Why No One Listens to Beethoven
It’s not because the music is difficult
I’m not an expert in serious music but ever since my friend Sven, who was the Organ Scholar at my Oxford college, introduced me to real music I’ve enjoyed exploring and listening and understanding. I know enough theory of music to follow along and I really enjoy what I’m hearing.
For example, once you know that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony should really have been his Fourth (he got stuck in the middle and came back to it later, hence the canon is out of sequence) then his game of fours becomes even more amusing.
But no one listens to Beethoven any more. Just as they don’t listen to Brahms or Hayden or Mozart or Rameau or Shostakovich or Prokofiev.
So the question is: why not?
I mean, seriously: we’re the fortunate inheritors of a wealth of music that is so incredibly beautiful and so stirring that it is incomprehensible so few people are aware of it.
For a really easy piece just try this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyulQKB3ykc
(Push the timebar to around 3.30, which is where the piece properly begins)
That was lovely, right? Not complex, it didn’t require four years of music theory in school, it didn’t require studying the development of…
