What (or who) am I not listening to?

After that last post on "what am I listening to", I have been reminded this week of the opposite extreme in my listening practices. There is in fact one musical category I have been deliberately avoiding, for a full year in fact. I could not have gotten away with such avoidance in my previous career, especially for this past year, but in my current life it was relatively easy to do.

Yep, I'm one of those people who has been avoiding, deliberately, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. 

Specifically, avoiding Beethoven's music during the year leading up to the 250th anniversary of his birth, which you might have heard was yesterday. 

It should be noted that this is actually one thing that was enabled by the ongoing curtailment of activities due to the pandemic. Last week or last month or some time I'd likely have been compelled to attend a big choral concert of one of his larger works, because my wife would have been singing in it. So, a narrow miss there.

Yes, it was a deliberate choice. Yes, it was somewhat encouraged by the anniversary. No, I'm not the only person. 

Why?

Because there was no need for music organizations to spend the last year or the next year bingeing on Beethoven music.

Why? Because music organizations, for the most part, already spend a great deal of their time and energy bingeing on Beethoven music.

This is especially true of instrumental groups, symphonies most of all. But choral groups will jump in on a Ninth Symphony whenever possible, and in a year like this other works were going to get a workout. But on the instrumental side, it's a pretty strong likelihood that any orchestra that put forth a Beethoven cycle (or had planned to) for last season or this had already done a Beethoven cycle (or some limited form thereof) some time in the past decade. Aside from certain specialty organizations, it's hard to imagine such a group going a full season without a Beethoven something. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I did participate in the Beethovenism, to the degree that one of my few public recitals was devoted to LvB's string trios, even though I was no Beethoven scholar.)

Perhaps even more pervasive is the presence of Beethoven music on such classical radio as exists these days. I'm not going to spend a full twenty-four hour period listening to a classical radio outlet (I need sleep), but it's hard to imagine such an outlet going a full twenty-four hours with no Ludwig. There may be a handful of others who get such treatment (Mozart or Bach might come to mind), but not many. 

The one exception I have made in the past twelve months is to let pass the fleeting bars of "Für Elise" that Schroeder tries to pass as "Beethoven Christmas music" in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Even that example points to the depth of the phenomenon. Mozart or Bach never got that pop-culture kind of treatment, nor others. (To be fair, Schroeder doesn't use his Beethoven fanaticism to demean the music of other composers, as the strip below shows.)

Interestingly, many of the names on that list Lucy spits out spent much of their careers laboring under the shadow of Beethoven, whether self-imposed or as part of a musical establishment in which LvB was increasingly idolized (I use that word more literally than I usually do on a non-religious subject). 

So, for me as a no-longer-music-professional, I simply didn't see any reason to support the Beethoven Binge with such funds as I had at my disposal. 

But not listening to Beethoven wasn't enough; something else needed to fill the musical void.

I ended up, as slightly alluded in the previous post, finding out just how much I had underappreciated Franz Schubert.

I rekindled my affection for the composers of late-19th and early-20th century composers of the US who had been my principal scholarly pursuit back in academia. 

I happily indulged in music of composers such as Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, William Levi Dawson (and I'm not referring to his choral arrangements of spirituals), William Grant Still, and others who committed the unforgivable crime of composing while Black. 

I remembered how much I liked jazz. I actually went to some jazz shows, both local and more national, before the pandemic shut down most concert life, and picked up some online shows in the meantime. 

I also put out feelers into other musical genres I hadn't indulged in much in a while. I ended up picking up some Broadway I wasn't familiar with and trying to find some of the classical music of India that had fleetingly passed through my life at least two decades ago.

And I discovered I liked hearing those things. 

So, with the term of avoidance technically over as of yesterday's big anniversary blowouts (such as they were), I have to admit that I honestly don't know whether that avoidance will continue or be dropped. 

I'm still obsessing over those Schubert piano sonatas. Still absorbed by that Chrismas Cantata by Daniel Pinkham. The presence of what might be called "classical Chrismas music" on one outlet I have available is helping pass the time. I still am waiting for Margaret Bonds to get the public recovery that Florence Price has been getting. (Listen to this and this if you wonder why.)

And one other thing: I'm not sure that "greatness" is enough of a reason to be force-fed one guy's music to the inevitable exclusion of some other composer's work. Call me a heretic if you like. It wouldn't be my first time.

So I have no idea what I'll do the next time LvB pops up in front of me anywhere other than from Schroeder's piano. Eventually I might spend some time with it. But I'm in no hurry. There's a lot of other stuff I need to hear.

??? Who knows what I'll do...