DAILY DOSE OF BEETHOVEN (September 3, 2020)
Beethoven's penultimate variation on “A Theme by Diabelli” was a contrapuntal tour de force, a massive double fugue. If Bach had continued with a canon every 3 measures, his variation 30 of the “Goldberg Variaions” would have been a canon at the tenth. Instead, he composed a quodlibet.
What, you say, is a quodlibet?
Many of our readers are familiar with the idea of the “Motivfuhrung”—the exploration and developement of an entire composition that flows from a central motif of only a few notes. The great 15th century philosopher Nicholaus of Cusa called this “the unfolding”—or “differentiation”, as from a seed or a germ. He also said we need a concept of “enfolding”—the integration of disparate things into a unity. Brahms did that with four different student songs in his “Academic Festival Overture” (see August 17, 2020 post).
The Quodlibet became popular during the Renaissance. Street festivals could often become threatening, with drunkenness accompanied by lecherous songs that got louder and out of hand. So, during the time of Lorenzo de Medici, Florence addressed the problem by combining several such songs. They were still bawdy, but they made you listen and think, in a way that Francois Rabelais would appreciate. The great composer Heinrich Isaac made a famous quodlibet. It combined three songs, "Donna, di dentro dalla tua casa." (woman, inside your house there is a flower), a good luck song ("Fortuna d'un gran tempo"), and "Dammene un poco di quella mazacrocha" (Give me a little of that cake.)
Here it is: https://youtu.be/2y30mkC5O7k
The Bach family produced many musicians, and they delighted in improvising quolibets. Everyone takes a song, and they figure out how to fit them together. Quodlibets could range from simple to reflecting advanced counterpoint. Such is variation 30. Here are the two songs quoted in that variation, plus the still-present bass line. We provide an audio to help make the process clear.
https://drive.google.com/…/19ymrr3Umb3Cwo_KUUrcPgjJuU…/view…
CONCLUSION:
And so, we see two different yet great composers—Beethoven and Bach, striving for the same goal through two different yet great compositions: not so much for perfection, as for the lessening of our distance from it. We do not get to see perfection in our daily lives: quite the opposite. No work of art achieves Nirvana. But the realization that perfection is a process, rather than a fixed state, affords us a higher delight in the striving.
So far, only one successful attempt has been made to join that exalted company. We shall come to it shortly.