For your blog post due tomorrow (Thursday, January 9 at 9 am),
please consider our class discussion with Prof. Pau from the afternoon on Wednesday,
January 8, and comment in 250-500 words on the following points:
· What did you know
about today’s subject before the listening and/or discussion session?
· What did you find
most surprising about today’s subject?
· What would you
like to know more about after experiencing today’s class?
Your post should be placed directly in the comments to this blog
entry, and is due at 9 am on Thursday, January 9 at 9 am.
Before the whole course starts, I literally know nothing about the 8th symphony of Beethoven. I haven’t heard any movements from it before, and I haven’t read anything about it either. It is strange that critics on Beethoven seldom mentioned this symphony. For preparing today’s class, I read through the material and watched the short video, and grabbed a vague impression of this symphony: it is kind of confusing, have a lot of elements of “joking”, it is shorter than most of Beethoven's symphonies and it is quite a light piece.
ReplyDeleteThe most surprising (in another way to say, intriguing) thing is thinking about the question that why music is funny. More specifically saying, I feel like it is studying how the tiniest and subtlest changes in the score make sense in its musical idea. When I listened to this symphony in the morning, I found that it is easier to follow the score than the second symphony, but it is harder for me to understand what kind of idea Beethoven wants to express through this symphony. There were always places that I expected to be a transition or a coda which turned out that I was wrong. In the lecture, when professor Pau went through some of the details, it became easier to understand. For example, the rhythm patterns sometimes changes directly from 2 plus 2 to 3 plus 1, the transition of keys can take a really long time before the music set up on the “right” key, the silence gaps between chords, and the long repetition of same octaves and chords towards the end of the symphony. None of these elements are classical or expectable, and it is these unexpected things that show a sense of humor - although it is hard to get. However, this does not mean that Beethoven is completely freewheeling, and he is still following an organized routine in this symphony while trying to put the jokes into the music.
It is good to go through the details of a symphony like this, and I enjoyed the class. Professor Pau mentioned that the 7th symphony is composed at the same time as the 8th, and they are kind of a set of pairs. This is an interesting way of putting it, and I’m looking forward to exploring more on the 7th.
Michael Henle requested that I post this on his behalf:
ReplyDelete"This post concerns the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony.
To begin, recall that Beethoven was fascinated by the Spanish sport of bullfighting, a fact that is not nearly as well-known as it should be. There are, however, coded references to this in many of his works.
"The finale of the Eighth Symphony is remarkable in that it depicts a single bullfight in its entirely from the crowd’s initial hush at the beginning (bars 1-16) to the first wounding of the bull (the fortissimo c-sharp at bar 17), which brings forth delighted cries from the crowd at their first sight of blood (bars 18-28). The next bars (28-48) depict several instances of pasa, where the matador dodges the movement of the bull. The subsequent broad second theme (bars 48-68) shows the matador strolling, seemingly without care, away from the bull. The lazy sweep of the matador’s cloak is clear from the central portion of this melody.
And so on.
"There is not enough space here to give a complete description of the scene. Perhaps it will suffice if I add a few more pointers to guide listeners. As already indicated the famous c-sharp’s indicate strokes of the matador’s sword that strike home. Likewise the many many sforzandi depict the tormenting of the bull by the picadors. (It was Leonard Bernstein who first noted this.)
"Crowd noise is an integral part of any bullfight scene. Beethoven does not neglect these. The many rapid eight-note motifs depict the crowd, the sextuplets are the crowd’s shouts and laughter and the abrupt three note motif (eighth-eighth quarter note) are the ubiquitous cries of ‘ole’.
"Finally, the repeated c-sharps in the coda (bars 272-279) spell the end for the bull whose death is presaged by the subsequent passage in f- sharp minor. It is, in fact, the need to depict the long drawn out death of the bull (you can clearly hear him wandering around the corrida) that impelled Beethoven to write the extraordinarily long coda.
"Some commentators object that such a light movement filled with
German jokes cannot possibly have been intended to portray a vicious bloody sport like bullfighting. These comments miss the point. The joyful spirit of the movement is ironic. Beethoven was politically opposed to bullfighting. The disjunction between the atmosphere of the movement and the seriousness of bull slaying is an example of Beethoven ‘going meta,’ and so anticipating current critical thinking by hundreds of years."
Prior to the lecture that Professor Pau gave today, I really didn’t know very much about the 8th symphony. Although I have heard it before, I didn’t remember the movement structure – that the two middle movements were a scherzando and minuet. I did know previously that several of Beethoven’s symphonies were composed in pairs, such as the 5th/6th duo and the 7th/8th duo. It was pleasant to hear the symphony again.
ReplyDeleteMany things surprised me from the listening session today and Professor Pau’s lecture. At first, I was surprised by the lightness of the symphony in comparison to the other symphonies. Since I had symphonies 5, 7, and 9 in mind coming into the listening session – I know those better than the others – the stark difference in character of the 8th really stood out to me. I felt validated, also, hearing that the others’ feelings about the work were like mine. As Professor Pau progressed through the work, I was surprised by the depth and humor that he uncovered. Many of the tricks that Beethoven plays (with tonality, phrase structure, and orchestration) I hadn’t really noticed in the listening session. The C#s in the piece always surprised me, but I didn’t notice how often the first and second themes in the finale came back in the “wrong” key. When Professor Pau pointed that out, I thought it was both witty and humorous. I was also surprised by the “double development, double recap” in the fourth movement. I enjoyed Professor Pau’s proposed narrative about correcting the C#s that were present in the first recap with the do-over, and it really changed the way I hear the symphony as a whole!
Since this symphony seems to be often considered [one of] the slightest of Beethoven’s nine, I’m really impressed and excited to dig into those that are more popular and uncover the complicated yet genius moves that he makes beyond the naked ear. I look forward to also talking more about expectations, Beethoven’s subversion of them, and the effect that it has on the feelings we get from his music.
Chemically, in the brain, ecstasy and devastation are not opposites but actually very close to each other. (This is why we can go from feeling great to feeling awful so quickly.) The antithesis of both is calmness. I'd argue that, in our experience, humor and tragedy are not opposites either.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone is hurt or embarrassed, sometimes we find it funny and sometimes we find it painful. How we react depends on our own experiences and the severity of the incident. Two people might have very different reactions to the same event. For example, some people enjoy sitcoms and find them funny, while I find their second hand embarrassment based humor uncomfortable to the point of feeling physically ill. A joke is always at someone's or something's expense, and if that someone is you or someone/something you care about, you might not find the joke very funny.
Many people use humor to reframe their painful experiences and, by so doing, process and cope with them. (Self-deprecating humor, jokes at the expense of the teller...) This and the pain-humor continuum from the paragraph above are two ways in which humor and struggle can be one and the same. It just depends how we frame and experience the events in question. Sometimes errors are funny, sometimes they're fatal, sometimes they're both.
Humor also relies on the element of surprise, in one form or another - a sudden fall, an unexpected turn of phrase, a short video clip out of context, etc. Surprise is also why we might laugh less at a stand up special upon re-watching it for the 4th time than we did upon hearing it for the first time. The surprise and newness of the jokes is gone. We might find them clever and enjoyable still, but not unbearably funny.
Measures 280-283 (unless my quick counting is off) in the first movement of Beethoven Symphony No. 3 are agonizing. They're a cry of anguish to empty heavens, if I want to get stupidly poetic about it. Because of the way those measures are set up - framed - I am certain that they're meant to be painful and not funny. (I definitely feel the hurt in my chest and the ghost of tears in my eyes every time I hear them.) The dissonance is set up, not a surprise, and the orchestra takes it very seriously after it happens. This kind of certainty is absent from Beethoven's 8th symphony. Is it funny or is it a painful struggle? I think most events in Beethoven's 8th are ambiguous - they could be funny, painful, or simply clever (like familiar jokes).
Is the stumbling at the end of the first transition (Symphony No. 8, mvmt 1) comical or painful? The orchestra nonchalantly brushes it off, but that doesn't amount to evidence either way. It depends on the listener's mood, temperament, and experience. If you're socially inept like me, you might hear conversational missteps in some of the outbursts in this symphony. I can frame them as funny, goodness knows I've watched enough stand-up to learn how, but their memory is ultimately still painful.
When does the long ff in the first movement of Beethoven 8 become comical? Painful? Maybe your answer is "never" but it probably isn't. I think it probably gets funny/painful at measure 170, when it gets very repetitive. When does it become almost certainly painful? When has this section gone on for too long? Beethoven and the orchestra tell us: at measure 181, things have reached a breaking point. (These four measures are analogous to the four in Beethoven 3 mvmt. 1, but they are farcically rather than seriously set up.) The music has certainly crossed the line from funny to painful. I find tears prickling at my eyes here. But then, at measure 189: ecstasy. Or does it, when viewed from a few steps back (reframing), inspire a feeling of devastation instead?
Before today, I was already very familiar with the 8th symphony. It's one of my favorites (3, 8, and 9 are my current top 3). I knew that we would end up on the wrong beat when conducting in hyper-metric two. I don't think I was surprised by anything, but I did find the class extremely thought provoking.
DeleteJust like yesterday, I had never listened to the entirety of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 before today, and I didn’t really know anything about this work.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Pau brought up the fact that it’s a romanticized idea to think that every progressive symphony a composer writes is better than the last and not quite as good as the next; I don’t think this was something I previously believed, per se, but I never really considered the existence of Symphony No. 8 compared to its surrounding works before today. I believe that Symphonies No. 5, 6, and 7 are phenomenal, and I daresay that Symphony No. 9 is a doozy as well. This subject isn’t necessarily something I want to know more about, but today hasn’t helped me fully figure out how Symphony No. 8 fits into all the other pieces I know about Beethoven. Then again, I don’t think this all has to be figured out in one day.
I thought Professor Pau’s guest lecture was absolutely wonderful, and there are several points he brought up that I’m still pondering and digesting. The thought of “what makes a musical joke funny” was very interesting to me, and I think that has a lot to do with the identity of this work. This class felt like English classes I’ve taken in the way we did analysis, and it seemed to me like all of the points Professor Pau made were sort of to explain “what gives” with Symphony No. 8, to go back to what I previously mentioned about Symphony No. 8 existing in the realm of Beethoven.
Lastly, this was not necessarily surprising, but I will say one of the best lines from today’s class was about German jokes not having to be funny.
I am quite familiar with Beethoven’s 8th symphony. Prior to today’s meetings, I knew that the 7th and 8th symphonies were composed around the same time, although they are drastically different from each other. However, Beethoven felt that the 8th is much better than the 7th, even though it was less popular with the audience. Personally, although I love both, I have always found the 8th charming in its aura of cheer and good spirits.
ReplyDeleteListening to Bernstein’s discussion made me ponder about what our idea of a musically “substantial” work is and how narrow it can be. We always think a substantial piece should stimulate the intellect as well as our emotions. It should have rather dark moments and tension, which should eventually be resolved. If it is a multi-movement work, it should have a slow movement, furthering the sense of tragedy and tension—which Beethoven’s 8th does not! This is the only four-movement piece I have heard so far which does not include a slow movement.
But where do these preconceived notions of a substantial piece come from? Bernstein, in my mind, is attempting to get us to realize that there is no one definition of a substantial musical work. Professor Pau further attempted to get this point across in his discussion today. He stated that at face value (and using our preconceived ideas) the 8th seems like a lightweight and genial piece, but it is very intricate in the way it sets up and breaks expectations. For example, in the second (scherzo) movement there is a metronomic pulsation that the woodwinds play. First of all, the “metronome” idea in itself breaks our expectations because, when we listen to classical music, we don’t imagine something mechanical to ensue. Then, after enough time passes that we are accustomed to hearing the woodwinds’ metronome idea, Beethoven throws another surprise our way: he stops the metronome in the 9th measure. It only makes matters worse that the orchestra is suddenly loud in the long note where it stops. In our discussion, I learned that even the little details can have a large effect, and therefore can be substantial in a way.
Another aspect of Professor Pau’s discussion that I found provocative is the fact that he encouraged us to consider why certain music is funny. Sometimes, even the tiniest details in the music can make us laugh! Expectations (and subversion of them) play a major role in the feelings and reactions we have when listening to music. When Professor Pau pointed out some of the details in the score, I finally realized why I love this symphony and why it makes me laugh.
I am eager to learn more about the 7th in class, since it was composed around the same time as the 8th and, based on my listening, I know that the 7th is dramatically different from the 8th. In fact, if I didn’t know that the two symphonies were composed in the same time, I would have thought that the 8th is an early work and the 7th is a middle period work!
Before today, I hadn’t paid very much attention to Beethoven’s 8th Symphony. I’ve heard bits and pieces here and there, but I haven’t taken it seriously (or jokingly) until this morning. Again, I was aware of the symphony structure and the oddity of the second movement scherzo, but not aware of it’s comical nature until class today.
ReplyDeleteIt’s surprising to me that Beethoven wrote with humor in this capacity. I have only thought of Beethoven as a serious and surly figure who only composed serious and heavy works. Even the 2nd Symphony with its somewhat comical onomatopoeia seems a more serious work than the 8th as a whole. I’m very glad to have studied the 8th in this context. It humanizes Beethoven in my opinion. For me, thinking about Beethoven and his ‘German jokes’ makes the work all the more comical. His use of remarkably constructed musical irony furthers my appreciation for Beethoven as a composer and person. Studying the 8th has left me pondering what makes music comedic, and what makes music profound, not that the two are mutually exclusive.
If Beethoven allegedly believed his 8th Symphony to be a better work than the 7th, I’m curious about how he measured his works. Even if this anecdote isn’t true, what did Beethoven value in composition? How did this affect the composition of his 9th and other works? Did he value the works of other composers such as Schubert? I don’t recall hearing about Beethoven’s opinions regarding his music or the works of his contemporaries. Did this change throughout his ‘three periods?’