# Beethoven: Vulgarity?



## chrisco97 (May 22, 2013)

I have not gotten it from Beethoven's music, but I have read multiple people say his music contains vulgar jokes...I have even read some say Mozart was not as vulgar as Beethoven...what is this about? I do not get it...


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I thinkit says _something_ about a composer if they have a Wikipedia page dedicated to their vulgarity.....

I don't believe I have seen mention of Beethoven writing vulgar jokes in his music.


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## Oreb (Aug 8, 2013)

The page on Mozart doesn't really shed any light on vulgarity in the music itself. A generic (and simplistic) definition of a canon aint equal to proof of vulgarity 

Not Beethoven, but this seems an appropriate place to share this from the notes in the Music and Arts release of the 1956 Bayreuth Ring:

Hans Knappertsbusch 'knew more dirty jokes (and evidently told them better) than anyone in Europe ...'

Now *that's* a conductor one can respect


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## chrisco97 (May 22, 2013)

Sorry I mistyped it in the original post, but they said he was not *as* vulgar as Beethoven. I never noticed how vulgar Mozart really was...xD

I have corrected that in my main post.

--
*BTW, Wikipedia even mentions Beethoven's vulgarity:*

_"The scherzo and the finale are filled with vulgar Beethovenian musical jokes, which shocked the sensibilities of many contemporary critics..."_

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._2_(Beethoven)#Background


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Vulgar can mean "rude" or "dirty," in which case Mozart comes to mind with his "Leck mich im Arsche."

But vulgar can also mean something like "lacking in sophistication" or "aimed at the multitude" (coming from the latin "vulgus" = "the mob"). In this latter sense, I have often heard Mahler's ländler descriped as vulgar, but that is most probably the composer's intention. 

As for Beethoven, I'm not so sure. A very harsh critic might call the finale to the 9th symphony vulgar for its unusual, somewhat brash instrumentation (e.g. lots of brass and percussion, and the march section with the triangle and the piccolo) and its desire for a "universal" message.


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## chrisco97 (May 22, 2013)

That makes perfect sense to me Winterreisender! Thanks so much for that post. I can see what they might have meant now...I mean, Beethoven was very unusual and unique for the time...maybe that is what they meant? 

I have always known vulgar to only mean rude or dirty...I guess you do learn something everyday!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Oreb said:


> The page on Mozart doesn't really shed any light on vulgarity in the music itself. A generic (and simplistic) definition of a canon aint equal to proof of vulgarity
> 
> Not Beethoven, but this seems an appropriate place to share this from the notes in the Music and Arts release of the 1956 Bayreuth Ring:
> 
> ...


You must know that Mozart wrote a number of fairly disgusting songs for his friends. I've got a whole 
LP of them.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

moody said:


> You must know that Mozart wrote a number of fairly disgusting songs for his friends. I've got a whole
> LP of them.


True enough, though as for Beethoven, I've never heard of vulgarity in his music from serious musicologists....


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Not exactly vulgar but possibly humorous. Mozart's Divertimento in F major k522 (1787), for two horns and strings, a parody of composers and performers of popular music.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Certainly "Wellington's Victory" elicited a vulgar response in me. Does that count?


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

He was quite fond of knock-knock jokes...da da da duh....Who's there?


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

I have often thought Beethoven one of the funniest composers who ever lived -- but vulgar is never a word I would have used to describe it. He knows the value of comic relief better than practically anyone else in music.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

*Winterreisender* covered it. Beethoven wasn't an aristocrat; didn't pretend to be one, didn't act like one. He was socially vulgar in the same sense as at least 99.44% of TC membership.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

chrisco97 said:


> I have always known vulgar to only mean rude or dirty...I guess you do learn something everyday!


The word literally means "of the common people". Hence the meanings of "lacking in refinement" or "lacking in social grace", as well as jokes that can be described in the same way.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I've never heard Beethoven's music described as "vulgar," although some of his musical humor can be a bit broad (as in the 8th Symphony). Personally he seems to have been something of a prig by our standards today, finding even some of Mozart's late operas offensive and immoral. His letters are far more straight-laced than Mozart's!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Couac Addict said:


> He was quite fond of knock-knock jokes...da da da duh....Who's there?


You're a real card you know.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> *Winterreisender* covered it. Beethoven wasn't an aristocrat; didn't pretend to be one, didn't act like one. He was socially vulgar in the same sense as at least 99.44% of TC membership.


Speak for yourself peasant,knights are not likely to mix with hoi poloi !


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

KenOC said:


> finding even some of Mozart's late operas offensive and immoral!


I think he described them more as '"frivolous". I don't have the quote, but it was sentence in which he claimed he couldn't write anything like Don Giovanni and (I think) Cosi Fan Tutte because these operas are, as I said, too frivolous. That's quite a difference from immoral. Do you have a quote where he uses that word?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Beethoven wondered how a great composer could have wasted his time on Cosi as it was trivial. Beethoven's music is full of jokes. The word Scherzo means 'joke' doesn't it?


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Nearly all of Beethoven's most respected works are tuneful little trifles for filthy, uneducated peasants and imbeciles. True music lovers need only his late string quartets, not those awful sensationalist symphonies. 

(Exaggerated paraphrase of actual comment I once overheard..)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Aramis said:


> I think he described them more as '"frivolous". I don't have the quote, but it was sentence in which he claimed he couldn't write anything like Don Giovanni and (I think) Cosi Fan Tutte because these operas are, as I said, too frivolous. That's quite a difference from immoral. Do you have a quote where he uses that word?


There are several references to this on the Internet, most having to do with Cosi fan tutti. From the Atlanta Opera website:

"The storyline of Così fan tutte was considered very scandalous in the 19th century, so anytime the opera was performed it was usually altered, completely rewritten or accompanied by an apology for the frivolous plot. Although he liked Mozart's music, composer Beethoven called the story concept immoral."

Sorry I don't have Beethoven's direct quote!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> There are several references to this on the Internet, most having to do with Cosi fan tutti. From the Atlanta Opera website:
> 
> "The storyline of Così fan tutte was considered very scandalous in the 19th century, so anytime the opera was performed it was usually altered, completely rewritten or accompanied by an apology for the frivolous plot. Although he liked Mozart's music, composer Beethoven called the story concept immoral."
> 
> Sorry I don't have Beethoven's direct quote!


One could wonder ~ parlor game mode ~ If Beethoven the man and his music would have been sunnier in general if he had not been a Germanic north European with the pervading protestant notion of sobriety as his cultural matrix.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Cheyenne said:


> Nearly all of Beethoven's most respected works are tuneful little trifles for filthy, uneducated peasants and imbeciles. True music lovers need only his late string quartets, not those awful sensationalist symphonies.
> 
> (Exaggerated paraphrase of actual comment I once overheard..)


Oh well, takes one to know one!


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Aramis said:


> I think he described them more as '"frivolous". I don't have the quote, but it was sentence in which he claimed he couldn't write anything like Don Giovanni and (I think) Cosi Fan Tutte because these operas are, as I said, too frivolous. That's quite a difference from immoral. Do you have a quote where he uses that word?


The word he used was '"licentious"

Also, the first post indicates critics were referring to the music as 'crude' but the thread wandered off into discussing the composer instead of the music.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

PetrB said:


> One could wonder ~ parlor game mode ~ If Beethoven the man and his music would have been sunnier in general if he had not been a Germanic north European with the pervading protestant notion of sobriety as his cultural matrix.


Beethoven was a Catholic!


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

PetrB said:


> If Beethoven the man and his music would have been sunnier in general


That's sunny enough for me:


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

PetrB said:


> One could wonder ~ parlor game mode ~ If Beethoven the man and his music would have been sunnier in general if he had not been a Germanic north European with the pervading protestant notion of sobriety as his cultural matrix.


And who wants sunny ??


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

moody said:


> And who wants sunny ??


Bavarians, of course.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

GGluek said:


> I have often thought Beethoven one of the funniest composers who ever lived -- but vulgar is never a word I would have used to describe it. He knows the value of comic relief better than practically anyone else in music.


But not better than Haydn, at least not in humour. Herr Haydn should take the cake on that one.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Beethoven wondered how a great composer could have wasted his time on Cosi as it was trivial. Beethoven's music is full of jokes. The word Scherzo means 'joke' doesn't it?


Yes, but Scherzos were already present in Haydn's Op. 33 quartets, written in 1781.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Ho Hum. if you want vulgarity try Monsieur de Pourceaugnac by les deux Jean-Baptistes (Lully and Poquelin aka Moliere).










This a representation of Lully as an Italian apothecary.

Nobody does vulgarity like the French!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The late, great harpsichordist and organist Gustav Leonhardt, who of course specilized in the music of the baroque ,
went on record calling the finale to the choral symphony musically vulgar and coarse, or words to that effect 
in an interview not too long ago . I forget where it is on the internet, but I believe you can google it .


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## Perotin (May 29, 2012)

Maybe I can shed some ligth on this. Here is a youtube clip of a lecture, given by Slavoj Žižek, where he talks about vulgarity of the 9th symphony: 



 Since Žižek is not a musicologist, but a philosopher, he is not the most reliable source, but it gives an idea as to what could be percieved as vulgar in Beethoven's music.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

superhorn said:


> The late, great harpsichordist and organist Gustav Leonhardt, who of course specilized in the music of the baroque ,
> went on record calling the finale to the choral symphony musically vulgar and coarse, or words to that effect
> in an interview not too long ago . I forget where it is on the internet, but I believe you can google it .


That use of 'coarse' is an antonym for 'refined' (in a social sense). So the phrase really doesn't need both words.


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

Perotin said:


> Maybe I can shed some ligth on this. Here is a youtube clip of a lecture, given by Slavoj Žižek, where he talks about vulgarity of the 9th symphony:
> 
> 
> 
> Since Žižek is not a musicologist, but a philosopher, he is not the most reliable source, but it gives an idea as to what could be percieved as vulgar in Beethoven's music.


Once can almost always find what they are looking for in a musical work, as in I can say that Mahler's 5th symphony reveals Mahler's secret polygamy, which doesn't even exist with Mahler, and yet put up an argument about it.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Perotin said:


> Maybe I can shed some ligth on this. Here is a youtube clip of a lecture, given by Slavoj Žižek, where he talks about vulgarity of the 9th symphony:
> 
> 
> 
> Since Žižek is not a musicologist, but a philosopher, he is not the most reliable source, but it gives an idea as to what could be percieved as vulgar in Beethoven's music.


Here is the written version:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/opinion/24zizek.html?_r=0

It deals with one piece, and how its social use has turned it insignificant. I find the claim that Beethoven was essentially laughing at this prospect of united brotherhood - that it was nearly a parody, a conscious mocking - a little unsubstantiated and tenuous, and only vaguely explained; in any case he does not condemn Beethoven for vulgarism, does he? He states explicitly in the lecture that the piece turns quite "unlike Beethoven." The Turkish parallel is cute, but musically his reasoning seems short-sighted: he appears to doubt himself, even, stating only that _'if'_ this is true, it would be interesting. Essentially, his argument seems unsupported to me, I don't understand how it relates to vulgarity, and it deals with only a single piece.

I agree here with Mencken:
"It is almost a literal fact that there is not a trace of cheapness in the whole body of his [Beethoven's] music. He is never sweet and romantic; he never sheds conventional tears; he never strikes orthodox attitudes. In his lighter moods there is the immense and inescapable dignity of the ancient Hebrew prophets. He concerns himself, not with the puerile agonies of love, but with the eternal tragedy of man."


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

regardless of its presence or lack thereof in Beethoven's work, what's wrong with vulgarity?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

deggial said:


> what's wrong with vulgarity?


Can't see a single f****** s*** being wrong about it


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

too many blips during a radio transmission?


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