Happy Birthday Beethoven

ArtAppreciation

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I didn’t know that. Interesting.
I wondered if maybe I was picturing the wrong person when I thought about ‘Beethoven’ too.

At first I thought...wasn’t he an old white dude? (A special one, of course) But what’s with the black hair and lean figure ...plus that suit is rather jazzy...what’s happening right now? :joy:

Slightly alarmed, I googled. I feel better now :)
 
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twoton

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Here's a YouTube of his 32nd sonata.
How do you interpret the passage that starts just around 16:50? I think it's pretty compelling evidence that Beethoven is playing ragtime decades before it was invented. The more I listen to his music the more syncopation I hear.

I submit that he is the godfather of jazz.
 

51arledge

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Here's a YouTube of his 32nd sonata.
How do you interpret the passage that starts just around 16:50? I think it's pretty compelling evidence that Beethoven is playing ragtime decades before it was invented. The more I listen to his music the more syncopation I hear.

I submit that he is the godfather of jazz.

Ha!
Well, I will agree that for the time it was written it was both harmonically and rhythmically challenging. There are syncopated rhythms in (I think) the last 3 sonatas that seem very much ahead of their time by at least 80 years. As

I also think that because Beethoven was almost totally deaf by the time he wrote these last 3 sonatas, he was living in his own harmonic world and exploring ideas that he might have been more cautious about had he heard them.
 
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