Ian and I planned to listen to the entire 24 hours of a stretched out symphony. Unfortunately I haven’t been around at my house enough for that so I only listened to the required hour. Andre suggested the entry level movement, the third, was a chill place to start in the Beethoven’s ninth beet stretch. I started there but quickly moved on.
The parts I listened to seemed to always be on the rise, a seemingly never ending crescendo. The music could almost be considered triumphant were this same thing not continuously happening. The triumph became monotonous.
Once I zoned out though and closed my eyes for a bit the music started to make more sense. It seemed headed to a point, but one that I could never understand. It was music for hyper-intelligent alien sloth beings.
This puzzle did not dissipate. Instead of boring the swells became intriguing. Was there meaning here? Gone were the musical tropes of a Beethoven suite and earthly sounding instruments, but there was something new there.
The instruments became even more organic at such a slow speed. The sound of trumpets became the cries of whales.
An interesting thing to consider in all this is what a musician performing beethoven's 9th might feel were he to hear this. His hard years of practice abstracted into an art piece. Each carefully constructed progression blown up into a movement. Would a musician able to perform this piece be able to more easily distinguish each part?
I had a tough time comparing the beet stretch to the actual piece. Even side by side I couldn't put my finger on quite which part was being played. The length of the notes definitely gave the piece a life of its own.
Beethoven is turning in his grave all right. Very slowly.
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