Friday, 11 November 2011

The ninth symphony


Even after nearly two hundred years of existence, Beethoven’s ninth and last symphony is still the subject of contention. Debate rages over the choral finale (most people love it but there’s a ‘let’s keep symphonies abstract’ lobby that’s very sniffy about it), the vexed question of the metronome markings (there is a difference of four minutes between the Klemperer and Norrington performances of the slow movement!) and whether or not to espouse the ‘correct version’ of the score (relatively) recently produced for the publisher Bärenreiter by the Beethoven specialist Jonathan del Mar.
This week we’ll mostly listen to and discuss the wonders of the symphony’s first movement.


Analysis:
First movement analysis


Click below to hear the themes:

Theme 1
Theme 1a Theme 1b Theme 1c


Theme 2a Theme 2a_finale Theme 2b Theme 2c


Fugato 1 Fugato 2 Fugato 3


Coda


Scores:
Symphony No. 9 in d, Op. 125
Composer’s autograph score of the slow movement, (Adagio molto e cantabile)


Music: (you must install Spotify* to hear the music link below)
Symphony No. 9 in d, Op. 125 


* If you have problems accessing the Spotify link, paste zinman beethoven 9 into the Spotify search box.


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