Comments on: Threedonia’s Word of the Day

By: Republibot 3.0

Republibot 3.0 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:17:57 +0000

“It is the nature of Truth to hide in garbage.”
—Philip K. Dick

By: Lars Walker

Lars Walker — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:20:19 +0000

This comment belongs further down. I have no idea why it ended up up here.

By: Lars Walker

Lars Walker — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:19:27 +0000

The one that stuck in my mind was where Lucy was reading from a similar book to Schroeder: “This rejection depressed Beethoven deeply, and he was unhappy for a long time.”

To which Schroeder replied, “How can anyone be Beethoven and not be happy?”

A question for the ages.

By: justjack

justjack — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:00:17 +0000

Heh!

By: Floyd

Floyd — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:54:41 +0000

Why did Schroeder call Beethoven a son-of-a-bitch?

By: justjack

justjack — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:50:30 +0000

After watching Floyd’s embedded clip from “Immortal Beloved,” I am reminded of a “Peanuts” strip. I found this following recap in an Amazon viewer reviewof a Beethoven-related video: “The October 27th [1955] strip has Charlie Brown reading to Schroeder how: “At the conclusion of the symphony the audience stood up and cheered. Beethoven, however, because of his deafness could not hear them, and because his back was to the audience could not see them. With Tears in her eyes one of the singers led Beethoven to the edge of the stage where he could see the cheering people.” At this point Schroeder buries his face in his hands and emits a heartbroken “SOB.”

I remember that strip because I had never seen a deliberately non-funny Peanuts strip before, and the fact was that I had the same feeling about it as Schroeder.

Beethoven was a weird character, not the easiest of men to get along with. But his two olympian symphonies, the 5th and the 9th, are hands-down the greatest artistic expressions ever created depicting man’s willingness to stand tall in defiance of the entire Cosmos, and give it the middle finger.

By: justjack

justjack — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:39:06 +0000

I find Leonard Bernstein more pompous than I can bear, but he did do one very cool thing: at the big super-colossal celebratory 1989 performance of Beethoven’s 9th, which was to commemorate the Wall at last coming down and the two halves of Germany finally, finally being reunited, Bernstein substituted the word “freiheit” in place of “freude,” thus changing it from an ode to joy, to an ode to freedom. The moment after the first bass solo, when the entire chorus repeats that word “FREIHEIT!” at full bellow, is pretty damn electrifying (it’s in the first of the three links I’ve listed below).

Also, leave us not forget that the mighty Scherzo of the 9th Symphony was for years the theme song for the Huntley-Brinkley Report news program, which we used to watch in our house instead of that damn Walter Cronkite and his suspicious mustache.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K4635W4roY

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GbesR5AEM

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIsXmOHo7EA

By: Rufus

Rufus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:49:59 +0000

Thanks for posting this, Floyd. “Sublime” is one of those words I know how to use, but I didn’t really know its definition. Now I know.

By: JohnFN

JohnFN — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:54:21 +0000

I dragged my sick self to Humanities class one evening after a 12-hour shift at work, which consisted mostly of tossing 70-pound boxes in a 30-degree warehouse. Beyond all commonsense I went to class, and my prof just happened to show Immortal Beloved – he rewound the Ode to Joy scene twice. I can’t remember much of the rest of the film, could have been the fever or the NyQuil, but I’ll never forget that scene.

By: Lars Walker

Lars Walker — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:28:44 +0000

It’s all about the sublime. The loss of taste for the sublime is most of what’s wrong with all the arts today, imho.