Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Too Hot for Vienna, ca. 1800

I'm sure my students think I'm on crack.

Today in class I described Beethoven's music as being "sexy."
How else to describe it though?
I showed them a clip from Immortal Beloved--the part where Gary Oldman as Beethoven is playing Moonlight Sonata with his ear down on the piano. I'm having flashbacks to the year I lived with Kelly in Crandall Hall and our room was plastered with pictures of Gary Oldman and Daniel Day Lewis and Ralph Fiennes. We were obsessed with G.O's Beethoven and listened to the slow, pulsating (sexy) second movement of his 7th symphony over and over and smoked Galois cigarettes, as a sort of outlet for our mid-CSC-no boy-dilemma.

I played the Pathetique piano sonata for them in class on the stereo, along witht the Andante of the 7th symphony. Did I reach them? Did I make it clear to them just how sexy Beethoven's music is?

Am I being too creepy?

2 comments:

ktwinters said...

I seem to recall that everything was "sexy" that year. Beethovan, Chopin, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Christopher Plummer... Sigh.

Anonymous said...

No, you weren't being creepy. Beethoven's music IS sexy. Have you ever listened to the Cello Sonata in A Major, the scherzo? WOW!

Beethoven fan