Finale - Summer 2014 (short version)

(If you'd rather just listen to Finale, click here.)

Sometimes I have to wait for the forgetting before I consider a work to be finished.  It took almost one year for Summer 2014 from my The Seasons to be sufficiently forgotten.  I no longer remember precisely why I was unhappy with it.

When I finished composing it on September 22, 2014, I decided it needed revisions.  I listened to it every few months.  I was less unhappy with it each time.  Eventually I realized I no longer wanted it hanging over my head.  After a while it seemed okay, I guess.  Good enough.  It is what it is.  No worse than my other music.  Better than some.

So this summer (the one in 2015) I mixed the tracks and produced an audio file.   Now it's available online and you can listen to it and I can attempt to forget it again.

The conceit of composing The Seasons is that I write a little bit of music for each day of the calendar.  I try to actually write one every day.  The mistake I made with this piece, I think, is that I had too many ideas upfront about what I would compose.

This daily composing scheme seems to produce better results if I just make sure each segment flows out of the previous day.  Occasionally I check to make sure each week hangs together.  When I try to make grand overall form or concept ahead of time, the way I was taught back when I studied composition, trouble ensues.  I'm not that kind of composer.

The grand form I imagined this time was a finale to a five-movement romantic symphony.  Mahler's Seventh would be a good example.  Mind you, I would not be writing grand romantic five-movement symphonic music.  Instead I would merely hint at the overall form of a five-movement symphony.   Each movement would be one season.  I would call it The Five Seasons - going Vivaldi one better.  I'm still going to call it that.

The five movements, composed in consecutive seasons, are:

1. Caprice (Summer 2013, short version)  (June 20, 2013 through September 21, 2013)
2. Nocturne (Autumn 2013, short version)  (September 22, 2013 through December 20, 2013)
3. Allegro (Winter 2013, short version)  (December 21, 2013 through March 19, 2014)
4. Minuet (Spring 2014, short version)  (March 20, 2014 through June 20, 2014)
5. Finale (Summer 2014, short version)  (June 21, 2014 through September 22, 2014)

As you can see everything was composed consecutively.  The final result allows you to listen to 15 months of my musical ideas in order.  They come and go, ebb and flow, wax and wane.

I hatched this plan about the time Minuet completed.  At that point, early June 2014, I envisioned the last season/movement would be a loud bang-up conclusion.  I had already given the four seasons single word musical terms as titles so the name Finale sprang easily to mind.  I set out to write music which rushed headlong to an obvious, inescapable and completely blatant final chord.  I wanted an ending no one could miss.

Yeah, it does that.

Yeah, there's more.

I decided the music would be based on a fragment from the Egmont Overture by Ludwig van Beethoven.  In the five movement form this would balance the first movement written in Summer of 2013.  I called that one Caprice because it is based on the 24th Caprice by Nicolo Paganini.  Formal structure, huh?

The Beethoven and Paganini pieces were written at approximately the same time (roughly 200 years ago) and both inspired compositional ideas in the student me decades ago.  It has taken me more than 40 years to get around to using these ideas.  I'm old now and I'm allowed to dig around in my past without good reason.  I must have had lots of other ideas back then as well.  These two were never forgotten.

I remember that the Beethoven idea happened in a momentary flash the very first time I heard the Egmont Overture.  I was in college, studying classical music and hearing recordings of famous repertoire for the first time.  It happened at a specific point in the music, let's call it the "inspirational moment", not too far from the end, at bar 309 to be precise.

First you hear this theme (measure 307-8):

Then, immediately, this happens:

This was not at all what I was expecting.  I was really surprised.  "Whoa," I thought, "how did Beethoven think of THAT?"   It happens so fast there wasn't enough time to wonder exactly what I did expect.

I began to ponder Beethoven's brain. (Here's a picture of what might be Beethoven's skull.)

Specifically I pondered how he got from the first idea to the second.  I decided it might be interesting to explore that briefest of moments.  Essentially I was interested in what happens exactly at the barline between measure 308 and measure 309.  Barlines are silent things.  They happen between sounds.

I decided to use this mere instant, the "inspirational moment", to generate a piece of my own.  It wasn't the themes that interested me.  I was interested in those mere milliseconds of time during which the idea seems to be created.

I have no idea how, in reality, Beethoven came to juxtapose those particular musical ideas.  Nor do I much care.  He probably worked hard at it.  If you're interested I suggest you ask your Doctor of Musicology.

Initially I imagined a minimalist process piece, beginning with the eight-note theme repeating over and over.  And over.  Repeating things over and over was a radical idea back then.  Slowly and imperceptibly the music would evolve into the second theme.  Somehow my music might reveal Beethoven's thought process.

Had I actually accomplished this, the piece could have been inserted directly into Ludwig's original overture right at the "inspirational moment".  Beethoven time would suddenly stop and the listener would be hurled deeply into the workings of my brain.   Eventually things would return to the Beethoven brain exactly at the same point where I took over.  Egmont Overture would then continue as if nothing unusual had ever happened.

Does this remind you of every movie about a time machine ever?  (This is Beethoven's death mask.)

I never pursued the idea.  Decades passed.  However, each time I heard the Egmont Overture I remembered my unfinished idea.  There could be no forgetting because Egmont is a stirring, heroic concert opener and it gets programmed.  Apparently classical concerts need stirring, heroic concert openers.

Finally on or about Saturday, June 21, 2014, the date I began Summer 2014 from The Seasons, I decided it was high time to try putting paid to this idea once and for all.  I began to incorporate the eight-note theme into the daily fragments.

And of course, the final result of Finale (Summer 2014 short version) bears only a small resemblance to what my imagination was predicting on June 21, 2014.  Finale does end definitively.  I got that right.  There is a lot of Beethoven worked into it.  I got that right as well.  Even the "inspirational moment" happens in my piece just as it does in Beethoven's.

And, as you remember from the beginning of this post, I was never happy with the result.  It's different than whatever it was I had set out to write.  Oh well, it is what it is.  No worse than my other music.  Better than some.

Finale is completely, totally different than the original idea I imagined as a student.  I have not put paid to that idea.  In reality I doubt I could have made an interesting piece, either back then or right now.  I wonder if anyone could, especially without being totally pedantic and boring.

Unfortunately I have made forgetting my idea more unlikely than ever.  I will remember it because now there are two pieces, one by Beethoven and one of mine, that will remind me of how I failed to follow through.

click here to hear Finale (Summer 2014, short version) by David Ocker - © 2015 David Ocker, 720 seconds

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You might be interested in the long version (fragments with silences) of Summer 2014 (4106 sec.):    [listen]   [read]

In a hurry: listen to Garbage Days of Summer 2014 (133 sec.):  [listen]  [read]

Here's another piece of mine that required two years of forgetting.

Here are all Mixed Meters posts about poor old Ludwig van Beethoven.

Here's a video of facial reconstruction of Beethoven's face based on his death mask (shown above).

If you must know, the "inspirational moment" in Finale happens at 8'19".  And if you insist on skipping ahead and listening to only that one spot, please do me this favor: leave a comment saying how much you enjoyed the entire piece, even though you only listened to a few seconds.  Just lie about it.  That seems fair.

Absolute Beethoven

I don't write about how I earn my living very often. My three readers ought to be thankful for that.

If you don't know what I do, I work as a freelancer in the exciting world of music preparation, toiling away at home, keeping my own bizarre hours, occasionally meeting terrifying deadlines, just as occasionally wondering if I'll ever get another gig.  I've been doing this for nearly 30 years. I make the joke "It looks like this job is going to work out." (The rest of my work history is better known: before going freelance I worked for Frank Zappa for seven years, also doing music preparation. I can honestly say that working for Frank Zappa is as close as I've ever come to having a real job.)

These days my biggest client is composer John Adams.  John has produced a steady stream of orchestra pieces, concertos, chamber works and operas over the years. His music gets played lots. I really appreciate all the jobs he's sent my way. Thanks, John.

Occasionally John writes something which appeals particularly to my own individual musical taste. It should not be surprising that I don't like all his music equally. I don't like all of any composers' music equally. Domenico Scarlatti gets the closest, I think, but even he wrote a few things I'm not too keen on. Yes, there are a few composers who never wrote a single piece I enjoy. And of course, as the decades pass, my opinions are subject to change.

Anyway, a few years ago John composed an orchestra showpiece which I think is perfectly fantastic. It's called Absolute Jest. It's a sinfonia concertante, a cross between a concerto and a symphony. Instead of one solo instrument there is a small ensemble of soloists, in this case a string quartet.

This work was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in 2012. I wanted to hear it played live bck then. That didn't happen because my life was just too busy (see above under "terrifying deadlines"). Later John made changes to Absolute Jest. He didn't simply alter a few harmonies and fix a transition or two the way he (and every other composer who ever lived) usually does after new works are premiered. This time he completely junked the entire first ten minutes and composed all new music. Ten minutes is enough to have created a whole new piece.  I liked the original version and I like the new version too.  I've given up trying to understand why he needed to make such massive changes.  I guess that's why he's the composer and I'm the copyist.

Earlier this month I flew up to San Francisco to hear the revised Absolute Jest at Davies Symphony Hall, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.  They recorded the concerts and promise to eventually release an album which includes this piece.  Watch for it.

Absolute Jest is a fun listen.  And it has an epic, travelogue feel to it.  Other Adams orchestra pieces with similar qualities include Slonimsky's Earbox, Guide to Strange Places and My Father Knew Charles Ives, all favorites of mine.  Absolute Jest has a certain humorous, good-timey wild joy-ride in the countryside, I wonder what's waiting around the next curve, hang on or you might miss something feel to it, which (you may have already guessed) I really like.  This side of John's music goes at least as far back as Short Ride in a Fast Machine

The composer demurs when it is suggested that the word "jest" in the title might imply some kind of musical "joke".   The piece was originally subtitled "a scherzo", the musical word for joke, but he took that out.  I agree that Absolute Jest is not a musical stand-up routine, ala Hoffnung or PDQ Bach or even Mozart's Musical Joke.  When asked what "jest" really means in his title the composer points to the word's archaic meaning.

Okay, if this work is more of a "narrative of exploits" then it's an enjoyable tale, a bucket-of-popcorn summer blockbuster or an extended personal anecdote or maybe a humorous short story.  There are no one-liners or punch lines.   Once it's over you know you've been somewhere fun and had a good time.  Throughout the piece you're never called upon even once to consider the eternal verities, like god or love or death, those inescapable banes of serious classical music.

There is one musical eternal verity, however, you need to know about to understand Absolute Jest properly. That would be Beethoven.

John has taken bits of Beethoven's themes and woven them throughout the fabric of Absolute Jest.   The essential culture of classical music is saturated by our imaginings of who Beethoven was and what his music means. If you think of classical music as a kind of religion (as I often do), then Beethoven has become one of its most revered graven images.

John Adams has added Beethoven themes to his music without the heavy sense of cultural gravity Ludwig usually gets.  One of the bits he chose (from Ludwig's late quartets) becomes a spritely musical hook which bounces around throughout the piece and stays in my head long after listening.  Like an ear worm.

As a result of all these references, the story which Absolute Jest tells is inescapably about Beethoven. The most performed living composer of classical music wants his audience to consider Beethoven.  And how does he do this?  By telling us a story!  A narrative.  A "jest".

(As an aside, here's a story about Beethoven told by Charles Bukowski:)

Now, at this point in my story I desperately want to tell you that Beethoven is funny.  The problem is that he's not, not at all, at least not very often and not intentionally.  Beethoven is the epitome of serious, the ur angst-ridden artist, the ultimate example of creativity beset by a cruel cosmos.

And I'm here to say "Well, screw that."  My opinion is that it's healthy for the artform when the icons of classical music are brought a little closer to the human level, especially an icon which has been worked over and beaten up for seemingly ever.  All those guys who wrote the great classics were human, after all, including Beethoven.  We ought to be able to enjoy their music without getting all cosmic on it.

And please remember - I'm not implying that John Adams agrees with any of this.  I'm just having my personal say about the matter.  My thoughts prompted by his music.

In spite of my opinions, the use of Beethoven source material in a brand new concert work like Absolute Jest ought to help endear it to audiences.  One piece is not likely to change the reverant opinions of Beethoven held by most serious classical music fans.  If it doesn't do that, then I hope that the people who listen enjoy the ride anyway.

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For no good reason, here are some appearances of Beethoven's music in our popular culture:

My least favorite Beethoven work accompanies the Harlem Shake:

Dudley Moore, a pianist, performs his classic Beethoven parody:

Rowlf, another pianist, plays Beethoven with a little coaching from Ludwig's bust:

Beethoven's music gets used in televisions commercials quite often. This might be the stupidest one of all.

Beethoven's own idea of a jest joke?

Eric Peterson offers this Beethoven-themed commercial as another candidate for stupidest ever:

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Links from out of the past -  other fun Mixed Meters articles about Beethoven:

Everybody Loves Beethoven (probably).   (see a picture of Beethoven's skull, read about the teaching of evolution.)

Stories of Almost Everyone  - an excerpt from Eduardo Galeano's book detailing how Beethoven's Ninth Symphony can mean just about whatever anyone wants it to mean.

LvB's on my list of Ten (or Eleven) Most Influential Classical Composers - each composer is described warts and all.

The Lifespan of Classical Music - a nearly Beethoven-free rant

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More links from out of the past - other fun Mixed Meters articles about John Adams

In which David writes new notes for a John Adams piece  (plus a short interview with the composer)

In which I read the book that John Adams wrote (I pick some fun quotes from Hallelujah Junction)

Hell Mouth, the name of John's blog; I quote something he wrote there about me.  (Also, see Ivy the late Six-Toed Cat next to a towering stack of Adams music).

Composers About Composers: Richard and John and Richard - three composers discuss composing.  Guess who said "it's easier to become a Catholic Saint than a truly Great Composer."  (me)

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Fast Metronome Tags: orchestra music. . . Beethoven. . . Adams

Ten Most Influential Classical Composers

A New York Times music critic is spending his time picking the "ten top Classical composers of all time."  He's seeking the "greatest" composers.  The essential criterion will be, I suppose, the opinions of classical audiences.  After all, composers become great because people keep listening to their music. 

This idea got me thinking about which classical composers have the most influence on living composers.   When living composers are lucky enough to get performed they often must share the bill with the honored dead ones.  Those dead composers bring us musical ideas from the past.  Some of those ideas, but not all, still have life to them. Presumably living composers are commenting, in some fashion, on what has come before.

I suspect there are plenty of contemporary composers like myself who were inspired to take up the craft by the musical classics.  Most likely we still feel the weight of that tradition, along with other influences, when we sit down to write.  This is true even if we are not as interested in classical music now as we once may have been. 

Please note that the reasons I'm about to give for including these particular names won't seem particularly positive.  Regular readers of Mixed Meters will not be too surprised by this.  If you happen to be a composer (and who isn't) I'm sure your opinions will differ.  If you're not a composer, this might make no sense at all.  There's a comment form where good natured responses will be published.

Here's my list.  The links all lead to earlier Mixed Meters articles.

Johann Sebastian Bach   Finding a balance between beauty and technique, between inspiration and academicism is always an issue for composers.  It's a matter of simplicity versus complexity, freedom versus control.  Bach used dry, complicated musical rules and produced perfect elegance with them.  It's an unattainable standard.  How depressing.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  Yes, he wrote some of the greatest pieces ever.  He's possibly my favorite composer.  But the real burden of Mozart for modern composers is that he was so blasted young.  The cult of the young genius lives on strongly.  These days a 30-year old composer who hasn't made it yet, won't.  We may well ask whatever happened to Jay Greenberg (who isn't even 20 yet.)
x

Ludwig van Beethoven He wrote some great music.  But he did two things wrong.  First, he invented the tormented composer, the Great Artiste who pours out his stormy inner life through music.  These days that idea seems really old.   Second, he went deaf - which by rights ought to be a compositional kiss of death - but Ludwig wouldn't stop writing.  Worse yet, once deaf, he wrote an unendurably grandiose symphony with one hummable tune and a few lyrics of desperate hope.  Modern audiences still can't get enough of that one.  How's a modern composer going to compete?

Richard Wagner  Mixed Meters has been bashing Wagner for over a year now.  He deserves it for the villainous political ideas which have so easily shackled themselves to his work.  But his musical innovations, possibly the most influential ever, still cloud contemporary music.  And the vast scope of some of his works, especially the Ring, ought to provoke us into keeping our music on a more human scale.     

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky  Maybe a surprising choice.  He's never been one of my favorites, but he has symphonies, concertos and ballets that audiences can't get enough of.  It's not just about shooting off canons.  I think it's about his melodies.  Contemporary composers don't seem to write melodies.  We might have lost the ability.  More likely, however, we know that if we try to compose hummable tunes, the audience will reject them in favor of ones they already know and love.

Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel  These two count as one.  (They both wrote the same string quartet.)  Audiences have come to love their lush sound worlds.  Some contemporary orchestra composers  have recognized that they can't go far wrong by imitating the colors and textures of Impressionism.  In other words, when a new piece restricts itself to musical techniques at least 100 years old, ones that Ravel and Debussy would have understood, the audiences will go home happy.  

Arnold Schoenberg Audiences still revile Schoenberg's music.  I don't blame them.  But as the spirtual inspiration behind the serial tradition and the technique of pre-composition and the emancipation of the dissonance and the notion of "composer as professor", he's still a potent nagging voice inside any composer's head.  Also, it never hurts to reflect on how Schoenberg's career (but not his influence) was ruined by the politics of his countrymen.

George Gershwin Along with Sondheim and Ellington, Gershwin was specifically disqualified from the New York Times ten greatest competition.  While the first two don't seem like classical composers to me, George most certainly does.  Think about the popularity of his rhapsody, his concerto and his opera in concert halls.  This popularity manifests itself in ever so many pleasantly upbeat Pops concerts.  The notion of harnessing vernacular music to make a serious piece more accessible is very alluring to any composer.

John Cage His music is a long long way from the standard repertory.  Infinitely far away.  He has absolutely no chance of getting on the New York Times list.  But a serious composer has to come to terms with Cage's ideas.  And that's what his music was about: ideas.  Ideas and not much else - in my opinion.  A decent composer's education should fry the brain with Cagian philosophy.  After that you can ignore him, but he won't really go away.

Philip Glass  He's also disqualified from the Times list because he's still alive.  But I think many other composers look at him with a combination of awe and disgust.  Awe because he's so successful - with a steady string of commissions for symphonies, operas and film scores.  Disgust because we can't find a simple compositional style of our own, the way he has, one that's both direct and elegant and will bring some of our own listeners into the concert hall so we don't have to worry so much about what the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky fans think.

Don't be fooled into the notion that the great classical composers are the only influences on us lesser lights.  There are hundreds of semi-greats who can also look over a composer's shoulder if we let them.  Composition is an old art, highly developed.  There have been countless branches and offshoots.  The heavy weight of this past can be stifling if it is taken too seriously.

And any half-way decent composer is also influenced by many other types of music besides classical.  But this article was inspired by a purely "classical music" project - a futile effort to quantitatively rank composers on what must be, in the end, purely subjective judgements.  To me it sounds like a fools errand.

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ADDENDUM:

Due to multiple comments I'm adding a bonus selection, a runner up.

Igor Stravinsky  He made it clear that staying current and staying famous is the most important thing for a composer.  During his career he was three different composers,  radically changing his musical style twice, both times taking ideas from others.  It would have been a gracious gesture on his part to adopt serialism before his neighbor Schoenberg died.   But had he been a really nice guy he would have stopped composing in the 1920s and given two other composers a chance to be famous in his place.

Ten Greatest Tags: ten best lists. . . greatest classical composers. . . Anthony Tommasini

Stories of Almost Everyone

My friend John Steinmetz sent me an excerpt from the book Mirrors, Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano.  The excerpt is about a famous piece of classical music (the one I have resolved never, ever to listen to again.)

THE NINTH

Deafness kept Beethoven from ever hearing a note of his Ninth Symphony, and death kept him from learning of his masterpiece's adventures and misadventures.

Bismarck proclaimed the Ninth an inspiration for the German race, Bakunin heard it as the music of anarchy, Engels declared it would become the hymn of humanity, and Lenin thought it more revolutionary than "The Internationale."

Von Karajan conducted it for the Nazis, and years later he used it to consecrate the unity of free Europe.

The Ninth accompanied Japanese kamikazes who died for their emperor, as well as the soldiers who gave their lives fighting against all empires.

It was sung by those resisting the German blitzkrieg, and hummed by Hitler himself, who in a rare attack of modesty said that Beethoven was the true führer.

Paul Robeson sang it against racism, and the racists of South Africa used it as the soundtrack for apartheid propaganda.

To the strains of the Ninth, the Berlin Wall went up in 1961.

To the strains of the ninth, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

John knew I would be fascinated by this because it deals with the common Mixed Meters trope that musical meaning is mutable according to who is listening.   And of course it mentions Adolf Hitler, which I have been doing a lot lately.

After reading about Galeano I ordered a "like new" copy of this book from an Amazon associate seller.  The price was 39 cents.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Thirty-nine U.S. pennies for a $26.95 list price hardcover book originally published in 2009.  Shipping charges were more than ten times the price of the book: $3.99.

In capitalistic America such a low price for nearly 400 pages of printed matter can only mean a huge lack of demand.   Could this be because Galeano says things Americans don't care to hear?  Or maybe someone is giving copies away because they think Americans ought to hear those things.  After all, the vilified Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez presented another of Galeano's books to Barack Obama, the increasingly vilified American president.

Mirrors consists of nearly six hundred short historical tales similar to the sample above.  I thought to myself "It's a novel in the form of a page-a-day calendar."

In reality it's a history book.  It's the story of human culture told in sequential "sound bites".   Each bite is short enough for even the tiniest attention span.  It would be perfect for multi-tasking, channel-switching, constantly on-the-go media consumers.  Except for one problem - it's a book.

Galeano makes his attitudes perfectly clear.  He is against sexism, racism, facism, colonialism, corporatism, imperialism and exploitation.  He counters pro-western, pro-northern, pro-European bias.  He lampoons the silly and he bemoans the greedy, the evil and the immoral.  He talks about the crazies, the revolutionaries, the successes, the failures and the famous.  Almost everyone.

Galeano obviously has strong opinions. His little tales will make you think.  Like the Beethoven symphony, what he tells is often open to interpretation.  If you think about the stories too hard they could be profoundly depressing.  You could even end up regretting being human.

But in spite of that, the book is a really easy read.  It would make a good blog.

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Listen to an interview with Eduardo Galeano on the NPR radio show Latino USA.  He says "I am just a person fascinated by reality and the magic hidden inside reality."

Other Mixed Meters posts mentioning Beethoven's Ninth: Everybody Loves Beethoven Probably and In Which Music Moves Slowwwly.

Everyone Tags: Eduardo Galeano. . . Beethoven. . . Hugo Chavez

Everybody Loves Beethoven (Probably)

Timothy Mangan, the last full-time newspaper music critic in O.C., has a blog. (which is not true of the last full-time newspaper music critic in L.A.)

Tim posted an excerpt written by H.L. Mencken at the time of the Scopes Trial, 1925. It's about Beethoven. Go read it now: Beethoven and the Scopes Trial. Reading it is important because Tim's bosses probably peg his salary to how many hits his blog gets.

The excerpt really pushed my buttons. It smacks of vile cultural elitism coated with that sickeningly childish Beethoven worship which I hate so much. It made me want to rant.


Of course it's entirely possible that Mencken has his tongue firmly in his cheek. How am I to be sure - with no smiley faces in the text?

It starts out like one of those "There are two kinds of people..." jokes. For example: "There are three kinds of people - those who understand math and those who don't." Warning: certain mathematical concepts will be abused in this post.


Here's an excerpt from Mencken's excerpt:

The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only ... That is why Beethoven survives. Of the 110,000,000 so-called human beings who now live in the United States ... it is probable that at least 108,000,000 have never heard of him at all.

I have no clue how many people in the US in 1925 had actually heard of Beethoven. Neither did Mencken. He was making up his facts ("it is probable"). That's an old journalistic tradition now preserved mainly by us bloggers. These days real journalists are into "fact checking". (Quick, name the capital city of Mongolia. )

Let's take Mencken at his word and stipulate that in 1925 about two percent of Americans actually knew who Beethoven was and the rest would have lynched him in the street for the crime of being meaningful and for coming back from the dead.


But times have changed. Allowing for the three-fold increase in U.S. population, no one could claim in 2008 that only 6 million Americans have ever heard of Beethoven. Any other composer (except Mozart), maybe, but not Beethoven.

I wanted to shout back at the excerpt: "Hey, H.L. Now-a-days, thanks to our limited choices of infotainment conglomerates, the U.S. is homogenized pretty thoroughly. We've all heard of the same stuff - including Beethoven."


We here at Mixed Meters set out to prove the point that everybody knows Beethoven by conducting a poll. The sample was small (9 responses) but the results prove the hypothesis so why bother going on. (Call that going, call that on.)

METHODOLOGY: I told each person that I had a question and asked for the first answer that popped into their head. No thinking, please. The question was: "Name a classical composer." (Not really a question, but hey.)

DATA: Here are the answers listed in descending frequency together with the first names of the respondents:

• Beethoven (Kevin, Sean, Claudia and Tom)
• Mozart (Rose and Lucy)
• Bach (Sandra)
• Brahms (Kristina)
• Takemitsu (Daniel)

Most of the answers were immediate, almost joyful. The exception was Claudia, secretary at an auto repair shop, who needed nearly a minute of her deepest cogitation before she came up with an answer, any answer (which she mispronounced.) But she knew "Beethoven".

Daniel's unexpected answer stems from the fact that he's a professional composer, the only trained musician in the sample. He cheated by thinking for several seconds before answering.

My poll has a probable margin of error of 25%. Remember: the "probable" - like Mencken I make up facts too. Please attempt to reproduce my results with polls of your own and post the probable results as comments below.


CONCLUSION: Forty-four percent of all Americans think of Beethoven first when they consider classical composers. If the question instead had been "Who is Beethoven?" my poll would have shown name recognition of 100% or more. That's because anyone who knows of Bach, Mozart, Brahms or Takemitsu probably knows of Beethoven too.


Poor Ludwig is now a cultural icon considerably separate from the appreciation of his music. Beethoven, who could still write music even after he went deaf. Beethoven, who overcame insurmountable obstacles. The Beethoven of Disney movies, disco hits, dog movies, strange rock band names and the John Thompson arrangement of Ode to Joy, among others.

We have made Beethoven's life's lemonade into a cultural kool-aid so diluted that everyone has tasted it but no one need be affected by it. The more diluted he becomes the less meaningful he gets. If people don't know why Beethoven is famous, they still know that he IS famous. Famous for being famous. Zsa Zsa Gabor.


Mencken goes on to tell us what would happen if the 1925 unwashed did take notice of our hero composer. He doesn't even say "probably".

If [Beethoven's music] could be brought within range, it would at once arouse hostility. Its complexity would challenge; its lace of moral purpose would affright. Soon there would be a movement to put it down, and Baptist clergymen would range the land denouncing it, and in the end some poor musician, taken in the un-American act of playing it, would be put on trial before a jury of Ku Kluxers, and railroaded to the calaboose.

Okay, I get it now. Beethoven is really a stalking horse for Mencken's real target - the anti-teaching-of-evolution crowd. He wants to show us how stupid those people really are by telling us about the bonehead stunts they would pull if they catch up with the poor unsuspecting Ludwig.

How much have things changed since 1925?

Suppose that in 2008 a teacher were arrested somewhere in America, just as John Scopes was in 1925, for telling his class about evolution. Could it happen? Would you be surprised? I wouldn't. The battle over teaching the idea of evolution continues to this day.

Could a contemporary journalist attack the opinions held by creationists (or neo-cons or right-to-lifers or some other deserving group) by describing their probably hateful retribution on a ... composer? A composer of music? I doubt it. A blogger might try it, but not a real journalist.

Which composer's villification at the hands of the cretinous masses would arouse the most sympathy among us - the good people? Copland? Carter? Leiber and Stoller? Keith Burstein? Richard Thomas? In the wildest journalistic imagination could any composer be plausibly turned into the next Andres Serrano or Robert Mapplethorpe?

In a word, no. That is because it is probable that 98% of all Americans these days don't know any contemporary composers at all, and if they did - unlike in Mencken's hypothesis - their reaction to finding out about them would be the shrugging of shoulders and the changing of channels.


And what of Poor Beethoven in all this? Suppose he did come back from the dead, hearing restored, to observe the holy adulations he so regularly receives. What would he think of his universal name recognition? Would be giggle nervously when asked about Immortal Beloved? I don't know.

But it is probable that if he actually listened (for the first time ever) to a performance of his own Ninth Symphony he would say "That's awful. I must completely rewrite it."


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The picture of John Belushi as Beethoven channeling Ray Charles on Saturday Night Live comes from here.

The Beethoven figurine picture comes from here.

The picture of Beethoven's skull comes from here.

The picture of John Cleese as Beethoven comes from here which also has a story about how poor Ludwig might have died. The script to Beethoven's Mynah Bird, a sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus, is here.

The Beethoven action figure pictures come from here and here.

The picture of Beethoven's ear trumpets comes from here.

I took the pictures of the Ludwig sticker (which looks like Johnny Depp) on the traffic box in Civic Center, downtown Los Angeles.

Click any picture for an enlargement.

H.L. Tags: Mencken. . . Beethoven. . . Scopes Trial