Beethoven was a revolutionary man living in a revolutionary time. He captured his inner voice—demons and all—and the spirit of his time, and in doing so, created a body of music the likes of which no one had ever before imagined.
"An artist must never stand still," he once said.
A virtuoso at the keyboard, Beethoven used the piano as his personal musical laboratory, and the piano sonata became, more than any other genre of music, a place where he could experiment with harmony, motivic development, the contextual use of form, and, most important, his developing view of music as a self-expressive art.
pgmd2
Reviewer pgmd2
February 17, 2006
Lovers of classic music will appreciate Professor Robert Greenberg’s course on Beethoven entitled, “Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas”.
Ludwig van Beethoven was a music composer from Germany who lived during 1770 to 1827. During that time he wrote and composed more than eighty major compositions. Also many years before he died, Beethoven had begun to suffer from loss of hearing that threw him into depression and made him a recluse. What was remarkable during the analysis of Beethoven’s sonatas, and was also reinforced in Professor Greenberg’s lectures, was that even though Beethoven was deaf by the time he died, he still continued composing even if he could not hear the music to enjoy it he.
This course was basically divided into three parts, the first two to three lectures introduced Beethoven the man and gave some insight into his childhood. However, the bulk of the course spoke about Beethoven’s lovely sonatas such as the “The Pathetique”, “The Moonlight”, and the “Appassionata” as they are called. The last two to three lectures switch back to Beethoven’s life, or more specifically, his state of mind as he struggled with his increasing deafness. The course was available on audio CD or audio tapes for review.