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When Beethoven Met Goethe

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Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#41

Post by xgk »

dang wrote: post #38
xgk wrote: post #6

Beethoven would be making techno Why? Given that making techno, or modern pop music in general, is basically trivial. Just spin up Ableton, press a few buttons ... boom, 10 minutes later you've got a competitive techno-track that doesn't sound all that different (apart from mastering maybe) from what's being played in the clubs. There is no art left in pop-music -- trivial and generic. A genius would be horrified by…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14978745 and marked it off-topic. (It has some excellent comments but the curmudgeonly 'art these days' thing still counts as a generic tangent so it's a borderline call.)

Beethoven and Goethe worked in a specific artistic context which is radically incompatible with industrial production that is characteristic of modern pop-music and marketing. Hence a facile quip like "Beethoven would be making techno in Rotterdam" is misleading and does not really engage with the subject matter. Yet, pointing this out and triggering an interesting debate gets reprimanded as "curmudgeonly" when the discussion was specifically about pop-music.

May I ask what is on-topic on HN these days?

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#42

Post by xgk »

archagon wrote: post #37
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aphex Twin.

A few years ago, as a classical music fan, I set out on a mission to find some electronic music that I actually enjoyed listening to. Gradually, I learned that aside from the three usual pillars of composition — melody, harmony, and rhythm — there is a fourth that is underserved by practically every other genre of music: timbre. Electronic musicians are masters of sound sculpting as a musical atom. They can create ne…

   melody, harmony, and rhythm [...] timbre
You are missing the fifth and most important: meaning!

To be fair meaning is extra-musical, and varies between listeners.

Other than that, you are absolutely correct: timber is the focus of modern electronic music. All previous genres simply lacked the instruments to do much of interest in the way of timber.

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#43

Post by shervinafshar »

zengid wrote: post #39
G2kyd7 wrote: post #4

This was arguably the golden age of German culture. Even if Kant just passed away, you had philosophers such as Hegel in Berlin, Fichte, Schelling living at the same time and the younger Schopenhauer actually meeting with Goethe, although that did not turn out well. At that time, Romanticism was taking off in Germany, after the Weimarer Klassik around Goethe, Schiller and people such as Herder and Wieland was coming…

Wasn't Austrian culture (it mentioned that Beethoven lived in Vienna) distinguishable from 'German' culture? I think I read about that in Nassim Taleb's Antifragile when talking about Gödel having to leave during the Nazi occupation and the negative affect Viennese culture incurred from being absorbed into Germany.

Hitler was from Upper-Austria. Before moving into politics and moving to Munich, as a wanna-be art student in Vienna he was poor and rejected from academia. My personal opinion from reading about him is that he did not really like the cultural thrivings of Vienna. So after annexation of Austria, he ordered to prepare plans to transfer his Upper-Austrian hometown of Linz into a "cultural capital". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrermuseum

Edit: typo.

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#44

Post by dgut »

davidreiss wrote: post #30
dkural wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German culture was going strong until the purges under Fascism began - in philosophy, art, mathematics, physics & other sciences. One of the shocking aspects of the rising of Fascism was that it happened in an intellectually fertile environment with many reasonable people. It is tempting to try to spot a gradual decline in German culture, but that was not the case. It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidate…

> It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidated the intelligentsia. That's not true. Hitler didn't liquidate the intelligentsia. The first programmable computer ( by konrad zuse ) was created during that time. The first rockets were developed during that time. Hitler didn't wipe out all the nobel prize winners in germany. Germany was still a major intellectual center before, during and AFTER ww2. Germany is s…

Why the downvotes? He is right.

The reason Germany, England, and France (Spain didn't catch up because they had no reason to as a negative consequence of their enormous wealth at the time) excelled to such extent that this particular period appears like a very special and wonderful intellectual age, is that the rest of the world was for the most part severely under-developed. Germany didn't become less "wise".

Today the contrast is much smaller, but Germany continues to be a scientific powerhouse even if it isn't as evident.

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#45

Post by cafard »

"No doubt Beethoven chided Goethe along these lines, and the most revered writer in the land would not have taken kindly to any sort of dressing down, friendly or otherwise."

No doubt? I'd say no evidence.

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#46

Post by beefman »

colanderman wrote: post #36
meri_dian wrote: post #16

If anyone is curious about Beethoven's life, I can recommend and excellent and relatively recently published biography: 'Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph', by Jan Swafford. We see figures like Beethoven and Goethe as geniuses themselves, but the 18th century conception of 'genius' was not of a person, but of a sort of holy spirit that blessed an individual with great abilities, while remaining separate from that person…

Note also that "genius" and "genie" are etymologically related, both descending from Latin "genius". [1] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genius#Latin

I think genie is an anglicization of djinn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#47

Post by colanderman »

beefman wrote: post #46
colanderman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note also that "genius" and "genie" are etymologically related, both descending from Latin "genius". [1] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genius#Latin

I think genie is an anglicization of djinn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn

Djinn comes directly from Arabic, genie from Latin via French and Arabic influence. [1]

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genie#Etymology

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#48

Post by cowpatcallr »

meri_dian wrote: post #16

If anyone is curious about Beethoven's life, I can recommend and excellent and relatively recently published biography: 'Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph', by Jan Swafford. We see figures like Beethoven and Goethe as geniuses themselves, but the 18th century conception of 'genius' was not of a person, but of a sort of holy spirit that blessed an individual with great abilities, while remaining separate from that person…

It goes back further than that, i thought.

The greeks had the same notion: one wasn't "a" genius, one "had" a genius - a spirit (the logos?) which was the inspiration and source of creativity and brilliance.

The whole idea was around invoking the logos to garner this brilliance.

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#49

Post by herbst »

davidreiss wrote: post #30
dkural wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German culture was going strong until the purges under Fascism began - in philosophy, art, mathematics, physics & other sciences. One of the shocking aspects of the rising of Fascism was that it happened in an intellectually fertile environment with many reasonable people. It is tempting to try to spot a gradual decline in German culture, but that was not the case. It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidate…

> It was on the rise until Hitler physically liquidated the intelligentsia. That's not true. Hitler didn't liquidate the intelligentsia. The first programmable computer ( by konrad zuse ) was created during that time. The first rockets were developed during that time. Hitler didn't wipe out all the nobel prize winners in germany. Germany was still a major intellectual center before, during and AFTER ww2. Germany is s…

No idea how you are reading this but Germany is on 11 for me. However thanks for linking, didn't know Switzerland is 2

Edit:// just realized you were going by numbers and not by capita

Re: When Beethoven Met Goethe

#50

Post by kruhft »

sordina wrote: post #7
xgk wrote: post #6

Beethoven would be making techno Why? Given that making techno, or modern pop music in general, is basically trivial. Just spin up Ableton, press a few buttons ... boom, 10 minutes later you've got a competitive techno-track that doesn't sound all that different (apart from mastering maybe) from what's being played in the clubs. There is no art left in pop-music -- trivial and generic. A genius would be horrified by…

Link to your tracks?

http://n1m.co/kruhft
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