Lead likely did NOT cause Beethoven's deafness or more

That's contra friend (his latest leads me to scratch the "friend") Skeptophilia, who posts to that end, with link to a Smithsonian piece, that in turn riffs off a letter to the editor in Clinical Chemistry.

There's a LOT to unpack.

First, Beethoven's hair has been tested before. Contra what I infer the letter writers implying, this is nothing new.

Second, the lead acetate mentioned in the story? Goes back to Roman times. So does lead being in pottery glazes. So does lead-pipe plumbing. Was Caesar deaf? Cicero? Augustus? Seneca? I think not.

Third, the authors note they were able to sequence much of Beethoven's genome and that he had a genetic disposition toward liver disease and had hepatitis B at the time of his death.

You know what exacerbates liver disease? Alcohol, as in the alcohol that contained the lead acetate grape syrup Beethoven was drinking.

A History Channel piece goes further down that road, talking about this hair study, which was published in Current Biology:

Moreover, the researchers provided the first proof that Beethoven was infected with the hepatitis B virus, which inflames the liver and could have spread to him during childbirth, sexual intercourse, or surgery with contaminated instruments.

“If you have hepatitis B today, then your doctor is going to tell you not to drink a single glass of wine,” says Meredith, a co-author on the paper.

Yet, though most evidence suggests Beethoven was a moderate drinker for the era, “it’s safe to assume he was drinking practically daily,” says Tristan Begg, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England and the paper’s lead author. In all likelihood, the researchers say some combination of alcohol consumption, hepatitis B, and his genetic predisposition to liver disease caused cirrhosis, from which he never recovered.

There you are.

If that's not enough?

Even an old ScientificAmerican story mentions a mix of alcohol and viral hepatitis on his death. (Beethoven also appeared to have had late-life pancreatitis, often associated with alcohol abuse.) From that 2023 hair study, again. In addition, Ars Technica notes Beethoven contracted typhus in 1796.

As for the deafness?

Beethoven had no genetic predisposition there. And, lead poisoning can be a factor. But, again, see above. And, some types of typhus can be a cause.

Not the first time Skeptophilia has run with something without being on the firmest of foundations. Why, this time, other than the "tears" on his piece meaning this has more pathos than Beethoven's drinking problem and wherever he got Hep B from, I don't know.

As for the letter he cites? When this was all over the news a year ago saying that lead probably was NOT the issue. It seems you have a couple of people hitting "publish" on the publish-or-perish button.

Now, how did Beethoven get Hep B? On causes, I doubt he was sharing dirty needles, and it surely wasn't from birth. That leaves him most likely visiting an infected prostitute. Boo hoo on that one, Skeptophilia.

An alleged Beethoven's 10th? Really? Boo or yay?

The Conversation reports that a team of musicologists, in conjunction with a team of artificial intelligence researchers, recently completed the first realization of what they call Beethoven's 10th Symphony.

Or Sym-phony? 

Pardon my skepticism. But, the manipulators have well earned it.

First, on the AI side, I've heard computer-generated music before. That includes computer-generated classical music. And, without knowing in advance it was computer-generated, in some cases. It sounded nice. Or rather, "nice."

Second, on the musicologist side, I've heard Barry Cooper's realization of the first movement before. Didn't like it. Sounded more like Schubert than Beethoven, among other things.

Third, on the music theory side, Beethoven left a lot less for "his" Tenth than Mahler did for his.

On the positive side?

The musicologists involved included Robert Levin, author of a renowned realization of Mozart's Requieum.

Second, in a test run, piano score, for an audience, supposedly, listeners couldn't tell where Beethoven ended and AI began.

I don't know if there's a recording of the full thing on YouTube, but there is a link to a snippet, audio only, at the end of the piece.

Still sounds as much like Schubert as Beethoven. Maybe not "more than," but still "as much as." And, to some degree, sounds like neither one totally. It sounds a bit like what Mozart might have done had he lived another decade. (That said, the snippet is from that same first movement that I critiqued above.)

Better, as least as far as something to listen to, but not actually better? I found the ALLEGED "full audio" on YouTube.

It AIN'T really "full audio," as Beethoven never would have written a 10th Symphony clocking just 21:30. I've left comments to that effect. This is like a master's of music thesis composition. Not even a doctor of music. Master's of music.

(At the YouTube page for the embedded video, people are chiding me for not understanding the project. Look, folks, unlike Barry Cooper, this isn't marketed as a "movement," and "full audio" can at least be interpreted as "the full enchilada." Don't blame me for perceiving a marketing attempt that backfired.)

Other commenters say it sounds like middle Beethoven, not late. I can halfway buy that, but even then, it doesn't sound THAT much like Beethoven. Compare it to, say, the 4th Symphony or 3rd Piano Concerto. 

Or, like a master's of music thesis composition!

There's the added problem, which Cooper admitted he faced, in that Beethoven's own sketches contradict each other, not a problem with the Mahler 10th. The new realizers appear to have taken a different fork at times, but I still think they have too little to work on.

It doesn't jazz me up a lot more than Cooper.

Finally, on an arrogance issue? Having the general public, music or other journalists or even musicologists allegedly not able to tell where Beethoven left off and where AI begins means little, for two major reasons.

First, there's so little in the way of Beethoven sketches beyond the first movement that it's mostly AI.

Second, given that the AI composers (I refuse to call this a "realization") say they used basically the entire Beethoven corpus, that means the trained listeners can't compare it to just late Beethoven. And, given that Beethoven, a la Prokofiev, never decided to write "A Symphony in Baroque Style," or per Schnittke, never wanted to write "A Suite in Baroque Style," using his whole corpus as an AI writing guide is a "fail." A necessary one, given the paucity of actual sketches, but one that just further illustrates the problem.

Third? As for the claim that journalists and musicologists even, couldn't tell where Beethoven stopped and AI started? I could tell where Beethoven stopped and bullshit started — when the organ comes in the first time, just after the 7-minute mark.

That's also a mark that this is bullshit by the modern pseudo-realizers. Given that Beethoven wrote almost nothing for organ, no way AI says "organ here." Humans did that. Humans writing something like ...  a master's of music thesis composition!

(Also at the YouTube page, one respondent to me says, imagine Beethoven dying earlier and never writing a choral symphony, but yet, somebody coming along and brilliantly saying ... "voila." Bull. First, as I noted, Beethoven lived to 57; he didn't die at Schubert's age. Second, we can play all sorts of games with such silly counterfactuals.)

And, feeding on that? I Twitter-searched "Beethoven's 10th," and see that the artistes and the recorders-engineers are touting this with the #BeethovenX hashtag. I Tweeted to a group:

Seriously this so-called #BeethovenX is like a thesis composition somebody would write for a master of music degree, and not even a PhD, and don't blame AI for that. This is ultimately on humans at the end, making overblown claims about #AI and about themselves.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 13, 2021

And Deutsche Telecom's account responded:

If you didn't like the result, it's totally fine. The perception of arts is always very individual. #BeethovenX was an experiment to find out if AI and arts can match. I'm pretty sure that Beethoven himself as a visionary would have curiously followed this approach. ^susann

— Deutsche Telekom AG (@deutschetelekom) October 14, 2021

To which I said:

>>I'm pretty sure that Beethoven himself as a visionary would have curiously followed this approach<<
I'm pretty sure not. Plus, don't blame AI for inserting an organ in a middle. IMO, this gets to the real issue. This wasn't even a "realization," as normally understood.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 14, 2021

C'mon, we're now entering the land of intellectual dishonesty. Humans ultimately wrote this up, and since this is orchestration, not a keyboard score, chose the instrumentation.

That includes the "master's of music theses" alleged creativity of adding an organ line in the middle. I'm pretty damned sure that, because Beethoven wrote little for organ, he would NOT have "curiously followed this approach."

So, per the header? "Boo!" And, in spades. And, why I added "An alleged" at the start of the header.

And, it's sad that a Robert Levin, with his great realization of the Mozart Requiem, would be part of this dreck.

Fabio Luisi at the DSO? I think I'll pass

Dallas Morning News classical music critic Scott Cantrell recently offered praise for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's new music director, Fabio Luisi, who will officially start this fall after a two-year hiatus to replace Jaap van Zweden.

Among the praise was, even with him not having a full hand in the 2020-21 season, booking more 20th century music than van Zweden or Andrew Litton before him.

But, of the pieces Cantrell listed, none are from the warhorses of 20th century atonality.

No serialist Schoenberg, or disciples Berg or Webern.

No late-life serialist Stravinsky.

No second-gen serialism pioneer Ernst Krenek, either from his serialism or his non-serial atonality.

No atonal (or tonal) Penderecki. No Ligeti. No Schnittke.

Lemme know when something from THAT, or similar, is on the playlist.

That said, speaking of warhorses?

I found part of Luisi's premier concert with the DSO on YouTube, which sadly had commenting turned off.

It's Beethoven's Seventh. To me, one of the acid tests is if you play the Allegretto second movement as marked, with the metronome at 76 or thereabouts, you have failed. You're not "HIP," if you're not conducting a period instruments orchestra.

And, while Luisi does get some nice texture out of the movement, it's too slow. Clocking at almost 45 minutes, the whole symphony is too slow. But the second movement, at more than 10 minutes, is WAY too slow. Listen, starting at 13:22 for the second movement.



No, DSO concertgoers, that did not deserve applause at the end of the second movement. Third movement is by the modern book, so good there. In fact, if anything ... it's almost rushed, and has a feeling of that after the slow second movement. Fourth movement, again, crisp, and again, even to the fast end. But ... that second movement ... no. And again, it's not just that it's slow; it stands out like a sore thumb against the third and fourth movements.

Listening to that again, in 2024, there's one other problem. The "attacca" between first and second movements, with no pause. You'll note there is a normal pause after the second movement, even before the unwarranted inter-movement applause. Listen further. The third movement in general is too slow. But, within that, the last major tempo change in the recapitulation area is too fast, and with the earlier portion of the movement too slow, it sounds rushed.

Speaking of, especially with all that behind him, the fourth movement's opening sounds rushed. In fact it IS rushed even if we ignored the slowness of the previous. It's barely 8 minutes. And that only emphasizes how the second and third sound too slow. And are too slow.

Compare all of that to the master in the period instruments (when appropriate) groups, John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique.



Hear the difference? Compare and contrast the finales, too. Gardiner actually starts slower, but that gives him more room to play.

Or David Zinman with the Tonhalle, whose Beethoven cycle I bought immediately after hearing him with the new urtext on Eroica. YouTube has his 7th separate by movement.



Again, hear the difference?

Or, one more. Kleiber, among the old masters. 12:15 8:04 for the second movement. (The scratched-out was the first movement clocking.) And he takes the whole schmeer even faster than Gardiner or Zinman.



Much above 80 can be rushed.

But anything below 68 can seem slow, and anything below about 64, especially with poor nuancing, can seem draggy. An even 8 minutes, as the three gents above indicate, is about right. Not a full 10 minutes. (Cantrell DID ding him for this.)

And, contra unnamed critics cited by D Magazine, Luisi's predecessor van Zweden didn't lash this piece, at least, too fast. YouTube shows him also at 38 and change. It also shows him with a 14-minute first movement and a second movement that's not exactly fast.

OK, more questionable Beethoven.

A nearly-55 minute Eroica?



Too slow all around. The biggest offender seems to be a 15-minute finale; second biggest is Funeral March nearly 16 minutes long.

Zinman comes in at an even 46 overall. The opening is about 2 minutes quicker. The funeral march about 2:40 quicker. The finale is almost 4 minutes shorter. Listen:



Zinman isn't alone. Erich Kleiber has the finale at 11 minutes in a 45 minute recording. Ditto Gardiner. Again, listen:



If Luisi either can't "get" Beethoven, or, on a piece like Eroica, thinks that sounding like Daniel Barenboim is good (it ain't), then no, this is not a fantastic hire.

Next, a warhorse from just about exactly a century later.

I found Luisi doing the finale of the Mahler Sixth with the Suisse Romande. Before even clicking, I noted a above-35 play time. Antennae up. Listen:



Not totally draggy, and he does get some nice nuances out of texture. But, when not totally draggy, even for Mahler, there seems to be too much rubato in tempo changes. Portions seemed rushed. And, per the Beethoven Seventh above, he likes to play with tempos a lot, as far as pushing composers' plans to the extreme both fast and slow.

A decade-plus older Italian contemporary of Luisi then came to mind — Guiseppe Sinopoli. I bought his M6 in the early 1990s, shortly after he'd started moving beyond opera, and started getting raves for his psychological interpretations. The opener of the M6 (where I'm a tough critic, and was halfway so even then) wasn't bad. Each subsequent movement got worse, and he pushed 35 with the finale. But even he didn't have that much rubato, IIRC.

Listen to somebody hugely uptempo with the M6, Kondrashin:



Big difference.

Or, someone somewhat more conventional, and with a lighter touch, but not delayed, Ivan Fischer, who comes in at just over 28 minutes:



Again, a difference that you would notice, even without Kondrashin as a peg.

Cantrell may have gotten it right before Luisi was named. "YouTube performances suggest consummate professionalism, but something less than a compelling musical personality."

And, speaking of M6? Cantrell (with whom I exchanged emails in the 2000-aughts when I was a DSO season ticket holder at Thursday night concerts, the nights he'd be attending for his preview write-ups) praises this by Jaap.



I'll pass on this, too. The second movement (not here, as this is first movement only, after the original YouTube video is gone due to being from a now-canned account) is lyrical and nuanced, but the first movement is by the book, and almost all conductors' books are wrong on this. This is part of why I so like Kondrashin; the opening BRISTLES with him.

Having never talking post-Litton Mahler with Scott, maybe we'd disagree on interpreting him in general? And, (April 5, 2024) going beyond earlier thoughts on this, while Cantrell was right that van Zweden brought the technique of DSO players, as individuals, as sections, and as a whole, to new levels, I don't think he brought as much new as an interpreter as Scott may have thought of him in van Zweden's first years in Dallas.

I do know that we agreed that the DSO, especially under Litton but also in my brief time there at the start of van Zweden's tenure, needed to broaden its rep in the 20th century. Per my suggested playlist, vs Cantrell's, I'm trying to figure out . He does like him some Walter Piston, who did at least some toe-dipping into serialism, and Elliott Carter, though.

Frankly, though he's older than Luisi, I wish they'd made a run at Salonen. But I forgot myself and forgot that this is Dallas.

And, 18 months later, having heard (via online clips) Luisi actually play with Dallas, my impression went further downhill.

Update, April 4, 2024: Yet more reason to take a pass on Luisi? Per this great New Yorker piece about a sad recent trend in the classical world, he's spread too thin:

Fabio Luisi is spread across three continents, maintaining roles at the Dallas Symphony, the Danish National Symphony, and the NHK Symphony, in Japan.

Per the piece, it's not quite as bad as its focal point, Klaus Mäkelä, who not only currently runs the Concertgebouw but is tapped to help Chicago in 2027 — while (at least until he says he's leaving) staying in Amsterdam as well. And, while neither Dallas nor the NHK (dunno about the Danish National) are top-tier, they're both solidly enough in the second tier that they shouldn't be sharing a music director. A Luisi could do one or the other of the two, plus the Danish. And, even be principal guest conductor at a third, smaller orchestra if the ego or tightening corporate symphonic sponsorships demanded. But, that's it.

That said, there's more.

That is snarkily topped by this:

American orchestra subscribers have become resigned to a phony civic ritual: a foreign-accented maestro flies in a few times a season for two or three weeks, stays in a hotel or a furnished apartment, attends a flurry of donor dinners, and dons the appropriate cap when the local baseball team makes the playoffs.

Oof. When Jaap van Zweden was in Dallas, he seemed reasonably involved. But, it was the only orchestra where he was the music director. Speaking of, the piece notes that he and the NY Phil have parted ways. For the Seoul Philharmonic and the French Radio Philharmonic, to style it in English? Wow, what a tumble.

Wiki's page on Luisi adds this, which fits perfectly with the New Yorker snark:

Outside of music, his hobbies include the production of his line of perfumes.

Oy.

Bottom line? It's like the reading of books. Ars longa, vita brevior. I have only so much time to read, or to listen.

Glenn Gould gets Beethoven right

Listening to Glenn Gould and realizing he is the ONLY pianist I've ever heard play Moonlight Sonata fast enough, especially/namely the iconic first movement. Most casual classical aficionados may not realize it's written in cut time, and should be played at least 25 percent faster than the average concert pianist plays it. And the finale (listen to the whole sonata, if you haven't) should be played like your hair's on fire.

Happy 238th, Ludwig!

My musical playlist suggestion?

Here in the States, where much of country is hit by winter weather today, the Choral Fantasy. Sprightly vocal music without Christmas connections.

Then, to honor "a great man," the funeral march from the 12th Piano Sonata. Then, all of "Moonlight." Add a late-era quartet, perhaps the C-sharp minor or the Serioso.

Calling all music police: round up the Bernstein-Beethoven recordings

About five years ago, I got home one evening from somewhere, and turned on WRR, the Dallas classical radio station.

I immediately recognized the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I shortly thereafter recognized that this was probably the worst interpretation I ever heard.

Like watching a train wreck, mesmerized, I had to listen to the end to see who was conducting.

I found out it was Leonard Bernstein, specifically his fall of the Berlin Wall epic performance, if I may use the word “epic” loosely. (I had never heard it before.)

He had everything wrong, in my opinion — tempos, phrasings, nuances of dynamics, you name it.

Since that time, I have occasionally heard other Beethoven recordings of his on the radio, and I am convinced of one thing.

Lenny was clueless about Beethoven. Period.

So, I suggest we deputize some music police, confiscate every Bernstein recording of Beethoven, and destroy them all.

Mahler: the anti-Beethoven

How’s that?

Mahler’s first symphony clearly exhibits signs of being written as a deliberate aheroic, or even antiheroic, counterpoint to Beethoven’s Eroica.

How’s that?

First, the title of Mahler’s First: “Titan.” Selected by Mahler itself, and not at all modest for the title of a composer’s first symphony, it deliberately plays off Beethoven’s Eroica. Yet, unlike that work, it contains no dedication to a particular person nor was it ever written with that end in mind.

But the real anti-Beethoven, aheroic strains come out in the funeral march.

Those familiar with the symphony know that the theme of the march is the popular nursery rhyme “Frere Jacques,” suitable retarded, and put in the minor key. A nursery rhyme is anything but march-like. And the daily routine of a 4- or 5-year-old child is anything but heroic, let alone martial. The child in his mundane, everyday world, slowed down in sadness — the sadness that anticipates the Kindertotenlieder — is the Titan of Mahler’s symphonic world.

There are no heroes, and certainly not in a romantic sense, for Mahler’s musical canvas. And he is telling us that.

The theme continues, in my opinion. The resurrection of the Resurrection Symphony is not heroic in the sense of, say, Handel’s Messiah. And for Mahler, a converted Jew who had little formal religious connection, such heroism was not to be found there anyway. Resurrection was a wistful possibility for him, not a concrete certainty.

And the bombast of the Third, no matter how loudly or longly played, cannot force heroism. Nor does the tenderness of the Romantic, the Fourth, have a heroic edge to it.

Returning to the purely instrumental, the Fifth seems to hit a note of quiet resignation. The Sixth is known as the Tragic and its antiheroism speaks for itself through that moniker.

The Seventh? If I were to be naming Mahler symphonies, the would be the Pensive. Certainly not heroic.

The Eighth? Does the Veni, Creator Spiritus triumph over the Faust first movement? If so, the triumph is not a human one — it is purely spiritual and purely abstract.

That takes us to the Ninth, completed as Mahler’s life ebbed away, mired in the pain of knowing he had an unfaithful wife. The answer of this symphony is not a heroic rage against either physical restriction and decay on one hand, or lovlessness and faithlessness on the other. Rather, it is a degree of resignation greater, broader, deeper and more worn-out at end than the Fifth.

And finally, the Tenth, begun and unfinished as Mahler approached his deathbed. The death-knocks of the bass drum speak for themselves; stated firmly, if anything is heroic in this symphony, it is death itself.