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A 250 years old love song
This piece by Beethoven always moves me, and is one of my favourite Beethoven works. Beethoven had one great love in his life, the Immortal Beloved, that left him with a broken heart. He wrote a famous letter to his great love, but some scholars believe the letter was never received. Some believe this 2nd movement from the Piano Concerto No 5, expresses his broken heart. Here is the letter to his Immortal Beloved, that this piece and the piano solo “Fur Elise” possibly relates to.
Such beautiful music that captures the longing for love from a broken heart, that endures 250 years later. When “speech is quite inadequate”, only music can express it fully.
“Some historians have surmised that Beethoven fell deeply in love with Therese Malfatti, cousin to a close friend of his, and even contemplated proposing in 1810. Once again, money got in the way. Her wealthy parents disapproved, and she was eventually married off to a nobleman. Many scholars believe his “Für Elise” was written in her honor.” – Beethoven Biography article “Who Was Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved”
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24 Replies
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Jung, thank you for Fur Elise. As a kid, I played this on the guitar at the Kiwanis Music Festival in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Did very well, finishing in first place in the age group. I always remember my Mom telling me to smile before I began. When I would look into the crowd before starting, she would have a big grin on her face to remind me.
When Eddie Van Halen did his version, I did my best to soup it up. It was fun, but, of course, nowhere near the EVH level.
When Mom passed, I found a music box that plays Fur Elise. It is currently on my desk in school and when I need the students to calm down, I simply open the box. Beethoven immediately calms the room.
I think the classical version serves the universe better.
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Hi Christopher, I think one of the first melodies I got to know was Fur Elise from a music box I had when I was 3 or 4 years old that I remember. It was a little wooden house with a watermill that you could wind up. I had that for several years, and it is one of the earliest of my memories. My mom loved Beethoven, and the 5th Symphony was the music that consoled her through tough times during the Korean War she lived through. So I always had a special affinity with Beethoven and his music. Music did not come easy for Beethoven like it did for Mozart and Bach, he really had to work hard and struggled with his music, but in the end his is considered the greatest monument in all of music.
That music box and Fur Elise I can see is very special for you given it’s relation back to your mom. Thanks for sharing your story around it. Can you play Fur Elise on the guitar today?
The Eddie Van Halen Fur Elise on guitar sounds intriguing. I will have to look for that on youtube.
I think Fur Elise, and Beethoven serves the universe well indeed. I have been practicing the piano off and on lately and perhaps Fur Elise would be a good project. I learned the Moonlight Sonata (simplified version) on the piano years ago.
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Jung…Can I play Fur Elise today? Nowhere as smooth as I could back in the day and nowhere as cool as EVH. But I have the music box. One year, my Mom would call my cellphone at a particular time about once every other week when I was teaching an Accounting class. I would put the phone on speaker and the class would shout “Hi Mom!”
Forgot all about that until Fur Elise…thanks!
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Thank you Jung for this beautiful topic. As always, I enjoy following your little excursions into the life and works of Beethoven.
Music is not only a wonderful way to express feelings, but also a great help to process and record feelings and moving moments in life. I am convinced that many great artists, whether musicians, painters or writers constantly have a thorn in their soul, which hurt them and which they wanted to overcome through their art. Love, joy, pain and sorrow. These are probably the four great driving forces of art.
With this contribution I would like to honor the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, who already performed his own compositions in front of an audience at the age of 8. Chopin’s life was marked by the search for love and recognition, expulsion from his homeland and finally his young life ended with a serious illness, which marked him the last years of his life. His musical work was as eventful as his life. He often composed melancholy pieces of music, which certainly trace his personal journey through life. Chopin became famous for his “Nocturnes” (night-inspired composition), which were based on piano compositions by the Irish composer John Field. Chopin took the music of the Irish piano virtuoso and refined it into his own formative music.
Beautiful, timeless music that invite you to dream and reflect. Sounds that take the listener on a journey, into the life of a man who some 160 years ago expressed his feelings with these wonderful piano compositions.
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Hi Jurgen, thanks for that, enjoyed reading what you said.
Most of the classical music works like symphonies, sonatas, concertos etc across the 3 or 4 movements, and even within a single movement comprise of some form of pain or sorrow, that through the music resolves to peaceful reflection or joy. The music takes you through a journey in emotions that reflect the human experience, often as in the case of Beethoven and Chopin, It’s the composers experience expressed in music. As Beethoven wrote in his love letter, “..there are moments when I find that speech is quite inadequate”, but art can express it all, which Beethoven does in his music.
To echo what you said, I think some artists used their art to express and overcome the hurt and thorn in their soul, and in the process created some of the most beautiful and moving works of art in history. It’s amazing, some of the great 60s legends like the Beatles created music that captures the same kind of emotional journey of a 45 minutes classical symphony in a 3 or 4 minute song. MLTs Songbird does that for me, and that is why I love it so much. It floored me when I first heard it.
In this video the speaker talks about how Chopin’s music express so much emotion. It starts at the 6:43 mark, and goes to 17:00, which I marked the video to start at. Although the video title is “transformative power of classical music”, in reality this applies to all music, and I would retitle it “TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ART”, not just classical.
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Here is a wonderful analysis/essay on why the Beatles “Yesterday” is so great and revolutionary, and considered possibly the greatest piece of music written in the 20th Century. There is so much emotional impact in a mere 2 minutes song. The brilliant genius of the Beatles.
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Easily the best cover version of this song ever.
I love the element of classical music in this performance with Lisa herself doing the Cello!
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Thanks for Baenjamin Zander’s contribution, Jung. Very entertaining.
And here is a love song composed about 180 years ago. On the eve of their marriage, in September 1840, Robert Schumann presented a collection of songs to his beloved Clara as a wedding present—something he had kept completely secret from her for months (so it is said)
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Franz Liszt : Liebestraum (1850)
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Thanks Juergen for posting these. The Liebestraum is beautiful. When Liszt played it in the parlors in the day, ladies use to faint. Franz Liszt was the Beatles of the 19th century, or classical people would say the Beatles were the Franz Liszt of the 20th century. Either way, Lisztomania and Beatlemania had a powerful effect on it’s fans.
As Paul McCartney said of Bach, “add some drums and a beat to it, and you have what we were doing”; Rock and Roll.
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Hi Jung, I didn’t know that Liszt was such a womanizer. But I can well imagine that musicians and writers of his time had a large group of female fans. Coveted by women and shunned by the money. A special kind of destiny.
La Campanella is also a very beautiful piece of music. It builds up a nice suspense of tension between melodic and extravagant.
Liebeslied (love song) – with Caspar Joseph Mertz I would like to introduce a representative of the Romantic Era who has written wonderful guitar pieces.
He grew up in a poor family. At the age of 12 he was already giving guitar and flute lessons. In Vienna, where he lived from the fall of 1840 and performed as an esteemed guitar virtuoso, Mertz was active both as a teacher and as a concert musician. In Dresden Mertz met the pianist Josephine Plantin, whom he married in December 1842. His activities in Vienna took place against the background of the general decline of public interest in the guitar in Vienna (wiki)
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Hi Jurgen, wow I was not aware of Casper Joseph Mertz and the classical guitar side. Imagine that a guitar virtuoso in the 1800s already existed, predating Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. I was very curious and researched a little and it looks like he was in the company of the great piano virtuoso’s like Liszt, Chopin, and Schumann, and of course his wife too, who was also a concert pianist. It looks like that Romantic period in the mid 1800s was a period of great virtuoso musicians, and there was a lot of creative cross pollination going on like there was in the 60s Liverpool, and Laurel Canyon. I bet Mertz would be so overly thrilled to see how the guitar flourished in the 20th century, and he would have loved the electric guitar. I’m sure he’d be a huge fan of Mona and Lisa if he time traveled to the future!!!
The video of his piece is played so delicately, very soothing. Thanks for sharing this, enjoyed learning about Mertz.
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Yes Jung, I’m sure Mertz would have loved the sound of an electric guitar and the possibilities it offers. At this point I ask myself what would have become of Eric Clapton and Co. if they had been born 100 or 200 years earlier. Would they have revolutionized the music scene then, too? We will probably never know, but maybe it is better that way. And here are two very talented guitarists performing a piece by Enrique Granados.
Enrique Granados, born July 27, 1867, was a Spanish composer and pianist. Although he composed primarily piano pieces, many of his works were also transcribed for guitar. The following piece is not a love song, but it is a very soulful performance nonetheless.
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Thanks Jurgen for that, the guitar playing is very graceful and beautiful. It’s a great transcription to guitar. I really like the classical/Spanish guitar style. In MLTs cover of “Time Of The Season” there is some awesome classical guitar sounds, in place of the synthesized organ, which really make that song all their own. Their Summer Rain also has some great acoustic guitar work that would make Mertz very happy I think.
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Friedrich “Fritz” Kreisler was an Austrian-born American violinist and composer. One of the most noted violin masters of his day, and regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing (wiki).
Here is an excerpt from his work „Liebesleid und Liebesfreud“ (Love sorrow and love joy). A very soulful piece, with a slightly melancholic note.
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Hi Jurgen, wow thanks that is beautiful. Again I’m not familiar with Friedrich “Fritz” Kreisler. I will have to check out his work with the violin, as well as Mertz with the classical guitar. I have a CD of Paginini who is another great violin virtuoso from the past.
Since we are talking great violin, while composers like Mozart created many Violin Concertos, Beethoven only created one in his entire career, and I think it is arguably the best of them all. Here are two movements from the concerto where the violin just sings so sweetly.
Beethoven Violin Concerto, 2nd movement
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Beethoven Violin Concerto, 3rd movement
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