New reading group begins! 'The Classical Style' [Updated]

The Classical Style by Charles Rosen 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Week 1: Overture 

Schedule: 

5/25/2026 Overture 

6/1 Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

I   INTRODUCTION 

6/8 1. The Musical Language of the Late Eighteenth Century 

6/15 2. Theories of Form 

6/22 3. The Origins of the Style 

II   THE CLASSICAL STYLE 

6/29 1. The Coherence of the Musical Language 

7/6 2. Structure and Ornament 

III   HAYDN FROM 1770 TO THE DEATH OF MOZART 

7/13 1. String Quartet 

7/20 2. Symphonies 

7/27  

IV   SERIOUS OPERA 

V   MOZART 

8/3 1. The Concerto 

8/10 2. String Quintet 

8/17 3. Comic Opera 

VI   HAYDN AFTER THE DEATH OF MOZART 

8/24 1. The Popular Style 

8/31 2. Piano Trio (Doomed Music) 

9/7 3. Church Music 

VII   BEETHOVEN 

9/14 1. Beethoven 

9/21 2. Beethoven’s Later Years and the Conventions of His Childhood 

9/28 Epilogue 

At the end of first grade they put some of the first graders in the second grade classroom for the last few weeks of school. One day the second grade teacher told us about Franz Joseph Haydn. She said he had become famous, but then, as now, some people fell asleep at the concerts, so he wrote a special piece for them, and she played us the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLy6JxEDLw&list=RDVOLy6JxEDLw&start_radio=1 

This utterly delighted my first grade mind. I could think of nothing cooler. I went home and told my mom about it, and she got me an LP of Haydn’s Surprise and Clock Symphonies that Christmas. I listened to them over and over again over the decades. 

Around December 1990 I read Joseph Kerman’s The Beethoven Quartets which blew me away, and in 1991 I read a bunch of other Kerman books. In Kerman’s Contemplating Music he raved about Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style, so it read it that summer, and I’ve read it over and over again over the past 25 years, along with all of Rosen’s other books. I also love Rosen’s piano playing. I love the synergetic experience of reading him and then listening to his recordings and trying to grok the music. Thank you for joining me on this voyage to Esterhazy, Salzburg, Vienna, and beyond. 

UPDATE: Given that there is interest in Sonny Rollins in the comments, I thought some of you might want to read the New  York Times obituary (gift link). 

RAW's Beethoven listening projects, and ours

Beethoven when he was 26. 

Thanks to Eric Wagner, we know that Robert Anton Wilson "once took LSD and listened to all nine Beethoven symphonies, taking a bit more before each symphony, climaxing with the Ninth at sunrise."

RAW also listened to Beethoven in other interesting ways. Cosmic Trigger II, in the "Attack of the Dog-faced Demons" chapter, records that "In a farm in Mendocino, 1972, I was preparing for the Mass of the Phoenix, a ritual designed by Aleister Crowley in which the magician attempts to activate his 'True Will.' I had taken 250 micrograms of Acid, played some Beethoven, and, when I felt ready, I went to my makeshift Altar and began the Invocation."

In the link above, you can can see that in 2012, Eric Wagner also wrote about "my 11:32 project to listen to all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas eleven times each.  I've modeled the sonatas as parallel with the eight circuits of the nervous system, so I've almost finished the Sixth Morphogenetic Circuit, and I look forward to metaprogramming Beethoven shortly."

Eric has a new listening project. He recently wrote to me, " I plan to work through the 24 brains in Leary’s Info-Psychology over the next 24 weeks. A discussion I had with Dr. Johnson about Leary’s skill as a writer helped inspire this idea. Music for week one: Haydn Symphonies 97-100."

An update: "Last week I reread the first half of Info-Psychology and started Game of Life and read the brief summary of state one in Musings on Human Metamorphoses, pg. 90; Design for Dying, pg. 85, and Flashbacks, pg. 385, all by Leary. This week I plan to read Game of Life up through state 2.

"Music for the week: Haydn Symphony 100, Beethoven Piano Sonata Op. 101."

I am not doing anything as elaborate, but I am currently listening to all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas, in order, concentrating on a particular sonata each week. This week is Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1. Sviatoslav Richter is my favorite piano player, but Richter did not record all of Beethoven's sonatas, although he recorded many, so I also listen to Igor Levit, Alfred Brendel, Wilhelm Kempff, etc. Perhaps not related to the Beethoven, but also I have been reading a bit of primary source Epicurean philosophy each day; right now, I am doing the "Letter to Menoeceus." (Another translation here.) 

My Beethoven synchronicity

Beethoven in 1813. (Source)

Monday was Beethoven's birthday and Eric Wagner wished me a "happy Beethoven's birthday." I didn't blog about him Monday as I try to follow the schedule for online reading groups, but I can write about him today. 

I have been a Beethoven fan for much of my life, and as I've written before, Robert Anton Wilson had a particular love of Beethoven. The essay about Beethoven in The Illuminati Papers, "Beethoven As Information," is my favorite short piece about Beethoven written by anyone, anywhere. 

Sunday I went to see a local community orchestra, the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, give a concert at a local Catholic church. The orchestra played Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, along with a piece by composer Leó Weiner that I wasn't familiar with,  the Serenade for Small Orchestra. 

The Beethoven and the Mozart made the concert an ideal bill for me. Although I've listened to a lot of Mozart, I am not particularly familiar with that work. Here is an article about the soloist, Sibbi Bernhardssohn, talking about  how "it’s probably the most perfect out of all the perfect violin concertos that Mozart wrote."

It certainly won me over. Later Sunday after I got home, I listened to a recording of it. My wife thought I was crazy to listen to a recording of something I had just heard. I thought it was crazy she would not want to hear it again.

The Seventh is perhaps the Beethoven symphony I have listened to the most. The second movement is particularly famous; when the symphony was first performed in 1813, it caused such a sensation that it was played twice. The movement is used to good effect in Zardoz, a 1974 science fiction movie that starred Sean Connery.  I saw it in high school, and it was an early example of a Beethoven piece making an impression on me. 

Late at night before I go to sleep, I often listen to the late night classical music program hosted by Peter Van de Graaff (it's very good). When I tuned in, the radio was playing a solo piano piece. To my amazement, I realized that the piece used the melody from the second movement of the Seventh. It turned out to be an obscure but interesting piece by Robert Schumann, WoO 31, "Studies in the Form of Free Variations on a Theme by Beethoven (1831–32)," played by Peter Frankl. Van de Graaff of course plays many famous pieces, but he's also good at discovering obscure but interesting ones. 

Beethoven in 'Cosmic Trigger 2'

Alfred Brendel. (Photo  from official website). 

My fascination with Beethoven continues. I decided a few days ago to listen to all of Beethoven 32 piano sonatas again, in order. I have made it through #5 so far, so obviously I have a ways to go. I am mostly listening to renditions by Alfred Brendel, but for certain performances I am switching to Sviatoslav Richter and Angela Hewitt. (Richter is my favorite piano player, but he never recorded a set of all of Beethoven's sonatas, a good example of how Richter was a maverick and would not do what he was "supposed" to do.)

Robert Anton Wilson's books are peppered with references to Beethoven. My search of the text of Cosmic Trigger 2 (I also have a paper copy, but a Kindle is useful for searches) shows four references to him. For example, in the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" chapter, RAW writes, "A movie theatre is the best place to learn the true meaning of Plato's parable of the prisoners in the cave, who accept shadows as reality. Every artist who moves us, from a movie maker to Beethoven or Shakespeare, is a bit of a hypnotist."

I am intrigued by another of the references to Beethoven. In the "Attack of the Dog-Faced Demons" chapter, RAW writes, "In a farm in Mendocino, 1972, I was preparing for the Mass of the Phoenix, a ritual designed by Aleister Crowley in which the magician attempts to activate his "True Will." I had taken 250 micrograms of Acid, played some Beethoven, and, when I felt ready, I went to my makeshift Altar and began the invocation."

Why would RAW play Beethoven as part of his preparation? Does anyone want to comment? 

The Emperor Joseph cantata seems worth checking out [UPDATED]

More Beethoven blogging: When I posted about the RAW-recommended Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, I got an interesting anonymous comment (feel free to out yourself, if you like):

The Missa Solemnis is wonderful. If you're inclined to look in more obscure areas for Beethoven's work, give the Cantata on the Death of Joseph II a listen. He wrote it while he was still in Bonn, but he missed the deadline, so it wasn't performed. It's powerful. He recycled some of the music into Fidelio, and it includes the first version of what became (and evokes the reaction) "O Gott, welch ein Augenblick!"

Addendum: It was Gary McGath, he didn't mean to be anonymous, see the comment. 

This is an intriguing recommendation for a couple of reasons.

It's an early work. Hipsters (like RAW) like to bring up the late works, and many of Beethoven's "greatest hits" come from the middle period. I like all that, too! But I also really like early Beethoven, (and when I recently read a biography of Sviatoslav Richter by Karl Rasmussen  I discovered that Richter liked early Beethoven, too). I really like the third piano sonata (Richter does a great performance) and the first piano concerto (ditto for Richter) and I like The Creatures of Prometheus, an early work of ballet music. So I'm inclined to give the cantata a fair hearing.

And there's also a connection to the Illuminati, believe it or not.

Robert Anton Wilson has said that when he made Beethoven a member of the Illuminati in Illuminatus!, he did it as a joke, not realizing until later that there was an actual connection: “Actually, a few things that I thought I invented did turn out to be true, oddly enough. The one I still remember is Beethoven’s link to the original, real, historical Illuminati. I invented that as a parody of right-wing books on the Beatles serving Moscow – but hot damn years later I found, in a bio of Ludwig, that he had several associates in the Illuminati and the Illuminati commissioned his first major work, The Emperor Joseph Cantata." (Joseph II had his faults, but he pushed many liberal reforms, so the radicals of the time liked him.) 

Jan Swafford's Beethoven biography goes into considerable detail about Beethoven's Illuminati connections and the cantata. 

As with other Beethoven work, even relatively obscure compositions, it's easy to find recordings of the cantata on streaming music services, and I've bookmarked one to listen to during the next few days. 

UPDATE: Eric's comment reminds me that I meant to cite him as my on-call Beethoven expert, and I just forgot. I will blame getting old. Eric told me he has a CD of the piece and said, "I recommend listening to the Emperor Joseph Cantata at least a few times."

Two great Beethoven works

[I love to read Robert Anton Wilson quotes that discuss Beethoven, and the short piece below was new to me. The below also seems pertinent considering the use of Beethoven in Reality Is What You Can Get Away With. The only problem is while I have listened to all of the Beethoven piano sonatas, all of the symphonies, all of the piano concertos etc., I had not listened to the Missa Solemnis. I am fixing that now with a Szell/Cleveland Orchestra recording. The below is from Robert Anton Wilson's column in New Libertarian, Volume Four, Number Eight, December 1990-February 1981, and thank you again, Chad Nelson -- The Management]

Art and Morality

I was once denouncing Alfred Hitchcock to an Oxford intellectual. (There is a great deal I admire in Hitchcock's work, of course.)

"Oh," said the Oxfordian in that tone the English always use in talking to Americans who dare to have opinions about art, "you believe in art as Moral Uplift."

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. In fact, to reveal the full abysmal depths of my heresy, I think the greatest art only comes from hearts and minds enflamed by a passion for the sublime in all dimensions, including the moral dimension.

Beethoven considered his greatest works to be the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony, and many intelligent musicologists agree with him. I don't think those towering Matterhorns of music could have been composed without a great passion for Utopia. After all, the Missa ends up with voices crying out for Peace, and the Ninth with a hymn to human brotherhood.

A few comments on the Beethoven podcast

I have finished the Hilaritas Press podcast on Beethoven starring Mike Gathers and Eric Wagner, it was very good, I plan to listen to it one more time to make sure I have absorbed everything. (It mentions this blog more often that the other HP podcasts have, but that's not why I liked it.) A few comments:

1. The discussion of Beethoven by Eric is really good, he does a good job for example of discussing the works of Beethoven written in C minor and what's happening with them.

2. Eric is invited to suggest a few pieces for Beethoven newbies, and he obliges, but I want to chime in. It seems to me some of the best choices are the blindingly obvious ones: The Fifth Symphony (I like the Szell/Cleveland Orchestra recording), the "Moonlight," "Pathetique" and "Waldstein" piano sonatas, the Fourth and Fifth piano concertos, the violin concerto. Beyond that, I agree with Eric in recommending the Seventh symphony. You can't go wrong trying some of the piano sonatas and other symphonies, some of my favorite pianists are Sviatoslav Richter and Alfred Brendel. I am particularly fond also of the third and 32nd piano sonatas and the third cello sonata. If you want more recommendations, see Tyler Cowen. 

3. At the end of the podcast, Eric gives an update on his Straight Outta Dublin book project about James Joyce and Robert Anton Wilson, I am relieved it is nearing completion and rather anxious to read it.

4. As Eric and Mike discuss, RAW liked what he liked on music and did not try particularly hard to "keep up," as he did with literary fiction, science fiction, etc. I unsurprised he did not pay a lot of attention to current pop music. I am more surprised he seldom mentions contemporary classical, such as Steve Reich, Lou Harrison, etc.

5. Eric and Mike are both Deadheads, I liked some of the Grateful Dead's records and I dutifully listened to some of Complete Road Trips album after listening to the podcasts, but I confess if I  am going to listen to live recordings, I'd rather listen to Miles Davis and his various bands, Frank Zappa and his bands, Sviatoslav Richter in performance and quite a few others ... what am I missing? 

6.  Let me once again recommend RAW's piece "Beethoven As Information," in The Illuminati Papers. 

Hilaritas Press podcast on Beethoven released

Eric Wagner

The latest Hilaritas Press podcast has been released today;  the topic is Beethoven, the host is Mike Gathers, and the guest is Eric Wagner.,This is a podcast I have been patiently waiting for and I will listen to it soon. Here is the RAW quote at the podcast page, from one of my favorites of RAW's books, Cosmic Trigger 2:

Whether one is transported out of one’s habitual Realty Tunnel to the multiple-choice labyrinth of Virtual Reality by marijuana or by Charlie Parker or by sexual orgasm or by meditation or by Picasso or by King Kong or by the Wicked Witch of the West, the experience has a quality of timelessness and liberation about it. One feels less mechanical and seems on the edge of grasping what the mystics mean by “Awakening”; sometimes, especially with Beethoven, one almost feels that one will never forget the “absurd good news” (as Chesterton called it) of that Awakened state.

Whenever I hear from Eric, he often mentions what he has been listening to. He is the author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson.

When I was growing up, my father used to put a Beethoven piano concerto (sometimes Mozart instead) on the stereo when we sat down to Sunday dinner. In high school, I started listening to Stravinsky and went on from there, but I never lost interest in Beethoven. 

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, episode 66, Chapter 11

Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

In Chapter 11, Robert Anton Wilson talks about various ways to activate the fifth of the eight circuits, the neurosomatic circuit, including tantric sex, cannabis, yoga and pranayama. Apuleius Charlton in his recent post seemed to have a good understanding of the subject matter, and I won't attempt to top him here. 

But I did want to offer a few notes on one of Wilson's observations. He seems to think that music can help activate the circuit. More specifically, he is interested in talking about the music of Beethoven.

Beethoven comes up quite a bit in this chapter. Beethoven is said by RAW to be "genetically inclined to right brain activities, that is, to sending coherent wholes, to plunging into neurosomatic bliss almost 'at will,' and to sensory-sensual raptness and rapture. Everybody 'knows' that the Sixth Symphony is 'pantheistic,' but whether Beethoven was an ideological pantheist or not, that way of responding to nature is normal and natural right-brain Circuit V functioning."

Wilson also writes that Beethoven could communicate his Circuit Five experiences, "which is precisely what the ordinary 'mystic' cannot do."

Wilson also writes about obtaining control of the neurosomatic circuit, a progression "from primate emotion to post-hominid tranquility," and says of this "Next Step" that "you can hear it in most of Beethoven's later, major compositions."

You will see that there is more about this in Chapter 12, including this paragraph:

" 'I am He that was, and is, and shall be,' a sentence from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, in hieroglyph and in his own handwriting, was found on the desk where Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony and all his later, aeon-spanning 'evolutionary' music. One judges from this, and from the music itself, that Beethoven had opened the neurogenetic circuit."

However you judge such passages, certainly it is true that there are RAW fans such as Eric Wagner and myself who have a major Beethoven habit. 

Anyone interested in this way of looking at Beethoven's music should read the short piece "Beethoven As Information" in The Illuminati Papers.  I almost hate to excerpt it -- RAW is on fire from beginning to end in this three-page piece -- but here is one bit:

" 'Anyone who understands my music will never be unhappy again'," Ludwig is alleged to have said. Some biographers doubt the source from which we get this; but it doesn't matter. If he didn't say it, he might as well have; the music certainly says it for him. It is the music of a stubborn individual who is willing to suffer anything, pay any price asked, to achieve greater organic vision than has existed in the world before him.

"To be blunt about it, what went on inside Beethoven's head was more important, in the long run, than everything going on outside that head in those years."

Beethoven 'Tenth Symphony' to be released soon

Some of Beethoven's notes for a planned 10th symphony. 

With the use of artificial intelligence, a group of musicologists have put together a Beethoven "Tenth Symphony," using fragments the composer left behind when he died. 

It will be easier to form an opinion on what to make of this after it's released,  but for now, there's a clip at the end of the article to listen to, a little over three minutes. 

The Beatles were Philip K. Dick fans? [UPDATED!]

Philip K. Dick, paperback writer 

Martin Wagner posted this comment on my post a couple of days ago about the Beatles' Revolver album:

"Tessa Dick, the last wife of PKD, said in an interview with the German Spiegel, that John Lennon called her husband in the 1970s to tell him that The Beatles wrote "Paperback Writer" in his honor."

I was surprised to see that. Here is a bit more: 

"In an interview given to Der Spiegel in 2016, Philip K. Dick's last wife, Tessa Dick, said that John Lennon had called her husband during the 1970s and told him that Paperback Writer had been written in honor of him. Source (in German): [1]. Quote from the linked interview: "In den Siebzigerjahren rief einmal John Lennon bei ihm an und sagte ihm, den Song 'Paperback Writer' hätten die Beatles ihm zu Ehren geschrieben." ("In the 1970s, John Lennon called him [= Dick] to tell him that The Beatles had written 'Paperback Writer' in his honor.").

"Of course, we also have John's own quotes in the article that it's mainly Paul's song, but if you look at those quotes closely, you'll see John actually talks about the tune as being entirely Paul's, not the lyrics."

Source.

My old friend Brett Cox (mentioned in the Revolver blog post) once wrote a parody of "Paperback Writer" for a fanzine about a person who wants to publish a science fiction novel; from memory, I believe the first line was "Donald Wollheim won't you read my book?" Wollheim, a famous SF book editor, was one of Dick's editors. So perhaps Brett was more right then he knew? This reminds me of Robert Anton Wilson's bit  in Illuminatus! about Beethoven being a member of the Illuminati, which RAW apparently put in because he loved Beethoven and it was a good joke. RAW later read Beethoven biographies and discovered he was more right than not. 

Many of Dick's titles were first published as paperback originals (much like Illuminatus!, as a matter of fact) and the Philip K. Dick Award is given to the best paperback novel published in the previous year. 

Thanks for the tip, Martin! 

UPDATE: Martin wrote to me and shared this passage from Tessa Dick's memoir, Philip K. Dick: Remembering Firebright: "On another occasion, Phil took a telephone call from a man who said he was John Lennon, and he was in a hotel room in Canada with Dr. Timothy Leary. 'Yeah, sure, you bet,' Phil said. He did not believe it, but eventually the man convinced him he really was John Lennon of the Beatles and that he and Dr. Leary were both fans of Phil's writing. He told Phil that the Beatles song 'Paperback Writer' was about him."

I still don't know what to make of this, but the additional details are intriguing and seem to add to the possibility the claim is true. A possible date for the phone call would be 1969, when John Lennon recorded the song "Give Peace a Chance" in Canada. Timothy Leary was present. Details here. 

RAW reviews the McKennas

 

On Twitter, Erik Davis reproduces a 1976 book review in the Berkeley Barb, and I in turn share it with you here. Erik writes, "Robert Anton Wilson reviews the McKennas' Magic Mushroom Growers Guide in the Berkeley Barb, 1976." (Follow Erik on Twitter, and the Twitter account links to his Substack.)

In the review, RAW complains about the price but otherwise gives it a favorable review, saying that it provides a way to "avoid the hazards of the black market." He also has a recommendation: "The only thing wrong with this book, aside from the price, is that they forgot to mention you should always absolutely in every case whatever the circumstances play Beethoven's Ninth during the third hour of the mushroom experience. With earphones and your eyes closed. Then o dearly beloved may you find the Gold of the Philosophers, the Stone of the Wise, the Medicine of Metals, the Rosy Cross, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness, Io Pan Io Pangenitor Io Panphage Hagios Hagios Hagios IAO."

Is Beethoven's 'greatness' white male propaganda?

 

Via a related article in the New York Times, I found this article by Black music critic Philip Ewell. "Beethoven Was an Above Average Composer -- Let's Leave It That" says claims about Beethoven's greatness is a plot by the white male patriarchy:

"Beethoven occupies the place he does because he has been propped up by whiteness and maleness for two hundred years, and we have been told by whiteness and maleness that his greatness has nothing to do with whiteness and maleness, in race-neutral and gender-neutral fashion. Thus music theory’s white-male frame obfuscates race and gender, one of its main goals."

It seems to be that claims that Beethoven wasn't great are refuted by listening to him, although I admit to being a white male.

John McWhorter, a Black writer, apparently also disagrees:

"Above average, for his era, was someone like Carl Stamitz – a typical piece was his Orchestral Quartet in C major. It’s pretty like a tulip, and exemplifies a word often used for his work, 'appealing.' Above average – but there’s a reason you’ve never heard of him unless you’re a music specialist.

"We have to compare something like one of Beethoven’s late string quartets – I’ll go for  the Opus 131 in C# minor. Schubert’s assessment of this one was 'After this, what is left for us to write?' and wanted it played by his deathbed. Robert Schumann placed it 'on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination.”'Yes, those two were limited by what they knew and heard as white guys – but I suspect their assessment stands the test of time for all humans today inclined to listen in to the piece."

Possibly related: the feminist college professor who said that Beethoven was a rapist, based on the "evidence" of the Ninth Symphony, a claim RAW wrote about in Cosmic Trigger 3. More on the controversy here. 

Also possibly related: Beethoven's Black friend. 

Via the New York Times and Rob Pugh. 

Happy Beethoven's birthday!

Today is (probably) the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. (He was baptized Dec.17 and the usual assumption is he was born the day before.) Here is coverage from the New York Times. 

I probably will find time to listen to Beethoven today and I suspect Eric Wagner and perhaps other RAW fans will, too. I have still not made up my mind who is my favorite conductor for recordings of the symphonies, but I like George Szell. For the piano sonatas I like a variety of pianists, including Sviatoslav Richter and Alfred Brendel; lately, I have been listening to Ikuyo Nakamichi, who has recorded all 32 of them. I really like most of her interpretations, and she's good with Mozart, too. She likes to post photos of her performances on her Twitter account and Japan apparently has some really beautiful concert venues. The caption for the above photo, posted Oct. 30, says, "Yatsugatake Kogen Concert Hall. A special impression surrounded by autumn nature. Beautiful time to enjoy the sound."

A new Beethoven biography

This year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven and it seems appropriate to mark that somehow, given RAW's interest in the composer.

There is a major new book about to be released in the United States: Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge, and as you can tell from the title, it presents the composer by focusing on nine of his works: Septet, Opus 20; Violin sonata No. 9, the "Kreutzer"; the Third Symphony; the Choral Fantasy; the song "An die Geliebte" WoO 140; the opera "Fidelio;" the "Hammerklavier" piano sonata; "Missa Solemnis" and String Quartet No. 13 and the "Grosse Fuge." It's not a greatest hits survey, although many of the pieces are well known, but the use of a wide variety of pieces to illuminate a life. 

This is an interesting approach, one more likely to get me to read another Beethoven book than just another biography, and Tunbridge's book is getting really good notices; for example, you can read the review from the Guardian, which mentions a couple of other new Beethoven books which might be of interest. Tunbridge is an Oxford music professor, but this is a book apparently aimed at wide audience, i.e. dunderheads like me, as opposed to folks like Eric Wagner who are comfortable with technical music analysis. 

More on Jesse Walker, jokes and RAW

An agent of the Illuminati, Ludwig van Beethoven. 

Yesterday, I blogged about Jesse Walker's new Reason article, "From Antifa to UFOs, One Joke Can Spawn a Thousand Conspiracies."  I'd like to stay on it and make a couple of points.

One of Jesse's main arguments that is something which is offered as a joke can wind up being taken seriously.

There's an example of that in Illuminatus! (well, there are probably at lot of examples, but here's one). Ludwig van Beethoven is depicted as being part of the Illuminati conspiracy.

In this interview (and I think in other places) Robert Anton Wilson maintains that this was simply a joke he made up: “Actually, a few things that I thought I invented did turn out to be true, oddly enough. The one I still remember is Beethoven’s link to the original, real, historical Illuminati. I invented that as a parody of right-wing books on the Beatles serving Moscow – but hot damn years later I found, in a bio of Ludwig, that he had several associates in the Illuminati and the Illuminati commissioned his first major work, The Emperor Joseph Cantata."

I think RAW is referring to the Maynard Solomon biography of Beethoven. A more recent Beethoven biography, by Jan Swafford, goes into considerable detail about the Illuminati influence on some of Beethoven's most famous works, including the Ninth Symphony, which was important to RAW.

Wilson's remarks about Illuminatus! and Robert Anton Wilson are worth discussing. As I've urged everyone to read the whole thing, I hope I can quote some of what he wrote without making the Reason folks mad:

[After noting Illuminatus! came out in 1975] Rumors immediately began to circulate that the books were more than just fiction. Conspiracy Digest reported that while many of the digest's readers believed Wilson "was an Illuminati agent attempting to lampoon and discredit conspiracy theories," others thought he was trying "to slip the truth past Establishment censors by disguising the truth as a titillating parody"; still others took the books as "a reliable guide to the inner doctrines of the hidden world of the secret societies alleged to control the conspiracy."

These sorts of reactions continued for decades afterward. The Rev. Ravi Holy, today an Anglican vicar, was an anarchist and occultist in his youth. Back then, the British journalist Damian Thompson has reported, Holy accepted Illuminatus! as "truth lightly clothed as fiction." When he was born again in a Pentecostal sect and created a conspiracist website, he "carried out only minor adjustments to this narrative." (Holy now describes himself as a "recovering conspiracy theorist.") The same sort of thing has happened to some of Wilson's other novels. In a 1992 tract called Dark Majesty, for example, the conspiracist Texe Marrs writes that Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati "purports to be fiction" before declaring that "there is little doubt that it contains much insight and many hard facts about the Secret Brotherhood."

Wilson has described the Illuminati as a "metaphor," but with all of the humor and fantasy elements in Illuminatus!, many people take it quite seriously -- libertarians focus on the political comment, people into magick tune in to the magick, etc. Certainly the appendices contribute to the notion that it's not just a story.

Try the Beethoven quiz

Here is something for RAW fans who are into Beethoven: A quiz to test your knowledge of Beethoven, from the Guardian.

I only got six out of 15 right, not a top score. I've read a few books on Beethoven, and one of my wrong answers came straight out of a biography, so I guess some facts about him are disputed.

I guess we'll see how Eric Wagner does, but based on his study of Beethoven and his track record as a Jeopardy champ,  I'm sure he'll leave me in the dust.

Thanks to Nick Helweg-Larsen for the tip and to Ted Hand for the above screen shot from Facebook.

Ask Eric Wagner

I recently had a post in which Eric Wagner, author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson,  answered a question posed to him on Facebook. Eric says he is willing to take other questions, so if you have one, please post as a comment to this blog post.

Here is question I asked Eric to get things started:

Tom Jackson: In honor of the the 250th anniversary for Beethoven, I would like to dig a little deeper into RAW's interest in Beethoven. What were his favorite Beethoven pieces, and did he have favorite performers? What other classical music did he seem to particularly like to listen to?

Eric Wagner: Well, Bob wrote about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony over and over again, especially the final movement. The Hammerklavier Sonata plays a major role in The Schroedinger’s Cat Trilogy and Bob also mention it in Prometheus Rising. Beethoven’s Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies also show up repeatedly in Bob's writings, as does the very early Emperor Joseph Cantata. Years ago I asked him for his ten desert island discs. I think you published that once. I can’t find the list at present, but in addition to the above and the Beethoven Piano Concertos it included the Mozart Piano Concertos, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, Carmina Burana, and Scott Joplin played on harpsichord. Bob does a great job creating the musical world of Sigismundo Maldonado in The Earth Will Shake. Sigismundo particularly loves Domenico Scarlatti. Bob also loved Mahler.

I don’t know about Bob’s favorite performers. Christina Pearson and Scott Apel would know better then I would. I spent far less time with him than they did. I do remember the one time he came over to my house for a Finnegans Wake study group in 1988, I asked him what he would like to hear. He asked for a number of Beethoven pieces, all of which I had recordings of except the Triple Concerto. Then he asked for Bach’s Goldberg Variations as a change of pace.

(Incidentally, I have no news yet on when the new edition of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson will come out. Eric prepared extensive revisions and it was supposed to be issued late last year, but it's been delayed. Eric has not received an update yet, and I got no reply when I emailed the publisher recently. Does anyone have any news on New Falcon? -- Tom)

Listening to Beethoven

What do you do to cope with all of the bad news?

In Right Where You Are Sitting Now, Robert Anton Wilson writes, "I believe in Beethoven, the mediator and comforter" (in the "Credo" chapter).

And indeed, I do tend to listen to Beethoven in stressful situations. I am listening to Beethoven now, along with other classical music.

I asked Eric Wagner what it's like for him, and he wrote, "Yes, I can definitely relate to Beethoven’s healing power. I had a similar experience on Friday. In a foul mood I turned on the radio and heard Faure’s Requiem. That really hit the spot.

"Two nights ago I had a dream about Mahler, so I’ve listened to a bunch of Mahler the last two days. Music seems to have tremendous metaprogramming power."

Related: During the pandemic, various classical music sources are offering free music, for example the Metropolitan Opera is streaming an opera for free every night. 

A great YouTube video

Here is a video from YouTube I am posting (about 18 minutes long) because I believe Robert Anton Wilson would have enjoyed it and sombunall of his fans will like it: "Happy Birthday" performed in the style of 10 composers by musician Nahre Sol. A wide variety of composers are represented, including Bach, Beethoven, John Cage and Steve Reich.