The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 Book

The best part, for me, of this analysis of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is the author's study of what any musical score means, what it says. It's pretty easy to hear things like bird tweets in a nature score, or the grinding crush of ice in the opening of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. But onomatopoeia aside, what of music that just fills the hearer with emotion. I admit it. I am a sucker for an Adagio. Gorecki's Third almost destroyed me on first hearing. Is it enough just to feel it, or is it preferable, even possible, to know the story being told? So, I wind up reading the linear notes or the program notes and thinking maybe I get it; but really, that could simply be subliminal suggestivity.

In talking about this, Sachs quotes German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, "It is in the very nature of music that the clarity of the language it uses is different from the clarity of words: but the language is none the less definite for all that." And Mendelsshon: "The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite." He tells the story of a composer who goes to the piano and plays a piece of music he has just written. A guest asks what the piece's meaning is. The composer simply returns to the piano and plays the piece again. I love that. And it makes me feel better.

This book was instructive in this and other ways. Much of it seemed like good ideas not fully explored. Setting The Ninth in historical context, in particular, seemed contrived and superficial. I liked the musical explanations more, even if I understood them less.

I have to compare this book to Eric Silbin's The Cello Suites about Bach's unaccompanied works for cello since I read these two works about a month apart. The Cello Suites was more personal and more flawed as a result. But I enjoyed it much more.