Happy Birthday To You
It’s Ludvig van Beethoven's 240th Birthday! We’re gonna party like it's 1770!
I confess, I was a weird kid. My cohort was into the Beatles. I dug Beethoven.
I don't know when I decided that Beethoven was the king of classical composers. Perhaps it was the Huntley-Brinkley Report. My dad used to watch it on our black and white TV. From 1956 to 1970, NBC's nightly news program ended with a clip from the second movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Scherzo with all that lovely pounding timpani.
Or maybe it was my piano teacher promising that, if I mastered the "Little Tunes for Little Hands" (or some such cutsie primer), I would be permitted to learn the Moonlight Sonata. (Well, the first movement, anyway.) On top of her piano stood two busts: Chopin and Beethoven.
Or maybe it was the first time I got to go to Boston Symphony Hall on a school trip. Harry Ellis Dickson conducted one of those "Young People's" concerts. The walls were lined with statues of gods and famous historical mortals like Demosthenes and Euripides. The great stage was framed by an ornate proscenium, and there, in the center, was the name "Beethoven". No other composer's name was ever placed on the Boston Symphony proscenium, only the Master Himself. It’s as though the entire Symphony Hall was designed just for Ludwig Van.
I don't remember whether it was this visit or a later one, but I remember the first time I heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. Di-di-di-DAH. Di-di-di-DAH!
As a teenager, I spent a fair amount of time in the Boston Public Library, listening to records in their auditing booths with big headphones on. There would be a crackle and hiss of the phonograph needle, then the music would start. The bold and forceful Third Symphony. The tender and lyrical Seventh. The mighty Ninth.
Happy Birthday, Ludwig. You’re still Number One!
I confess, I was a weird kid. My cohort was into the Beatles. I dug Beethoven.
I don't know when I decided that Beethoven was the king of classical composers. Perhaps it was the Huntley-Brinkley Report. My dad used to watch it on our black and white TV. From 1956 to 1970, NBC's nightly news program ended with a clip from the second movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Scherzo with all that lovely pounding timpani.
Or maybe it was my piano teacher promising that, if I mastered the "Little Tunes for Little Hands" (or some such cutsie primer), I would be permitted to learn the Moonlight Sonata. (Well, the first movement, anyway.) On top of her piano stood two busts: Chopin and Beethoven.
Or maybe it was the first time I got to go to Boston Symphony Hall on a school trip. Harry Ellis Dickson conducted one of those "Young People's" concerts. The walls were lined with statues of gods and famous historical mortals like Demosthenes and Euripides. The great stage was framed by an ornate proscenium, and there, in the center, was the name "Beethoven". No other composer's name was ever placed on the Boston Symphony proscenium, only the Master Himself. It’s as though the entire Symphony Hall was designed just for Ludwig Van.
I don't remember whether it was this visit or a later one, but I remember the first time I heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. Di-di-di-DAH. Di-di-di-DAH!
As a teenager, I spent a fair amount of time in the Boston Public Library, listening to records in their auditing booths with big headphones on. There would be a crackle and hiss of the phonograph needle, then the music would start. The bold and forceful Third Symphony. The tender and lyrical Seventh. The mighty Ninth.
Happy Birthday, Ludwig. You’re still Number One!