…but I have a feeling this approach is not going to work.
Right, nobody else ever played Beethoven with feeling. About a dozen of these showed up on eMusic this morning. I don't know whether "all female" is meant to have the connotations of "sisterhood is powerful" or "Lingerie Football League," but I don't think it's going to appeal to either crowd–the picture would annoy the first, but not be racy enough for the second.
The picture is annoying, yes, but I think “Performed With Feeling” (?!!) is much much worse.
Heh. I agree–it’s sort of the difference between “sorta dumb” and “really really stupid.”
LOL!! Exactly 😀 (I have this curious idea that someone in production mentioned something about “getting the female audience to relate.”)
Agreed. Really the whole thing is just…sorta cheesy and sad. I didn’t have the heart to look for further info.
Still recovering from my Anatomy & Physiology class, I read this as Sometimes Sex Cells.
AMDG
Sounds like the beginning of a multiple-choice question.
Beethoven is hardly renowned for exhibiting feminine sensibilities.
Well, if it is, I don’t have to answer it!
AMDG
Maybe they’re trying to fix Beethoven by bringing out his feminine side.
Well, he was a Romantic.
Actually, the past couple years I’ve been able to hear the eroticism in certain Classical pieces. I don’t mean anything like this dumb-downed cover though. More like the erotic longing of certain Romantic sonatas, or the playfulness of Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun. Eros in the best C.S. Lewis sense of the word. Unfortunately, the real emotional depth that is already written on the page is overlooked, hence why it has to be advertised as being played “with feeling.”
And I don’t like how the latest comments are now at the top.
As for Beethoven’s feminine side, I suggest reading the Immoral Beloved letters they found in his house after he died:
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us – I can live only wholly with you or not at all – Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits – Yes, unhappily it must be so – You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart – never – never – Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life – Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men – At my age I need a steady, quiet life – can that be so in our connection?
Centuries later, it still flares off the page.
Are you saying this passage exhibits a “feminine side”? Doesn’t seem feminine to me at all. I mean, not specifically feminine. Although the style is antique to our ears, the emotions don’t seem un-masculine to me at all.
Well, maybe not specifically feminine, but there’s a vulnerability there and a yearning for domesticity that contrasts with the usual depiction of him.
I just realized I wrote “immoral beloved” instead of “immortal.” I was in a bit of a daze.
Hmmmm. Just irritating all round.
“immoral beloved”–that’s hilarious. And I didn’t even notice. Thank you for pointing it out. 🙂
I see what you mean now: yes, that passage does have a tenderness which is not what one generally associates first with Beethoven.
But, really, would you want the dominant tone in his major works to be muted by being feminized? There is “feeling” and there is “feeling.”
No, I can’t imagine anyone wanting that. Well, I take that back, there was one feminist critique that said one of the symphonies expressed the emotions of a rapist.
And she’d know how? Why do so many feminists have to say such dumb things? Unprovable can’t.
“cant”
stupid iPod!
I expect, Louise, she used the same special sense as that feminist professor who declared that Sarah Palin is not a woman.
that feminist professor who declared that Sarah Palin is not a woman
Good grief!
“Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”
–Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago
A little like people who say that Clarence Thomas is not black.
AMDG
Yep, very much the same thing.
Facebook thinks I might like Ludwing van Beethoven: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ludwing-van-Beethoven/112253748800304
Yesterday it suggested I might like “Music.” I declined to commit myself.
You must be cultured if FB thinks you might like music. FB keeps asking me if I like things like The Bible, The British Army, and Mother Theresa. OTOH, I really don’t like to tick no, but OTOH, I don’t want the follow up if I tick yes. So I’m stuck with this stupid ad telling me I might like The Bible.
Dilemmas like that sometimes cause me to imagine being on trial: “Now, Mr. Horton, would you please explain to the jury why you refused to say that you like the Bible?”
I just couldn’t help wondering whether he was related to Darkwing Duck.
I was thinking that employers check your FB account now and if ND sees that Francesca doesn’t like the Bible, she’s in trouble.
AMDG
“Darkwing Duck”…what a thrilling name! I’m not even going to look it up, lest it fail to live up to the promise of the name.
Well, as you know, it doesn’t say ‘don’t like’, it just enables you to delete it and make it go away, which seems to amount to a ‘no’
Drake Mallard.
I think if you “like” things, though, you belong to something. You start getting things on your newsfeed. I may be wrong, though, because I never “like” anything.
AMDG
Once long ago a friend and I started laughing about the name Bob Mallard and couldn’t stop. We were young…
I hope I don’t get that “like the Bible” thing. I’m about to “like” eMusic because they will give me 5 free downloads for doing so. I’ll feel bad if I like eMusic more than I like the Bible.
Yeah, I ‘liked’ Bob Dylan (appetite took control over reason there!), and now I get information about what songs he sang or will sing at some concert it would be physically impossible for me to attend.
I’ve just checked – and there is a Ludwig van Beethoven page on Facebook with 35,926 fans. Poor old Ludwing only has 99.
Ha! I hadn’t even noticed that it was “Ludwing.”
FB asked me to like David Copperfield. I looked at the page because I wanted to see the picture of the book more clearly. It was full of information about Dicken’s DC, but all the comments were about the magician.
AMDG
A couple of my old students have liked “Classical” – which it turns out is “an album by the guitarist Wolf Hoffmann”. I wonder how many of the album’s million-plus fans thought they were expressing approval of “Classical music”?
Light On Dark Water 
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