Your post should be placed directly in the comments to this blog
entry, and is due at 9 am on Thursday, January 16.
For your blog post due Friday, January 17 at 9 am, please consider
our class discussion as led by Prof. Ristow from the afternoon on Thursday,
January 16, 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 Friday, January 17.
Professor Ristow’s lecture today was awesome; I loved the in-depth theory focus and all the attention that was paid to the use of motifs across the movements. I also enjoyed that Professor Ristow chose to analyze the first symphony as a self-contained work, without referencing Beethoven’s later works or the classical era works of Mozart and Haydn except in cases where it really added to the discussion. I didn’t really know anything about the first symphony before the lecture, probably because people I have talked to quickly dismiss it as uninteresting or “less Beethoven” than the other symphonies. I only knew that it is a great example of Beethoven’s early period, and that it was one of his first explorations in writing for orchestra.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Ristow’s overarching point about the two motifs that are present throughout the entire symphony was really cool and surprising to me. I thought it was very interesting to see that Beethoven introduces those ideas immediately in the introduction to the first movement of the symphony – and they are so instrumental to his writing for the rest of the movements. The frequency of the E -> F ascending half-step (sometimes reversed to become descending) in all the movements fascinates me. I think that Professor Ristow did an awesome job at showing just how forward-thinking Beethoven was with the structure of his compositions, even though this one was composed out of order.
I really look forward to learning more about how Beethoven, in Professor Ristow’s words, sets up expectations to be altered and intentionally unrealized. I think that we’ll see a lot more of that in the 5th symphony on Monday. I also would like to know more about the tricky harmonic structures in Beethoven’s symphonies, like the ones today in each of the movements.
Before the listening and discussion today, I was quite new to Beethoven’s symphony no. 1. I had only heard excerpts of the first movement, and I didn’t know any of the other movements. After listening to the entire symphony for the first time today, I must admit I really enjoyed it. It is not one of his well-known or often-performed pieces, but in my opinion, it ought to be performed more!
ReplyDeleteI sincerely respect how Prof. Gregory Ristow analyzed it in class, and brought to our attention all of the witty secrets of Beethoven’s architecture. At first listening, even while looking at the score, I didn’t take notice of these details because I was not listening for anything in particular. However, when he pointed them out, the piece became much more significant to me than it was in my first listening! While the inner structure of the piece is rather simple and conventional (by Beethoven standards), the analysis is still satisfying. When I listen to the piece with the structural details (and Beethoven’s hidden allusions), I find it almost comical how economical he was with his material. Here are a few examples of what I mean: The two-note, half-step motif shows up in melodies and harmonic structure throughout the entire piece. Additionally, the main theme of the fourth movement, which is an upward scale, is foreshadowed as early as the first movement, and Beethoven keeps hinting at it afterwards. It is “subconsciously present” until the last movement. An important trifle in the piece that I noticed that Prof. Ristow didn’t cover is that the downbeats alone of the main theme of the 2nd movement are the same melodically as the main theme of the first movement (first three notes). Even though these are simple building blocks, the piece as a whole doesn’t sound simple. I am just mesmerized by the breathtaking unity of this symphony! I completely agree with Prof. Ristow’s opinion that the 1st is one of Beethoven’s most self-contained, albeit simple, works.
Overall, I enjoyed Prof. Ristow’s lecture about one of the most underrated symphonies, in my opinion. His breakdown demonstrated that there is musical substance that is much deeper than the first listen, which is brought out by theoretical analysis, even in this seemingly playful, conventional piece. After our listening and discussion today, I would love to read scholarly information the influence of Haydn and Mozart on Beethoven. Prof. Ristow and I both think that there is strong evidence that Beethoven took a lot from Haydn’s compositional style during this early period—even though Beethoven claimed he learned nothing from Haydn!
Before today, I actually hadn’t listened to all of Symphony No. 1 before. I had never listened to any of it on my own, but I remembered the part in the second movement we looked at in Professor Jimenez’s lecture, when he was talking about rhythms not lining up quite right, and how often the rhythm is overlooked to fix the discrepancies in note placement.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Ristow said right at the beginning of his lecture that Symphony No. 1 is frequently spoken of mainly in the context of what comes before it and what comes after it, which is what the train of thought I went on for the rest of his lecture. In the listening session, I was surprised at how Symphony No. 1 sounded compared to the other Beethoven symphonies I’ve heard. Parts of it, especially the end of the first movement, reminded me of his Horn Sonata, which was written in his early period. Throughout the listening session and Professor Ristow’s lecture, I kept thinking about how Symphony No. 1 set a certain precedent for Beethoven as a composer; he was certainly a known composer, but Symphony No. 1 was the first symphony that Beethoven wrote, after a period of Mozart and Haydn being well known for their symphonic compositions. Having this symphony being the first one Beethoven wrote seems kind of odd to me, and even more odd considering he wrote the first movement after he wrote all of the others.
After today’s class, as well as Professor Miyake’s class, I’m wondering more about the relationships between keys in different movements of Beethoven’s symphonies. Professor Ristow said that Symphony No. 1 may not be the most complex symphony, but that it’s masterful in how it ties all of the movements together with two specific motives. Professor Miyake also spoke about this in her lecture, regarding how the second movement of Symphony No. 3 calls back to the first movement in several ways. I find this interesting, and would like to know more about how Beethoven connects movements in his symphonies.
Before today, I was already familiar with Beethoven's 1st symphony from repeated listening, playing it in orchestra, and studying parts of it in conducting class. I really love this symphony, and I'm glad that Professor Ristow talked about it on it's own terms. If I had to put it in context, I definitely hear it as a synthesis and Beethoven-ization of classical symphony writing (ie the backwards looking view). I see it as a starting point but still every bit a Beethoven symphony as any of the others, not inferior to them in any way.
ReplyDeleteThe most surprising thing I learned today was that the fourth movement was originally, at least in sketch form, going to be the first! I can only hear this movement as a finale. The character of it just suits a final movement and would sound a bit strange as a first movement.
I don't have anything specific from today I'd like to learn more about, but I do have some things I'd like to work on. I'd like to improve my tonal analysis skills (I was reminded about sequence identification today) and to spend time with the score of each Beethoven symphony mapping form, motives, and key areas.
As someone who's never written a symphony, I was never certain how long it took to actually write one. My main writing experience is playwriting, and writing a two-act play can take anywhere from a few months to a year. As such, I was glad to learn about the timeline of Beethoven's writing process for the first symphony. I was surprised that while he started writing drafts of various movements in the early 1790's, he did not premiere until April 2, 1800 after having made serious revisions in both the structure of the symphony and within the individual movements. What I'm left wondering, however, is if this was a typical amount of time to write a symphony or if Beethoven took even more time or perhaps less time than other composers at the time such as his instructor Haydn. What's also interesting is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was written in a much shorter time frame, as some brief research suggests w\he worked on it from 1822 to 1824.
ReplyDeleteI will say I finally understand where the humor is in Beethoven, or at least understand why I don't understand it. An insightful comment I heard today is that Beethoven often plays and plays with the expectations of the listener, and this "whimsy" is what constitutes the humor. As a relatively uninformed listener, I'm impaired in the way a truck driver drives through a dark tunnel: despite having my headlights on, I can barely make out what's right in front of me. If anything is unusual, it speeds past me far too quickly to be noticed. I hope that if I keep listening to classical music, I'll develop a sensibility for the humor in it.
Prior to class today, I had listened to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, but have never paid too much attention to it. I found Professor Ristow’s lecture to be fascinating. I’ve never noticed the intricacies of his 1st symphony. I was aware that the slow introduction was weird, but I didn’t know that it ties in with the rest of the symphony. Professor Ristow mentioned that people generally view the first as a means of looking backwards or forwards, which I certainly had up until yesterday. I didn’t pay attention to what could be special about this symphony, but instead thought about it in the context of his other symphonies, or Classical Era symphonies.
ReplyDeleteI can’t say I’m surprised at how intricate Beethoven Symphony No. 1 is, but it was still news to me. He had all the ingredients of a normal Classical Era symphony, and still pushed convention, basing much of the symphony on half steps, and ideas subtly expressed in the slow introduction of the first movement. To my ears in the past, I had mostly picked up that there was some unconventional tensions and resolutions, and some unconventional aspects of the harmonic form, but because of Professor Ristow’s lecture, I’ll be able to pick up on how these unconventional aspects relate to each other and tie the symphony together. This is certainly a work that rewards deep analysis.
I’m curious about any programmatic elements some scholars have assigned to this symphony. While it’s not overtly programmatic, if all of Beethoven’s symphonies have this element, I wonder what it would be for the first. Who was Beethoven when he was thirty? Can we see this in the symphony?