Demystifying Beethoven's Große Fuge
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- Опубликовано: 25 июл 2024
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Richard Atkinson attempts to demystify Beethoven’s revolutionary Große Fuge for string quartet, Op. 133. This is a fair use educational commentary that uses excerpts from the following recordings/performances:
Excerpts from Beethoven’s late quartets (including the Große Fuge) :
Takács Quartet
Excerpt from B minor fugue from Book I of Bach’s WTC, BWV 869:
András Schiff
Excerpt from Bach’s 3rd Orchestral Suite, BWV 1068:
Deutsche Bachsolisten (Helmut Winschermann, conductor)
00:00 - Video intro
03:03 - "Overtura" (Introduction)
07:55 - Intense fugue #1
17:30 - Meno mosso (slow section)
22:16 - March/scherzo
23:30 - Intense fugue #2
38:14 - Discussion of replacement finale for Op. 130
43:23 - Extended "coda" 
Видеоклипы
Now we need the Hammerklaiver Fuge
You mean the last movement? Amen to that.
Agreed
Agreed
Yes!
yup
What I've found with Beethoven's late quartets is that no matter how long you've listened and familiarised yourself with them (and I've listened to them for decades) you frequently hear something you haven't noticed before.
That second fugue is probably my favorite fragment of any composition. It's insane to think it was written almost 200 years ago.
It's insane to think it was ever written.
I remember when a string orchestra arrangement of this quartet and Schoenberg's Notturno for Strings and Harp were programmed on the same evening at a concert in my college, and the sheer confusion in the audience when they realised this was beethoven, and not Schoenberg. Truly, one hell of a gorgeous piece.
I think it sounds more like Beethoven than shoenberg, so I disagree with that audience, what do you think?
Which college was that?
How can anyone think Beethoven is Schoenberg... I love both but it's impossible to mix them up
@Vincent True but they could both be on the same program
I remember a discussion which happened a long time ago between Hans Keller and Deryck Cooke during an introduction to Schoenberg's Op.31 Variations. Cooke, who thought music stopped at Mahler, said something to the effect that if you can't sing it it isn't music. Keller promptly sang the theme from the Schoenberg and then said to Cooke, "Now sing the Grosse Fuge".
Well this video proved that I can't sing it...
It's all about the who the you is.
Although I have been listening to classical music for over 50 years, I first heard this composition only 10 years ago. I remember that I was literally paralysed for 20 minutes, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, this was Beethoven in 1825??? This was 100 years before it’s time! Many thanks for this fascinating video!
yeah, try the Bach fugue 24 book 1 from, what 1720? Better yet, Bwv 802
I think, my friend, this is the most anticipated video of the year, and not all the thanks in the world will extend and signs my gratitude to all the effort you put on every video you made. This is the best hommage to Beethoven on his 200 anniversary!
its his 250th
@@erikbreathes )
People cry out "this sounds bad", I don't think so. Not holistically, not if you immerse yourself in the structure of its story. It only "sounds bad" moment-to-moment, and if you go down this slippery slope, all music, if you zoom in enough, sounds ugly, just like you can't see a beautiful picture if you only think about each pixel individually. People often misunderstand my very favourite composer, as I'm sure they did back in the day as well; "Singability", "Catchyness", these are all traits that can be powerful tools in a composer's arsenal, but not universal, and if you're gonna ostracise Beethoven for not constantly relying on them, you should think equally of Bach, with his long-winded, asymmetric, "nonsensical" melody lines. I love his Bm Mass to bits, but it is has even less straight-forward motivic appeal than this. My apologies if I'm about to get a little maudlin, but due to some... impactful, let's say, personal experiences and circumstances surrounding Beethoven's music, I find myself resonant with his works beyond others, I "get" what they're saying so clearly and unambiguously, and it is in his late period, starting the all-important 9th (that many people have brought up in the comments, as it has many similarities with this) that in one of his pieces, no matter if it lasts 5 minutes, or 15, or 50, that from the start to the finish, I have seen my entire life spring into being, pass all its twists and turns, and come to its end. It's not something I can describe in words, much less so in a youtube text wall no-one will read, but the cerebral gist of all this is that Beethoven's music is uniquely dynamic, like a living person, it is not a still frame, but an animation (I mean, it's in the very word). And, well, life can get very ugly and nasty and bad and painful and cruel at times, but it is only to the extent of that uglyness and cruelty that it can also be beautiful, joyful, and exuberant; Because these properties are the two sides of the same coin, like Yin and Yang, one contains the other. And it's not like it's so much of an "acquired taste" or a "hard listen"; Bruckner's 8th is way more of that in my opinion (and so absolutely worth it); It's nowhere near as "catchy" as this. All there is to it, you can't listen to Beethoven and really get it if you're not ready and able to hear a whole story. And I don't judge there, not everyone has, or wants, the time and energy to sit down and listen in this way; Still, people shouldn't be coming to the Große Fuge looking for light entertainment and then blaming the author when they don't get what said author never purported to deliver. Finally however, I can get not liking this even if you do listen "proper". My heart cannot understand it, but cerebrally, it's true people have different tastes and so on. I'm just saying it's not qualitatively different from the Eroica or the Appassionata or the 9th, so if you resonate with one you most certainly can do the same with the other.
tl;dr
Ironically, despite being deaf he must have had one of the best inner ears in musical history.
The more i come back to this work the more I understand that I don't understand how he could imagine any of this.
Yes! Something like this would be so hard to hear just in your mind.
Beethoven was a genius, but he was insane!!! He had to be crazy to leave his own time, his own world and jump more than 100 years and meet Bartok, Webern and the late Stravinsky.
Thank you so much for create and share this video!!!
Beethoven is like history of music in a nutshell. Great video as always !
Regarding the discussion about which piece should be the final movement of the b flat quartet; a similar thing happened with Beethoven's Waldstein sonata! He originally composed a different 2nd movement - Andante Favori (you can listen to it here on youtube). But when he played the sonata for some patrons and friends they suggested that it doesn't fit well with the rest of the work. Beethoven stormed off but then thought about it thoroughly, concluded they were right and composed the 2nd movement of the Waldstein sonata we all know and love today!
When I was in uni, a company was promoting a brain tonic called "essence of chicken".
I asked a friend what is tasted like, and he said it tasted like "a hundred chickens squeezed into a bottle".
The Grosse Fuge sounds like a hundred classical music pieces squeezed into a bottle.
I share your love for fugal music, but not your knowledge. Your hard work driven by incredible passion is truly impressive and I appreciate all of it. Thank you for breaking down a piece of music that has broken me down to tears of joy, sorrow, anguish, rage, elation, and more. To Beethoven and to you, good sir. Cheers!
Glad you picked the Takács Quartet recording. Love their intensity!
It was the only version I even considered using.
@@Richard.Atkinson Right?? I think they best capture Beethoven's character.
I usually listen to Italiano sq for Beethoven but I agree that for the great fugue Takacs is just much better because it has more nerve.
Still I'd suggest listening the italiano sq for the first Razumosky quartet and the op 132
@@diegeigergarnele7975 I loved the Italian Quartet, but for me they have been superseded by Quatuor Mosaique.
The Große Fuge has been a huge inspiration for me. It's one of my favorites of Beethoven.
50 minutes of auditory gold. Worth the wait!!
Contemplating the beauty of music is (for me at least) the strongest source of joy and an important drive in my life. The only thing that could beat it is discovering a new sense of beauty in music I already know. Your videos always do the trick and for that I thank you very much.
From a non-musician's perspective, I feel in this piece Beethoven "transforms" the somewhat abrasive original themes in such a way, so in the end they (as if naturally) shed their form and emerge in such blinding sparkle, it takes my breath away every time I hear it.
Also, I can't understand, after years of listening to this piece, how on Earth a deaf man could create such a miracle.
Because he heard it in his head
@@anthonyehrenzweig7697 yeah but how many can compose without being able to hear
After writing sheets, listening passages on his piano for so many years, I wouldn't even need to listen to pieces at the end as he already knew how it would sound. It is in fact « music literature » technically.
Well I'll be damned, here's the big one. Literally.
This kind of content is what we need more to appear on RUclips
WOW! 50 mins of explaining hardcore Beethoven could never be done better than you sir. You really do the musical gods work. Thank you.
BRAVO!!!!!! Best music analysis video I've seen / heard this year. I am really surprised that you didn't mention the great fuge at the end of the Hammerklavier. The G.Fuge has so many textures that remind me so much of the H. fuge. Andras Schiff, in his famous lecture on the great H piano sonata makes it clear that the work was not pretty music at all. The Grosse Fuge fits this description to a "t", as we say. As a matter of my own sense, it seems to me that philosophically speaking, Beethoven had in mind to change the manner in which his audience would think of musical lines. He embarked on completely shaking up sonata writing with the Hammerklavier in 1817. He seems to have pushed chamber musical lines as far as he could go with the G. Fuge in 1825. Chamber music writing was never the same, was it? I mean you would still get the delicious Romantic era musical compositions yet to come. But, the Hammer and the Grosse were unprecedented and totally transformative. I also heard rhythmic motifs that appear in earlier works in his sonatas and quartets.
And, whoever said that Beethoven was not much of a fuge writer should eat their words after listening to this hyper complex monster.
It is not pretty music, as Schiff said of the H. It sounded to me that each instrument was existing in its own dimension. Hence the aural impression is of a 4 dimensional storm, hurricanes and tornadoes that intermingled with each other in fragments, bumped into each and then spun off in different directions. It sounds to me that in Beethoven's imagination he tapped into the creative and destructive powers of nature. The G. Fuge allowed us, so to speak, to see how the universe assembles, disassembles and smashes creation into shape and then repeats the process of tearing apart and assembling. No wonder why Gould was so enamored of this piece. A monster of a piece but totally necessary in the spectrum of what music could be. Beethoven said that the Hammerklavier would give generations of performers trouble for a long time to come. The same could be said for this grenade that he lovingly tossed into the medium of string quartets. BOOM.
"this grenade that he lovingly tossed into the medium of string quartets" I wish I'd thought up this phrase!
The orange theme is simply the best music ever written. It is the perfection of one of musical ideas he was obsessed with in his late years. Ode to Joy is the same idea, for example. The other is the blue theme, you can find its variants in many late quartets, in Kyrie of Missa Solemnis etc.
I've never clicked on any video so fast, I've waited for this specific video, from you especially, thank you!!!
Große fuge is one of my most favourite pieces. Thank you for explaining it. I love it more now.
Thank you, Richard. I fell in love with the Große Fuge over 40 years ago (and consider it along with Bach's Chaconne, the greatest pieces by mankind.) The one place where I would like to detract from your excellent and to most people, mind-boggling analysis is the CODA. Upon first hearing this almost a half-century ago, I whimsically perhaps, but realistically considered quite a unique and perfect culmination of what had gone before. If we can consider the last gathering of motifs as a respite from the monumental searching Beethoven had wrought during the piece. Beethoven brings in the most lyric and unexpected conclusion imaginable to his great fugue. In essence for me, here I am whimsical again, I can feel the oncoming entire romantic period of music emerging from the "red" subject. Certainly, you might be charitable to agree that the chordal/harmonic progression of the last few measures is tantamount to Beethoven heralding the coming romantic era of music - not as a let-down to the entire piece but as a clarion call. Well, there you have it. My entire impression of the coda as a most perfect culmination of one of the two greatest pieces composed. Thank you, again.
The more you listen to the Grossa Fuga the more it grows into you. Thanks for the amazing analysis!
46:06 the blue theme is distributed between the viola and cello and then between the 1st and 2nd violins
I was so annoyed to have missed this that I corrected that in my latest video (same analysis without the voice commentary).
Thank you for giving us the keys to open such a treasure coffer.
Classical music has always been a huge part of my life (I'm currently 22 and a full time concert pianist), so naturally I've listened to quite the amount of repertoire throughout my experience... I've always been kind of afraid to listen to this mysterious and (literally) bloody piece though.
This video gave me the courage to listen to it for the first time in years and appreciate Beethoven's immense genius once again. Thank you for dedication and your will to shed light on classical music's most interesting and beautiful pearls!
P.S.
Glenn Gould has always been my biggest idol!
Glad to know that there are concert pianists who look to Gould as a master. I read comments of so many pianists who seem to just treat him as an interesting weirdo. Do you incorporate Gould’s philosophy of experimental repertoire performances?
In a way, I met my wife thanks to this incredible piece. We met at a chamber house concert organized by the startup Groupmuse, whose founder decided to start the organization after being immeasurably moved by a recording of the Große Fuge. Thank you, dear Beethoven, as well as Groupmuse, for helping me find the love my life. And thank you, Richard, for creating this brilliant video.
I love your story! For me, the Große Fuge IS the love of my life!
This just might be my new favorite video! I've been waiting for it for over a year, expected a lot, yet was still staring at the screen like a child at a new toy the whole time. I love your work!
From 32:30, I do this too when wandering around london and it reminded me of this quote:
''"I can do things in the performance of music, and so can any conductor or performer, that if I did on an ordinary street would land me in jail. In other words, I can fume and rage and storm at a hundred men in an orchestra and make them play this or that chord, and get rid of all kinds of tensions and hostilities. By the time I come to the end of Beethoven's Fifth, I'm a new man. Whereas if I did that down on Seventh Avenue, I'd be picked up. This is a very lucky kind of profession."
-Leonard Bernstein, 1963
Absolutely brilliant video - easily one of the best I've seen on YT. *Plenty* of information, emotion (passion!), entertainment. Wow!
This is just great, it is impossible to thank you enough for the amount of work put into these amazing videos.
My favourite fugue - by far. Love it to bits. Thank-you Richard.
Great video! I ordered the sheets to this fuge 2 weeks ago to analyse it during these times. You were just one step ahead and I do thank you for that :D
Excellent video and excellent channel. Our deep respect for your commitment to music and analysis.
Rocking a baby to sleep in my arms in the early morning light here in Berlin, and watching/listening to Richard‘s witty, self-deprecating, deeply-thought, vibrant analysis… takes me back to the source of why music is the richest stuff in this life. An absolute gift. I used to put Klemperer‘s recording of the GFuge on the turntable in the LP room at school (there was such a room! with sound-proofed walls and a musty old carpet!) and listen over and over.
Probably my favorite video on RUclips right now. Can’t stop rewatching.
These videos never fail to inspire me :') ty Mr. Atkinson!
Brilliant analysis of a magnum opus like the Grosse Fugue.
Congratulations on the work and I hope it continues.
Omg, this is uploaded two days ago! I thought i just found a very old video i haven't seen earlier
What a great present, 50 minutes of brilliant analysis from one of my favorite musical youtubers
Thank you, Richard! I really am filled with joy! Love your videos
He is back and ready to deliver. What a masterful analysis!
Oh my gosh!!!!! What an astounding masterpiece. I'm talking about this video of course, the fugue goes without saying ;D I can't believe I've never found your channel before - I just binged your Mozart 41 and Eroica videos and then this popped up and - well, I am so grateful for what you are doing. You're not afraid to go into the nitty gritty details, and you communicate your passion for music so well...and like - I had hoped to go this in depth in upper level theory in undergrad, but alas. I am isolated among my friends for being a music theory nerd haha, so - thank you so much for this!!
Oh man, this is so complicated, I may need to watch this video many times. It's absolutely great, thank you so much for it.
Thanks for helping us to understand this masterpiece. Thanks to you, now I'm totally overwhelmed by the final of the Intense Fugue #2, what a beautiful moment.
Yes, he uploaded! My favorite composer too, and one of the greatest pieces ever!
Thank you so much for posting this. It is absolutely wonderful.
Absolute Genius! I asked you to do the Great Fugue a while ago, and did not know so many others asked for the same thing!
I was so excited when I got the notification. The Takacs Quartet recording is my favorite, probably because I read their book...! :) Can't wait to watch!!!!
So many thanks Richard! I'm reminded that I saw the Arditti Quartet play this as the OPENING WORK in a recital that went on to include Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit and Xenakis' insanely difficult Tetras. It was just as modern, blistering and overwhelming as the rest of the program.
As a non-musician growing up with a mom (dad was into early 20th c. popular) who loved the classics, I can tell you, "If you put it that way, now it makes some sense." Thank you for explaining some stuff I never knew, please keep explaining. I like it.
Aw yeah! Waited for this for a long long time. Good job Rick!
Brilliant analysis and video. Thank you for all the effort you put into it, and thanks for sharing!
Yet another fantastic video! Missed you atkin.
Great analysis! Worthy of its subject. "Demystified" is an understatement. As someone who has listened to this work many times over 50 years, I am grateful for this enriching and illuminating experience.
It's great to have you back after a long absence! ...and with my favourite piece of all the classical repertoire! (Bach is my favourite composer, but Beethoven's Große Fuge is the single work by that amazes me most).
When I first listen to this fugue as a Highschool kid, I already knew about the name it bears but was still blown away by it. The tonal ambiguity at the beginning shocks me well. I thought,“ how is this even within the boundary of tonal music.“ After watching the video, I was shocked by the rhythmic dissonances. Nonetheless, the thing I marveled the most must be the craftsmanship of Beethoven, which I failed to truly appreciate myself. Having written a fugue myself, a crappy three-voice fugue with cheat (computer playback), I cannot imagine how amazing is it for this masterpiece to be composed by a man who cannot hear.
I just about to sleep. Thank you for keeping me up an extra 40 minutes. I'm sure this will be worth it
Edit: It was 50 minutes and definitely worth it. Best video on the channel so far!
I got goosebumps when I saw this video uploaded. That's how much I love the Große Fuge.
Great video. I learned so in terms of understanding what Beethoven was up to in this mind-boggling muisc! 🎶🙏
This is phenomenal. I thank the author of the video for this tremendous gift.
I see 48:07 less as "cutting room floor" material, than as a "retrospective montage" used by B. in other compositions, most famously at the end of the 9th symphony. In this case it also "bookends" the presentation of the germinal material at the very beginning.
True, It brings back all 4 versions from the overtura, but in a different order (1, 2, 4, 3).
@@Richard.Atkinson "1, 2, 4, 3" - mirroring the shape (if not the precise intervals) of the main fugal subject! ;-p
emilgilels That would be the Jupiter theme!
At 35:59 that dominant pedal point. I can’t think of a more intense or “dissonant” section in all of Beethoven’s music. I love it. I can’t imagine what the premier audience’s reaction was to hearing it.
8 and 9 measures after this (after K) is one of my favorite half-step dissonances between the two violins. Is this what you’re talking about, or the whole passage in general?
Richard Atkinson that is actually one of my favorite dissonances in the whole piece, but I was referring to the whole pedal point section as “the most tense section in all of Beethoven”. If you look at the harmonies there a all sorts of dissonant passing tones. Like the second measure after K, there is a tone cluster: Eb,D natural, and E natural. Awesome
If I were in that audience, I'd probably have thought that it's just an immensely difficult piece that sounded off because the players couldn't meet the technical demands... But on top of that, add the fact that it was very likely that they couldn't have played it nearly as well as the modern recordings (as it was a work of unprecedented difficulty), so it probably sounded even more chaotic than it's supposed to
You are amazing for doing this. The first time I heard this fugue I hated it, but when I listened to it again I liked it more, and now it may be my favorite piece. Thank you!
Thank you! Much to digest, even after this thorough analysis. I liked this more personal narration as well. Very fun.
A Triumph and a Masterpiece, my dear friend. Congratulations and Mazel Tov!!!! Loved every second of it!
Wahoo!
This channel is sublime. Thank you, Richard.
I love that you have a favorite note in the meno mosso section
So worth the wait on your videos!!!
When I first herd this work in my life, 4 or 5 years ago (I am 67 now), I was far well impresed by it. Now because of your careful study on it, It lakes me to a much better understanting of it's greatness. Thankyou for shearing.
BEST VIDEO I HAVE EVER SEEN. REMARKABLE. YOU SIMPLIFIED A VERY COMPLICATED SUBJECT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I was so excited to have this video pop up in my notifications. Just finished watching it and I already recommended it to a composer friend of mine, I feel like a child on christmas showing off their new toy!
Finally! The video I have been waiting for. I've tried analyzing this fugue and after the third entry of the fugue exposition, it becomes a confusing sea of counterpoint for me.
I'm so excited to watch this! (I've obsessed with it for years!)
I analyzed this 'giant piece' decades ago. I felt it way over my head. Still there.
Thank you!
Reminds me of Vicente Huidobro's poem "Altazor o el viaje en paracaidas", exploring the possibilities of language. Beautiful
Absolutely wonderful content. Thank you so much for sharing
Not only my favourite composer, favourite analyser but also my favourite performance of this fugue.
Richard this is easily the greatest analysis videos of the many outstanding ones you have shared with the world! And though I have always venerated Beethoven's late works and particularly the mind boggling fugue, your analysis opened my eyes even more to its dazzling complexity, sophistication, innovative genius and staggering degree of artistic synthesis! This work is truly without equal!
Well that was worth the wait, great work as always Richard
Hey Richard, thanks for the awesome video. This piece kind of overwhelmed me before and now it's just more Beethoven being a genius and magician (and wonderfully strange at times). And btw your monotone voice is very relaxing and has a nice timbre.
This is why I clicked the bell THIS IS WHY
Wonderful work. Thanks so much for your insights.
Looking forward to this Richard. Would love to view your analysis of the fugues from Bach's B minor mass & Beethoven's Missa Solemnis next!
Oh finally. The anticipation is over!
This is my comfort RUclips Video
That moment on the streets of New York ... I imagine a lot of us here have been there! Thank you for such a wonderful and heartfelt analysis. I love how you weave your personal experiences, musical associations and subjective opinions into the theoretical discussion. It's counterpoint, of a sort; these vids are works of art in themselves.
whenever there's chaotic situation happening in the debut
you know the piece is a masterpiece
Thanks for the great video, Richard.
On the subject of the double octaves, I think I know why the piano arrangement does not include it, but the string quartet version does. If a pianist were to do the double octaves, it would be difficult *and* not as intense. Tremolos keep the intensity. In the string quartet, that isn’t a problem, so writing an octave passage with an octave of grace notes is more economic than the tremolos in the piano arrangement.
I first listened to this piece last year. At first, I did not understand it. I also thought it wasn’t that good. Then I started listening to it more and I don’t regret it. It’s one of the best fugues ever written if not the best.
Beethoven shreds it. He inverts, inside out, upside down and does everything possible to the subjects.
Wow....never heard this piece before. Thanks for the enlightenment Richard.
I completely agree about the "Intense Fuge #2" as you call it. I was of course completely baffled (in a good way) the first time I heard the Grosse Fuge but when I heard this section especially 31:25 - 31:45 it completely won me over. String Quartet No. 14 is my favorite work of Beethoven's but that moment in the Grosse Fuge is my favorite moment of his.
Remarkably cogent and persuasive analysis. Kudos!
Quite excellent. Full of insights, and, though complex, as is the music, absolutely clear. The colour-coding of motifs is hugely helpful.