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Blogs > stevenjosepht > stevenjosepht

Beethoven's Fifth--DA DA DA DUM!  

stevenjosepht 78M
312 posts
8/6/2014 3:10 pm
Beethoven's Fifth--DA DA DA DUM!
Saw a live performance last Friday of Beethoven's
5th Symphony... That insistent opening bar has been interpreted
as "Thus fate knocks at the door..." (Though
Beethoven himself didn't give it that interpretation...)
But still that interpretation works. And of course, what
is most fateful but sexual activity, sexual attraction.
(And more than one music critic has seen as sexual forcefulness
in those opening measures...) It is, of course, to another
of Beethoven's 1826--a year before his death--String
Quartet (Opus 135) where he inscribed the words [Muss es
sein? Es muss sein] "Must it be, it must be".
So fate controlling our life and surrendering that life
to fate.

But it wasn't till I got older--that I realized a person
could take control of life, could make decisions that were
beneficial to life. And ironically, that person most ill-fated--Frank
Moore, the paraplegic having naked gatherings and thus
defying his fated paralysis... And of course, the drunk
who needs to defy fate and assert responsibility for sobriety,
life, by attending AA meeting...

For many people these questions are very real... They certainly were for paraplegic Frank Moore... And in times of war--when the Fifth Symphony also reflected Morse Code V for Victory and Winston's Churchill's raised fingers in
the sign of Victory--when war makes large the question
of who shall live and who shall die--the questions become
all too real...

For myself, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony has meant
something about structuring a life about subsuming a life
to fate. As Hamlet says: "There's a divinity
that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will..."

But I also received religious instruction that told me
NOT to do certain things--like getting drunk, or robbing
banks, or whatever evils an individual can give in to. So
in that sense, I have made my own fate--transcended the
limitations of the circumstances of my birth--and at age
68--soon to be 69--I can look back at a life well lived....
Well a life lived... well a life livid...

And of course, these same values were given to my ,
which she could then give to her ... Funny how that
works...

stevenjosepht 78M
3726 posts
8/12/2014 9:26 am
    Quoting  :
Thanks, except my birthday isn't till October... 69 then... Wow--who wouda thunk it? Always amazes me that I lived this long...


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