humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

> Art Neuendorffer wrote:
> >
> > ...-- ----. / .--. . .-. -.-. . -. - / -.. --- -. .----. - / -.-. ---
> > -. ... .. -.. . .-. / .. - / .- / .-- .- ... - . / --- ..-. / - ..
> > -- . / --- .-. / .- / -.. .. ... - .-. .- -.-. - .. ---
> > -. .-.-.- / .---- --... / .--. . .-. -.-. . -. - / - .... .. -. -.- /
> > - .... .- - / - .... . .-. . / .. ... / .--. --- ... ... .. -... .-..
> > -.-- / --. --- --- -.. / .-. . .- ... --- -. / - --- / --.- ..- . ...
> > - .. --- -. / .-- .... . - .... . .-. / .-- .. .-.. .-.. .. .-
> > -- / ... .... .- -.- . ... .--. . .- .-. . / --- ..-. / ... - .-. .-
> > - ..-. --- .-. -.. / .. ... / - .... . / .--. .-. .. -.
> > -.-. .. .--. .- .-.. / .- ..- - .... --- .-. / --- ..-. /
> > - .... . / .--. .-.. .- -.-- ... / .- -. -.. / .--. --- . -- ... / ..
> > -. / - .... . / -.-. .- -. --- -. .-.-.- / .-.-.- / - ....
> > --- ... . / .- .-. . / .--. .-. . - - -.-- / .... .. --. .... / -. ..-
> > -- -... . .-. ... / ..-. --- .-. / .-- .... .- - / ... - .-. .-
> > - ... / .- .-. --. ..- . / .. ... / .- / .-..-. -.-. .-. .- -.-.
> > -.- .--. --- - .-..-. / - .... . --- .-. -.-- .-.-.-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
--
nordicskiv2 wrote:
>
> You've already been characterized as a horse's hindquarters, Art;
> apparently you now strive to be a Morse's hindquarters as well.
-------------------------=AD------------------------------=AD---
Balaam's Ass?
=2E..................................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_122.jpg
=2E
=2E NUMBERS 23:23 What HATH God wrought!
(Quote from the last oracle of the non-Israelite prophet Balaam)
------------------------------=AD--------------------------------
You can lead a Morse to Vassar but you can't make him think.
[1865 Morse becomes a charter trustee of Vassar College]
------------------------------=AD--------------------------------
=2E The Papers of Samuel Finley *Breese* Morse
=2E http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/atthtml/morse2.html
=2E
<by Samuel F. B. Morse reads, "What hath God wrought?" It was sent
by him from the Supreme Court room in the Capitol to his assistant,
Alfred Vail, in Baltimore. Morse gave credit to Annie Ellsworth,
the young daughter of a friend, for suggesting Numbers 23:23.>>
------------------------------=AD--------------------------------
<expertise.
He entered an agreement with Alfred VAIL who built more practical
equipment. A. VAIL developed a system in which each letter or
symbol is sent individually, using combinations of dits, dahs,
& pauses. Morse & VAIL agreed that VAIL's method of representing
individual symbols would be included in Morse's patent.
This system, known as American Morse code,
was the version that was used to transmit the first
telegraph message. A line was constructed between
Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC, and the first
message, sent on May 24, 1844, was "What hath God wrought!">>
=2E
=2E King George III - 106th birthday
=2E Queen Victoria's - 25th birthday
=2E
1858 August 16 The first transatlantic cable message is sent
=2E from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. However, while this
=2E fourth attempt to establish an Atlantic cable is successful,
=2E it stops working less than a month after its completion.
-----------------------------------=AD----------------------------
=2E _Ulysses_ by James Joyce
=2E
< She put the comether on him, SWEET and twentysix. The greyeyed
goddess who BENDs over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer,>>
------------------------------------=AD----------------------------
=2E John Gower, _Confessio Amantis_ Tale of Florent, Book I
=2E
=2E Florent this thing *HATH* undertake,
=2E The day was set, the time take,
=2E Under his seal he *WROT* his oth,
=2E In such a wise and *FORTH* he goth
----------------------=AD----------------------------
=2E <=3D 33 =3D>
=2E
=2E [T] OT__ [H] EONLIEBEGETTEROFTHESEINSVINGS
=2E [O] NN [E T] SMRWHALLHAPPINESSEANDTHATETE
=2E [R] NI__[T(I)E] PROMISEDBYOVREVERLIVINGPOET
=2E [W] IS [H E T H] THEWELLWISHINGADVENTVRERIN
---------------------------=AD------------------------------=AD---
The usefulness of a secret 1-4 bit Morse code [especially for
Masonic prisoners such as the Count of MOntE cRiSto] long preceeded
it's revelation to S. Morse by A. VAIL. It was a simple (and
obvious) extension of Francis Bacon's binary 5 bit cipher:

a AAAAA g AABBA n ABBAA t BAABA
b AAAAB h AABBB o ABBAB u-v BAABB
c AAABA i-j ABAAA p ABBBA w BABAA
d AAABB k ABAAB q ABBBB x BABAB
e AABAA l ABABA r BAAAA y BABBA
f AABAB m ABABB s BAAAB z BABBB
------------------------------=AD------------------------------=AD---
Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) From Wikipedia,

<1804-1807. In the catalog of Beethoven's works it is Opus 67. The work
was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz and Count Rasumovsky, a Russian
diplomat who had commissioned three of Beethoven's string quartets.
The
symphony achieved its reputation soon after its first performance in
1808; it was described at the time by E.T.A. Hoffmann as "one of the
most important works of the age." The symphony is immediately
recognizable by its four-note opening motif. Because of the motif's
resemblance to the Morse code for the letter V (dot dot dot dash),
it was used as a shorthand for the word "victory" to open the BBC's
radio broadcasts during World War II, an idea of William
Stephenson's.>>
------------------------------=AD------------------------------=AD---
<concert, consisting entirely of Beethoven premieres, at the Theater an
der Wien in Vienna. Other highlights were the Choral Fantasy, the
Sixth
Symphony, and the Fourth Piano Concerto. (The names of the Fifth and
Sixth symphonies were mistakenly reversed on the program, due to the
order of their performances). There was little critical response of
any
sort to the symphony's first appearance, perhaps due to the poor
playing
of the orchestra (they had only one rehearsal before the concert) and
the exhaustion of the audience from the long program. However, a year
and a half later another performance resulted in a rapturous review by
E.T.A. Hoffmann in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. He described
the
music by writing, "Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this
region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back
& forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of
endless longing -- a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid
jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which,
while
consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our
breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the passions, do
we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits."

An episode of The Simpsons see the residents of Springfield build a
concert hall to make their town more cultural. Beethoven's 5th
Symphony
is played on the opening night, but after the first four notes have
been played the audience gets bored and leaves. When the conducter
asks where everyone is going, Clancy Wiggum sneers "Hey, we heard
the 'Duh-duh-duh-dum' bit already, the rest is just filler.">>
------------------------------=AD---------------------------=AD--------
http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/morse.html

<1791, was the oldest son of ReVEREnD JEDIdiah Morse & Elizabeth Ann
Breese Morse. His dad, JEDIdiah Morse, (1761-1826) was an American
Congregational pastor and wrote a series of widely used geography
textbooks. At the age of eight Morse was taken to Phillips Academy,
where his father was a trustee. He was unhappy under their rule, and
twice as homesick, so he fled back to Charleston. He entered Yale
College at 1805 where he majored in chemistry and natural philosophy.
=2E
Strictly as an artist Morse did not exert a major impact on the
stylistic development of nineteenth century American art, and his
ideas
and art appealed exclusively to the cultural elite. With the exception
of the romantic Lafayette portrait, his most ambitious works failed
before an unreceptive public. Unable to earn a living through painting
historical subjects he was forced into portraiture, and many of these
paintings are of negligible quality. Morse was further humiliated in
1837
when the Congressional Committee on Public Buildings decided not to
commission him to paint a mural for the Capitol Rotunda. This
rejection
may in part have been brought about by Morse's reputation for radical
politics; in the middle 1830s he became associated with the Native
American party and wrote several widely-read and vitriolic anti-
Catholic
diatribes whose xenophobic tone bordered on paranoia. Disillusioned
by failure, Morse ceased painting in 1837 at the age of forty-six,
and devoted the last 35 years of his life to perfecting the telegraph.
=2E
During 1826-'7 Prof. James F. Dana lectured on electromagnetism and
electricity before the New York athenaeum. Mr. Morse was a regular
attendant, and, being a friend of Prof. Dana, had frequent discussions
with him on the subject of his lectures. But the first ideas of a
practical application of electricity seem to have come to him while he
was in Paris. James Fenimore Cooper refers to the event thus: "Our
worthy friend first communicated to us his ideas on the subject of
using
the electric spark by way of a telegraph. It was in Paris, and during
the winter of 1831-'2." On 1 Oct., 1832, he sailed from Havre on the
packet-ship "Sully " for New York, and among his fellow-passengers was
Charles T. Jackson, then lately from the laboratories of the great
French physicists, where he had made special studies in electricity
and
magnetism. A conversation in the early part of the voyage turned on
the
recent experiments of Ampere with the electromagnet. When the question
whether the velocity of electricity is retarded by the length of tile
wire was asked, Dr. Jackson replied, referring to Benjamin Franklin's
experiments, that "electricity passes instantaneously over any known
length of wire." Morse then said : "If the presence of electricity can
be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why
intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity."
=2E
The last public service that he performed was the unveiling of the
statue of Benjamin Franklin in Printing house square, on 17 Jan.,
1872,
in the presence of a vast number of citizens, he had cheerfully
acceded
to the request that he would perform this act, remarking that it would
be his last. It was eminently appropriate that he should do this, for,
as was said : "The one conducted the lightning safely from the sky;
the
other conducts it beneath the ocean, from continent to continent. The
one tamed the lightning, the other makes it minister to human wants
and
human progress." Shortly after his return to his home he was seized
with
neuralgia in his head, and after a few months of suffering he died of
pneumonia on 2 April, 1872, in New York City, at the age of 81. He
died
peacefully in a home he and Sarah maintained in New York as their
winter
house. Memorial sessions of congress and of various state legislatures
were held in his honor. He's buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood
Cemetery.>>

------------------------------=AD------------------------------------
Mercury - Venus - Mars aligned at sunset
=2E..................................
Sat 1521 Apr 27 10:00 UTC [18:00 local (PhilippineS)]
=2E
=2E Right Distance From 10=B0N 124=B0E:
=2E Ascension Declination (AU) Altitude Azimuth
Sun 2h 54m 15s +16=B0 41.1' 1.011 -1.876 107.305 Set
Mercury 4h 13m 23s +23=B0 37.2' 1.025 17.427 111.782 Up
Venus 5h 56m 7s +26=B0 6.2' 0.936 40.549 115.921 Up
Mars 9h 2m 22s +18=B0 51.1' 1.369 80.687 162.209 Up
-------------------------------------------
April 27, 1521 : Ferdinand Magellan killed (on 117th day)
1521 =3D 13 x 117 =3D 39 x 39
------------------------------=AD------------------------------------
Earth - Mercury - Venus - *T* shaped
=2E..................................
Wed 1791 Apr 27 12:00 UTC [7:00 local (Charlestown)]
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
=2E
=2E Right Distance From 42=B0N 71=B0W:
=2E Ascension Declination (AU) Altitude Azimuth
Saturn 0h 48m 50s +2=B0 49.6' 10.322 32.110 -60.878 Up
Mars 1h 38m 20s +9=B0 39.7' 2.396 28.464 -76.628 Up
Sun 2h 19m 2s +13=B0 54.0' 1.008 23.784 -87.503 Up
Mercury 3h 15m 38s +19=B0 50.0' 1.158 17.096 -101.580 Up
Venus 4h 11m 24s +22=B0 0.8' 1.433 8.605 -111.954 Up
------------------------------=AD------------------------------------
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sfbmhtml/timeline02.html
=2E
1791 April 27 Samuel Finley Breese Morse is born in Charlestown,
Massachusetts, the first child of JEDIdiah Morse, a Congregational
minister and geographer, and Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese.
=2E
1805 Morse enters Yale College at age fourteen. He hears lectures
on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. While at Yale,
he earns money by painting small portraits of friends, classmates,
and teachers. A profile goes for one dollar; and
a miniature portrait on ivory sells for five dollars.
=2E
1810 Morse graduates from Yale College and returns to Charlestown,
Massachusetts. Despite his wishes to be a painter and encouragement
from
the famed American painter Washington Allston, Morse's parents plan
for
him to be a bookseller's apprentice. He becomes a clerk for Daniel
Mallory, his father's Boston book publisher.
=2E
1811 July Morse's parents let him set sail for England with Washington
=2E Allston. He attends the Royal Academy of Arts in London and receives
=2E instruction from the famed Pennsylvania-born painter Benjamin West.
=2E
December Morse rooms with Charles Leslie of Philadelphia,
=2E who is also studying painting. They become friends with
=2E the poet SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
=2E
1812 Morse models a plaster statuette of The Dying Hercules, which
wins a gold medal at the Adelphi Society of Arts exhibition in London.
=2E
His subsequent 6' x 8' painting of The Dying Hercules is exhibited
=2E at the Royal Academy and receives critical acclaim.
=2E
1815 October Morse returns to the United States.
=2E Morse opens an art studio in Boston.
=2E
1816 In Concord, he meets Lucretia Pickering Walker,
=2E aged sixteen, and are soon engaged to be married.
=2E
1817 While in Charlestown, Morse and his brother Sidney patent
=2E a flexible-piston man-powered water pump for fire engines.
They demonstrate it successfully, but it is a commercial failure.
=2E
1818 September 29 Lucretia Pickering Walker and Morse are
=2E married in Concord, New Hampshire. Morse spends the winter
in Charleston, South Carolina, where he receives many portrait
commissions. This is the first of four annual trips to Charleston.
=2E
1819 September 2 Morse's first child, Susan Walker Morse, is born.
=2E The city of Charleston commissions Morse
=2E to paint a portrait of President James Monroe.
=2E
1820 The Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted discovers that
=2E electric current in a wire generates a magnetic field that can
=2E deflect a compass needle. This property will eventually be used
=2E in the design of some electromagnetic telegraph systems.
=2E
1821 While living with his family in New Haven, Morse paints
=2E such distinguished individuals as Eli Whitney,
=2E Yale president Jeremiah Day, and his neighbor Noah Webster.
=2E
1822 Morse invents a marble-cutting machine that can carve three
dimensional sculpture in marble or stone. He discovers that it is not
patentable because it infringes on an 1820 design by Thomas Blanchard.
=2E
Morse finishes an eighteen-month project to paint The House of
Representatives, an oversize scene of the Rotunda of the Capitol
in Washington, D.C. It contains more than eighty portraits of
members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court,
but loses money during its public exhibition.
=2E
1823 Morse opens an art studio in New York City.
=2E
1825 The City of New York commissions Morse to paint a portrait
=2E of LAFAYette for $1,000 during his last visit to the U.S.
=2E
February 7 Morse's wife, Lucretia, dies suddenly at age 25.
=2E
November Artists in New York City form a drawing cooperative, the
New York Drawing Association, and elect Morse president. It is run
by and for artists, and its goals include art instruction.
=2E
=2E William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet,
=2E which will be a key component of the telegraph.
=2E
1826 January In New York, Morse becomes a founder and first president
=2E of the National Academy of Design, which has been established
=2E in reaction to the conservative American Academy of Fine Arts.
=2E
=2E June 9 Father, JEDIdiah Morse, dies.
=2E
1827 Professor James Freeman Dana of Columbia College gives a series
=2E of lectures on electricity & electromagnetism at
=2E the New York Athenaeum, where Morse also lectures.
=2E
1828 May 28 Mother, Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese Morse, dies.
=2E
1829 November Leaving his children in the care of other family
members,
Morse sets sail for Europe. He visits LAFAYette in Paris and paints in
the Vatican galleries in Rome. During the next three years, he visits
numerous art collections to study the work of the Old Masters and
other painters. He also paints landscapes. Morse spends much time
with his novelist friend JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
Sketch by Morse, Diaries---22 December 1829-3
May 1830 (Series: Diaries and Notebooks)
=2E
1831 The American scientist Joseph Henry announces his discovery
of a powerful electromagnet made from many layers of insulated wire.
=2E
Demonstrating how such a magnet can send electric signals over
long distances, he suggests the possibility of the telegraph.
=2E
1832 Autumn During his voyage home to New York on the Sully, Morse
first conceives the idea of the electromagnetic telegraph during his
conversations with another passenger, Dr. Charles T. Jackson of
Boston.
Jackson describes to him European experiments with electromagnetism.
Inspired, Morse writes ideas for a prototype of an electromagnetic
recording telegraph and dot-and-dash code system in his sketchbook.
=2E
1833 Morse completes work on the 6' x 9' painting Gallery of the
=2E Louvre. The canvas contains forty-one Old Masters paintings in
miniature. The painting loses money during its public exhibition.
=2E
1835 Morse is appointed professor of Literature of the Arts & Design
=2E at the University of the City of New York (now New York University).
=2E
=2E Morse publishes Foreign Conspiracy Against
=2E the Liberties of the United States. It is a treatise
=2E against the political influence of Catholicism.
=2E
Autumn Morse constructs a recording telegraph
=2E with a moving paper ribbon.
=2E
1836 January Morse demonstrates his recording telegraph to
Dr. Leonard Gale, a professor of science at New York University.
=2E
Spring Morse runs unsuccessfully for mayor of New York for
a nativist (anti-immigration) party. He receives 1,496 votes.
=2E
1837 Spring Morse shows Dr. Gale his plans for "relays," where
=2E one electric circuit is used to open and close a switch on
=2E another electric circuit further away. For his assistance,
the science professor becomes part owner of the telegraph rights.
By November, a message can be sent through ten miles of wire
arranged on reels in Dr. Gale's university lecture room.
=2E
September Alfred Vail, an acquaintance of Morse, witnesses a
demonstration of the telegraph. He is soon taken on as a partner with
Morse & Gale because of his financial resources, mechanical skills,
and access to his family's iron works for building telegraph models.
=2E
Dr. Charles T. Jackson, Morse's acquaintance from the 1832
=2E Sully voyage, now claims to be the inventor of the telegraph.
=2E Morse obtains statements from those present on the ship
=2E at the time, and they credit Morse with the invention.
=2E
Morse completes his last paintings in December.
=2E
The Englishmen William Fothergill Cooke & Charles Wheatstone
patent their own five-needle telegraph system inspired by a
Russian design of an experimental galvanometer telegraph.
=2E
1838 January Morse changes from using a telegraphic dictionary, where
words are represented by number codes, to using a code for each
letter.
=2E
Telegraph agreement between Morse, Smith, Vail, & Gale, 1838,
=2E
February 8 Morse demonstrates the telegraph at the Franklin Institute.
=2E
Morse exhibits the telegraph before the House Committee on
Commerce, chaired by Representative F. O. J. Smith of Maine.
=2E
February 21 Morse demonstrates the telegraph
=2E to President Martin Van Buren and his cabinet.
=2E
March Congressman Smith becomes a partner in the telegraph,
=2E along withMorse, Alfred Vail, & Leonard Gale.
=2E
April 6 Smith sponsors a bill in Congress to appropriate $30,000
to build a fifty-mile telegraph line, but the bill is not acted upon.
In England, Cooke puts his needle telegraph into operation
on the London and Blackwall Railway.
=2E
1839 In Paris, Morse meets Louis Daguerre.
=2E
1840 Morse is granted a United States patent for his telegraph.
Morse opens a daguerreotype portrait studio in New York with
John Draper. Morse teaches the process to Mathew Brady.
=2E
1841 Spring Morse runs again as a nativist candidate for mayor of
New York City. A forged letter appears in a newspaper announcing
that Morse has withdrawn from the election. In the confusion,
he receives fewer than one hundred votes.
=2E
1842 October: Two miles of cable is submerged between the Battery
=2E and Governor's Island in New York Harbor and signals are sent.
=2E
1844 May 24 Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought?"
from the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol in Washington,
D.C., to the B & O Railroad Depot in Baltimore, Maryland.
=2E
1845 Spring: Morse selects Amos Kendall, former Postmaster-General,
to be his agent. Vail & Gale take on Kendall as their agent as well.
=2E
In May, Kendall and F. O. J. Smith create the Magnetic
=2E Telegraph Company to extend the telegraph
=2E from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York..
=2E
1846 Summer The telegraph line is extended from Baltimore
=2E to Philadelphia. New York is now connected to Washington,
=2E D.C., Boston, and Buffalo.
=2E
1847 Morse buys Locust Grove, an estate overlooking the Hudson.
=2E
1848 August 10 Morse marries Sarah Elizabeth *GRISWOLD* ,
=2E a second cousin twenty-six years his junior.
=2E
The Associated Press is formed by six New York City daily papers
=2E in order to pool the expense of telegraphing foreign news.
=2E
1852 A submarine telegraph cable is successfully laid across the
=2E English Channel; direct London to Paris communications begin.
=2E
1854 The U.S. Supreme Court upholds Morse's patent claims for
=2E the telegraph. All U.S. companies begin to pay Morse royalties.
=2E
The British & French build telegraph lines to use in the Crimean
=2EWar. The governments are now able to communicate directly with
=2Ecommanders in the field, and newspaper correspondents are able
=2E to wire reports from the front.
=2E
1856 The New York and Mississippi Printing Telegraph Company unites
=2E with a number of other smallercompanies to form the Western Union
=2E
1861 The telegraph is used by both Union & Confederate forces.
=2E
October 24 Western Union completes the first
=2E transcontinental telegraph line to California.
=2E
1865 Morse becomes a charter trustee of Vassar College
=2E
1871 June 10 A statue of Morse is unveiled in Central Park in
=2E New York City. With much fanfare, Morse sends a "farewell"
=2E telegraph message around the world from New York.
=2E
1872 April 2 Morse dies in New York City at eighty years of age.
------------------------------=AD------------------------------=AD-
Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) From Wikipedia,

<concert,
consisting entirely of Beethoven premieres, at the Theater an der Wien
in
Vienna. Other highlights were the Choral Fantasy, the Sixth Symphony,
and
the Fourth Piano Concerto. (The names of the Fifth and Sixth
symphonies were
mistakenly reversed on the program, due to the order of their
performances).
There was little critical response of any sort to the symphony's first
appearance, perhaps due to the poor playing of the orchestra (they had
only
one rehearsal before the concert) and the exhaustion of the audience
from
the long program. However, a year and a half later another performance
resulted in a rapturous review by E.T.A. Hoffmann in the Allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung. He described the music by writing, "Radiant
beams
shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of
gigantic
shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all
within
us except the pain of endless longing -- a longing in which every
pleasure
that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this
pain,
which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries
to
burst our breasts with a full-voiced general cry from all the
passions,
do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits."
=2E
An episode of The Simpsons see the residents of Springfield build a
concert
hall to make their town more cultural. Beethoven's 5th Symphony is
played on
the opening night, but after the first four notes have been played the
audience gets bored and leaves. When the conducter asks where everyone
is
going, Clancy Wiggum sneers "Hey, we heard the 'Duh-duh-duh-dum' bit
already, the rest is just filler."
=2E
In Douglas Adams' 1979 novel "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy",
Ford
Prefect hums the symphony's first bar to a Vogon guard, in a last-
ditch
effort to persuade the guard to abandon his brutal ways; the attempt
is
unsuccessful, although Prefect evades imminent death by other means.>>
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.classicalnotes.net/classics/fifth.html
=2E
Copyright 2001 by Peter Gutmann: <=2E
<opening
of Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony just could be the most
memorable
musical phrase of all time. During World War II its suggestion of
Morse Code
became the powerful symbol of "V For Victory." GI's who didn't know
Schumann from shinola knew this was Beethoven and relished the irony
of a
German's music galvanizing the Allied effort to defeat the horrific
murder
machine that country had become. But that's just the first five
seconds. As
for the rest, in nearly every poll, even of classical sophisticates,
the
Beethoven Fifth tops the list of favorites. Clearly, Beethoven crafted
something powerful and universal that reverberates with ageless
significance
in every listener regardless of their depth of musical culture.
=2E
While the Fifth isn't Beethoven's most innovative or influential
symphony
(the Third and Ninth compete for that honor) it did have a wealth of
ground-breaking features: the first use of a trombone in symphonic
music,
variations built upon dual themes, two movements joined together, the
reprise of an earlier passage in the finale and, most impressive of
all, a
single motif that unifies the entire work.
=2E
Beethoven reportedly called his opening "Fate knocking at the door,"
but
nowadays that's largely discredited as unreliable hearsay; as
Beethoven's
posthumous fame grew, many associates tried to magnify their own
significance by claiming special insights. But, as befits one whose
genius
lay in the abstract realm of music rather than a more specific art,
Beethoven didn't trivialize his creations with a single connotation.
Even
so, the entire work exemplifies the Romantic ideal of an expressive
journey,
not in the sense of telling a story but rather as an emotional
catharsis.
=2E
"Fate" or not, the commanding opening figure pervades the entire work.
The
first movement is grim and resolute yet charged with constant conflict
and
energy as glimmers of hope swirl through a relentless storm. It's a
miracle
of construction, with all the ideas firmly grounded in that first four-
note
phrase - even a lyric second theme rides atop and ultimately devolves
into
it. The focused intensity is relieved by a flowing set of variations,
leisurely but with controlled surges of power. Next comes a resolute
march
built largely upon the insistent rhythm of the opening motif which
descends
into a hushed section of coiled tension and then explodes into the
finale,
an exhilarating shout of C-major triumph. In a masterstroke, Beethoven
magnifies the effect by summoning again the tense portion of the third
movement march and then repeating the triumphant explosion all over
again.
The work ends in a breathless coda built upon variants of the opening
motif
to pound home the permanence of the joyous destination.
=2E
While Mozart may have written out masterpieces in final form right off
the
top of his head, Beethoven struggled over the Fifth for nearly a
decade.
Many early ideas and sketches found in his notebooks started out
conventionally, with lengthy repetitions and standard harmonic
progressions.
As a great composer, Beethoven delved deeply into his material to
explore
and develop its full potential, and as an equally great editor, he
constantly simplified and tightened it. In final form, the Fifth is a
masterpiece not only of invention but of concision; unlike movies and
novels
we consider great but in which minor changes would be inconsequential,
not a
single note of the Fifth could be improved.
=2E
But please don't think of the composer who lavished so much devout
care on
perfecting his work as a pure soul whose rarified spirit had risen far
above
the venality of the rest of us mere mortals. Beethoven was all too
human -
he contracted to sell the Fifth to a wealthy patron for 500 florins (a
considerable sum), but after collecting the first 350 turned around
without
apology or refund and sold the very same score to a publisher. But
perhaps
it was Beethoven's intense humanity that enabled him to write in a
style
that appealed to real people, NOT JUST ARISTOCRATS.
=2E
That, in itself, is an essential key to understanding Beethoven's
lasting
appeal. Two centuries ago classical music was wholly dependent upon
the
patronage of nobility. Public concerts were rare and established
professional orchestras unknown. The Fifth was given its world
premiere in a
massive four-hour concert on December 28, 1808 that consisted entirely
of
new major Beethoven works, including his Sixth Symphony, Mass in C,
Fourth
Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasia. By the time the Fifth rolled
around that
night, the audience was not only too exhausted to have paid much
notice but
also nearly frozen, as the hall was unheated and the winter bitterly
cold.
With only a single rehearsal by a pick-up ensemble for the entire
program of
unfamiliar and difficult music, the execution was a mess; at one
point,
things got so tangled that Beethoven had to stop and restart, a
humiliation
that the shivering players repaid.
=2E
Not surprisingly, the world was hardly transformed by first hearing
this glorious creation - the premiere was essentially an exercise in
sight-reading, and so notions of sensitivity and interpretive feeling
were
well beside the point. Nowadays, we've made up for that with a huge
variety
of distinctive, highly-polished and deeply expressive recordings that
plumb
the considerable depths of this amazingly rich work. Here are my
favorites:
=2E
Although Arturo Toscanini's reputation as a classical speed demon is
largely
unwarranted, he does claim the fastest Fifth on records - a stunning
concert
of May 8, 1945 celebrating VE Day (on Music & Arts CD 753). Toscanini
was
a fervent anti-fascist and the overthrow of Mussolini and Hitler
overpowered
his usual sense of proportion to produce a hair-raising distillation
of his
political emotions that clocks in at a breathless 26 minutes, 45
seconds..>>
-----------------------------------------
Arturo Neuendorffer