# Why Beethoven Couldn't Find His Music Teacher



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Because he was Haydn.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think Haydn and young Beethoven didn't get along very well as teacher and student if I read correctly.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My take: Beethoven didn't think much of Haydn as a teacher (maybe with good reason). Musically, he saw Haydn as a competitor in the very late 1700s and in the first couple of years of the 1800s, which was quite correct.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

This wouldn't have happened if he was Glass


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Because he was a little Brahms and Liszt.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

It's true Beethoven said he didn't learn very much but on an unconscious level he took a great deal from Haydn. I hear many similarities, at least more so than any other composer he came after and he was a great admirer of Mozart and Handel.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> I think Haydn and young Beethoven didn't get along very well as teacher and student if I read correctly.


I did read the same thing :tiphat:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

MarkW said:


> Because he was Haydn.


Ha! Ha! Good one!!!

Wasn't his other teacher Madame Belle Yusse. Couldn't the answer to your original query be that he needed glasses and he simply could not see Belle Yusse.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

In Italy we say "siamo alla frutta" (literally "we are at the fruits")
The fruits usually are the final part of a meal, i.e. an endpoint...

I don't know if something similar exists in the English language. Maybe "at the end of one's tether"?


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I reported this pun to the mods for the sake of the forum. If this doesn't finally rouse them to action, nothing will.

p.s. I'm currently trying to think of a good pun for "Albrechtsberger."


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

GioCar said:


> In Italy we say "siamo alla frutta" (literally "we are at the fruits")
> The fruits usually are the final part of a meal, i.e. an endpoint...
> 
> I don't know if something similar exists in the English language. Maybe "at the end of one's tether"?


No "at the end of one's tether" refers to someone being at an extreme of anger. Think of a guard dog trying to attack you, he is trying to eat you but the 'end of his tether' restricts him.

"At the end of the road" is the nearest I can think of.

You got me wondering if "siamo alla frutta" was th eorigin iof the English "just desserts", which I always thought (guessed!) was a metaphor for getting a reward at the end of long effort (pudding!) But it appears I might have been wrong:

"The expression meaning that which is deserved was originally just deserts. The phrase is the last refuge of an obsolete meaning of desert-namely, something that is deserved or merited. But because most modern English speakers are unfamiliar with that old sense of desert, the phrase is often understandably written just desserts.

Using just desserts is not a serious error, and it is much more common than just deserts in 21st-century texts. Some people still consider it wrong, however. Whether to pay this any heed is for each of us to decide for ourselves."

http://grammarist.com/spelling/just-deserts-just-desserts/

No pudding 

Some food metaphors:

"full of beans" - lively
"having a beef" - to complain,"Possibly it traces to the common late 19c. complaint of U.S. soldiers about the quantity or quality of beef rations."


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Because the teacher got fed up with shouting, "Over here Ludwig!"


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

GioCar said:


> In Italy we say "siamo alla frutta" (literally "we are at the fruits")
> The fruits usually are the final part of a meal, i.e. an endpoint...
> 
> I don't know if something similar exists in the English language. Maybe "at the end of one's tether"?





Mal said:


> No "at the end of one's tether" refers to someone being at an extreme of anger. Think of a guard dog trying to attack you, he is trying to eat you but the 'end of his tether' restricts him.
> 
> "At the end of the road" is the nearest I can think of.


How about "we hit rock bottom"?
(for "siamo alla frutta", I mean)


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

I've been working on Beethoven's studies with Haydn for a couple months now, and it's pretty clear just from the paper that it was not the best working relationship. There will be pages and pages of exercises with absolutely no corrections by Haydn---later, Albrechtsberger wrote corrections onto them and was clearly using them as lessons himself. You can see Ludwig start off enthusiastically and then as the exercises in species counterpoint become more and more tedious he becomes sloppier and sloppier to the point it's clear he's thinking "Papa Haydn isn't even looking at these so why am I bothering?" He never, ever gets that way in the studies with Albrechtsberger and Salieri, where he is being corrected regularly and close attention is being paid to his work (even if Albrechtsberger is often a tiresome old pedant).

I know, it was a joke but everyone else is being serious so I thought I'd join in.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Stavrogin said:


> How about "we hit rock bottom"?
> (for "siamo alla frutta", I mean)


"Hit rock bottom" means to be at one's lowest point, where things can't get any worse.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> "Hit rock bottom" means to be at one's lowest point, where things can't get any worse.


Well it's good for "siamo alla frutta" then, paraphrasing: "we have consumed all the food".


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> I reported this pun to the mods for the sake of the forum. If this doesn't finally rouse them to action, nothing will.
> 
> p.s. I'm currently trying to think of a good pun for "Albrechtsberger."


A rather pun-iscious thing to do, IMHO.....not that MHO is worth very much.


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> "Hit rock bottom" means to be at one's lowest point, where things can't get any worse.


Yes, it doesn't have "the sense of an ending", to steal the title of a good book by Julian Barnes. Another valid metaphor, borrowed from old blue eyes, is "face the final curtain".


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## Mal (Jan 1, 2016)

Stavrogin said:


> Well it's good for "siamo alla frutta" then, paraphrasing: "we have consumed all the food".


I feel really good at the end of an Italian meal, hardly "rock bottom"!


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Beethoven was a great composer but proud and self-centered. His saying he didn't get much from Haydn is, as you say, Fugue Meister, belied by the actual music. It took him several symphonies to emerge from Haydn's shadow, and don't get me started on how often, in symphonies alone, Haydn played with the dit-dit-dit-DAH motif as a central theme.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Fugue Meister said:


> It's true Beethoven said he didn't learn very much but on an unconscious level he took a great deal from Haydn. I hear many similarities, at least more so than any other composer he came after and he was a great admirer of Mozart and Handel.


From Wiki: At the suggestion that he include the phrase "pupil of Haydn", Beethoven bristled. According to the account left by Ferdinand Ries, "Beethoven was unwilling to, because, as he said, although he had some instruction from Haydn, he had never learned anything from him."

It's pretty clear that Beethoven was speaking of Haydn the teacher, not Haydn the composer. In fact, he spoke admiringly of Haydn and his music throughout his life, including on his deathbed.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Funny said:


> Beethoven was a great composer but proud and self-centered. His saying he didn't get much from Haydn is, as you say, Fugue Meister, belied by the actual music. It took him *several symphonies* to emerge from Haydn's shadow, and don't get me started on how often, in symphonies alone, Haydn played with the dit-dit-dit-DAH motif as a central theme.


Well two before he wrote the Eroica!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I have known brilliant practitioners who are poor teachers. Maybe Haydn was one of them?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

DavidA said:


> I have known brilliant practitioners who are poor teachers. Maybe Haydn was one of them?


From what limited information we have, it seems Haydn was at least quite inattentive. His few years as Beethoven's teacher were the same years as his two journeys to London, which involved things like writing twelve substantial symphonies and probably a lot of other things as well.

Albrechtsberger, who Beethoven studied with after a spell of this, seems to have been much more assiduous in his teaching (actually correcting his species counterpoint exercises, for instance). Later yet Beethoven studied with Salieri, the only composer aside from Haydn ever to receive a Beethoven dedication. Guess Beethoven had forgiven him for that Mozart thing! :lol:


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Funny said:


> It took him several symphonies to emerge from Haydn's shadow


I think he never quite did, even after he found his own voice in the form, which is why his output consists of few big ones, in contrast to his predecessor's numerous medium sized ones. To paraphrase Chesterton on Dickens, his piano sonatas were inspiration [though, again, obviously indebted to Haydn], but his symphonies were ambition.


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