Man's greatest, most useless invention!

Last night, as I watched and listened to around 40 or so  men and women armed with sundry, odd-shaped implements, crashing, bashing, blowing and scraping, I thought to myself this is deeply peculiar because out of what should have been utter pandemonium there came instead the sublime and thrilling beauty of Beethoven. It was the BSO (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) in a programme which ended with the greatest symphony ever written - Beethoven's Fifth. I use the word "thrilling" deliberately, because it is the one word that sums up Beethoven, and in the Fifth you have all the thrills in the world. It has its quiet contemplative moods, but never for long, before that trochaic counter-rhythm starts up again and, hey-ho, we're off to the races!  I was reminded of times past when business was bad, the Revenue, the VAT-man, the Bank, to say nothing of the customers, were giving me grief, and in a mood of total depression I would put old Ludwig's No. 5 in the CD player and within minutes I would be strutting round the house conducting the orchestra with the sort of abandon of which that old showman, 'Lennie' Bernstein, would have been proud.  A good dose of Beethoven's Fifth is better than a tonic.  No wonder that old misery, Plato, wanted music banned from his ideal Republic on the grounds that it subverted men's minds. But watching the orchestra last night, and remembering the musicians at the Globe Theatre where they often reproduce genuine Elizabethan music, I couldn't help marvelling at the evolution of the modern orchestra over a mere 300-odd years.  So, I give you, Ladies and Gentlemen, Man's greatest, most useless invention - the symphony orchestra!

Comments

[Elmer Quigley Gooseburger]

Yeah but the BSO still aren't a patch on the Dixie Chicks....

[dearieme]

I like the way that the Fifth starts with:
Yes, yes, yes, no.

[Mike Cunningham]

Greatest....Certainly!

Useless.....Never in a million years!

What other collective device can, at the same moment, bring a tingle to the back of your neck, tears to your eyes, and a certain stiffening of the spine?

I would take issue with your choice of the 'Greatest' as my own personal preference is the slow movement of the 'Emperor' piano concerto, but the 5th is a close second!

[David Duff]

Mr. Gooseburger ... on second thoughts I won't bother!

'DM', yes, what an opening! However, never having *seen* it before, what fun watching the normally sedate, not to say, ponderous, double-bass section going at it like Gypsy fiddlers! I managed a word with their leader afterwards and offered the thought that he and his boys and girls had really earned their money that night and he nodded, tiredly, and said that for them, this was the big one.

Mike, you are entirely right - and wrong - but it's my fault! My post was rather slap-dash and I should have made clear that the symphony orchestra *produces* nothing and a trained economist would dismiss it as of no value. But, of course, you are right. Where else would you get the sort of heightened emotional rush that the very best of classical music can provide - but only via the excellent good offices of a top-rate symphony orchestra.

"Regrets, I have few", as the old song has it, but one of my main ones is my lack of musical knowledge. I may have mentioned this before, but my music master at school once wrote on my report, "These lessons consist mostly of listening, a habit Duff has not yet mastered" before giving me a mark of 8%! Poor man, he never knew that he had actually succeeded with me because one day he made us all listen to "Vltava" by Smetana and at the ripe old age of 14+/- I realised that I liked classical music. Couldn't be bothered to do much about it then but it stuck, and later I indulged and have had so much pleasure from it since. So, here's to you Mr. Stannard!