moab wrote:
--For those of you into music, I'd like to hear your comment.
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Lessons From Beethoven and Life
By STUART ISACOFF
NEW YORK -- Beethoven is forever contemporary. In his own time, he pushed artistic boundaries so far that the formidable pianist and composer Muzio Clementi once asked him if he really considered a set of string quartets to be "music." "Oh," replied the indomitable composer casually, "they are not for you, but for a later age."

"Consider the so-called 'Moonlight Sonata,' " he says. "Beethoven never called it that, and the popularity of this piece actually irritated him. He thought his F Sharp Major Sonata was better, but it was not embraced in the same way. I hate the name myself -- it's a kitsch name. However, this is a fantastic sonata. The first movement is playable by amateurs, but they tend to think of 'moonlight' instead of actually reading the score, in which Beethoven asks the player to hold down the pedal for the entire movement. Most players ignore this, saying it is not practical on today's instruments. But they never really give it a try. Beethoven was inventing sounds and sonorities that no one thought of before. Using the pedal -- raising the dampers so that the strings continue to vibrate -- allows sounds that do not traditionally belong together to blend into a cloud. He's going against the textbook."