Love in Classical Music

In principle I'm against introducing "programmatic" elements into music, including what we would call "Love". If composers need that then it usually means that the music can't speak for itself. The history of a piece may involve a deep love (or other feeling) as inspiration for the composition, but I try not to read love or anything else into music, for me music goes far beyond all our attempts to "understand" or "explain" it. Words and music don't mix well. Music can only be experienced, not rationalised in this way.

Thus I really don't care if Mahler meant the Adagietto to be a love song for Alma, I only care about the music itself which - undoubtedly - is magic in its own right. And the Ring... come on, the Ring is powerful and stunning music (and I'm a great Wagner fan), but any Puccini aria or duet certainly sounds a lot more "love-inspired" than any note Wagner wrote in his operas. The Siedfried Idyll is perhaps an exception. 

Why try to pull together and rationalise love and music? They don't belong into our brains and onto discussion boards, they can only be lived.

Parla

Your post about Op.90 sent me scuttling back to the music. I have to admit I could not make the connection to the'glory and joy of love' as you do, as I find the movement too playful to inspire feelings of glory. This is one of the wonders of music - it just can convey so many different messages, dependent on the magical trio of composer, performer and audience.

I am very fortunate to have series of lectures /masterclasses by Andres Schiff, where he explors all 32 sontatas in great detail (each lecture is almost an hour long). He makes the point that the whole work is the beginning of the late phase in the piano sonatas and feels that it is the first to really be influenced by Bach (his reasoning is not clarified and I wonder if around that time Beethoven had a burst of studying and playing Bach). It is certianly an extremely intimate sonata and I have to agree with Schiff that it really isn't a concert piece, as applause always seems to silly after the ending, which leaves us hanging in the ether.

Parla

yes your were clear and I was trying to use 'glory' in the definition you had given, but perhaps I should have repeated back the qualifying qualities you added interms of subtly and profoundity. I would also add tenderness as a adjective to this music; in fact I have to add that one of the reasons for my great love of Beethoven's music is that he had the ability to create music that encompassed tenderness and grandeur at his will and desire. The emotinal range and immediacy of his music has very few parallels.

I am still a little in need of clarity however. You have written sincerely about your opinion that the movement is about 'love of life' and also described a possible link to paternal love. There is often (for my ears) a real sense of playfulness in a rondo, particularly when the materials is as you said so seemingly simple and yet so magnificently varied. One could add that by choosing give the player the instruction 'Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen (Not too fast and conveyed in a singing manner)' Beethoven was asking for a phrasing almost as a sweet reminisence or nostalgia might feel. That would also seem to accord with the ending, which does disappear like a whisp of memory. So, would it be fair to say in terms of shades of 'love' you hear paternal love?

I have no problem with Schiff's musings on the music. If his performance cannot provide the interpretation you are looking for that is also fine - to use an expression, 'horses for courses'. Schiff himself sees a link between some of the musical ideas and Schubert and specifically the idea of the 'babbling brooke' (possibly light dancing on the ripples). It is an interesting idea, but the is a retro-fit, using the future to interpret the past. More honest would be Schubert's reference to Beethoven. The other description I found was from Bramwell Tovey, who considered the movement full of 'passionate and lonely energy'. Beethoven himself talked of the first movement being a 'contest between head and heart' and it is only a small stretch to apply the same idea to the movement in question. 

So where does this all leave us? Well Ganymede may indeed be right that music speaks for itself, but we all do hear different things in that music. For performers I doubt you can play the music without bringing a part of yourself into the piece, and I am just as certain an audience, be it live and numerous or the single person listening to a recording at home, bring a part of themselves to the music.

Parla

I will listen to K.516 and give it some thought, but if you will excuse me it might take a few days. I am currently putting in a week of 15 hour days!

I have one piece of music that encompasses both love and eroticism. That is:

Quoted from classicalnotes.net

Verklärte Nacht ("Transfigured Night") was inspired by a mystical
poem by Richard Dehmel. In cold, moonlit woods, a woman confesses to
her lover that she carries the child of another man she never loved but
to whom she yielded for fulfillment. After a long pause of brooding
meditation, he resolves that their love will make the child their own.
They embrace and walk on, the formerly barren night transformed by hope
and devotion.
Such cloying sentimentality is rather hard to take seriously nowadays,
and indeed Schoenberg later called the poem "repulsive" and urged
appreciation of his work as pure music, portraying nature and expressing
human emotion rather than depicting the specific action of the text.

Whatever Schoenberg's thoughts, I propose this music is unparalleled in depicting human emotion. It's also one of my favourite pieces. I love the Iwamoto version; I have not heard the one illustrated.

Hi Naupilus and Parla. Fascinating discussion!

Here's a relevant quotation I found online:

'Op.90 is one sonata for which Beethoven provided descriptive titles, albeit in jest. The first movement was intended to be an affectionate joke at the expense of his friend, the Count von Lichnowsky, to whom Beethoven dedicated the sonata and who was about to embark on a second marriage against the wishes of his family. The second movement presumably afforded Lichnowsky a consoling vision of domestic bliss. We have it from the composer’s biographer, Anton Schindler, that both men laughed loudly when, at Lichnowsky’s request for the meaning of the sonata, Beethoven told him that the work was a musical representation of his love life'.

(Source Brian Chapman. I've not heard of him before, but if you google Beethoven Sonata in E minor opus 90 you should find his analyses.)

I'm not sure exactly (only my own pereception) if I hear love outright in this sonata, but I do hear moments of melancholy alright. Strangely enough, I noticed (whilst listening to Brendel's version and like you Naupilus following Tovey's edition) that the simple use of octaves in both movement really does help to create this melancholy mood. The octaves just before the bridge passage from 1st to 2nd subject in the 1st movement, and in the Rondo, the first subject repetition is in octaves each time the main therme appears.

Overall, a real variety of moods noticeable as well, some quiet and tender, and some a bit 'sturm und drang'.

Yes, it is an enchanting piece Parla. I can see why you like it so much.

Mark