[HN Gopher] A secret code may have been hiding in Beethoven's ma...
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A secret code may have been hiding in Beethoven's manuscripts
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 48 points
Date : 2024-04-09 19:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| kidbomb wrote:
| https://archive.is/sXAPN
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Tldr: the _code_ is systematic nuances that appear in the dynamic
| markings on his manuscripts, rather than hidden messages.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Beethoven didn't hide anything. He was obsessed with making sure
| people played his music as he intended. He would never have
| intentionally hidden the true instructions on how to play it. He
| didn't even like it when people performed his music from memory
| for fear they would miss something on the page. He was very
| explicit.
| jackbravo wrote:
| this is addressed in the article:
|
| > But whether Kitchen is correct remains up for debate.
| Jonathan Del Mar, a Beethoven scholar who has worked
| extensively with the composer's manuscripts, told me in an
| email that any anomalous marks in Beethoven's manuscripts were
| merely "cosmetic variants" of standard notations. Beethoven was
| a stickler for precision, Del Mar explained, especially when it
| came to his music, and if he'd cared about these marks, he
| would have made sure they appeared in the published versions.
| "I am absolutely convinced that, indeed, no difference of
| meaning was intended," Del Mar wrote.
|
| > Jeremy Yudkin, Lockwood's co-director at the Center for
| Beethoven Studies, also initially viewed Kitchen with
| skepticism. "When I first talked to him, I thought he was
| nuts," Yudkin told me. But Kitchen's close and careful research
| won him over. Yudkin now believes that Kitchen has discovered a
| previously unknown layer of meaning in Beethoven's manuscripts:
| "There are gradations of expression, a vast spectrum of
| expression, that music scholars and performers ought to take
| into account," he said.
| jackbravo wrote:
| oh! and also at the end, some "proof" ^_^
|
| > At this point, Kitchen believes he knows the code well
| enough that he can hear it in music. Once, at a concert in
| Hong Kong, he was listening to a performance of Beethoven's
| Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57--the "Appassionata."
| He noticed an unstable chord that seemed especially ominous
| and unsettling--the kind of quiet but emotionally powerful
| moment that Beethoven often noted with one of his bespoke
| abbreviations.
|
| > "I said, 'I bet you that's a two-line pianissimo,'" Kitchen
| recalled. After the performance, he checked. Sure enough:
| Scrawled below the disconcerting bass note troubling the
| otherwise serene chord, Beethoven had written a double-
| underlined pp. Two hundred years later, maybe Kitchen finally
| understood exactly what he'd meant.
| bombcar wrote:
| It could be both - notes to himself on what he wants to
| cause here, even if the performer will see something else
| (e.g. notes like "arrange the chord order this way when you
| select it" - editor's notes to himself).
| seanhunter wrote:
| Such a shame they didn't illustrate the article with specific
| pictures of some of the actual markings the author is referring
| to. The small picture at the top isn't really conclusive.
|
| Edit to add: That string quartet (Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op.
| 132) is amazing though[1], so it's great to be reminded to listen
| to it again.
|
| [1] Aren't they all? But that one for sure is.
| dako2117 wrote:
| A whole lot of words.
| tunesmith wrote:
| custom markings indicating more granularity in dynamics.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > "living instructions from one virtuoso performer to another"
|
| This guy really thinks a lot of himself if he's putting himself
| into the same category as Beethoven.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| One can be a virtuous musician of the level of Beethoven
| without coming close to his genius as a composer.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| You're right, at least we know how well the author performs
| whereas with Beethoven we have no recordings :)
| djtango wrote:
| This does not surprise me - the attention to detail that
| professional musicians play with is astounding.
|
| A friend had a lesson with Mitsuko Uchida and she would correct
| his tempo from hearing the first note.
|
| I wouldn't believe it if it weren't for the fact that my piano
| teacher was also such a stickler for the details and he slowly
| opened my awareness to just how much control of the instrument is
| possible.
|
| So it doesn't strike me as surprising that Beethoven was fussy
| and pedantic enough to have a personal graduation of dynamics
| that far exceeded the standard notation. This is a man who taught
| himself how to listen through his teeth after all...
|
| Being able to hear the music as Beethoven intended is a small
| dream to many musicians
| jancsika wrote:
| > A friend had a lesson with Mitsuko Uchida and she would
| correct his tempo from hearing the first note.
|
| I think you meant _second_ note. :)
| colanderman wrote:
| First note is perfectly possible.
|
| Note held too long? Tempo too slow.
|
| Note released too early? Tempo too fast, or note erroneously
| played staccato.
| recursive wrote:
| A 10% change in tempo at 120 BPM results in a difference of
| 50ms in the duration of a quarter note. This is certainly
| not difficult to a professional to discern.
|
| What _would_ be hard though is interrupting the performer
| during this window and stopping them prior to playing the
| second note.
|
| Errata: Some first notes are longer than a quarter notes.
| Some tempos are different than 120 BPM. It's possible to
| notice something before you can effectively communicate it.
| edbaskerville wrote:
| First note makes a better story. :) And not totally
| implausible--she could have inferred the tempo from the
| preparatory gesture leading into the first note.
| ssttoo wrote:
| Reminds me of my latest classical guitar lesson...
|
| Teacher: Have you ever learnt Villa-Lobos etude #1?
| (Reaches for his guitar)
|
| Me: this thing? (I play one note, very possibly a semitone
| off as it's a reach past 12th fret on the D string)
|
| Teacher: (with his back to me) No, that's #4
|
| Me: (wtf!)
| bombcar wrote:
| I used to listen to the same roughly five thousand songs,
| and friends were amazed that I could recognize some of
| the MP3s by the duration of silence before it began.
| timthecomposer wrote:
| That particular quartet (op132) is remarkable. Also not really in
| A minor, but in the Lydian mode. Very unusual, and deeply moving.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > Around the same time, scans of Beethoven manuscripts began to
| appear on a wiki site for musicians called the International
| Music Score Library Project.
|
| IMSLP is the third wonder of the crowdsourced world, after
| Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. I write as an OSM OG, someone who in
| theory understands crowdsourcing dynamics more than most, and
| still... IMSLP never ceases to amaze me.
|
| One example. Look at the contributions of Pierre Gouin:
| https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Gouin,_Pierre . He's 77 years old
| and from Montreal. He has edited thousands of scores of keyboard
| music, with the highest standards of scholarship, and posted them
| up for people to download. I play the church organ and I lose
| count of the number of times I have benefited from his
| endeavours.
|
| Multiply that by the number of IMSLP's dedicated contributors.
| Multiply that by the number of musicians who have downloaded
| their scores. It is an absolute wonder and it deserves more
| recognition.
| analog31 wrote:
| My kids are both classical musicians, and IMSLP has been a game
| changer for music study, as well as spontaneous jam sessions.
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