From Sickness to Health: Beethoven's Heiliger Dankgesang

[grunder20]

great delivery and discussion.

[agapitoflores001]

He raises good points. Excellent!

[mmarks4]

My only disappointment with the organization of this lecture + performance is that he didn't (along with that taste of the previous movement leading into this one) give us at the end a little taste of the Alla Marcia that follows. I always perk up for the Alla Marcia.

[AfterClassroom]

You can rate your professor on After Classroom, also you can socialize while you're studying on After Classroom. It's completely new way to learn and social with your friends.

[davrs001]

I believe Beethoven was completely deaf by the time he wrote all the late quartets, compounding my already significant awe of them.

[Nizlopi2]

It's really incredible for an uneducated ear like mine - which just listens to this incredible musicfrom a purely 'musical' point of view - that it's so, so complicated.

[orphyborphy]

@Nizlopi2 The more I study it, the more fascinating and confusing it is.. but it certainly doesn't get any simpler :P I'm so glad you can appreciate the complexity without 'training'. I think it's there for everyone, that it's a universal message. A lot of people just think classical music is elitist, or dry, I guess.

[veegenose]

I find that the achingly beautiful music distracts from a perfectly good lecture.

[net4michael]

Fibonacci 1.618 ...maybe Beethoven had a Divine audience in mind...thanks Rob. Great info and beauty here. Mike salon de colores

[net4michael]

I can't help but notice the divine proportion 8-5-3-2-1 in this great piece.

[platero55]

Interesting lecture, and even better performance!  This is surely one of most transcendent pieces of music ever. String quartet players are so lucky to have it in their repertoire.

[MultiLerak]

"Heiliger Sangesang"

[lovesGenet]

dude ,Everyone is not supposed to nor can appreciate late Beethoven nor Rothko or Freud . Maybe you cant appreciate King Crimson or the Beatles' thinking efforts. What really matters is those that seek :find . It used to bother me too. I'm 45 acceptance comes without even looking for it. It would be nice if someone could find a way to improve life &empathy by giving good music a place in American society. It is very against out sad greedy empty culture .

[aznmusicmaster]

...I knew it! He's the same guy that gave the lecture on Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht!

[kmatson07]

I would really encourage this guy to stop talking. Just let the piece speak for itself, its doesn't need English to introduce it. It speaks from the cosmos.

[orphyborphy]

@kmatson07 I agree with you on the last sentence, but I don't think everybody is ready to hear it. I think maybe making it more approachable like this guy does is a good idea.

[kmatson07]

@orphyborphy

I would imagine watching a Magnificent Sunset and having this guy talk through the whole thing, just stop talking. The meditation is impossible to achieve while your mouth/mind is running around. Stop running. Just listen. Listen with every bone-muscle-hair in your body and a magic door will open inside you to a world that sits beautifully on top of our world.

[orphyborphy]

@kmatson07 I know, I still agree with you, but what I mean is maybe introducing it like he does might introduce more people who might not otherwise listen to it. Then once they've heard him talk about it, maybe they'll want to listen to it again on its own. I've seen opera programs where something similar was attempted - I'm already devoted to this music, so I found it annoying, but I think it could be helpful at times.

[kmatson07]

@orphyborphy

True. You bring up a valid point. I think since so many people have political bumper stickers, it couldn't hurt to have a musical message as well and just say "Go Listen to Opus 132." or "Got Bliss? Try Opus 111."

[orphyborphy]

@kmatson07 Hahaha I love that idea! :P

[kmatson07]

Respond to this video... I've seen 132 in concert about five times, after a while this kind of work of art becomes part of your heart and your mind, it comes back to you when you need it most. During extremely stressful periods of my life, this will gently start to play in my head/heart/mind. Its like a ray of the divine that comes bursting through a cloud. For me it has never gotten stale or banal or old, it stays forever fresh and ageless.

[brilliantcorners]

I aint so sure. This is musical Lego played slow so folks don't latch on that it's musical Lego. What is the big fuss about? Arvo Part did this much better with Fratres.

[ilaconix]

Arvo Part would have had no musical content to work with had Beethoven not have written what he wrote!

[brilliantcorners]

@ilaconix dunno what u mean. Notes are common property and were around long before LvB. Check out the Fratres theme (which you can find elsewhere on youtube). It has its own totally hermetic logic. The theme expands, then inverts and expands on the inversion. [[: Then does all that again a third lower :]] until on the seventh repeat it has explored all the modes and brings you home. Mesmerising.

[ilaconix]

What I was getting at was Beethoven's immeasurable contribution to music. Without the musical ideas that Beethoven gave the world, Arvo Part would not have had the ideas to have been able to compose this piece which, as you say, is mesmerising.

[richardyingren]

Most mornings for twenty years i have put on a Beethoven late string quartet and cooked breakfast.

[1888junkteam]

excellent worker!

[kammermusiken]

The difference between Mozart and Beethoven is that for the latter God went for a coffee while he was working and God new that this guy would work it all out in the best possible way whereas for Mozart God decided to stay with him all the time because he couldn't live without his, Mozart's, music and that's what we can hear anytime listening to his music, it's divinity while God is present.

[ilaconix]

Mozart's music is light and fluffy; supersilious. Beethoven's music is a deep exposition of humanity.

[cozyslippers]

@ilaconix

I'll agree with what you say about Beethoven; sounds like you need to spend more time with Mozart.

[EmitFlestiKY]

@ilaconix You Sir, are light, fluffy, and - note the proper spelling - supercilious. Typically banal juxtaposition between Mozart and Betthoven. Try listening to Don Giovanni, the Winde Serenade K. 338, the Symphony No. 40 in G-minor, the Adagio in B-minor K. 540...etc.. to name just a few. To claim that Mozart is "light and fluffy" is sheer nonsense. Would you agree with someone who claimed that Beethoven is merely a bombastic propagandist based on the Wellington's Victory piece?

[kammermusiken]

I would have wanted the speaker invited to a mediation. He is making me nervous, really. Other than that it's a nice video and I'm utterly impressed by the importance of this piece of music for medicine purposes :)

[steveshack]

"Notes will help him who is in need."

Wonderful.

[spauzauskie]

Whomever is declaring poor comments needs to make their own.

[sylvestermeow]

Everyone favorite this, and let the world know that classical music still matters!

[newworldodour]

@sylvestermeow its dead & quite rightly so, it's for dinosaurs, elitests & pseudo intellectuals & it disgusts me how classical music is funded. It's parasitical in nature & always has been & like every other struggling musician if it cannot fund & support itself it doesn't desrve to exist, & all classical music without exception should have been consigned to the dustbin of history a long time ago. "From Sickness to Health" ? Beethoven especially was always a sick & mentally derranged human being

[spauzauskie]

Are you serious? As a medical student, pianist, and amateur composer, I feel the so-called "Heileger Dankesang" is perhaps the most incredible and important piece ever composed. If you have the patience, as I like to think Beethoven intended, after two hymn/prelude iterations in the piece, and in this video near minute 55, take it in as a whole and appreciate the shear majesty and mystery of the climax. It is a minute of music inexplicable, that continues to enrapture and enthrall generations

[Nizlopi2]

@spauzauskie And who says the internet is full of morons?!

[Adamalgorithm]

@spauzauskie thank you for putting in word so well what most of us feel.

[starry2006]

One other thing I forgot to say...

I wish he had related this slow movement more to the other parts of the quartet as that is how it is always heard.

[starry2006]

Interesting definitely, he shows enthusiasm (not too technical). Interesting comparison of Mozart to Beethoven, of how the tempo affects the music, of the organic analysis of Beethoven.

To say ONLY Beethoven could ever have done something....an exaggeration? Also perhaps if someone is too ill maybe they can't compose, perhaps art can be more done in health remembering illness. Interesting saying that illness slows things down for someone (though this is conjecture with this piece).

[bourbakis]

This is just brilliant. We need more of that. Our society is filled with cultural junk food. This is just so nourishing.

Thank you!

[princessanahmi]

i love the speaker, he should be a part time music history professor

[classic77violin]

Truly remarkable!

[trinity729]

Wow. This was a fantastic lecture. I knew the first time I heard this piece that there was something amazing about it. How wonderful to have a musical and mathematical explanation for it! I'm glad I didn't see the lecture in person, however. I actually cried at hearing the sections broken down into their constituent parts. How amazing was Beethoven! The speaker here, Rob Kapilow was engaging and obviously passionate about this piece!

[Adamalgorithm]

Wonderful video, thank you Stanford for hosting and supporting the event.

[muzzleray]

I like a saying, which is never mentioned by professionals, or folks who have something to gain by trauma (sick folks included) and that saying is 'Post Traumatic Growth'.

[DookieCantRead]

I worked with Rob this past April in Boston, and this is one of my favorite pieces of classical music. WINNING COMBINATION!