I had great fun returning for this episode!!! You all are great - even though you made me listen to Für Elise more times than I wanted to!!! 😂 Just kidding...🧡
I find it quite realistic that he has written it as kind of a gift for Elise Barensfeld, not as a love song, but as "here, I wrote something for you to play", I think. He would then maybe have given it to Therese so she could pass it on to Elise Barensfeld, bearing the label "für Elise" as in "this is meant for Elise". Then maybe Therese just sort of forgot about it.
Totally agree with Charlotte. Also, Beethoven wrote this piece when he was really young, there was a paper or research about, and no words about that here, it will add some sense I think.
That struck me too as a very likely scenario. Or perhaps something to cheer her up for some reason. For example, I once wrote a piece for a friend recovering from minor surgery.
I think there some validity to that. The reason that this song is so simple, catchy and almost like a nursery rhyme is because it was probably written for a child.
Fur Elise has always felt very dreamy to me, like walking through some strange dreamscape. Not necessarily melancholy or playful, just sort of otherworldly; and the lack of drama/simple loop/timelessness of the piece enforces that.
I agree. Just because something is simple does not mean it's not important or good. I've always liked this song. Besides thw whimsical feeling, I believe that it's the tension that makes the song. When it slows down and almost pauses at some points before speeding back up into it's normal rhythm leaves you in suspense, like "waiting for the drop" does currently.
Shout out to everyone that joined us for this episode, 3rd grader Ethan Choi and his teacher Emily Spaeth, pianist Sean Chen, and Andre Sims. If you like that original rendition of Für Elise at the end of the episode make sure to watch the full thing over on Andre's channel ruclips.net/video/HZxYT2A102g/видео.html
I appreciate this! Thanks! Coincidentally Für Elise was the first piece I learned on the piano as a kid, outside of my normal improv doodles and daydreaming. I loved the music teacher’s insight in how children might feel around finally being able to play this. I probably felt a bit like that too. I think it’s written for a child though, not a love interest. Had I received this by someone I would’ve felt, “niiice, this is a great little practice piece. I like it.” For a love interest I would’ve thought Beethoven had the ability to evoke grander feelings with the same simple means.
I think it’s incredibly special that the process of learning Für Elise and then learning to move past it has become such a cultural phenomenon and is a shared experience among so many musicians who started their musical journey with piano lessons. I remember when I was a kid being so proud that I’d learned it and just playing it obsessively because of how good it felt to play. I’m sure it had a profound impact on my love for musical performance. Even though I don’t love it anymore the way I used to, I think there’s something about it that fulfills an important role for piano students as they progress.
Totally agree with this take. Tons of Beethoven pieces evoke way bigger and more complex nuanced emotions we can definitely expect of Beethoven in love.
Fur Elise certainly sounds a lot different when played by someone who doesn't like it. . . when you play it a bit faster than normal, with an extremely light touch while dismissing it a emotionless and lightweight, it will seem so. But I have heard Fur Elise also played slightly slower, with a little bit of hesitation on that first set of four notes. There is a lot more emotion there. Instead of allegro capriccio, think allegro non troppo malinconico. The song sounds and "feels" a lot different.
Listen to Lang Lang play it. It's so beautiful the way he expresses it. I don't agree its emotionless. But then, beauty is in the eyes, or in this case, the ears, of the beholder !
I think it’s popular because it has this transformative property, depending on the speed it’s played. Played fast it’s kind of quick, and breezy, almost a little upbeat. Slow it down though, and it gets more melancholic. It’s also a very approachable piece for new classical fans, which is touched on in the video. If you’re going to introduce someone to classical music, it’s going to be an option for you to pick. While it’s not as impressive or as deep as other works, it does a good job at opening the door, and starts people down the path towards more complex pieces of work. It’s catchy, it’s hummable, and sure if you’ve heard it thousands of times you may think it’s overrated. But just imagine someone hearing it for the first time. It can open people to the power of classical music. Look at it this way, if you want to take someone who likes pop music or Hip Hop and introduce them to Heavy Metal.... it’s probably not going to go well if you just throw on some Tool, it’s just too dense if you don’t know the structures it’s built upon. You need to work them up to something like that, start with some foundational stuff. Same for a lot of classical music, it’s dense, it goes all over the place, it’s full of emotion, and can just sound confusing if you’ve only ever heard a nursery rhyme or pop songs. That’s where the importance of Fur Elise is. You listen to it once, and you can get it. Then you hear it again, played a bit differently, and you go “oh, there’s more to this”. Then when you’re hooked on it and ready for another piece, you’re starting looking for things now, changes in tempo, different emotions. It lays the groundwork for greater things to build on it. That’s why it wasn’t considered important when it came out by experts, but when the masses who hadn’t spent their life immersed in “classical” music heard it, and could play it, and transform it, of course it became popular. So overplayed, probably. Overrated, not at all.
I think if we've learned anything about "famous" music, it does not have to be especially profound. It just has to get stuck in your head. It's marketing 101. Like creating a logo, a company motto or a jingle
Indeed so, and in fact the most profound music of all seldom becomes famous outside a small circle of connoisseurs. How many casual classical concertgoers, to say nothing of the general public, can identify the Bach Chaconne or the Beethoven Grosse Fugue? But the Pachelbel Canon's career over the last half century has been as spectacular as that of, well, the 1812 Overture, which also features rounds of cannons. Neither can be accorded high musical value, but like commercial jingles, they are perfectly wrought to become earworms.
I loved that jazzy version of Fur Elise at the end because of how unexpected it twisted and turned the song into something exciting. Like a journey that starts on a path you’ve walked a thousand times before you decide, “You know what… I’mma take a turn here and see where I end up.” That was awesome.
The main melody is pretty fascinating, it sounds like an improvisation or an impromptu but its incredibly catchy and recognizable, people who dislike it proly heard it too much but its without doubt a masterpiece
“Does it really deserve its popularity?” Mmm ok, does it matter? I mean this song reached where it is now by itself, as you mention on the video, the editor took it out but people demanded. I think “importance” is there.
I'm not a fan but I think it certainly deserves its popularity. Many people young and old are happy Fur Elise listeners and piano players. However I agree with Nahre that it does not appear to have the same emotional depth as other work of Beethoven and other great composers. One danger is the people will identify Fur Elise as a highlight of classical music when in fact it could possibly be classified as classic easy listening music.
I think the acid test for something "deserving it's popularity" if it's still popular past the expiration date of when similar things fall out of popularity. There are tons of songs, films and literature that were extremely popular in their time that are relatively unknown a decade or more later. That Fur Elise is recognizable to people and still being played 154 years after it was first published rather proves that it has earned and deserves it's popularity.
Nahre: *is miffed by Für Elise* Me: *is miffed by the Simply Piano ad at the beginning of the video* 😩💀🎹🔥 Yaaaay Nahre is back! And LA looking fly as always! 😏😎✨
Yousician is the best way to learn any instrument Yousician is the best way to learn any instrument Yousician is the best way to learn any instrument *GETOUTOFMYHEAD* *GETOUTOFMYHEAD* *GETOUTOFMYHEAD* *GETOUTOFMYHEAD*
@@VERTXProd I have a mixed thought of these instrument learning apps. I have seen so many people who have used an app such as simply piano, and most of them just play notes and not focus on the dynamics and articulations in their whatever piece they want to learn. These apps such as such as Simply piano makes people casually learn the piano by treating each song or piece they chose like a video game (where they give them stars in the end.) If you check out the simply piano sheet music there aren't any time signatures or any articulations given at all. You have to just strike the notes. Even if yousician or all these instrument learning apps have the tools for you to pick up and play any instrument compared to learning from a teacher, you never get that same experience from a teacher sharing his or her personal experiences learning an instrument. You get to learn so many different opinions on learning instruments with working with teachers. Apps mostly will just give you instructions of how to casually play any instrument.
35 year old pretending to be a child by wearing a SnapBack and literally speaking like Bobby boché from the waterboy : I JUST DOWNLOADED SIMPLY GUITAR AND I ALREADY KNOW THREE CHORDS!
I remember when I played this at school after I finished people were congratulating me on how good my improv skills were because I played the entire piece and most people only knew the opening.
@@sieme-stopmotion me either, its not even good. totally overrated. besides, the song doesn’t transmit any emotions, anything. NOTHING. and that is one of the reasons “fur elise” isn’t good.
I find Fuer Elise useful because I’ve figured out a way to use it to teach non-classical players and listeners how to listen to and approach classical music. Here’s what I do with it: I start by playing a melody with chords consisting of the first note of each measure. So, A over A minor, B over E Major, C over A minor, etc. All the way through the section with a big pause where the octaves ascend followed by what is a sort of slow trill. I play it as monotonously as possible, deliberately. I want to bore my listener. I then take that section and say: OK, now when I play it I’m going to get louder as I go up in pitch, get softer as I go down in pitch, free up the tempo because I’m playing alone, and if I repeat a section I might play it softer for variety. Then I play the same tune exaggerating dynamics and rubato. When I do the E/C Major, D/G Major, C/A minor, B/E major section, I drastically slow down and get way softer. I want the changes dramatic. Now I’ve shown my audience what dynamics does to the music, keeping in mind that most other genres don’t worry about dynamics to the same extent that classical does. Then I tell them that I didn’t really play a complete piece, really sort of a skeleton of one (not a technical term) and that I’m about to put all the notes back but you’ll still hear the melody I just played twice interpreted in the second way at about the same tempo as they just heard it. Now they get the idea that they’re listening for melodies within melodies, another classical thing. The melody I isolated was arbitrary but not completely. Your ear goes for down beats anyway, so on the downbeats look for scalar or arpeggiated patterns. This one is scalar. This works, but only as long as the notes on the downbeats are within the chord. If they’re not, if they’re a bit more dissonant, we’re looking at something else. Fortunately, this being a teaching piece, the very next section has downbeats with dissonances/suspensions. What you do there is emphasize the dissonance, which usually resolves the next note and you play the next note softer because it’s both a relaxation of tension and off the beat. In this section, which starts in F Major, there’s a descending melodic scale which you can approach in two ways and either works: either as a straight descending scale or as a series of downbeat dissonances that resolve on the next note and so the descending scale is comprised of pairs of suspension/resolution. Then we get to the pedal tone section. If you’re a hack or not paying attention, all the notes come out the same loudness and it sounds a little flashy, at least for a beginner. But let’s look at pedal tones. They’re the same note repeated over and over, no melodic variation, no rhythmic variation, and they’re all off the beat, so treat them as the textural embellishment they are and de-emphasize them. What goes against them is an ascending scale. Put a crescendo on that and the passage sounds musical. This whole process takes maybe ten minutes and I’ve taught a whole lot about how to approach classical music. They begin to get the idea as to why there might be a hundred or so recordings of the Pathetique, all using the same notes except for repeats and ornaments on the beat or before it. As a piece of music to listen to, maybe. As a piece of music to teach with, fantastic. And it was written as a teaching piece to our knowledge.
8:08 "I feel like I can breathe very easily during Fur Elise", it seems like the reason you dislike it is exactly the reason I love it so much; listening to it feels like an invitation to breathe for a bit. Much as I agree that Pathetique makes me hold my breath, there's only so long I can do that before I need to breathe again. Also, thank you for making awesome things :)
The biggest irony in this is that Beethoven himself never intended for this piece to reach public ears, and yet this piece is the most recognizable one by Beethoven. The manuscript for Fur Elise was discovered post-mortem?! Bizarre!
Also funny how “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” was Edvard Greig’s least favourite piece of music that he’d written, yet everyone has heard it at least once and it has inspired 2 famous pieces of music that almost everyone has heard 😂
Yeah, there are quite a few examples where the piece was hated or at least looked down upon by the composer and yet it became one of their most popular pieces. Another Beethoven example of that, Moonlight Sonata.
What the piano teacher said was exactly what I felt learning the piece in my 4th grade. Me being typical asian kid taking piano lessons, being able to play Für Elise made my young self felt like I made it. Definitely big boost in the pride and the fun factor of my piano lessons.
My wife really wanted to learn this piece, it has such a wonderful emotional feel to it... so I taught her to play it... the first section of course. She never played piano before, but I knew she had a good sense of rythym and melody... and by the end of 2 weeks of nightly practice, she could play the first section (the one everyone knows) all the way through! Weeks later... she had not been practicing and didn't understand how it was that she couldn't play it well. I told her to calm herself, take a deep breath, reminded her she had played it well before and to just let it flow through her. She played it with great feeling and without mistake. She hasn't played it in years ... bucket list item scratched off I guess! 😎🎹💔🐦
Whether it deserves to be as popular as it is, my favourite thing about overly popular music like is seeing reactions like at 13:46 when someone discovers something new in something they were so familiar with.
I am most likely seeing things that aren't there, but to me, it is a deep, emotional piece, and the unrequitted love theory seems to fit perfectly. Theme A sounds like an attempt to confess, maybe not to them, but to yourself, it is light-hearted and sing-songy while also a bit sad and even pleading. It isn't too deep because... neither is love. Love is simple, primitive. Beneath you. Yet here you are, defeated. Theme B is where you picture your life together, or maybe yours alone after you're over it, putting on a brave face, laughing at yourself and the world, except you're full of it and you know it, and once you're out of breath you're back to where you started. Theme C is doom and gloom, you're not worthy of love, neither is anyone else, and actually there is no love, only war and death. You were a fool but now you see the big picture, you're above it all once again, your chin is high, your resolve is grim. And then you're out of breath again, and we're back to theme A. The piece ends on just the tonic without the third because you're exhausted and out of feelings, you have nothing to say, you're just there. Or maybe Beethoven just casually whipped it up so that the chick across the street can learn to play. Maybe got carried away here and there but she can just skip those parts.
Before I had any ideas about music this was the first music I ever heard consciously and listened to on repeat because of a music box. This is by far my favorite. I had no idea who Beethoven was or who wrote it. But the sound touches my soul.
This video also made me realize Fur Elise was so catchy because the first part is a 'riff' that leads to a sort of 'drop' played by the lower notes. This builds anticipation and is still commonly used on pop songs today. Mostly on the chorus and/or the start of a song. (i.e. Bazzi - Mine "[riff] You so f*ckin' precious when you [drop] smile") p.s. I couldn't find a better song example now but the idea is out there lol
Für Elise was used for commercials for a painkiller brand in Finland for decades (or maybe it still is, I don't really watch tv nowadays). That makes it (or rather the first theme) probably the by far most common only song people know on the piano here. Also Nahre is back, Yay!
Excellent episode. The fact that you try to be sincere (not 100% but nothing will ever be) in showing the two opinions about the song and also that you inspire us to question things without trying to destruct our world view, is rare these days.
I’m not a musician at all, but I love music…just not classical music. My mother used to play classical music to soothe my little sisters crying. And as a child, I visited the Chicago Symphony Orchestra annually. I’m a lover of soul, jazz, r&b, dance, disco, alternative, and pop….and a bit out of techno and house. I just did not enjoy classical, despite its proximity to me. One day, my teen self was in a gift shop and I played a music box…Fur Elise, of course. I was frozen and played it over and over. It was so beautiful. It felt peaceful, slightly happy, and light. It made me feel like I was a small leaf drifting on a warm breeze. So, I get her saying it seemed too easy to breathe. That’s what I love about it. It’s I like instant meditation and mindfulnesses. It moved me then, and still does nearly 30 years later. Very few songs exist where I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it. Fur Elise is special.
we wonder why this track is so good but if you just listen to it you have to realise... he went away and made this piece quite simply "for elise". you know, like nothing at all, picked the absolute perfect chords and melody for it. like you said, it's simple, short and catchy. but it's not just that, it's the beauty in the notes. how does one simply go away and write something so wonderful. i challenge anyone to write anything close just because it's 'simple, short and catchy'. it won't be possible.
It's so simple yet beautiful. Like how the most simple things can be beautiful, like how a simple spoon in your kitchen can be beautiful...I think fur Elise is about learning to appreciate things that we take for granted more. Most people who hate this Beethoven's master piece do so because they mostly heard it being played very poorly by beginner pianists who play it so bad they make it lose its simple way of being so beautiful.
I think the reason it is well like is that it doesn't require too much from the listener. It's catchy, bright, flighty, memorable and can be the gateway to classical music of a more serious bent. A very enjoyable episode guys.
NAHRE!!!!!!!! So good to see you here again! And such a good video, I loved every bit of this! I can of course only give my own opinion, but "over rated" is kind of...hmm, it's not a very useful term sometimes. Not to me anyway, because what people enjoy can really surprise me and fascinate me, and sometimes it's the "bad" stuff that brings the most fascination! There are plenty of my friends who look at me funny because I am on a bit of a binge for a specific K-pop group; but I don't mind if they think this music is "not important!" I am having fun, and that's the importance of it to me at this moment. With Fur Elise - as you said, I've heard it so much, it's saturated into my cultural self. I find that the appeal for me is the comfort of familiarity - and I could indeed listen to this piece on repeat for a good long while, probably while studying. It's soothing, familiar enough to not distract, I can hum with it and not lose my train of thought. And I can remember at least that A theme well enough to sit around humming it and improvising around that so-simple melody. It doesn't have tension, you are very right...but I feel like there are times (especially these days) when people really, really seek music that doesn't have such tension. Sometimes, you just want to kind of float, you know? And I think maybe that's the biggest factor in why it's become so popular and so cemented into Western musical ideas. It's accessible, and it holds something quiet inside, something that doesn't feel urgent or tragic; it's easy and pleasant; it is music that makes no demands on the performer or the listener. I think that for us in these last hundred years or so, finding some few things that DON'T demand much of us has become a way of coping with a world whose demands are now incessant. This song doesn't bring to mind any specific place or time, it doesn't "do" anything, it just - IS. And for some folks, that's not enough, and that's perfectly valid of course! But really, when I listen to this piece? I'm looking for a way to let my mind just BE.
Thanks for the great video! I wonder if part of Fur Elise's modern appeal is because its melody opens with the harmonic minor, trilling between the octave and major 7th right out of the gate. Those notes imply a V/vi to vi harmonic movement so common to our modern ears. Thanks again!
Nobody other than classical musicians hate on it. Everyone else loves it. The guest in the video who said it makes beginners feel they are playing something great, rather than an exercise no one will remember, is right on.
I always liked Fur Elise but I hadn't thought about it before, like this video prompted me to. Now it occurred to me that I think it represents the comforting, the dreamy, and the disturbing parts of being in love. So.. the perfect love song - and as you said.. it's pleasant and memorable.
Excellent video! It can appeal to the young and old as well as persons raised on classical music and the novice listener. I really enjoyed this, thanks for posting!
I read through many of the comments to see what people have posted. Yes, personally I do wish the final "e" were pronounced, but then again I'm not a big stickler with regard to how words are pronounced when borrowed from other languages. I'd like to add that some of the little piano sonatinas by Clementi rank up there with Fuer Elise by being frequently played. There was a New York Times article about this little piece, and I found a recording of Valentina Lisitsa playing it. It's a great bagatelle and deserves to be recaptured by professional pianists and played correctly When Lisitsa played it, a giggle went through the audience. She performed it during an encore; the audience wasn't expecting that. Then the audience quieted down and listened. I suspect for many, it was like hearing it for the first time.
I heard it first time in Wolfenstain: Return to Castle Wolfenstain. That old 3d remake. I used to replay it a lot. Thus hearing it a lot as a child. From that it has became one of my favorites. Kinda fits in it place. A remote village in the mountains, around 10-11 pm, silence. Enemy is unsuspecting of you presence.
Oh c'mon...don't make it complicated...popular because it's similar to a pop song? There weren't pop songs when it was first published and people loved it...and the beginning is not complicated at all...it's popular because it has a beautiful melody, memorable, and sounds enchanting...Alfred Brendel has the most beautiful rendition of Fur Elise...it's a relatively easy piece to learn for a pianist, but very difficult to play well...many pianists just hit the notes too hard at the beginning or they play the notes like a robot lacking the touch.
I can relate to how a popular song as Fur Elise can be disliked. When the song is new to someone, they may like and enjoy listening to or playing it. However, over time musical tastes can change. For example, I really like the band, Dire Straits. When I first heard of them, two of their songs dominated the radio airwaves. Money for nothing and Sultans of Swing. Decades later, I don't listen to those song anymore. The albums these two song are on have really great songs that you almost never hear on the radio. So, I gravitate towards them. It also explains why many bands get tired of playing their own songs. If you go on tour and play the same songs several times in a day, over the course of some 200 show dates, it would get insanely boring! I think variety can add some levity to one's music career. 😁
Something which is perhaps underestimated is the social impact of the early stand up video games, found in arcades in the 1980s. At least one of these (Galaxians, or its sequel, Galaga/Zalaga) used Fur Elise as background music to the start of challenges. I never played it, but I've been told Super Mario did too, which was a huge video game back then. Galaga also featured in War Games, which was a very popular computer-causes-thermonuclear-war film in the early 80s. So there's a generation of 40-55 year olds now who are probably familiar with it from that, even if it's not at a conscious level.
This is why I'm careful about becoming overly obsessed of my new passions. You risk getting so deep into the nuance that you begin to seek complexity as an inherentl validating factor of quality as opposed to just a feature. You become snobbish and pretentious and elitist. Which no one likes other than others who are the same way. At that point you tend to only be able to enjoy and appreciate the obscure and complex and simplicity becomes mundane and robbed of all its potential beauty. I did this with hip hop and began to do so with Jazz and film. However I stepped back and just enjoy now. I like what I like. I miss pouring through credits and liner notes and the digging deeper and more complex and I still do that from time to time but I just enjoy now.
It's magick music for children. It was magick for me as a young piano student. And if you hear it as a child it retains that magickal quality eternally. :)
I like that the video I saw before this, was Nahre teaching her mom how to play piano and in a given moment, her mom played the melody for Fur Elise and Nahre said "Please don't play that. I hate that piece". And now, the very next video I see is Nahre exploring why that piece is so popular. Indeed, the reason has always been a combination of 1) The importance that our culture has given to Beethoven, and 2) Just the fact that the piece is so easy to digest for people who have little to no musical knowledge. Of course, the way most people play it, is even more superficial than the piece originally should be played. Most people play it like a pop song, because to most people, it is a pop song (Which is discussed here as well, in terms of the form. But also, the very sound of the A section) I wouldn't be amazed if the piece had inspired a lot of pop-new age piano music like Richard Clayderman and Yanni. It goes well with that sort of emotional-flat-even-terrain, commercial, minimalistic sound that is so characteristic of this type of commercial music. It seems that pop culture itself may have helped to propagate it and program it in people's ears through the media which, as you show, has been using this piece in Tv shows and movies. It's not to be amazed that the piece has become so well known when our media basically did a free campaign for it.
I never gotten tired hearing Für Elise, I love it. Its a very good piece learn on piano. To play it beautiful it takes skill, skill that is needed for other pieces.
Yeah, I think it's just because it's Beethoven, it's a good learning piece, and it's lovely. "Well, it's not *important*!" sounds kinda like snobby elitism. It's very important for a lot of people who've learned to play. Are there better solo piano pieces that tick these boxes (recognizable, listenable on its own, intermediate difficulty)? Maybe? But fur whatever reason, this is what we have.
The majority of Central European folk and medieval music was based on the i - v - i (all major) chord progression, and a easy-to-sing melody. Für Elise belongs to that tradition on the first 22/23 bars, then things get interesting ;-)
I have to disagree about Fur Elisa not being profound enough. The progression of the mood of the piece is very evocative. It moves from bittersweet, to light and airy, to bittersweet, to conflict, before finding it's repose in the bittersweet again. For me it evokes the idea of life viewed backward from the perspective of age. It begins sensation of memory, many good, but all in the past. It moves to focus on the joy of youth; the tripping and dancing sensation of love, and lets you live there for a moment before pulling you back to the moment where such things have passed. You look back at the difficulties of your middle years, the cares of money and child rearing, loss, death, sudden lonliness; before once again finding it's repose in the bittersweet acceptance of a life lived. I have felt this way about it since I was nineteen. That is what it evokes for me. Obviously I have no idea what was in big B's head when he wrote it. I do know however, that the chord progression and tonal progession is always on purpose with him. All of beethoven's music contains these enherent evocative metaphors. And, to my mind, this is one of the best examples. So I chaff to hear "it's not profound enough". I don't care that it probably took him about ten minutes to write it.
I just remembered Nahre Sol's latest video with her mom, who tried to play Fur Elise, when she was supposed to teach her a (new) piece that they were supposed to play together. I recall Nahre commented that she didn't like Fur Elise. XD
Everyone knows Für Elise in Brazil because it's the theme song of the trucks that go around the neighborhoods, selling stove-gas canisters (yeah, we often get the natural gas that power our stovetops from replaceable canisters, not from always from piping). They have several possible theme songs, and Für Elise is one of them.
Melody is simple but it resembles repeated efforts to start a fire from kindling. Then there is the dream part that portrays how amazing that would be if this fire just started. Then we go back to trying to start fire. Then we reach the bridge where dark thoughts show up as chromatic harmonies that end up with a shriek. Then we go back to trying to kindle a fire. Melody being simple has a function it tells a story.
I think there’s a tendency for people who care the most about any given subject, there can be a tendency to value the details over the whole picture. I generally disagree with Nahre on the idea that a melody’s catchiness isn’t a merit. My thinking is that the study of music is pursuit of communication that transcends words. That can both mean expressing what words(or words alone) cannot but it can also mean expressing something in a way that makes it more universally relatable. I think appreciation for the simplicity and relatability of music outside of the classical canon is why romantic composers like Chopin and Liszt have stood the test of time so well. Certainly the virtuosity displayed in their pieces has something to do with it but I think the sensibilities that inform the context of them is why they are so popular outside of the realm of classical. Pieces like Debussy’s Claire de Lune, Schubert’s Standchen and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata speak to the significance of memorability. Music that you remember hearing but can’t articulate what you heard leaves an impression but fails as true expression. As someone who is a classical music fan but not a classical musician, I think my opinion is probably somewhat predictable but as a gigging cover musician who started performing almost solely my own music, the genuine connection that people have with songs that I had strongly disliked definitely softened my opinion on what “good” music is. At this point in my musical journey I have a very strong competency in ear training, theory and analysis. After about 20 years of enthusiastic and eclectic pursuit of deepening my own understanding, the biggest revelation that both improved my understanding and love for music was accepting that if millions of people have a real love for a piece of music, hating it for being simple or “bad” just got in the way of me expanding my love and understanding for all music. I think one of the biggest shames right now is that so many of the people who spend their entire lives dedicated to the rigorous study and highest level of performance of music seem to ignore or look down on the vast majority of what is being created and listened to in the world. Because of that, modern academic music has nearly zero connection to the culture at large despite having a core repertoire revolving around composers who were often celebrities in their own time. It’s hard to see how a future Beethoven, Chopin or Mozart will ever have anywhere near the relevance or impact that their forebears without being peerlessly transcendent or being attached to multiple successful movies. As a parting thought, despite all the praise and acclaim Hans Zimmer receives, I don’t know of a single melody he’s written that I’d call more interesting than Fur Elise’s.
I love this song because of my grandmother who taught it to me. Listening or playing it on her piano was a magical experience. So yes, I think it's nice. I don't think it's a complex or super deep piece though. But it is important. At least for me
In Pakistan, people who sell popcorn uses für elise. When I was a kid, I really loved this music and this made me buy the popcorn so I can just listen to this masterpiece ❤😊
I took piano lessons for 10 years and was never introduced to this piece during that time. I was probably familiar with it because of its use in popular culture, but didn't know what it was.
I can imagine Nahre saying: "What? Fur Elise? I came back for THIS? Right." No matter what it takes, it's great to see you again! And LA (Arthur?), there at the end, I swear I could have turned off the sound, and read the song from your expressions. I love watching you listen to (and make) music! It truly is a form of silent narration that speaks to me. BTW Nahre, I completely agree with every one of your criticisms. Then I hear Fur Elise again, and I'm captured by how open and accessible it is, the sweet transitions between sections, its familiarity like a warm blanket. So, yeah, I agree, but I'm keeping it anyway!
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
Nahre is back? Awesome!
Yeah like say some about it uh.
Howdy!!!
7:21 -- and her cute little puppy!!!
@@NahreSol hello!
I had great fun returning for this episode!!! You all are great - even though you made me listen to Für Elise more times than I wanted to!!! 😂 Just kidding...🧡
Welcome back!
Nice to see you here again! Should've recruited your Mom to play that!
I never thought you would be coming back...so happy to see you back with L.A.. You guys are the dynamic duo!
Going a bit deeper, might your dis - dain/pleasure/like /missal of Für Elise be partially due to overexposure to it?
You, lighting up to Sims' rendition, is a Big Mood.
"Why do people only remember a piece called *Für Elise* and not my pieces?" - some composer writing Sonata No.523 or Prelude No. 264
BIG FAX
Too true.
like literally, those numbers, 523 and 264
That’s a practice I’ve never gotten behind
@@tfninjadoom who
Ah this explains why Nahre was tired of this piece in her last video :)
Hahaha this video was Nahre's idea awhile ago so she's been tired of it. But yes even more so now.
I find it quite realistic that he has written it as kind of a gift for Elise Barensfeld, not as a love song, but as "here, I wrote something for you to play", I think. He would then maybe have given it to Therese so she could pass it on to Elise Barensfeld, bearing the label "für Elise" as in "this is meant for Elise". Then maybe Therese just sort of forgot about it.
i love this theory
Totally agree with Charlotte. Also, Beethoven wrote this piece when he was really young, there was a paper or research about, and no words about that here, it will add some sense I think.
That struck me too as a very likely scenario. Or perhaps something to cheer her up for some reason. For example, I once wrote a piece for a friend recovering from minor surgery.
I think there some validity to that. The reason that this song is so simple, catchy and almost like a nursery rhyme is because it was probably written for a child.
My problem with your theory (and this video) is For Elise IS beautiful...and people don't write beautiful melodies as a gift to their friends.
Fur Elise has always felt very dreamy to me, like walking through some strange dreamscape. Not necessarily melancholy or playful, just sort of otherworldly; and the lack of drama/simple loop/timelessness of the piece enforces that.
I agree. Just because something is simple does not mean it's not important or good. I've always liked this song. Besides thw whimsical feeling, I believe that it's the tension that makes the song. When it slows down and almost pauses at some points before speeding back up into it's normal rhythm leaves you in suspense, like "waiting for the drop" does currently.
I imagine a ballerina in pink toutou dancing.
Thanks so much for having me on this show! I vote to crowdfund a garbage truck from Taiwan and park it outside of Nahre's place (sorry neighbors)!
Shout out to everyone that joined us for this episode, 3rd grader Ethan Choi and his teacher Emily Spaeth, pianist Sean Chen, and Andre Sims. If you like that original rendition of Für Elise at the end of the episode make sure to watch the full thing over on Andre's channel ruclips.net/video/HZxYT2A102g/видео.html
My eyes are getting worse!! Haha... firstly I read "Shout out" as "Shut up" 😂🤣🤡🤣 why this happens to me only?!?!?!? 😨😂🤯
That's a different version, I like the much more jazzy and tense cover showcased here!
Sean Chen should be linked: ruclips.net/user/SeanChenPianovideos
Some pros playing it: ruclips.net/p/PLJ7UlCvhaY5CNz--N6RS_5_-JzHG5_3G3
Ethan Choi seemed like the cute little kid Russel from UP to me
Dudeee! That jazzy rendition at the end was amaazing! Love it!
The stank face approves!
Yeah dude
it was incredible
In Brazil, Für Elise is historically linked to cooking gas delivery trucks -- it's famous as "musica do gás" here.
I appreciate this! Thanks! Coincidentally Für Elise was the first piece I learned on the piano as a kid, outside of my normal improv doodles and daydreaming. I loved the music teacher’s insight in how children might feel around finally being able to play this. I probably felt a bit like that too. I think it’s written for a child though, not a love interest. Had I received this by someone I would’ve felt, “niiice, this is a great little practice piece. I like it.” For a love interest I would’ve thought Beethoven had the ability to evoke grander feelings with the same simple means.
I think it’s incredibly special that the process of learning Für Elise and then learning to move past it has become such a cultural phenomenon and is a shared experience among so many musicians who started their musical journey with piano lessons. I remember when I was a kid being so proud that I’d learned it and just playing it obsessively because of how good it felt to play. I’m sure it had a profound impact on my love for musical performance. Even though I don’t love it anymore the way I used to, I think there’s something about it that fulfills an important role for piano students as they progress.
Totally agree with this take. Tons of Beethoven pieces evoke way bigger and more complex nuanced emotions we can definitely expect of Beethoven in love.
Fur Elise certainly sounds a lot different when played by someone who doesn't like it. . . when you play it a bit faster than normal, with an extremely light touch while dismissing it a emotionless and lightweight, it will seem so. But I have heard Fur Elise also played slightly slower, with a little bit of hesitation on that first set of four notes. There is a lot more emotion there. Instead of allegro capriccio, think allegro non troppo malinconico. The song sounds and "feels" a lot different.
Exactly. Everyone's playing it fast like it's some pop song beat or something.
Listen to Lang Lang play it. It's so beautiful the way he expresses it. I don't agree its emotionless. But then, beauty is in the eyes, or in this case, the ears, of the beholder !
7:28 But the dog loves the song, and that's all that matters ❤
I think it’s popular because it has this transformative property, depending on the speed it’s played. Played fast it’s kind of quick, and breezy, almost a little upbeat. Slow it down though, and it gets more melancholic. It’s also a very approachable piece for new classical fans, which is touched on in the video. If you’re going to introduce someone to classical music, it’s going to be an option for you to pick. While it’s not as impressive or as deep as other works, it does a good job at opening the door, and starts people down the path towards more complex pieces of work. It’s catchy, it’s hummable, and sure if you’ve heard it thousands of times you may think it’s overrated. But just imagine someone hearing it for the first time. It can open people to the power of classical music.
Look at it this way, if you want to take someone who likes pop music or Hip Hop and introduce them to Heavy Metal.... it’s probably not going to go well if you just throw on some Tool, it’s just too dense if you don’t know the structures it’s built upon. You need to work them up to something like that, start with some foundational stuff. Same for a lot of classical music, it’s dense, it goes all over the place, it’s full of emotion, and can just sound confusing if you’ve only ever heard a nursery rhyme or pop songs. That’s where the importance of Fur Elise is. You listen to it once, and you can get it. Then you hear it again, played a bit differently, and you go “oh, there’s more to this”. Then when you’re hooked on it and ready for another piece, you’re starting looking for things now, changes in tempo, different emotions. It lays the groundwork for greater things to build on it. That’s why it wasn’t considered important when it came out by experts, but when the masses who hadn’t spent their life immersed in “classical” music heard it, and could play it, and transform it, of course it became popular.
So overplayed, probably. Overrated, not at all.
I think if we've learned anything about "famous" music, it does not have to be especially profound. It just has to get stuck in your head.
It's marketing 101. Like creating a logo, a company motto or a jingle
"Fur Elise is corporate background music, change my mind"
Indeed so, and in fact the most profound music of all seldom becomes famous outside a small circle of connoisseurs. How many casual classical concertgoers, to say nothing of the general public, can identify the Bach Chaconne or the Beethoven Grosse Fugue? But the Pachelbel Canon's career over the last half century has been as spectacular as that of, well, the 1812 Overture, which also features rounds of cannons. Neither can be accorded high musical value, but like commercial jingles, they are perfectly wrought to become earworms.
@@ar.ninetysix *Tantacrul rage is increasing*
doofenshmirtz evil incorporated!!!!
I loved that jazzy version of Fur Elise at the end because of how unexpected it twisted and turned the song into something exciting. Like a journey that starts on a path you’ve walked a thousand times before you decide, “You know what… I’mma take a turn here and see where I end up.” That was awesome.
The main melody is pretty fascinating, it sounds like an improvisation or an impromptu but its incredibly catchy and recognizable, people who dislike it proly heard it too much but its without doubt a masterpiece
Welcome back Nahre! Good to see you pop in.
🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️
“Does it really deserve its popularity?” Mmm ok, does it matter? I mean this song reached where it is now by itself, as you mention on the video, the editor took it out but people demanded. I think “importance” is there.
I'm not a fan but I think it certainly deserves its popularity. Many people young and old are happy Fur Elise listeners and piano players. However I agree with Nahre that it does not appear to have the same emotional depth as other work of Beethoven and other great composers. One danger is the people will identify Fur Elise as a highlight of classical music when in fact it could possibly be classified as classic easy listening music.
I think the acid test for something "deserving it's popularity" if it's still popular past the expiration date of when similar things fall out of popularity. There are tons of songs, films and literature that were extremely popular in their time that are relatively unknown a decade or more later. That Fur Elise is recognizable to people and still being played 154 years after it was first published rather proves that it has earned and deserves it's popularity.
Nahre: *is miffed by Für Elise*
Me: *is miffed by the Simply Piano ad at the beginning of the video* 😩💀🎹🔥
Yaaaay Nahre is back! And LA looking fly as always! 😏😎✨
Yousician is the best way to learn any instrument Yousician is the best way to learn any instrument Yousician is the best way to learn any instrument *GETOUTOFMYHEAD* *GETOUTOFMYHEAD* *GETOUTOFMYHEAD*
*GETOUTOFMYHEAD*
@@VERTXProd I have a mixed thought of these instrument learning apps. I have seen so many people who have used an app such as simply piano, and most of them just play notes and not focus on the dynamics and articulations in their whatever piece they want to learn. These apps such as such as Simply piano makes people casually learn the piano by treating each song or piece they chose like a video game (where they give them stars in the end.) If you check out the simply piano sheet music there aren't any time signatures or any articulations given at all. You have to just strike the notes. Even if yousician or all these instrument learning apps have the tools for you to pick up and play any instrument compared to learning from a teacher, you never get that same experience from a teacher sharing his or her personal experiences learning an instrument. You get to learn so many different opinions on learning instruments with working with teachers. Apps mostly will just give you instructions of how to casually play any instrument.
@@yashbspianoandcompositions1042 true, especially dynamics... cause that’s how expression is conveyed and takes emotions to the next level!!
@@VERTXProd And another thing is their advertising. They just trigger you down based on how the cringe level is another level.
35 year old pretending to be a child by wearing a SnapBack and literally speaking like Bobby boché from the waterboy : I JUST DOWNLOADED SIMPLY GUITAR AND I ALREADY KNOW THREE CHORDS!
I remember when I played this at school after I finished people were congratulating me on how good my improv skills were because I played the entire piece and most people only knew the opening.
I started liking the piece after I heard the whole thing. I used to think It was kind of boring before that.
it's not overrated
it's amazing
In my opinion
ITS VERY OVERRATED i dont even like it
@@sieme-stopmotion not every body hates it
I love für elise
@@vishnuraghav1390 okay but i also said “IN MY OPINION”
Cuz i dont want to hurt anyone…like emotionaly
The term overrated for music makes no sense. The word has a lost definition.
@@sieme-stopmotion me either, its not even good. totally overrated. besides, the song doesn’t transmit any emotions, anything. NOTHING. and that is one of the reasons “fur elise” isn’t good.
I find Fuer Elise useful because I’ve figured out a way to use it to teach non-classical players and listeners how to listen to and approach classical music. Here’s what I do with it:
I start by playing a melody with chords consisting of the first note of each measure. So, A over A minor, B over E Major, C over A minor, etc. All the way through the section with a big pause where the octaves ascend followed by what is a sort of slow trill. I play it as monotonously as possible, deliberately. I want to bore my listener.
I then take that section and say: OK, now when I play it I’m going to get louder as I go up in pitch, get softer as I go down in pitch, free up the tempo because I’m playing alone, and if I repeat a section I might play it softer for variety. Then I play the same tune exaggerating dynamics and rubato. When I do the E/C Major, D/G Major, C/A minor, B/E major section, I drastically slow down and get way softer. I want the changes dramatic. Now I’ve shown my audience what dynamics does to the music, keeping in mind that most other genres don’t worry about dynamics to the same extent that classical does.
Then I tell them that I didn’t really play a complete piece, really sort of a skeleton of one (not a technical term) and that I’m about to put all the notes back but you’ll still hear the melody I just played twice interpreted in the second way at about the same tempo as they just heard it. Now they get the idea that they’re listening for melodies within melodies, another classical thing.
The melody I isolated was arbitrary but not completely. Your ear goes for down beats anyway, so on the downbeats look for scalar or arpeggiated patterns. This one is scalar. This works, but only as long as the notes on the downbeats are within the chord. If they’re not, if they’re a bit more dissonant, we’re looking at something else. Fortunately, this being a teaching piece, the very next section has downbeats with dissonances/suspensions. What you do there is emphasize the dissonance, which usually resolves the next note and you play the next note softer because it’s both a relaxation of tension and off the beat. In this section, which starts in F Major, there’s a descending melodic scale which you can approach in two ways and either works: either as a straight descending scale or as a series of downbeat dissonances that resolve on the next note and so the descending scale is comprised of pairs of suspension/resolution.
Then we get to the pedal tone section. If you’re a hack or not paying attention, all the notes come out the same loudness and it sounds a little flashy, at least for a beginner. But let’s look at pedal tones. They’re the same note repeated over and over, no melodic variation, no rhythmic variation, and they’re all off the beat, so treat them as the textural embellishment they are and de-emphasize them. What goes against them is an ascending scale. Put a crescendo on that and the passage sounds musical.
This whole process takes maybe ten minutes and I’ve taught a whole lot about how to approach classical music. They begin to get the idea as to why there might be a hundred or so recordings of the Pathetique, all using the same notes except for repeats and ornaments on the beat or before it.
As a piece of music to listen to, maybe. As a piece of music to teach with, fantastic. And it was written as a teaching piece to our knowledge.
8:08 "I feel like I can breathe very easily during Fur Elise", it seems like the reason you dislike it is exactly the reason I love it so much; listening to it feels like an invitation to breathe for a bit. Much as I agree that Pathetique makes me hold my breath, there's only so long I can do that before I need to breathe again.
Also, thank you for making awesome things :)
The biggest irony in this is that Beethoven himself never intended for this piece to reach public ears, and yet this piece is the most recognizable one by Beethoven. The manuscript for Fur Elise was discovered post-mortem?! Bizarre!
Also funny how “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” was Edvard Greig’s least favourite piece of music that he’d written, yet everyone has heard it at least once and it has inspired 2 famous pieces of music that almost everyone has heard 😂
Yeah, there are quite a few examples where the piece was hated or at least looked down upon by the composer and yet it became one of their most popular pieces. Another Beethoven example of that, Moonlight Sonata.
What the piano teacher said was exactly what I felt learning the piece in my 4th grade. Me being typical asian kid taking piano lessons, being able to play Für Elise made my young self felt like I made it. Definitely big boost in the pride and the fun factor of my piano lessons.
If your school had piano, chances are you've heard this song at least 4521 times.
My wife really wanted to learn this piece, it has such a wonderful emotional feel to it... so I taught her to play it... the first section of course. She never played piano before, but I knew she had a good sense of rythym and melody... and by the end of 2 weeks of nightly practice, she could play the first section (the one everyone knows) all the way through! Weeks later... she had not been practicing and didn't understand how it was that she couldn't play it well. I told her to calm herself, take a deep breath, reminded her she had played it well before and to just let it flow through her. She played it with great feeling and without mistake. She hasn't played it in years ... bucket list item scratched off I guess! 😎🎹💔🐦
Whether it deserves to be as popular as it is, my favourite thing about overly popular music like is seeing reactions like at 13:46 when someone discovers something new in something they were so familiar with.
I am most likely seeing things that aren't there, but to me, it is a deep, emotional piece, and the unrequitted love theory seems to fit perfectly. Theme A sounds like an attempt to confess, maybe not to them, but to yourself, it is light-hearted and sing-songy while also a bit sad and even pleading. It isn't too deep because... neither is love. Love is simple, primitive. Beneath you. Yet here you are, defeated. Theme B is where you picture your life together, or maybe yours alone after you're over it, putting on a brave face, laughing at yourself and the world, except you're full of it and you know it, and once you're out of breath you're back to where you started. Theme C is doom and gloom, you're not worthy of love, neither is anyone else, and actually there is no love, only war and death. You were a fool but now you see the big picture, you're above it all once again, your chin is high, your resolve is grim. And then you're out of breath again, and we're back to theme A. The piece ends on just the tonic without the third because you're exhausted and out of feelings, you have nothing to say, you're just there.
Or maybe Beethoven just casually whipped it up so that the chick across the street can learn to play. Maybe got carried away here and there but she can just skip those parts.
Before I had any ideas about music this was the first music I ever heard consciously and listened to on repeat because of a music box. This is by far my favorite. I had no idea who Beethoven was or who wrote it. But the sound touches my soul.
Nahre is baaaaaack ❤️❤️❤️
This video also made me realize Fur Elise was so catchy because the first part is a 'riff' that leads to a sort of 'drop' played by the lower notes. This builds anticipation and is still commonly used on pop songs today. Mostly on the chorus and/or the start of a song. (i.e. Bazzi - Mine "[riff] You so f*ckin' precious when you [drop] smile")
p.s. I couldn't find a better song example now but the idea is out there lol
Für Elise was used for commercials for a painkiller brand in Finland for decades (or maybe it still is, I don't really watch tv nowadays). That makes it (or rather the first theme) probably the by far most common only song people know on the piano here.
Also Nahre is back, Yay!
Nahre Sol and Arthur Buckner yayyyy one of the best hosts ever for a PBS show
keep it up guys!
It's just a cute little piece, not everything needs to be profound. IMHO.
Yes.
Excellent episode. The fact that you try to be sincere (not 100% but nothing will ever be) in showing the two opinions about the song and also that you inspire us to question things without trying to destruct our world view, is rare these days.
Yes you got it that was exactly our goal
Bro, I need to learn Andre’s version of the song. It’s goes soooo many places, it was a fun time. Great video as usual!
I’m not a musician at all, but I love music…just not classical music. My mother used to play classical music to soothe my little sisters crying. And as a child, I visited the Chicago Symphony Orchestra annually. I’m a lover of soul, jazz, r&b, dance, disco, alternative, and pop….and a bit out of techno and house. I just did not enjoy classical, despite its proximity to me. One day, my teen self was in a gift shop and I played a music box…Fur Elise, of course. I was frozen and played it over and over. It was so beautiful. It felt peaceful, slightly happy, and light. It made me feel like I was a small leaf drifting on a warm breeze. So, I get her saying it seemed too easy to breathe. That’s what I love about it. It’s I like instant meditation and mindfulnesses. It moved me then, and still does nearly 30 years later. Very few songs exist where I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it. Fur Elise is special.
we wonder why this track is so good but if you just listen to it you have to realise... he went away and made this piece quite simply "for elise". you know, like nothing at all, picked the absolute perfect chords and melody for it. like you said, it's simple, short and catchy. but it's not just that, it's the beauty in the notes. how does one simply go away and write something so wonderful. i challenge anyone to write anything close just because it's 'simple, short and catchy'. it won't be possible.
My ears perked up when I heard Igor Levit's name - Would've been cool to see him in the critic's seat. But you're outstanding as always, Nahre!
Was laughing when I saw the title, so happy to see yall make more videos!!!!! Cant wait to see whatever comes next!
I just thought of Sound Field yesterday.
To be honest I remember your channel pretty often.
It's so simple yet beautiful. Like how the most simple things can be beautiful, like how a simple spoon in your kitchen can be beautiful...I think fur Elise is about learning to appreciate things that we take for granted more. Most people who hate this Beethoven's master piece do so because they mostly heard it being played very poorly by beginner pianists who play it so bad they make it lose its simple way of being so beautiful.
I think the reason it is well like is that it doesn't require too much from the listener. It's catchy, bright, flighty, memorable and can be the gateway to classical music of a more serious bent. A very enjoyable episode guys.
NAHRE!!!!!!!! So good to see you here again! And such a good video, I loved every bit of this!
I can of course only give my own opinion, but "over rated" is kind of...hmm, it's not a very useful term sometimes. Not to me anyway, because what people enjoy can really surprise me and fascinate me, and sometimes it's the "bad" stuff that brings the most fascination! There are plenty of my friends who look at me funny because I am on a bit of a binge for a specific K-pop group; but I don't mind if they think this music is "not important!" I am having fun, and that's the importance of it to me at this moment.
With Fur Elise - as you said, I've heard it so much, it's saturated into my cultural self. I find that the appeal for me is the comfort of familiarity - and I could indeed listen to this piece on repeat for a good long while, probably while studying. It's soothing, familiar enough to not distract, I can hum with it and not lose my train of thought. And I can remember at least that A theme well enough to sit around humming it and improvising around that so-simple melody. It doesn't have tension, you are very right...but I feel like there are times (especially these days) when people really, really seek music that doesn't have such tension. Sometimes, you just want to kind of float, you know?
And I think maybe that's the biggest factor in why it's become so popular and so cemented into Western musical ideas. It's accessible, and it holds something quiet inside, something that doesn't feel urgent or tragic; it's easy and pleasant; it is music that makes no demands on the performer or the listener. I think that for us in these last hundred years or so, finding some few things that DON'T demand much of us has become a way of coping with a world whose demands are now incessant.
This song doesn't bring to mind any specific place or time, it doesn't "do" anything, it just - IS. And for some folks, that's not enough, and that's perfectly valid of course! But really, when I listen to this piece? I'm looking for a way to let my mind just BE.
Thanks for the great video! I wonder if part of Fur Elise's modern appeal is because its melody opens with the harmonic minor, trilling between the octave and major 7th right out of the gate. Those notes imply a V/vi to vi harmonic movement so common to our modern ears. Thanks again!
Kudos for mentioning my favorite composer, Johann TacoBell
Glad too see that sound field is back
"You heard this piece at least once"
That's an understatement.....
Nobody other than classical musicians hate on it. Everyone else loves it. The guest in the video who said it makes beginners feel they are playing something great, rather than an exercise no one will remember, is right on.
I always liked Fur Elise but I hadn't thought about it before, like this video prompted me to. Now it occurred to me that I think it represents the comforting, the dreamy, and the disturbing parts of being in love. So.. the perfect love song - and as you said.. it's pleasant and memorable.
Excellent video! It can appeal to the young and old as well as persons raised on classical music and the novice listener. I really enjoyed this, thanks for posting!
I read through many of the comments to see what people have posted. Yes, personally I do wish the final "e" were pronounced, but then again I'm not a big stickler with regard to how words are pronounced when borrowed from other languages. I'd like to add that some of the little piano sonatinas by Clementi rank up there with Fuer Elise by being frequently played. There was a New York Times article about this little piece, and I found a recording of Valentina Lisitsa playing it. It's a great bagatelle and deserves to be recaptured by professional pianists and played correctly When Lisitsa played it, a giggle went through the audience. She performed it during an encore; the audience wasn't expecting that. Then the audience quieted down and listened. I suspect for many, it was like hearing it for the first time.
I just found your channel...amazing work !
Excellente vidéo, bien documentée, différentes opinions, montage de fou !! Bravo !
Wow, I absolutely love this series. Just found it today and am hooked.
The beauty of simplicity, I love the song.
LA is great, but Nahre brings a different dynamic and a broader wealth of music knowledge. Y'all need to bring her back permanently.
A fascinating look at an icon of music. Good work.
Thanks from Beethoven's longtime home Vienna, Scott
"No! Für Elise is definitely NOT overrated!!" Thumbs up if you agree 🧐
I want the truth ! 🤣
NAHRE!!!!!! Welcome back!!! Great stuff as always :) Keep up the great work!
I heard it first time in Wolfenstain: Return to Castle Wolfenstain. That old 3d remake. I used to replay it a lot. Thus hearing it a lot as a child. From that it has became one of my favorites.
Kinda fits in it place. A remote village in the mountains, around 10-11 pm, silence. Enemy is unsuspecting of you presence.
Fur Elise is a lead part in Rosemary's Baby too
This was a super fun deep dive into Für Elise!
13:47 so fun!
I only learned fur Elise last year and I have been playing piano for about 14 years. I love it!
ANDRE SIMS IS A MONSTER!! Can we get him to do the whole rendition?? 🎹🔥🔥🔥🔥⚡️
#andresimspiano #beast
You can check it out over at his channel 💕💕 @andre sims
Oh c'mon...don't make it complicated...popular because it's similar to a pop song? There weren't pop songs when it was first published and people loved it...and the beginning is not complicated at all...it's popular because it has a beautiful melody, memorable, and sounds enchanting...Alfred Brendel has the most beautiful rendition of Fur Elise...it's a relatively easy piece to learn for a pianist, but very difficult to play well...many pianists just hit the notes too hard at the beginning or they play the notes like a robot lacking the touch.
I can relate to how a popular song as Fur Elise can be disliked. When the song is new to someone, they may like and enjoy listening to or playing it. However, over time musical tastes can change.
For example, I really like the band, Dire Straits. When I first heard of them, two of their songs dominated the radio airwaves. Money for nothing and Sultans of Swing. Decades later, I don't listen to those song anymore. The albums these two song are on have really great songs that you almost never hear on the radio. So, I gravitate towards them.
It also explains why many bands get tired of playing their own songs. If you go on tour and play the same songs several times in a day, over the course of some 200 show dates, it would get insanely boring! I think variety can add some levity to one's music career. 😁
Something which is perhaps underestimated is the social impact of the early stand up video games, found in arcades in the 1980s. At least one of these (Galaxians, or its sequel, Galaga/Zalaga) used Fur Elise as background music to the start of challenges. I never played it, but I've been told Super Mario did too, which was a huge video game back then.
Galaga also featured in War Games, which was a very popular computer-causes-thermonuclear-war film in the early 80s. So there's a generation of 40-55 year olds now who are probably familiar with it from that, even if it's not at a conscious level.
This is why I'm careful about becoming overly obsessed of my new passions. You risk getting so deep into the nuance that you begin to seek complexity as an inherentl validating factor of quality as opposed to just a feature. You become snobbish and pretentious and elitist. Which no one likes other than others who are the same way. At that point you tend to only be able to enjoy and appreciate the obscure and complex and simplicity becomes mundane and robbed of all its potential beauty. I did this with hip hop and began to do so with Jazz and film. However I stepped back and just enjoy now. I like what I like. I miss pouring through credits and liner notes and the digging deeper and more complex and I still do that from time to time but I just enjoy now.
It's magick music for children. It was magick for me as a young piano student. And if you hear it as a child it retains that magickal quality eternally. :)
I like that the video I saw before this, was Nahre teaching her mom how to play piano and in a given moment, her mom played the melody for Fur Elise and Nahre said "Please don't play that. I hate that piece". And now, the very next video I see is Nahre exploring why that piece is so popular.
Indeed, the reason has always been a combination of 1) The importance that our culture has given to Beethoven, and 2) Just the fact that the piece is so easy to digest for people who have little to no musical knowledge. Of course, the way most people play it, is even more superficial than the piece originally should be played. Most people play it like a pop song, because to most people, it is a pop song (Which is discussed here as well, in terms of the form. But also, the very sound of the A section) I wouldn't be amazed if the piece had inspired a lot of pop-new age piano music like Richard Clayderman and Yanni. It goes well with that sort of emotional-flat-even-terrain, commercial, minimalistic sound that is so characteristic of this type of commercial music.
It seems that pop culture itself may have helped to propagate it and program it in people's ears through the media which, as you show, has been using this piece in Tv shows and movies. It's not to be amazed that the piece has become so well known when our media basically did a free campaign for it.
Nahre’s back! And she brought a dog!
André Sims did not have to smash on that song like that 🤧🔥 This was a very engaging!! I enjoyed everything about this video!
#ASPMUZIQ
I never gotten tired hearing Für Elise, I love it. Its a very good piece learn on piano. To play it beautiful it takes skill, skill that is needed for other pieces.
Yeah, I think it's just because it's Beethoven, it's a good learning piece, and it's lovely. "Well, it's not *important*!" sounds kinda like snobby elitism. It's very important for a lot of people who've learned to play. Are there better solo piano pieces that tick these boxes (recognizable, listenable on its own, intermediate difficulty)? Maybe? But fur whatever reason, this is what we have.
The majority of Central European folk and medieval music was based on the i - v - i (all major) chord progression, and a easy-to-sing melody. Für Elise belongs to that tradition on the first 22/23 bars, then things get interesting ;-)
It's so obvious but not mentioned in the vid which surprised me
Brilliant, brilliant video. Thank you.
Aaa omg that cover was amazing!!! Reminds me a bit of The Sims Soundtrack, it has very similar jazzy-classical piano songs!!
That re-chorded Fur Elise was awesome.
The hybrid chords on this rendition omg the suspension
Beautiful, accessible and gracious. Pure Beethoven
Love the work you guys do, I always learn a lot! As for Für Elise, it would be interesting to ask Igor Levit why he plays it as an encore.
I have to disagree about Fur Elisa not being profound enough. The progression of the mood of the piece is very evocative. It moves from bittersweet, to light and airy, to bittersweet, to conflict, before finding it's repose in the bittersweet again.
For me it evokes the idea of life viewed backward from the perspective of age. It begins sensation of memory, many good, but all in the past. It moves to focus on the joy of youth; the tripping and dancing sensation of love, and lets you live there for a moment before pulling you back to the moment where such things have passed. You look back at the difficulties of your middle years, the cares of money and child rearing, loss, death, sudden lonliness; before once again finding it's repose in the bittersweet acceptance of a life lived.
I have felt this way about it since I was nineteen. That is what it evokes for me. Obviously I have no idea what was in big B's head when he wrote it. I do know however, that the chord progression and tonal progession is always on purpose with him. All of beethoven's music contains these enherent evocative metaphors. And, to my mind, this is one of the best examples. So I chaff to hear "it's not profound enough". I don't care that it probably took him about ten minutes to write it.
I just remembered Nahre Sol's latest video with her mom, who tried to play Fur Elise, when she was supposed to teach her a (new) piece that they were supposed to play together. I recall Nahre commented that she didn't like Fur Elise. XD
Everyone knows Für Elise in Brazil because it's the theme song of the trucks that go around the neighborhoods, selling stove-gas canisters (yeah, we often get the natural gas that power our stovetops from replaceable canisters, not from always from piping). They have several possible theme songs, and Für Elise is one of them.
Melody is simple but it resembles repeated efforts to start a fire from kindling. Then there is the dream part that portrays how amazing that would be if this fire just started. Then we go back to trying to start fire. Then we reach the bridge where dark thoughts show up as chromatic harmonies that end up with a shriek. Then we go back to trying to kindle a fire. Melody being simple has a function it tells a story.
I think there’s a tendency for people who care the most about any given subject, there can be a tendency to value the details over the whole picture. I generally disagree with Nahre on the idea that a melody’s catchiness isn’t a merit. My thinking is that the study of music is pursuit of communication that transcends words. That can both mean expressing what words(or words alone) cannot but it can also mean expressing something in a way that makes it more universally relatable. I think appreciation for the simplicity and relatability of music outside of the classical canon is why romantic composers like Chopin and Liszt have stood the test of time so well. Certainly the virtuosity displayed in their pieces has something to do with it but I think the sensibilities that inform the context of them is why they are so popular outside of the realm of classical. Pieces like Debussy’s Claire de Lune, Schubert’s Standchen and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata speak to the significance of memorability. Music that you remember hearing but can’t articulate what you heard leaves an impression but fails as true expression.
As someone who is a classical music fan but not a classical musician, I think my opinion is probably somewhat predictable but as a gigging cover musician who started performing almost solely my own music, the genuine connection that people have with songs that I had strongly disliked definitely softened my opinion on what “good” music is.
At this point in my musical journey I have a very strong competency in ear training, theory and analysis. After about 20 years of enthusiastic and eclectic pursuit of deepening my own understanding, the biggest revelation that both improved my understanding and love for music was accepting that if millions of people have a real love for a piece of music, hating it for being simple or “bad” just got in the way of me expanding my love and understanding for all music.
I think one of the biggest shames right now is that so many of the people who spend their entire lives dedicated to the rigorous study and highest level of performance of music seem to ignore or look down on the vast majority of what is being created and listened to in the world. Because of that, modern academic music has nearly zero connection to the culture at large despite having a core repertoire revolving around composers who were often celebrities in their own time. It’s hard to see how a future Beethoven, Chopin or Mozart will ever have anywhere near the relevance or impact that their forebears without being peerlessly transcendent or being attached to multiple successful movies. As a parting thought, despite all the praise and acclaim Hans Zimmer receives, I don’t know of a single melody he’s written that I’d call more interesting than Fur Elise’s.
I love this song because of my grandmother who taught it to me. Listening or playing it on her piano was a magical experience. So yes, I think it's nice. I don't think it's a complex or super deep piece though. But it is important. At least for me
Yep, definitely a huge fan of Sims' interpretation. Record it !
In Pakistan, people who sell popcorn uses für elise. When I was a kid, I really loved this music and this made me buy the popcorn so I can just listen to this masterpiece ❤😊
I took piano lessons for 10 years and was never introduced to this piece during that time. I was probably familiar with it because of its use in popular culture, but didn't know what it was.
I remember really enjoying this piece when I was a kid. Now? Couldn't care less.
I can imagine Nahre saying: "What? Fur Elise? I came back for THIS? Right." No matter what it takes, it's great to see you again!
And LA (Arthur?), there at the end, I swear I could have turned off the sound, and read the song from your expressions. I love watching you listen to (and make) music! It truly is a form of silent narration that speaks to me.
BTW Nahre, I completely agree with every one of your criticisms. Then I hear Fur Elise again, and I'm captured by how open and accessible it is, the sweet transitions between sections, its familiarity like a warm blanket. So, yeah, I agree, but I'm keeping it anyway!
Hahaha the episode idea was actually from Nahre!
@@SoundFieldPBS Of course! Aren't all Classical musicians masochists? XD
wow that jazz remix hit me!
In Indonesia, Fur Elise become popular because when it played in the background of the movie, then the ghost will show up.
You're back!!! 💜💜💜 If you could do Vivaldi...i played violin and his music was the most fun to play!!!
+1
I love this channel so much!
Amazing episode