morality and the masters

I have a Deep and Abiding Respect for the Masters.

But - Dear Friends and Commenters - this post is not about golf.

rather it is about composers
~~~

I am trying to re-establish the habit of playing the piano so several times a day
when I pass it I sit down and do just that.

Although Bach is always my first choice today I played the slow movement of
the Moonlight Sonata and that was nice.

It made me start thinking about those guys - you know - the Big Four - not to be
mistaken with the Big Ten - and the impact they have had on the World.

The impact their music has made goes without saying - but what kind of role
models are they?

Now as far as Bach goes - in my opinion you can't touch him.  He is
indisputably the Father of  Music and I've never heard anything about him
straying far from home -unless it was for an organ concert.

According to the movie Amadeus, Mozart was - how should I say - a bit of a
rounder.  For some reason when I think of Mozart I sometimes also think of
Thomas Jefferson.  Well - they did both Die Broke.

Chopin was never married although his famous lover was writer George Sand -
a woman - who once said of him:

'He does not really know on which planet he is living and has
no precise notion of life as we others conceive it and live it.'

Hmmm....that may be the only thing I have in common with Chopin.
~~~

But it is a little more complicated with Ludwig van Beethoven.  You see
Beethoven held himself in very high esteem when it comes to morality.

In my big thick book Beethoven by Maynard Solomon - and this is the only
part I've ever read in that book - Solomon tells how the passionate composer
of 32 Piano Sonatas~ Nine Symphonies~One wonderful Violin Concerto - and
much much more - was in love with Antonie Brentano.  But in his book Solomon
says that Beethoven's desire for this woman was 'in conflict not only with his deeply
rooted psychological inabiliby to marry, but also with the prospect of the betrayal
of a friend, Franz Brentano' - Antonie's husband.

 Beethoven's affair with Antonie was never consummated - or so they say.

Are we to believe this? 

I choose to.  And perhaps this is the reason that the music of  Ludwig van Beethoven
is so passionate - so powerful - that we never tire of it.

But then that is why we call them the Masters.
~~~

I should stop here but my love of movies will not let me.

True - it is not fair to judge Mozart through the eyes of  Milos Forman -
but Amadeus is such a great movie and surely F. Murray Abraham was
born to the role of Salieri.

And although for me Ed Harris' defining role was as Jackson Pollock - he did
one heck of a job portraying the Immortal Beloved in Copying Beethoven.

I've never seen a movie about Chopin - but I'm quite sure that one about Bach
might simply be - to put it not so discreetly - downright boring.







still - he must have had a few tricks up his sleeve since he went through two wives
and had twenty children.
~~~



thanks ducky - and happy thanksgiving