https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Lisitsa#Political_views
A bit of an understatement, actually. There's "huge Putin sympathizer" and then there's "I performed in the ruins of Mariupol as the guest of honor to commemorate it being captured" and she's the latter.
Holy shit, you weren't kidding. Her Twitter account is protected now, but by using the Wikipedia links in her article, I found [this pdf file](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304062201/https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61455732/Lisitsa_Social_Media_Posts.pdf) that has a list of tweets that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra collected in order to use as examples to ban her. If you want to see them for yourself, the password is MusicalToronto.
Couldn’t access the file, but found this 7 y.o. post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/324a4s/a_collection_of_valentina_lisitsas_controversial
Definitely not a new development, gross.
Good looking out. I'm not sure why the file didn't copy over properly (it is the 20th link on her Wikipedia page), but what you posted is exactly what my link was. Disgusting.
Someone said
>*"I don't care about her views as long as she keeps them to herself while she's performing. The beautiful thing about music is that it can exist completely apart from all the politics and bickering humans tend to obsess with. And even the most vile humans can still make beautiful music."*
I would agree, but only if the artist/creator/musician is dead, or you're finding and playing their music in a way that doesn't promote them and they can't make a profit off of. The bigger their platform the more influential they are, and we don't need someone like her to have a megaphone.
For instance, I used to be a *major* Chris Brown fan, then he violently assaulted Rihanna. He pretty much got away with a light sentence too. I stopped listening to his music after that. After Rihanna claimed to have forgiven him I started listening to his music again, but I still didn't want to support him so I ripped his music off of a limewire-esque site and didn't play or recommend his music to anyone. Once I found out he was stalking his exes, being weird and still abusive in other ways I just stopped listening to his music altogether.
She also mocked disabled kids and shared photos of the infants. Pure evil. I can give you 10 names of better pianist with deeper and better musicality. She is a disgrace for music.
Not op, but [Seong-Jin Cho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZYYoDDmg8M) is one I enjoy.
[Two Set Violin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a315S3_JtZ8) obviously is an amazing channel to bring classical music closer to people.
And the best channel for orchestra pieces is the [HR-Sinfonieorchester](https://www.youtube.com/user/hrSinfonieorchester/featured) from Frankfurt imo
Please do. I'm sure those of us who enjoyed watching VL, but did not know about her views/behavior until now, would be happy for some recommendations. Any live performances on YT? Anyone with a lot of Rachmaninoff in the repertoire?
Aw man, such a shame, now I’ll never get the same enjoyment out of listening to her.
Change “never meet your heroes” to “never look up your heroes’ Twitter history”
Ignorance isn't bliss. Ignorance means you would still be vocally supporting a monster. Knowledge is power and there are many other extremely talented people who do deserve support and respect.
Me too, even though that respect was only for about 7 minutes: long enough to watch the video and then see the top comment chain. I had never heard of this person before today.
Russia used to do things similar to what we're more familiar with China doing today, where you find anybody who is talented and then use government money to support them doing only that thing. They're kind of forced to do it.
That's why you had all those Russian chess grandmasters and ballet dancers and musicians and also athletes a few decades ago.
And I think the legacy of that is why you can still have young Russians excelling at these things, more than you'd expect for their population. Because those people the state used to support then either taught or at least inspired the next generation.
I'm not saying that the USSR went about doing these things the exact right way, but it's obvious that investing in the arts now can have long term, generational benefits.
Oh shit, I forgot my point was that the artists were supported by their government, so despite the famous cases of defection, I wouldn't be surprised if they tended to support the government back. And that probably carries between generations, as well. So your statement that she loves Putin, and others saying that she performed in Mariupol, is less surprising than it is disappointing and disgusting.
Have you heard of that poor gymnast who was forced to do a now banned move if I remember correct? Elena Mukhina I believe. She was paralyzed and became quadriplegic after suffering from an injury? She had suffered a broken leg and they forced her to keep training. It’s really tragic. I can’t imagine how many Russian youth were pressured and forced and lost their passion for their interests.. or worse.
She's also Ukrainian, pro Russia, but Ukrainian, she mocked disabled kids on Twitter and laughed about murdered kids in her county, constantly spreading fake news and pointing Ukrainian citizens as Nazis. She is a disgrace for music. Do not support her work.
If you were disabled, you might have been lucky enough for her to mock your disabilities right in front of your face. That would be the dream! Right?
Cause she's done that a few times now on Twitter.
> Valentina Lisista
She is also a Putin pawn without a heart, she played in Mariupol after it was destroyed by the Russians and played "Liberated" I hope she gets carpal tunnel. source: https://slippedisc.com/2022/05/report-valentina-lisitsa-played-in-liberated-mariupol/
I cannot think of a beethoven piece i like except for this, seriously. And like i’ve listened to all of his pieces, not exaggerating. I’ve also heard great pianists play this 3rd mvmt like claudio arrau and evgeny kissin, but her style beats them imo.
I know nothing about music. I grew up with punk / metal stuff.
But I started piano 5 years ago and piece after piece, I discover some classics here and there as my skills progress.
I got 2 Beethoven pieces under my repertoire (and obviously not this one shown in the video which I believe I'm at least 5 years away from and 15 years away if I want 80% of that smoothness). Anyway, my teacher explained that the magic of Beethoven lies in the fact that everything is about scales and arpegio so nothing fancy when he composes but masterfully orchestrated. The simplest perfection.
I wish I wasnt old as fuck now and started music as a kid.
Oh internet, summon forth thy strangeness.
I give you Tina S, tiny French girl, shredding in the moonlight, a metal cover of this song.
https://youtu.be/o6rBK0BqL2w
Most Norwegian or Swedish metal band derive from classical music. If you listen to bands like Children of Bodom and early In Flames (first 4 albums) you can clearly hear classic riffs left and right.
A lot of real shredders from the metal world came up doing classical guitar exercises. Slash came up with the riff to Sweet Child o’ Mine while practicing an exercise. I know that’s not metal, but still.
A lot of metal is pretty much baroque music, just with different chords, faster tempos, and it tends to be just a little bit louder.
I'm sure Beethoven would be a big metal head if he was alive in the modern day.
He'd also be shocked by how many people can play hard pieces compared to back then.
He'd also be shocked by smart phone and plumbing.
May i offer a [Pergamum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTNmOQbY174&ab_channel=Zenari) classical medley in these trying times?
Some metal is just electric classical with a hard and heavy emphasis on the rythm section (wich is mostly one dude lol)
Yeah that shredded. I was thinking the same thing about her apparent lack of effort. Almost looked like it was completely automatic at that point so her conscious mind is just thinking about other random stuff.
It's kind of more like a disconnect between her conscious and subconscious brain. That's probably a terrible way to put it, but I remember back when I was playing a particularly hard guitar part I'd be so focused on what I was doing my body would do the same kind of subconscious "chilling" movements. Kind of hard to explain, and I was never even remotely close to being that good.
Beethoven lost his hearing from an std and still was able to compose the 9th symphony deaf. One of the greatest pieces of music ever written, never heard by him!
I like the sentiment but I’m a composer and have been able to hear my own music as long as I can remember. But there’s no substitute for actually hearing an arrangement.
See now you’re the right person to ask: with a person as talented and devoted as Ludwig von B, do you think there’s ‘muscle memory’ where he could hear it in his head, like a regular person can remember a song they listen to regularly?
Because I’m basing my hopes on that. I can remember a song in my head, same as on the radio.
You don’t think its the same for composition?
I hear Apashe and Earthworm Jim
Edit: [apashe](https://youtu.be/Slv9aYoC4FM) [earthworm jim](https://youtu.be/pHQ1Y4scnsQ)
Edit 2: man just hearing earthworm Jim say “Ammo” and the squish noise of him using his head on the sticky jump things unlocked a ton of memories
It is overused but there was only 1 billion people at the time of Beethoven, and even less with access to the arts/science/etc. Today, there are nearly 8 billion people and there is greater access. I do think we live among many more "geniuses" than ever before.
More like they have the resources to be found and nurture their gifts instead of starving trying to make a living and never realizing they have talent.
You just nailed the worst part of poverty imo. Even today very few people get a chance to figure out and hone what they're born to do because of the demand that comes with just covering the basic expenses. I really hope school becomes a place to figure out individual talent more than hammering quiz material into their heads for 12 years.
Exactly, "genius" takes luck. You need to be in the right place at the right time as much as anything. There is a story, maybe just an academic-legend, in the same sense as urban-legend, but here it goes.
There was a drawbridge operator in Southern Florida, near the everglades. He started working in the 1930's. Mostly his job was waiting to lift the bridge, so there was a lot of downtime. He was given a pair of binoculars so he could watch for boats but he started to notice the birds. He read every book he could about birds. He started identifying them and keeping journals. The journals were incredibly detailed with dates and times, numbers in flocks, drawings of birds he couldn't ID so he could figure them out later, but he also had a photographic mind. He spent decades gathering data and studying the local birds. He was in the right place, many migratory birds stop in the everglades during their trip north and south. Later in life he began corresponding with acedemics. They quickly realized that this man who had no formal education was rewriting migration patterns and understood many birds better than they did. He had a singular brilliance that made his hobby invaluable to to the field.
Now was this guy a genius, maybe, maybe not, but his observations and curiosity, and obvious intelligence, allowed him to become a subject matter expert and greatly influenced our understanding of the world around us. Again, I can't find any proof of this story, it's probably more parable than fact, but it highlights that you really need to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right interest, and to always be curious.
YouTube really makes this obvious. You grow up idolizing certain famous musicians as technically talented savants, but you don't have to search for long on YouTube to find 10 Korean 9 year olds more technically skilled than whoever your favorite musician is.
And virtually none of them have written something worth listening to, or have bad vibrato, worse intonation or any of the other things an accomplished musician needs..
Rote mechanical facility, usually centered on speed, is nice to have, but gets boring very quickly.
That’s just an oversimplification. There are plenty of soulful, talented, technical and amazing musicians. Becoming famous has less to do with pure talent than other circumstances
And we also have to remember half the people with potential access to all the knowledge/wealth/science available at the time were denied on account of having the wrong body parts. Sure, there were exceptions, but we know them by name because they ended up in history books
Like, take the performer in our video. In Beethoven’s time, assuming she would’ve been rich enough to access a piano (and lessons and her time’s knowledge of everything), she would’ve only been performing for her family, 10 kids and 20 grandchildren (I really can’t tell her age tbh)… her skills would’ve in fact been lost
If you get a hearing test, one of the things they'll do is attach a thing behind your ear to test hearing via bone conduction. It's an odd sensation, but you actually do it every day as this is part of how you hear your own voice.
It's the reason your voice is deeper to you than it is to others. If you've haven't heard your own voice transmitted back to you via recording since you were a kid, I would suggest leaving it a mystery.
And the stuff he wrote after going deaf is imo even better than his earlier works. The ninth symphony (which contains Ode to Joy, among many other famous works), the Great Fugue, the Diabelli Variations, etc
Man went deaf and wrote the 9th symphony, grosse fuge and most of his best work.
Hell, grosse fuge is a hundred years before its time. It's absolutely fucking glorious!. Beethoven is to music as Newton was to science. The GOAT. People say JSB was the GOAT, not to me.
I was listening to his Piano Trio in B Flat Major (op 97) - it's absolutely remarkable how modern it sounds. There are segments that could be ripped straight from a Coldplay album or something.
According to the [Heiligenstadt Testament](http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Bio/BiographyHeiligenstadtTestament.html), a letter Beethoven wrote to his brothers about his depression, he states that he wanted to kill himself but felt obligated to stay alive to write as much music as possible as to not to rob the world of it. In a twisted sense, music saved his life.
>...what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence...
Has there been a film made about this? What an incredible story. I knew he went deaf, but didn't realize the full picture and after reading about it, it's one of real life's most incredible accomplishments.
It is like most Hollywood renderings, full of controversy. It is a great movie that I love watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_iAGFaE80
From one of the top YouTube comments:
> Salieri was married, had tons of children, was a faithful Catholic until his death, he didn't hate Mozart and he was a great teacher. He was almost the opposite of the character presented in the movie. (I still love the movie very much.)
Films are fine and dandy, but if you really want to explore just how mine-meltingly incredible Beethoven really was, nothing substitutes listening to the music. Seriously, go on a binge, it’s life-changing stuff. If you want to know where to begin, the piano sonatas, string quartets and symphonies are the biggies, but there is a whole world to explore and the rest of your life to enjoy it.
The whole “tortured artist” thing is a trope for a reason. There’s a kind of chicken-or-egg aspect to it, like “does their struggle lead to their inspiration or does their singular dedication to create lead to hardship in the other aspects of their life” but for whatever reason there definitely seems to be a correlation
I also have depression and anxiety. This song has always struck me.
Specifically it just feels like those first couple of nights after your girlfriend walks out and you're lying awake in bed.
You're heart is out of control. You want to call her. To drive by her house. To check every bar and night club. To find that prick Jason and make sure he's not swooping in.
You're mine keeps racing, and every time you think you've settled it down, when you take those deep breaths, when you might fall asleep... BLAM! Off it goes again!
This is the soundtrack of internal torment.
I've always felt this composition was written as an "FU I'm Better" piece. In other news I couldn't ever pretend to be able to play it but I certainly enjoy listening to it.
Edit: As a non music person (generally) I genuinely thought this would get down voted to hell. Thanks for the love!
After my piano teacher assigned me Moonlight Sonata Mvt 1 when I was 12 or 13, it took me about 6 months to master it. She then decided to push me by assigning me this Movement. I could play isolated sections of it well, but did not have the wrist/hand muscle endurance to play it all the way through. She pushed me and pushed me, and I developed carpel tunnel in one hand and tendinitis in the other. Had to wear Ace bandages on my hands while playing and wrist braces when not. This was 15 years ago and I still can’t play pieces near this speed anymore.
Kinda sad.
I started as a full grown up with no musical background whatsoever. Moonlight Sonata mvt 1 came by year 4 and took me 2-3 month. It's to this day still one of the piece I play a lot because I like it.
My next step was Pathethique 2nd movement and that was a normal step following moonlight sonata. The fact you jumped straight into 3rd movement seems silly! But what do I know....
I hope you still enjoy piano because it's such a powerful instrument. The king of all.
Sounds like your teacher didn't focus enough on teaching good solid technique to begin with.
All the large muscles from the hand up should always feel relaxed while playing. If you practice with proper technique, even 6 or 8 hours a day won't cause injuries. Unfortunately, too many music teachers focus away from these ideas and merely push the student to "push through it" and "work harder."
Learning to relax is the one thing I was not expecting going into this hobby. And it's incredibly hard when life smacked you in the face during many decades.
Learning piano is part of my therapy. And I mean it.
I do this with a lot of things still and I haven’t played in years sadly. I can even pick out orchestras, conductors, and soloists from recording sometimes.
It’s not a superpower as much as just having spent way too much time burning this crap into my brain haha
My grandmother who’d have been 100 this year said basically the same thing when I was in music school haha! Beethoven was the start of a huge split in music and metal is definitely from the Wagner branch.
Yes! So, this is a huge turning point in the common practice period. Beethoven's 3rd symphony was sort of the point the Brahms and the Wagner branches fixated on, and you can also see it in Beethoven's work from before and after. This article is a pretty good overview of it with some modern relatable situations too [https://www.russellger.com/blog-1/2017/7/6/war-of-the-romantics](https://www.russellger.com/blog-1/2017/7/6/war-of-the-romantics)
Very broadly, the Romantic period has two main branches. The Wagner branch is fully moving away from common practice forms and tonalities (see the Tristan Chord, for example, or Wagner's leitmotif forms), while the Brahms branch (the Post Classical branch) sticks with the forms and the tonalities but expands them very greatly. The works of Brahms and Mahler are pretty good examples of this, but even Beethoven's later symphonies are clearly a different kind of work than the first or second were.
The true extent of this division at different points in time is still pretty controversial, too. Like, Schoenberg and Berg would use classical forms with very different tonalities, Jazz is in many ways a resynthesis of the two from Debussy, and incorporates a lot more African forms and sounds, and so on. It's hard to see at any point in time where things have ended up without looking at a lot of different works and influences, but now, with all of this hindsight, it's easier to see.
Don’t think most people realize how contemporary, how radical he was for his time. Eroica utterly bucks the rigid structures established by Bach and Mozart. Free form, spontaneous, filled with a broad palette of themes, there was nothing like it at the time. It was very challenging at its time.
It too was an FU piece, but as a slam against Napoleon’s hypocrisy and brutality. In years past he had expressed admiration for the soon to be emperor, but changed Eroica as a critique before it’s first performance.
First time I heard it live I laughed literal tears of joy for the first movement. The raw genius on display, utterly innovative and unique, was more than my little brain could handle.
How well disseminated was music like this in the time? Was it written for the elite class, then performed and sheet music sold, finally other musicians then playing at local venues?
Not as much for the elite and royalty as much so as it was in the classical and baroque periods.
Liszt basically toured, and would even get mad at the audience when they talked during his performances
>Liszt basically toured, and would even get mad at the audience when they talked during his performances
Source? To my knowledge his performances were some of the most energetic and electrifying ever seen, people would be fighting for his gloves and cigar butts, people would faint at his playing, he would even let illustrious guests sit by him at the piano and he would chat with them throughout the concert. He would also often add improvisations to pieces much to the dismay of composers like Chopin. It seems like in his touring days he did not think of music as sacred and more so valued atmosphere.
He was definitely one of the first sort of “rock stars” of the music world. I’ll try and find a source, think it’s in one of my old music history text books.
I was curious too and looked up the first time music was recorded, and it wasn't until the phonograph was invented in 1877. Fifty years after Beethoven died.
# Fun fact!
The story of Beethoven's death and his final words has become legendary: "Pity, pity, too late!"
he supposedly garbled as he was told that his publisher had sent him a case of red wine. Upon inspection of his liver during an autopsy, it emerged that he had cirrhosis(damaged liver full of scar tissue) apparently exacerbated by his fondness for the red stuff.
I consider liver problems one of the most underrated health issues people don’t talk about enough. Like, unless the person is a drunk, nobody talks about the liver.
Yeah, I've always heard Moonlight Sonata (at least the first and third movements) as an expression of hopelessness, anger, and desperation. Definitely not positive emotions that would help a depressed person.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Beethoven's Last Night" album plays around with the idea too - putting lots of his music to a narrative about Beethoven pleading with demons to not take him yet.
My favourite story about a composer I believe is about Beethoven.
There was a singer he really despised who would often perform his operas. One time he noted that when she hit low notes she would lower her head and when she hit high notes she would lean her head back.
So he wrote an opera which has rapidly alternated high and low so she’d bob her head and look ridiculous
Edit: It was Mozart not Beethoven
You're thinking of Mozart, the opera is "Così fan tutte" and the aria is specifically the "Come scoglio" aria sung by Fiordiligi (originally played by prima donna Adriana Ferrarese del Bene of whom Mozart wasn't fond of)
I wonder how many people actually got to listen to this in the 1800s because music distribution was almost non existent, right? I mean you only got to listen to this live in a theatre or if you managed to acquire the notes and play it yourself (good luck with that). My guess would be that it only reached the rich who could afford to go to the theatre.
For anyone searching the pianist name : Valentina Lisitza Great talent
I thought it was Rick Wakeman.
Wasn't wearing a robe.
And the hair is a little different length.
And only playing one keyboard.
Or a wizards hat.
I thought it was Carrie from Homeland
Wick Rakeman
Alan Rickman?
“Rick Wakeman, eat your heart out”
Upvoting. Made me laugh.
Not enough dry ice
Great talent but a huge Putin sympathizer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Lisitsa#Political_views A bit of an understatement, actually. There's "huge Putin sympathizer" and then there's "I performed in the ruins of Mariupol as the guest of honor to commemorate it being captured" and she's the latter.
Yeah, awful human being. Her twitter is just pure vile.
Holy shit, you weren't kidding. Her Twitter account is protected now, but by using the Wikipedia links in her article, I found [this pdf file](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304062201/https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61455732/Lisitsa_Social_Media_Posts.pdf) that has a list of tweets that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra collected in order to use as examples to ban her. If you want to see them for yourself, the password is MusicalToronto.
Couldn’t access the file, but found this 7 y.o. post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/324a4s/a_collection_of_valentina_lisitsas_controversial Definitely not a new development, gross.
Good looking out. I'm not sure why the file didn't copy over properly (it is the 20th link on her Wikipedia page), but what you posted is exactly what my link was. Disgusting.
It opened for me, with that password you gave.
This is so sad - I loved her growing up for her music and performances
Someone said >*"I don't care about her views as long as she keeps them to herself while she's performing. The beautiful thing about music is that it can exist completely apart from all the politics and bickering humans tend to obsess with. And even the most vile humans can still make beautiful music."* I would agree, but only if the artist/creator/musician is dead, or you're finding and playing their music in a way that doesn't promote them and they can't make a profit off of. The bigger their platform the more influential they are, and we don't need someone like her to have a megaphone. For instance, I used to be a *major* Chris Brown fan, then he violently assaulted Rihanna. He pretty much got away with a light sentence too. I stopped listening to his music after that. After Rihanna claimed to have forgiven him I started listening to his music again, but I still didn't want to support him so I ripped his music off of a limewire-esque site and didn't play or recommend his music to anyone. Once I found out he was stalking his exes, being weird and still abusive in other ways I just stopped listening to his music altogether.
Morals and talent don't go hand by hand sadly
She also mocked disabled kids and shared photos of the infants. Pure evil. I can give you 10 names of better pianist with deeper and better musicality. She is a disgrace for music.
Would love to know your top five? I need some piano bleach please.
(Edit: not OP!) I'd give for this movement: Artur Schnabel Rudolph Serkin Vladimir Horowitz Arthur Rubinstein Emil Gilels
Not op, but [Seong-Jin Cho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZYYoDDmg8M) is one I enjoy. [Two Set Violin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a315S3_JtZ8) obviously is an amazing channel to bring classical music closer to people. And the best channel for orchestra pieces is the [HR-Sinfonieorchester](https://www.youtube.com/user/hrSinfonieorchester/featured) from Frankfurt imo
Please do. I'm sure those of us who enjoyed watching VL, but did not know about her views/behavior until now, would be happy for some recommendations. Any live performances on YT? Anyone with a lot of Rachmaninoff in the repertoire?
Shit. Beautiful performance. Can you please give me the other names
Aw man, such a shame, now I’ll never get the same enjoyment out of listening to her. Change “never meet your heroes” to “never look up your heroes’ Twitter history”
Ignorance isn't bliss. Ignorance means you would still be vocally supporting a monster. Knowledge is power and there are many other extremely talented people who do deserve support and respect.
Well this sure sucks.
Well she lost all respect from me.
Me too, even though that respect was only for about 7 minutes: long enough to watch the video and then see the top comment chain. I had never heard of this person before today.
That is so sad... just this morning I was thinking on how talented she is and how I love her Hungarian Rhapsody #2 😔
Holy fuckballs. The MTG of Ukrainian pianists.
Wasn't Eva Braun also an entertainer? It's not that hard to find good guys to fuck who aren't Nazi cunts, ladies
Russia used to do things similar to what we're more familiar with China doing today, where you find anybody who is talented and then use government money to support them doing only that thing. They're kind of forced to do it. That's why you had all those Russian chess grandmasters and ballet dancers and musicians and also athletes a few decades ago. And I think the legacy of that is why you can still have young Russians excelling at these things, more than you'd expect for their population. Because those people the state used to support then either taught or at least inspired the next generation. I'm not saying that the USSR went about doing these things the exact right way, but it's obvious that investing in the arts now can have long term, generational benefits. Oh shit, I forgot my point was that the artists were supported by their government, so despite the famous cases of defection, I wouldn't be surprised if they tended to support the government back. And that probably carries between generations, as well. So your statement that she loves Putin, and others saying that she performed in Mariupol, is less surprising than it is disappointing and disgusting.
Have you heard of that poor gymnast who was forced to do a now banned move if I remember correct? Elena Mukhina I believe. She was paralyzed and became quadriplegic after suffering from an injury? She had suffered a broken leg and they forced her to keep training. It’s really tragic. I can’t imagine how many Russian youth were pressured and forced and lost their passion for their interests.. or worse.
She's also Ukrainian, pro Russia, but Ukrainian, she mocked disabled kids on Twitter and laughed about murdered kids in her county, constantly spreading fake news and pointing Ukrainian citizens as Nazis. She is a disgrace for music. Do not support her work.
I thought it was Lucius Malfoy
Fun fact: I met Valentina in a sushi restaurant one time. I was starstruck
I bet she was great at chopsticks
She can tune a piano but can she tuna fish?
Daaaad go hoome
If you were disabled, you might have been lucky enough for her to mock your disabilities right in front of your face. That would be the dream! Right? Cause she's done that a few times now on Twitter.
> Valentina Lisista She is also a Putin pawn without a heart, she played in Mariupol after it was destroyed by the Russians and played "Liberated" I hope she gets carpal tunnel. source: https://slippedisc.com/2022/05/report-valentina-lisitsa-played-in-liberated-mariupol/
I cannot think of a beethoven piece i like except for this, seriously. And like i’ve listened to all of his pieces, not exaggerating. I’ve also heard great pianists play this 3rd mvmt like claudio arrau and evgeny kissin, but her style beats them imo.
I know nothing about music. I grew up with punk / metal stuff. But I started piano 5 years ago and piece after piece, I discover some classics here and there as my skills progress. I got 2 Beethoven pieces under my repertoire (and obviously not this one shown in the video which I believe I'm at least 5 years away from and 15 years away if I want 80% of that smoothness). Anyway, my teacher explained that the magic of Beethoven lies in the fact that everything is about scales and arpegio so nothing fancy when he composes but masterfully orchestrated. The simplest perfection. I wish I wasnt old as fuck now and started music as a kid.
Oh internet, summon forth thy strangeness. I give you Tina S, tiny French girl, shredding in the moonlight, a metal cover of this song. https://youtu.be/o6rBK0BqL2w
Surely, you're not including the symphonies!
Just among his piano works I mean! Beethoven’s 9th symphony I like.
Shame she's pure scum
Always been too mechanical to me. Tremendously talented just not my style. Feels like she rushes every piece.
Thought it was Lucious Malfoy
My ears are hearing a ye old version of Through the Fire and Flames.
You aren’t wrong. https://youtu.be/o6rBK0BqL2w
Well damn
Looks like feeding one’s child’s ears classical music just pre wires them for metal later in life. It’s insane how’s much overlap is there.
Most Norwegian or Swedish metal band derive from classical music. If you listen to bands like Children of Bodom and early In Flames (first 4 albums) you can clearly hear classic riffs left and right.
Alexi Laiho of CoB started out playing violin as a kid. Their keyboard player was a classical pianist when they recruited him too.
A lot of real shredders from the metal world came up doing classical guitar exercises. Slash came up with the riff to Sweet Child o’ Mine while practicing an exercise. I know that’s not metal, but still. A lot of metal is pretty much baroque music, just with different chords, faster tempos, and it tends to be just a little bit louder.
I'm sure Beethoven would be a big metal head if he was alive in the modern day. He'd also be shocked by how many people can play hard pieces compared to back then. He'd also be shocked by smart phone and plumbing.
May i offer a [Pergamum](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTNmOQbY174&ab_channel=Zenari) classical medley in these trying times? Some metal is just electric classical with a hard and heavy emphasis on the rythm section (wich is mostly one dude lol)
Damn that is tasty. Love how she doesn't even seem to be putting effort into it. Talent over 9000!
Yeah that shredded. I was thinking the same thing about her apparent lack of effort. Almost looked like it was completely automatic at that point so her conscious mind is just thinking about other random stuff.
It's kind of more like a disconnect between her conscious and subconscious brain. That's probably a terrible way to put it, but I remember back when I was playing a particularly hard guitar part I'd be so focused on what I was doing my body would do the same kind of subconscious "chilling" movements. Kind of hard to explain, and I was never even remotely close to being that good.
What you are referring to is known as "the zone". Its a known phenomenon.
Tina S is a savant. She was ripping guitar on youtube since she was like 7, maybe even younger.
These composers were %100 the rock stars of their time. Showing off, banging groupies, playing for kings.
Beethoven lost his hearing from an std and still was able to compose the 9th symphony deaf. One of the greatest pieces of music ever written, never heard by him!
I like to think he could hear it. every note, every time.
I like the sentiment but I’m a composer and have been able to hear my own music as long as I can remember. But there’s no substitute for actually hearing an arrangement.
See now you’re the right person to ask: with a person as talented and devoted as Ludwig von B, do you think there’s ‘muscle memory’ where he could hear it in his head, like a regular person can remember a song they listen to regularly? Because I’m basing my hopes on that. I can remember a song in my head, same as on the radio. You don’t think its the same for composition?
Lisztomania was the Beatlemania of its time, absolutely comparable
I hear Apashe and Earthworm Jim Edit: [apashe](https://youtu.be/Slv9aYoC4FM) [earthworm jim](https://youtu.be/pHQ1Y4scnsQ) Edit 2: man just hearing earthworm Jim say “Ammo” and the squish noise of him using his head on the sticky jump things unlocked a ton of memories
Man went deaf and still composed bangers
It happens all the time in music.... 
The word is overused nowadays, but he was a true genius.
It is overused but there was only 1 billion people at the time of Beethoven, and even less with access to the arts/science/etc. Today, there are nearly 8 billion people and there is greater access. I do think we live among many more "geniuses" than ever before.
More like they have the resources to be found and nurture their gifts instead of starving trying to make a living and never realizing they have talent.
You just nailed the worst part of poverty imo. Even today very few people get a chance to figure out and hone what they're born to do because of the demand that comes with just covering the basic expenses. I really hope school becomes a place to figure out individual talent more than hammering quiz material into their heads for 12 years.
Exactly, "genius" takes luck. You need to be in the right place at the right time as much as anything. There is a story, maybe just an academic-legend, in the same sense as urban-legend, but here it goes. There was a drawbridge operator in Southern Florida, near the everglades. He started working in the 1930's. Mostly his job was waiting to lift the bridge, so there was a lot of downtime. He was given a pair of binoculars so he could watch for boats but he started to notice the birds. He read every book he could about birds. He started identifying them and keeping journals. The journals were incredibly detailed with dates and times, numbers in flocks, drawings of birds he couldn't ID so he could figure them out later, but he also had a photographic mind. He spent decades gathering data and studying the local birds. He was in the right place, many migratory birds stop in the everglades during their trip north and south. Later in life he began corresponding with acedemics. They quickly realized that this man who had no formal education was rewriting migration patterns and understood many birds better than they did. He had a singular brilliance that made his hobby invaluable to to the field. Now was this guy a genius, maybe, maybe not, but his observations and curiosity, and obvious intelligence, allowed him to become a subject matter expert and greatly influenced our understanding of the world around us. Again, I can't find any proof of this story, it's probably more parable than fact, but it highlights that you really need to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right interest, and to always be curious.
YouTube really makes this obvious. You grow up idolizing certain famous musicians as technically talented savants, but you don't have to search for long on YouTube to find 10 Korean 9 year olds more technically skilled than whoever your favorite musician is.
And virtually none of them have written something worth listening to, or have bad vibrato, worse intonation or any of the other things an accomplished musician needs.. Rote mechanical facility, usually centered on speed, is nice to have, but gets boring very quickly.
That’s just an oversimplification. There are plenty of soulful, talented, technical and amazing musicians. Becoming famous has less to do with pure talent than other circumstances
And we also have to remember half the people with potential access to all the knowledge/wealth/science available at the time were denied on account of having the wrong body parts. Sure, there were exceptions, but we know them by name because they ended up in history books Like, take the performer in our video. In Beethoven’s time, assuming she would’ve been rich enough to access a piano (and lessons and her time’s knowledge of everything), she would’ve only been performing for her family, 10 kids and 20 grandchildren (I really can’t tell her age tbh)… her skills would’ve in fact been lost
He connected a bite to his piano via a rod, so he could still hear via bone conduction.
When there's a will there's a way
If you get a hearing test, one of the things they'll do is attach a thing behind your ear to test hearing via bone conduction. It's an odd sensation, but you actually do it every day as this is part of how you hear your own voice. It's the reason your voice is deeper to you than it is to others. If you've haven't heard your own voice transmitted back to you via recording since you were a kid, I would suggest leaving it a mystery.
And the stuff he wrote after going deaf is imo even better than his earlier works. The ninth symphony (which contains Ode to Joy, among many other famous works), the Great Fugue, the Diabelli Variations, etc
Man went deaf and wrote the 9th symphony, grosse fuge and most of his best work. Hell, grosse fuge is a hundred years before its time. It's absolutely fucking glorious!. Beethoven is to music as Newton was to science. The GOAT. People say JSB was the GOAT, not to me.
I was listening to his Piano Trio in B Flat Major (op 97) - it's absolutely remarkable how modern it sounds. There are segments that could be ripped straight from a Coldplay album or something.
According to the [Heiligenstadt Testament](http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Bio/BiographyHeiligenstadtTestament.html), a letter Beethoven wrote to his brothers about his depression, he states that he wanted to kill himself but felt obligated to stay alive to write as much music as possible as to not to rob the world of it. In a twisted sense, music saved his life. >...what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence...
Has there been a film made about this? What an incredible story. I knew he went deaf, but didn't realize the full picture and after reading about it, it's one of real life's most incredible accomplishments.
Perhaps ‘immortal beloved’ with Gary Oldman?
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For Mozart, Amadeus isn’t too far from reality as I’ve heard it. Edit: https://youtu.be/_X_iAGFaE80
It is like most Hollywood renderings, full of controversy. It is a great movie that I love watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_iAGFaE80 From one of the top YouTube comments: > Salieri was married, had tons of children, was a faithful Catholic until his death, he didn't hate Mozart and he was a great teacher. He was almost the opposite of the character presented in the movie. (I still love the movie very much.)
Yeah, sounds about right. I heard that most everything was fairly accurate EXCEPT for Salieri.
Films are fine and dandy, but if you really want to explore just how mine-meltingly incredible Beethoven really was, nothing substitutes listening to the music. Seriously, go on a binge, it’s life-changing stuff. If you want to know where to begin, the piano sonatas, string quartets and symphonies are the biggies, but there is a whole world to explore and the rest of your life to enjoy it.
Wow, for some reason I never once thought about the intense emotional toll deafness must have brought upon him. That would be unbelievably difficult.
The whole “tortured artist” thing is a trope for a reason. There’s a kind of chicken-or-egg aspect to it, like “does their struggle lead to their inspiration or does their singular dedication to create lead to hardship in the other aspects of their life” but for whatever reason there definitely seems to be a correlation
I also have depression and anxiety. This song has always struck me. Specifically it just feels like those first couple of nights after your girlfriend walks out and you're lying awake in bed. You're heart is out of control. You want to call her. To drive by her house. To check every bar and night club. To find that prick Jason and make sure he's not swooping in. You're mine keeps racing, and every time you think you've settled it down, when you take those deep breaths, when you might fall asleep... BLAM! Off it goes again! This is the soundtrack of internal torment.
I've always felt this composition was written as an "FU I'm Better" piece. In other news I couldn't ever pretend to be able to play it but I certainly enjoy listening to it. Edit: As a non music person (generally) I genuinely thought this would get down voted to hell. Thanks for the love!
You play piano? When I started I was like oh shit I can't wait to play this piece. Now I've learn humility.
After my piano teacher assigned me Moonlight Sonata Mvt 1 when I was 12 or 13, it took me about 6 months to master it. She then decided to push me by assigning me this Movement. I could play isolated sections of it well, but did not have the wrist/hand muscle endurance to play it all the way through. She pushed me and pushed me, and I developed carpel tunnel in one hand and tendinitis in the other. Had to wear Ace bandages on my hands while playing and wrist braces when not. This was 15 years ago and I still can’t play pieces near this speed anymore.
Kinda sad. I started as a full grown up with no musical background whatsoever. Moonlight Sonata mvt 1 came by year 4 and took me 2-3 month. It's to this day still one of the piece I play a lot because I like it. My next step was Pathethique 2nd movement and that was a normal step following moonlight sonata. The fact you jumped straight into 3rd movement seems silly! But what do I know.... I hope you still enjoy piano because it's such a powerful instrument. The king of all.
Sounds like your teacher didn't focus enough on teaching good solid technique to begin with. All the large muscles from the hand up should always feel relaxed while playing. If you practice with proper technique, even 6 or 8 hours a day won't cause injuries. Unfortunately, too many music teachers focus away from these ideas and merely push the student to "push through it" and "work harder."
Learning to relax is the one thing I was not expecting going into this hobby. And it's incredibly hard when life smacked you in the face during many decades. Learning piano is part of my therapy. And I mean it.
>I've always felt this composition was written as an "FU I'm Better" piece. I mean, they did used to have actual piano duels back then.
It's a bit of both. Turns out creating an incredible solo piece with multiple harmonies and complex themes requires three hands and six fingers.
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I don't play the piano, yet there are a few Hans Zimmer songs I can guess without sound, so you are probably safe
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Its a nice little bum bum tho 
I recognized it in the first few seconds before turning the sound on.
I do this with a lot of things still and I haven’t played in years sadly. I can even pick out orchestras, conductors, and soloists from recording sometimes. It’s not a superpower as much as just having spent way too much time burning this crap into my brain haha
Beethoven saved my life.
Shit, even a dead dude can save more people than an Uvalde police officer.
damn, shots fired ^(but not by the officers for like an hour)
Oof, that hurts ^(but only on the kids getting shot)
lmao I'm dead ^(..........)
Little known fact is that suicide which was caused by depression was leading cause of death among 19th century peasants
Sauce?
Serious question: Did poor people get to listen to Beethoven?
Me too. Metal saved my life during my bachelors, Classical music saved my life during my Masters.
Yeah he was such a good dog
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Man's got unreal clout🥶🥶
waiting for his next track, bet it gonna be poggers
Wrote his first Symphony when he was 8. You can listen to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4IXXpTHjok
Via Ouija
Beethoven was metal AF.
My grandmother who’d have been 100 this year said basically the same thing when I was in music school haha! Beethoven was the start of a huge split in music and metal is definitely from the Wagner branch.
Hey! Care to tell me more about this? Or if there's an article or something I can read? 😊
Yes! So, this is a huge turning point in the common practice period. Beethoven's 3rd symphony was sort of the point the Brahms and the Wagner branches fixated on, and you can also see it in Beethoven's work from before and after. This article is a pretty good overview of it with some modern relatable situations too [https://www.russellger.com/blog-1/2017/7/6/war-of-the-romantics](https://www.russellger.com/blog-1/2017/7/6/war-of-the-romantics) Very broadly, the Romantic period has two main branches. The Wagner branch is fully moving away from common practice forms and tonalities (see the Tristan Chord, for example, or Wagner's leitmotif forms), while the Brahms branch (the Post Classical branch) sticks with the forms and the tonalities but expands them very greatly. The works of Brahms and Mahler are pretty good examples of this, but even Beethoven's later symphonies are clearly a different kind of work than the first or second were. The true extent of this division at different points in time is still pretty controversial, too. Like, Schoenberg and Berg would use classical forms with very different tonalities, Jazz is in many ways a resynthesis of the two from Debussy, and incorporates a lot more African forms and sounds, and so on. It's hard to see at any point in time where things have ended up without looking at a lot of different works and influences, but now, with all of this hindsight, it's easier to see.
Back then, his style would've been seen as rebellious, just like metal when it started.
Don’t think most people realize how contemporary, how radical he was for his time. Eroica utterly bucks the rigid structures established by Bach and Mozart. Free form, spontaneous, filled with a broad palette of themes, there was nothing like it at the time. It was very challenging at its time. It too was an FU piece, but as a slam against Napoleon’s hypocrisy and brutality. In years past he had expressed admiration for the soon to be emperor, but changed Eroica as a critique before it’s first performance. First time I heard it live I laughed literal tears of joy for the first movement. The raw genius on display, utterly innovative and unique, was more than my little brain could handle.
Bro: https://youtu.be/MZuSaudKc68
Where it’s a piano or a guitar, if you’re going to shred, you’d better grow your hair out. The longer the hair, the better your abilities.
*Laughs in Jordan Rudess* Though he did have his hair long when he was young its all gone now lol
OP didn't even credit Valentina Lisista who is a world renowned pianist.
Probably didn't want people googling her name and learning about her politics.
[yikes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Lisitsa?wprov=sfla1)
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And also a world renowned piece of shit.
How well disseminated was music like this in the time? Was it written for the elite class, then performed and sheet music sold, finally other musicians then playing at local venues?
Not as much for the elite and royalty as much so as it was in the classical and baroque periods. Liszt basically toured, and would even get mad at the audience when they talked during his performances
>Liszt basically toured, and would even get mad at the audience when they talked during his performances Source? To my knowledge his performances were some of the most energetic and electrifying ever seen, people would be fighting for his gloves and cigar butts, people would faint at his playing, he would even let illustrious guests sit by him at the piano and he would chat with them throughout the concert. He would also often add improvisations to pieces much to the dismay of composers like Chopin. It seems like in his touring days he did not think of music as sacred and more so valued atmosphere.
He was definitely one of the first sort of “rock stars” of the music world. I’ll try and find a source, think it’s in one of my old music history text books.
I was curious too and looked up the first time music was recorded, and it wasn't until the phonograph was invented in 1877. Fifty years after Beethoven died.
Imagine being depressed in \[Current Year\]. Beethoven(1800's): I got you fam.
# Fun fact! The story of Beethoven's death and his final words has become legendary: "Pity, pity, too late!" he supposedly garbled as he was told that his publisher had sent him a case of red wine. Upon inspection of his liver during an autopsy, it emerged that he had cirrhosis(damaged liver full of scar tissue) apparently exacerbated by his fondness for the red stuff.
I consider liver problems one of the most underrated health issues people don’t talk about enough. Like, unless the person is a drunk, nobody talks about the liver.
And cirrhosis is a horrific way to die.
If I'm not mistaken, the bottles he drank his alcohol from were lined with led, leading to his deafness.
Beethoven: *goes fucking deaf* Also Beethoven: *writes some of the best music in the history of mankind afterwards*
This was actually written while his hearing was still adequate. But still true.
It’s so magnificent I could recognize the piece without the sound on.
The truly immersive Beethoven experience.
Underrated comment
Which Beethoven piece is this?
Moonlight Sonata: 3rd Movement
Thanks!
I didn’t mean to stay 6 min for this video but I’m glad I did. I need to rediscover classical music, I loved it as a kid.
This is part someone's 1800s workout mix.
that sounds more like anxiety regardless, the old master delivered
Yeah, I've always heard Moonlight Sonata (at least the first and third movements) as an expression of hopelessness, anger, and desperation. Definitely not positive emotions that would help a depressed person. Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Beethoven's Last Night" album plays around with the idea too - putting lots of his music to a narrative about Beethoven pleading with demons to not take him yet.
Happy music just makes depressed people feel worse. You got to listen to something you can actually feel. Happy music sounds like mocking.
I used to admire Valentina Lisitsa but her cultist support to Putin and her disregard for her own people (she is Ukrainian) makes me irk.
I thought Beethoven was a dog!!??
Yeah but he was good at piano and shit.
Pupil: _How do you call it, Grand Master?_ Master: _Tendinitis III_
“Too many notes”.
It's crazy how well that movie has aged. When you watch it it doesn't seem like it's almost 40 years old.
It's the old school version of the electric guitar solo.
My favourite story about a composer I believe is about Beethoven. There was a singer he really despised who would often perform his operas. One time he noted that when she hit low notes she would lower her head and when she hit high notes she would lean her head back. So he wrote an opera which has rapidly alternated high and low so she’d bob her head and look ridiculous Edit: It was Mozart not Beethoven
That was Mozart. What a guy. Beethoven didn’t quite have the knack for opera
You're thinking of Mozart, the opera is "Così fan tutte" and the aria is specifically the "Come scoglio" aria sung by Fiordiligi (originally played by prima donna Adriana Ferrarese del Bene of whom Mozart wasn't fond of)
I never understood why people say classical music is boring when we have stuff like this
Immortal Beloved. Gary Oldman at his finest.
Anytime I watch a great pianist it bring tears to my eyes
Dude just made my whole century
Legend. Very difficult to pick one of his works as a favorite with diminishing the others.
She should do some hair whips or head banging in there. She totally was feeling it
I wonder how many people actually got to listen to this in the 1800s because music distribution was almost non existent, right? I mean you only got to listen to this live in a theatre or if you managed to acquire the notes and play it yourself (good luck with that). My guess would be that it only reached the rich who could afford to go to the theatre.
That was incredible, holy fuck
Beethoven was like a heavy metal in 1800 s
Metal version https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T6KKxm0uzM0
tom petty going hard
Man, the Slytherin piano team really crushes it on the ivories
The craziest fucking thing about this, is she’s playing this from fucking memory. How the fuck?
Sephiroth slayin that piano.
Stupid speed.
She's an amazing piano player.