Beethoven
Iraq
During a brief respite from the attacks that have paralyzed his city, an Iraqi man takes his children out for ice cream. For one moment on the news, America sees an Iraqi father watch his children lap up soft serve during an ordinary moment of family togetherness. The man shrugs when asked if he believes that peace is near. He is philosophical, not hating (or loving) America or the Iraqi fundamentalist insurgents. He merely regrets the circumstances that have inhibited the course of his ordinary life. Other images, like soldiers 'rapping' with Iraqi children might seem like more radical cultural mergers of American and Iraqi society are really just status quo images of wartime and have parallels with other typical dramatic media images of war, like the tearing down of the statue of Lenin. But this image of an apparently ordinary day is really the most avante guard image -- it shows that Iraqis just want to get on with their lives. Their culture is not exotic and most Iraqis are obsessed with religion or politics. Most people remember personal aspects of their lives as fond memories, not the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and they are not dreaming of democracy in the form of a republican legislature, they merely want their children to be happy. This is what connects Americans with Iraqis more fundamentally -- a common humanity, not abstract desires to change the government.
Discussion 2: Beethoven
This passage prompts the question -- why do we tend to classify Beethoven as a Romantic artist and David as Neoclassical? After all, both artists combined Romantic and Neoclassical elements in their composition. Perhaps the answer is that when we listen to a composition by Beethoven, we feel as listeners that we have gained a sense of who Beethoven was like as a man, the emotions that moved him as a human being. David, in contrast, although he had clear political views that shifted and evolved over the course of the French Revolution to the rule of Napoleon is not an emotional presence in his paintings. David's paintings seem to be historical, almost photographic depictions of 'real life' or imagined real life in the classical past like the "Oath of the Horatii." His paintings seem to be about other people, like Napoleon or Marat, not about himself, unlike Beethoven's works, where Beethoven's emotions seem to bubble beneath the surface.
As a result, Adagio ma non-troppo feels calmer and more relaxing, and imparts a soft, almost tranquil aura on the listener with the occasional moment of tension around the six-minute mark of the seven and a half-minute movement, when long pauses in the music are introduced. In fact, the last minute and a half of the second movement of the String Quartet develops a different theme from the beginning
The originality that this enabled -- or rather the complete state of non-hindrance that this created for the originality that existed in Beethoven already -- is the other major source for Beethoven's influence. That is, the innovation that Beethoven created all but necessitated the composer's inordinate influence on the trajectory of Western music; his sound was at once rooted in the technicalities and tones of the last generation of masters,
One of the most well-known work from this period, the 9th Symphony, represents very well the inner turmoil of the composer and is very characteristic of other work published during this Late period. Many historians also consider this symphony to be the greatest piece of music to be ever written (Cook, 1993). It also happened to be the very first symphony using voices; the chorus can be heard in
Beethoven's style disturbed him, causing Beethoven to seek instruction elsewhere, including that of Mozart's rival Antonio Saleri ("Ludwig van Beethoven," the Columbia Encyclopedia, 2008). For awhile he lived in the aristocrat Prince Lichnowsky's mansion and began to secure fame as a 'dueling' piano player and composer. "Beethoven's rivals always retired, bloodied, from such combat. While he made enemies of many pianists in Vienna, the nobility flocked to hear him....
...a symphony which could present its creator's image of the world," a concept which "lay at the heart of the Romantic revolution" and through which Beethoven "first brought Romanticism into Western music ("Ludwig Van Beethoven," Internet). Of course, it is Beethoven's momentous and magnificent Symphony no. 9, the Choral, which continues to thrill music lovers all over the world. This incredible piece of music stirs up a galaxy of human emotions,
7). It is the only symphony out of the nine for which Beethoven chose the key of a. In form, the symphony is not strikingly different from his previous six symphonies but the way in which the power and the beauty of thoughts have been treated gives it a unique "romantic" air. In the Finale, this 'romance' develops into "a vein of boisterous mirth" that had not been seen
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