How did you first learn about Beethoven... school, Looney Tunes or A Clockwork Orange?
The 9th Symphony, 2nd Movement is my all time favorite... clues...
Looney Tunes, of course, Lol.
@mrmikeswildworl When I was around five, I started playing my parent's records. Do you have any idea how many 78rpm records it takes for a complete symphony? Fortunately, we had a turntable with an automatic changer.
His 9th used to be my favorite piece of music too, but I prefer the 4th (choral) movement. That was his great masterpiece. My new favorite is Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Do you know it?
I've known about Beethoven since before I can remember, so before I was five. Most likely it would have come from my mum but I don't know. I would guess that I heard most of the major works for the first time at concerts when I was a teenager. Kind people who had spare tickets would send them down to the school, and I would hang out in Head of Music's room on appropriate days in the hope of snagging one.
When I became a student, and thereby became rich for the first time, one of the first things I bought was a set of complete Beethoven symphonies on cassette.
@GreatHornedOwl I used to be a percussionist and I played Carmina many times. It's marvellous.
I don't remember the first time I heard about Beethoven. He's such a cultural icon, like Einstein, he's everywhere. Incidentally, that scowl you often see on his face in paintings of him all were painted from a life mask, not from life. He didn't have the scowl when the artist had Beethoven as a live model. When the life mask was being made, the plaster irritated Beethoven's face and he felt like he was suffocating. He threw the mask off onto the floor and broke it. It was pieced back together and that became the image most have of Beethoven. If you're ever in Vienna, it's such a spiritual experience visiting one of his apartments and his grave. The Central Cemetery is mind-blowing with incredible gravestones. His immediate neighbors are also mind-blowing: Brahms, Chopin, Shubert, a couple Strausses.
I first learned via piano lessons and Looney Tunes.
@mrmikeswildworl ... agreed Beethoven's 9th is awesome. My fav is the 4th movement, but I enjoy the whole symphony.
As a young teenager I heard Walter Murphy's disco version of Beethoven's fifth.
Looney Toons of course. Für Elise & my very favorite is Piano Sonata No. 14, it moves my soul!
Both my parents were musicians so it’s impossible for me to remember exactly when I first learned about Beethoven. I was literally listening to classical music while still in the womb. My parents were talking to me about classical composers by the time I was five years old. My father and I would “conduct” symphonies together in the living room to recorded music and he taught me to sing the Toreador song from Carmen at a young age. My father, mother, aunt, and uncle would ham it up singing opera in the living room as entertainment. Just for context, my aunt spent her life working in a coat factory in Union City, NJ. They were working class children of Italian immigrants but they loved music. Back in the old country, a great aunt sold a copper pot in order to buy a violin for my grandfather so he could have music lessons as a child. My mother’s father worked on the barges on the Hudson River and my grandmother was raising her children during the Depression, but she still saved money to buy a piano and paid for my mother to have voice and piano lessons. They valued music that much.
My favorite piece by Beethoven is the second movement of his 7th symphony. I fell in love with it as a child, maybe when I was about 12 years old. The beginning is so sad and filled with such longing but triumphant in the end. I could be wrong but I think this may have been the first symphony he wrote after having gone deaf.
This particular recording of it was conducted by Leonard Bernstein, my favorite conductor, in Berlin. I had a huge crush on him as a child.
@Babichev your wonderful story reminded me of one of the most remarkable and yet most un-remarked upon changes in society in my adult life.
When I was in my 20s music was still expensive. Very widely available, but you thought about the money. Will I buy this tape/record/CD or that one? Will I go to a concert or the pictures or buy a book? If you were broke you had to rely on the radio, assuming you had a radio, which is great but of course somebody else is choosing the music, not you. If your friend made a musical 'discovery' you had to arrange to go to their house and listen to it.
Now, music is functionally free. You can listen to any Beethoven symphony, in a variety of recordings, on youtube for the cost of having your life despoiled by a few adverts. It's an extraordinary transformation, which was unthinkable when I was a child.
For me it was probably "A Charlie Brown Christmas". I remember watching it when I was very young and almost every year since. (It's around the 1:16 mark)
My first exposure to live Beethoven was at the Promenade Concerts in London. This was before most people on this site were even born. The Proms, as they are known, run from about July to September, and traditionally, Beethoven’s 9th was always performed on the penultimate night. I was fortunate to be able to hear it four years in succession. Each time it was like going on a pilgrimage. Surely Beethoven is the greatest benefactor our culture has ever had.
@BJC I would argue for Mozart, being the greatest. Beethoven comes in second. Even in his very short life, Mozart was far pore prolific, and had a far wider range of styles. The quality of his music was at least as good.
I don't recall my first exposure to Beethoven's music, but it probably was though a cartoon. And I did grow up reading the Peanuts comic strip, where he was mentioned many times.
Beethoven is my favorite classical composer, followed closely by Tchaikovsky. The second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (for which I have an idea for a paired Fantasia-style animated segment ) is the most beautiful piece of classical music I have ever heard.
I'm sure it was probably a cartoon, but I'll give the majority of credit to Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts on PBS. This early exposure led me to the Peabdoy Conservatory of Music (Peabody Institute). I have fond memories of rehearsing the 6th.
GreatHornedOwl, Mozart certainly had a greater gift for opera than Beethoven. I would not be without any of Mozart's operas; The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute are unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Fidelio has some superb things in it (Florestan's Act 2 aria comes to mind) but for some reason Beethoven wasn't quite at home with opera.
I agree with you about Carmina Burana. Wonderful piece.
GreatHornedOwl I agree Mozart first, Beethoven second.
For those who love the 9th, and who doesn't, you might want to check out it's precursor, written 16 years earlier, the Choral Fantasy for piano, voices, chorus and orchestra, Op. 80. You can see many of the ideas he used for the 5th movement. I had not heard it until last year -- still shocked at that fact. Really good. The choral portion comes in in the last four minutes.
It's impossible to say. Playing music from an early age familiarized myself with him by playing various arrangements of his symphonies and learning the (easier) piano work. My earliest memory playing them is Symphony no 2. When I put my parent's record set of all nine to cassette tape, I would cycle through all of them from time to time as a teen.
@JohnfromVienna - The Choral Fantasy is more for insight into Beethoven's style vs enjoyment as a stand-alone work. I even have a soft spot for Wellington's Victory but both works are average to mediocre.
Marcus, I wouldn't call it mediocre. Mediocre for Beethoven, maybe. It is very enjoyable, creative and is interesting also from a historical perspective, which is why I pointed it out. As I recall Wellington is quite a monstrosity, though.