefully drawn above his head in the comic strip ;)

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-21 14:05:50   Reply   Private Reply

#25: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#23)

few thousand in the Netherlands, and several hundred scattered through Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia.

Since you're citing it, that's way more than enuff to produce a Pushkin or Dvorak. Are you sitting down? People from white countries don't always stay in 'em -- they go running all over the place in fact

www.saint-petersburg.com/famous-people/great-italians/

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-21 14:12:10   Reply   Private Reply

#26: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#25)

Since you're citing it, that's way more than enuff to produce a Pushkin or Dvorak.

Pushkin, yes. We know how he got there. But a few hundred in Central Europe producing a black butcher or a black servant? Possible but unlikely.

Ada posted on 2020-09-21 16:21:04   Reply   Private Reply

#27: Ada    To: NeoconsNailed (#24)

Amazing -- his little cartoon hands are actually playing that music.

And on a piano where the black keys were painted on :-)

Ada posted on 2020-09-21 16:22:34   Reply   Private Reply

#28: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#26)

Only one thing's for sure about this world -- expect the unexpected ;)

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-21 17:29:56   Reply   Private Reply

#29: NeoconsNailed    To: Ada (#27)

Hahaa, you're right. For some reason it's only toy piano with longer legs that have real black keys -- and they are fun.

NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-09-21 17:32:14   Reply   Private Reply