stlukesguild
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I loved that cartoon so much as a kid that when we got a very blonde dog in my late teens, we named her Brunhilde.

I am always somewhat in two minds about Beethoven, and I think I know why: the man is exhausting, at least from his middle period onward. Thus, when I have the energy, I think he's the greatest musical genius who ever walked this earth. But only when I have the energy.
I've always found Bach to be the most abstract. I can see why his reputation returned with a vengeance in the 20th century. His music is almost mathematical at times... the musical structures are almost architectural. Listening to one of his fugues I can picture the interior of a Gothic cathedral.
He was perhaps one of the first composers to understand that orchestration is a thing. When Mozart needed a flute concerto, he had no compunctions about transcribing an oboe concerto for flute. But when Beethoven specifies oboe, you need an oboe.
I agree that he is among the first pointing in this direction... albeit not yet Wagner, Strauss, Ravel, or Rimsky-Korsakov.
I am always somewhat in two minds about Beethoven, and I think I know why: the man is exhausting, at least from his middle period onward. Thus, when I have the energy, I think he's the greatest musical genius who ever walked this earth. But only when I have the energy. Nowadays, I mostly listen to his first period works, almost all of which are masterpieces in their own right, but do not carry so heavily on their own weighty message.
But surely you know that Wagner was the greatest musical genius who ever walked this earth.![]()
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Hopefully it cools off this evening. It's raining for the first time in nearly 10 days🌧.