2020-10-20
Beethoven picante
A friend pointed me this week to a YouTube performance that she had found. It is a recording made by the Norwegian state television in 2013 of The Norwegian Radio Orchestra with Sverre Idris Joner at the piano. The selection is a 5 minute arrangement of the main theme to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to salsa rhythms and orchestration. It is fun! I assume since the performance has been up for several years at this point it would be all right to share the link with you.
This is, of course, the sort of arrangement that Beethoven purists will sniff at... how dare we mess with one of the great masterpieces of Western art? I don't really know what to say to such folks; it is known that Beethoven loved a good joke, and he may have given a hearty laugh at seeing his symphony wearing such odd clothes. On the other hand, Beethoven biographers agree to a person that Beethoven had an explosive temper. I would not want to have been in the room if he >disliked< this treatment of his music.
Mr. Joner has made a career of infusing European music with Latin rhythms. He has created film and theater music drawing on these traditions, and a quick look at the YouTube menu indicates he has "converted" a few other famous Classical themes as well.
As I listened to the performance, I did have a couple of realizations, however, that go a bit deeper than a possible Beethoven tantrum. (After all, he's been gone since 1827.) I sometimes listen to a few minutes of salsa on the weekend, because, as a sacred musician, I >must< rise bright and early Sunday morning to go to work. I have an ancient clock radio that I set as a backup, and my favorite station usually has a salsa program going at the time I test it for the morning. I will listen for a few minutes and then turn off the lights.
Salsa, of course, is the national style of Cuba; and it is for DANCING. How could one not start to move on hearing the energetic Afro-Cuban percussive layers? I am always fascinated to hear the characteristic sounds of West Africa emerging from this fabric, one entire ocean and 500 years away from its origins in Ghana, Senegal, Gambia, Congo. Because salsa is dance music, however, it puts musical limits on things like melody. Song sections are tightly defined and often repetitive... this makes for good dancing. The singing is usually in short, echoed phrases that help to tell the story, but are not quite the focus and size that they would be in some other world musics that come to mind.
Why would Beethoven's Fifth translate to a salsa arrangement? Precisely because the first theme, perhaps the most famous musical theme in the world, the "Victory" motif, "so-so-so-mi", is just a tiny fragment: three eighth notes followed by a quarter. Those three eighths are the same pitch, three Gs... even more compression. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that the players on the London Philharmonic Society, one of Beethoven's early supporters among Europeans, laughed out loud the first time they played the opening to this symphony. The famous impresario Salomon, who belonged to the Society and was playing first violin for the rehearsal, stood up after a while and apologized to the Society for putting them through the reading. (He later stood up again and apologized for so completely misunderstanding the masterpiece they were premiering for English society.) They simply could not believe that a composer would be able to "grow" an entire movement out of such a tiny statement. Little did they know! The miracle of Beethoven is that he derives a dizzying number of permutations from this highly compressed cell. If we were looking at a long flowing theme, like say to the first movement of the "Eroica" symphony, that just wouldn't fit in the salsa structure. This famous theme, however, does work!
I must point out that the place where Mr. Joner's arrangement started to feel less like salsa and more like Beethoven is when he retains the small amount of development from the original score. Salsa would never do that... it doesn't need to... it usually would not fit in the available dimensions. Still Beethoven's amazing protean energy pushes through this brief arrangement. It cannot be contained.
So thanks to my friend for pointing to this video. I must say, I think I would still rather listen to the miracle of the original Symphony, if I had to choose. I will, though, most certainly leave my radio tuned to the salsa station as I drift off to sleep Saturday evenings.
If you have more questions about this topic, don't hesitate to contact me and we can chat.
K
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