Beethoven qua Beethoven

[pynchonoid]

[...] It's tough to listen to Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony without going into a trance. The piece has
been played and recorded so often, and the concluding
"Ode to Joy" has become so ingrained in our
consciousness, that just paying attention to the notes
is a challenge.

But that is exactly the state intended in a radical
new interpretation by the Norwegian conceptual artist
Leif Inge, whose "9 Beet Stretch" digitally elongates
a recording of the symphony to make it last 24 hours.
The piece slows symphonic time so that movement is
barely perceptible. What you hear in normal time as a
happy Viennese melody lasting 5 or 10 seconds becomes
minutes of slowly cascading overtones; a drumroll
becomes a nightmarish avalanche. Yet the symphony
remains somehow recognizable in spirit if not in form,
its frozen strings fraught with tense, frowning
Beethoven-ness.

"This trance feeling, letting the sound just go on
without trying to expect anything, is really the way
to listen to it," Mr. Inge said from Oslo. "You get
away from the idea of music having a definite start
and a definite end." [...]

<http://nytimes.com/2004/04/11/arts/music/11HIGH.html>

"'I'm not so much for Beethoven qua Beethoven," Gustav
argues, "but as he represents the German dialectic,
the incorporation of more and more notes into the
scale, culminating with dodecaphonic democracy, where
all notes get an equal hearing.'" 

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