Posted By crates on April 14, 2009

I admit it.  I’m musically illiterate (also I’m not a big he-man :cough:).  It is not that I do not like music, I do, it is just that I tend to be unconscious of it.  I almost never listen to music on the radio or disc players.  I have two really nice stereo systems and several smaller players.  I have a nice radio in my car with a dvd  player that holds 6 discs.  I have the means to listen to music, but I tend to be indifferent to it.  When I think of my preferences in music, I tend to like classical, jazz, new age, blue grass, folk music from all over the world, and what I call unusual music,  but as I said, I rarely am aware of it.

I currently am going through one of my spells of trying to listen to more music.  I bought a cheap mp3 player for example.  Right now I am listening to some mp3 files on my laptop (Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, 1959), so it’s not as if I am against music!  It’s just that I don’t think of it that much, and I rarely am affected emotionally by it–with two notable exceptions both by Beethoven.  I can’t really remember exactly when these amazing pieces of music came to my attention, but it had to be late in my life.  I can’t really explain my reactions to them.   Something about them reaches down into my soul and elicits tears, almost every time.  It’s plumb embarrassing, that’s what it is.

Moonlight Sonata is the first of the two,  notably the first movement (although the second and third are wonderful).   Beethoven composed this music in 1801, dedicating it to a pupil (Countess Giulietta Guiciardi).   Apparently he proposed to her right after dedicating the music to her.  Her parents, however, prevented the willing Countess from accepting.  The first movements starts  out in a low,  melancholy sort of lament that affects me deeply every time that  I listen closely to it.  Listen to the movements here on Wikipedia and read this: “The movement has made a powerful impression on many listeners; for instance, Berlioz wrote that it “is one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify.” The work was very popular in Beethoven’s day, to the point of exasperating the composer, who remarked to Czerny, “Surely I’ve written better things.”

I tried to find out something about Fur Elise, and found that it affects many other people the same way!  There seems to be some commonality of spirit in people that reacts similarly to this music.  I also found that there is also some controversy over the name.

Fur Elise (For Elise) was written around 1810 when Beethoven was about 40 years old.  A researcher finding the manuscript claimed that the dedication read Fur Elise.  However, the dedication has been lost and most researchers believe that the researcher must have misread Beethoven’s atrocious hand writing, and that the inscription probably was dedicated to Therese, referring to Therese Malfatti who was studying under him at this time and was known to have turned down his marriage proposal.  Most reject this speculation however.

More speculation was fueled by the discovery of a letter after his death addressed to “My Immortal Beloved.”  No connection with an Elise or Therese was found however.  Another hypothesis says that Elise was a type of generic name for sweetheart at that time, and that the piece was written for all sweethearts.  This also is unknown.  This seems to me to totally specious.

Whoever it was dedicated to, it seems more likely to me to have been a woman that was loved by Beethoven.  Just listen to it.  How can it not be? (I hope to put in a small file of this music, but in the meantime you can listen and download  it here.)

Categories: Creative, Personal Stuff
Tags: Beethoven, Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata, music