Happy Wednesday! 10-14-15
Today’s Class:
● Getting to Know You
● Beethoven No. 5
Objectives:
1. Assigned Seats
2. Attendance
3. Intro Activities
4. Introduction to Beethoven
= “Water”
= “Restroom”
Getting to Know You
● Write your name at
the top (First/Last)
● Circle “GM”
● Take this seriously
● Put it in the INBOX
when you’re done
About You / For You
● Write your name at
the top (First/Last)
● Be as honest with
and as kind to
yourself as possible.
● Put it in the INBOX
when you’re done
Symphony No. 5
Ludwig van Beethoven
Let’s Talk About Ears
How do they work????
Bill Nye: Ears
Ludwig van Beethoven
December 17, 1770
● Born in Bonn, Germany
● His father, who was a singer, was his first
teacher. After a while, even though he
was still only a boy, Ludwig became a
traveling performer, and soon, he was
supporting his family.
● Beethoven made his reputation as a
prodigious pianist, but that part of his
career was cut short...
● Around 1796, by the age of 26,
Beethoven began to lose his
hearing, and by the last decade
of his life he was almost totally
deaf.
● He gave up conducting and
performing in public but
continued to compose; many
of his most admired works
come from this period.
●
He suffered from a severe form of
tinnitus, a "ringing" in his ears
that made it hard for him to hear
music
● Beethoven was an unpleasant
person, difficult to get along with,
and had rather poor hygiene.
● He was almost arrested once while
walking near his home because he
was thought to be a vagrant.
● Over time, his hearing loss became
profound:
○ at the end of the premiere of his Ninth
Symphony in 1824, he had to be turned
around to see the tumultuous applause
of the audience because he could hear
neither it nor the orchestra.
● Beethoven's hearing loss did not prevent
him from composing music, but it made
playing at concerts—a lucrative source of
income—increasingly difficult.
Fifth Symphony
● Symphony: an elaborate
instrumental composition in three
or more movements, written for an
orchestra and usually with grand
proportions and varied elements.
Fifth Symphony
●
●
Beethoven was in his mid-thirties during this time; his
personal life was troubled by increasing deafness.
Performance:
○ The orchestra did not play well—with only one
rehearsal before the concert—and at one point,
following a mistake by one of the performers in the
Choral Fantasy, Beethoven had to stop the music
and start again
○ The auditorium was extremely cold and the
audience was exhausted by the length of the
program.
○ However, a year and a half later, publication of the
score resulted in a rapturous unsigned review
First movement:
Allegro con brio
(“Happy, with fire”)