“I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven…” – Wagner

I have found new joy in Beethoven, and the Great Fugue now seems to me … a perfect miracle … an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever … hardly birthmarked by its age, the Great Fugue is, as rhythm alone, more subtle than any music composed in my own century … it is pure interval music, this fugue, and I love it beyond any other. – Igor Stravinsky

I would go so far as to say, not only that we do not know Beethoven, or even music, until we know this work, but that we do not understand life and humanity. If this seems an extravagant statement, for me to make, I will ask the reader to bear in mind that the fugue has, for myself, illuminated everthing I have ever known or thought of things of beauty, character, and significance in any art or in any department of existence.

To end, hoever, and on a lighter note, In Goethe’s Faust Mephistopheles hears the angels chanting “Pardon to sinners and life to the dust.” Their song is contrary to his nature, and he expresses himself on it accordingly: “Mis-töne höre ich; garstiges Geklimper” (“Discord I hear, and filthy jingling.”) The nineteenth century heard in the Grosse Fuge discord and filthy jingling. It said so. And it said it with amazement that the beloved Beethoven could have perpetrated such a “monster” (one of the pet terms of condemnation). The century should have been more modest; it should have stood before the fugue as Blake stood before creation and its mysteries, and have done no more than question:

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Sydney Grew writing in the Musical Quarterly, 1931

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