Thursday Music Post

And let's add an envious link to Murph's post re: obtaining a copy of the Stanley Kubrick archives...I wonder if he--Murph, that is--is particularly fond of Beethoven?

Heather Carbo, a matter-of-fact librarian at an evangelical seminary outside Philadelphia, was cleaning out an archival cabinet one hot afternoon in July. It was a dirty and routine job. But there, on the bottom shelf, she stumbled across what may be one of the most important musicological finds in years.

It was a working manuscript score for a piano version of Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," a monument of classical music. And it was in the composer's own hand, according to Sotheby's auction house. The 80-page manuscript in mainly brown ink - a furious scattering of notes across the page, with many changes and cross-outs, some so deep that the paper is punctured - dates from the final months of Beethoven's life...

The Times goes on to note that the scorebook was available for public viewing today, and will eventually be sold at auction. The work itself is or was apparently controversial, not being well received intially--as they conclude:

Beethoven could not comprehend why the work was not better received. When he was told the audience at the premiere called for encores of the middle movements, he was reported to have said: "And why didn't they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!"

Today, we'd call them neo-cons. Or wingnuts.