Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
1994-04-10
Section: ARTS AND LEISURE
Edition: FINAL
Page: D1
LEXINGTON SINGERS, PHILHARMONIC TAG-TEAM BEETHOVEN'S 'NINTH'
KEVIN NANCE HERALD-LEADER ARTS WRITER
Why did Ludwig van Beethoven -- whose encroaching deafness and domestic crises had left him reclusive, profoundly depressed and occasionally suicidal -- compose his monumental Ninth Symphony, perhaps the most remarkable outpouring of pure joy ever written?
And why did Beethoven -- rarely one to defy the conventions he'd been handed by Mozart and Haydn -- add a choral finale, the now-famous setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy," to a form in which human voices were all but unheard of? There are no good answers to these enduring questions of classical music, but Lexington Philharmonic music director George Zack, who will conduct the philharmonic and the Lexington Singers in a performance of the work Friday, is simply inclined to accept the mystery of genius.
"When you're dealing with somebody like Beethoven, you have to deal with him on his own terms because there are no other terms," Zack said. "The choral finale was an incredible in-your-face statement and you have to justify it, but he never did."
Traditionally, there are three ways of explaining Beethoven's mystifying addition of the finale, which critics attacked as late as the 1920s:
It was a mistake.
It was an accident.
It was intended as an instrumental finale that the composer could never finish to his satisfaction.
A fourth possibility exists: that Beethoven simply decided to do it his way.
"He was his own man -- maybe a kind of man before his time -- and behaved his own way," Zack said. "And if it was an accident, it was certainly sublime."
The finale aside, that Beethoven completed the symphony at all in 1824, is something of a miracle. His most recent symphony, the Eighth, had been written a dozen years earlier, in 1812. By 1819, Beethoven had become almost completely deaf.
The crushing isolation brought about by Beethoven's condition was compounded by his protracted battle for custody of his nephew, Karl, and his stormy, bitter quarrels with the young man that culminated in Karl's suicide attempt in 1826.
Somehow, Beethoven mustered the concentration and the emotional resources to produce the symphony, which was quickly acknowleged as a triumph. (At the first performance, the composer was oblivious to the thunderous applause until one of the soloists turned him around to face the audience.)
However the Ninth Symphony came to be written, it is magnificent, Zack said. "You can be as senseless or as sensible as you want to be about these matters, but the work still comes out a monument to man's creative power."
The symphony is monumental in another sense: the sheer size of its forces, which are significantly larger than the classical symphonies that preceded it. The work also opened the door for the even larger Romantic symphonists who followed. (Those composers, notably Mahler, also followed Beethoven's lead in adding vocal passages to their symphonies.)
In Lexington, the philharmonic and singers will be joined by a quartet of solists: soprano Laura English-Robinson, mezzo-soprano Anne Duraski, tenor Erik Johanson and baritone Philip Kraus, who has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The philharmonic and singers will also perform Verdi's late religious work, Te Deum.
"I do think audiences look forward to hearing the singers and the orchestra in such a huge combination," Zack said. "Nothing else seems to satisfy quite like seeing and hearing the entire stage filled with people. It becomes something you don't want to miss."
1994-04-10
Section: ARTS AND LEISURE
Edition: FINAL
Page: D1
LEXINGTON SINGERS, PHILHARMONIC TAG-TEAM BEETHOVEN'S 'NINTH'
KEVIN NANCE HERALD-LEADER ARTS WRITER
Why did Ludwig van Beethoven -- whose encroaching deafness and domestic crises had left him reclusive, profoundly depressed and occasionally suicidal -- compose his monumental Ninth Symphony, perhaps the most remarkable outpouring of pure joy ever written?
And why did Beethoven -- rarely one to defy the conventions he'd been handed by Mozart and Haydn -- add a choral finale, the now-famous setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy," to a form in which human voices were all but unheard of? There are no good answers to these enduring questions of classical music, but Lexington Philharmonic music director George Zack, who will conduct the philharmonic and the Lexington Singers in a performance of the work Friday, is simply inclined to accept the mystery of genius.
"When you're dealing with somebody like Beethoven, you have to deal with him on his own terms because there are no other terms," Zack said. "The choral finale was an incredible in-your-face statement and you have to justify it, but he never did."
Traditionally, there are three ways of explaining Beethoven's mystifying addition of the finale, which critics attacked as late as the 1920s:
It was a mistake.
It was an accident.
It was intended as an instrumental finale that the composer could never finish to his satisfaction.
A fourth possibility exists: that Beethoven simply decided to do it his way.
"He was his own man -- maybe a kind of man before his time -- and behaved his own way," Zack said. "And if it was an accident, it was certainly sublime."
The finale aside, that Beethoven completed the symphony at all in 1824, is something of a miracle. His most recent symphony, the Eighth, had been written a dozen years earlier, in 1812. By 1819, Beethoven had become almost completely deaf.
The crushing isolation brought about by Beethoven's condition was compounded by his protracted battle for custody of his nephew, Karl, and his stormy, bitter quarrels with the young man that culminated in Karl's suicide attempt in 1826.
Somehow, Beethoven mustered the concentration and the emotional resources to produce the symphony, which was quickly acknowleged as a triumph. (At the first performance, the composer was oblivious to the thunderous applause until one of the soloists turned him around to face the audience.)
However the Ninth Symphony came to be written, it is magnificent, Zack said. "You can be as senseless or as sensible as you want to be about these matters, but the work still comes out a monument to man's creative power."
The symphony is monumental in another sense: the sheer size of its forces, which are significantly larger than the classical symphonies that preceded it. The work also opened the door for the even larger Romantic symphonists who followed. (Those composers, notably Mahler, also followed Beethoven's lead in adding vocal passages to their symphonies.)
In Lexington, the philharmonic and singers will be joined by a quartet of solists: soprano Laura English-Robinson, mezzo-soprano Anne Duraski, tenor Erik Johanson and baritone Philip Kraus, who has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The philharmonic and singers will also perform Verdi's late religious work, Te Deum.
"I do think audiences look forward to hearing the singers and the orchestra in such a huge combination," Zack said. "Nothing else seems to satisfy quite like seeing and hearing the entire stage filled with people. It becomes something you don't want to miss."
Reprinted courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader