My newsfeed exploded this week with posts about Ludwig van Beethoven‘s 250 birthday.

trigger warning: If you love Beethoven, be prepared to hate me.
2nd trigger warning: I’m about to mention abortion, but this post has nothing to do with the being pro-life or pro-choice. So for goodness sake, don’t comment on it. If you must send me a hate-comment, do so because I am throwing shade at Beethoven.

There’s a pro-life meme that’s been travelling around for some time – there are variations, but it goes something like this:

“A syphilic mother of eight handicapped children becomes pregnant. Should she have an abortion? If you said yes, you just killed Beethoven!”

Just for the record, this is incorrect. Ludwig was the 2nd born, and the oldest surviving child in his family, and I won’t get into the logic issues of the argument.

So it’s Beethoven’s 250th birthyear. That means that musicians all around the world will be programming MORE Beethoven on their concerts this year. I can’t say I’m particularly excited.

To be clear: I love the music of the great composers of the past. There is a reason that masterpieces stand the test of time – their message is enduring, they are crafted perfectly, or they evoke a sublime reaction. If I didn’t think it was worth keeping these pieces alive, this blog wouldn’t exist.

So here’s my Beefoven with Beethoven. You can hear his symphonies performed live every year – at least the best six of the nine. If you look at orchestra repertoire in general, the composers are overwhelmingly dead. This chart from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra takes into account thousands of concerts and shows living composers represent 12.3% of pieces performed (and I get a sense that the chart is bragging about how high that number is). A rough estimation based on this chart suggests that Beethoven is performed 25% of the time – one composer, getting twice the amount of performances as ALL living composers combined.

Ok, so his music is great. It’s hard to argue against that. But let’s go back to the “would you abort Beethoven” meme. Today, a syphilic mother of eight handicapped children needn’t worry that she might abort the next Beethoven; nobody will perform the child’s music anyway, because they’re too occupied with overplaying the first Beethoven’s music.

Now throw in the concerns that orchestras are failing to attract young or diverse audiences. Living composers are far more likely to bring musical ideas to the stage that would attract new audiences – not only with new sounds and styles, but also by addressing current issues or events. And using living composers would allow orchestras to actually diversify their repertoire and include more women and non-white composers. (go back to the chart from the Baltimore Symphony. A whopping 1.3% of music performed is by women composers. The chart doesn’t even mention race; I’m willing to bet it’s because the percentage of black composers would be even lower than women.)

But no, no, no, let’s not change anything. Let’s play Beethoven’s 5th for the birthday boy for the 5,555,555th time.

The news has been ablaze this week regarding the burning and collapse of the roof of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris – but I don’t mean to make light of the situation. Terrible puns aside, many people were saddened by the damage, regardless of religious faith or nationality. Humanity has claimed Notre Dame as a universal work of art: loved, admired, maybe even “owned” by all.

What I found fascinating was the immense response on social media. I was amazed at how many of my contacts had a personal connection to Notre Dame, whether it was religious (the seat of the Catholic Church in France), musical (concern for its magnificent organ), artistic (loss of a centuries-old work of art), or just emotional (remember that romantic weekend in Paris? Ahhh…). It’s no surprise that a billion dollars were raised in two days for the restoration of this building.

And of course, since this is 2019, there was an immediate response criticizing the Notre Dame donations as unimportant compared to the ongoing needs of climate change, deep poverty, hunger, sex trafficking, and more. After all, we’re talking about a lump of stones, not human lives. And yet, while those needs are significant, very real, and desperately need to be addressed, I don’t think we should so quickly condemn the efforts to preserve this monument.

Works of art, like Notre Dame cathedral, remind us that we are an insignificant speck in a long history of humanity. The cathedral has been a symbol of France for centuries, and will (probably) remain so until the apocalypse. It might be an active church now, but who knows, one day it might be treated like an ancient Greek temple – a pilgrimage for tourists who care nothing for religion, but instead seek it for its beauty; or perhaps it makes them think about their own mortality and their place in the universe.

And still, from the perspective of the universe, the cathedral went up and burned down in the blink of an eye (not to mention, humanity itself is just a flash in the universe’s pan). Maybe we’re thinking about it all wrong. Maybe all art needs to be treated as fleeting, whether it’s a 5 minute performance that will never be repeated (a jazz improvisation), a drama that enjoys a 50-year popularity (a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical), or a 4000-year-old monument (Stonehenge or the Pyramids). Some art might last longer than others, but really, is 6,000 years of history anything more than a fart in the wind compared to the history of earth?

And so, in honor of France, and Notre Dame, here is the Patrie (Homeland) Overture by the iconic French composer George Bizet.

Wind is one of those words that can mean different things according to the context in which it is used. Physically, it is the movement of gasses; metaphorically, it can refer to luck (winds of fate), change in society or culture (winds of change), change of (metaphorical or actual) season, the state of being alive (having breath). Wind takes a role in many, if not all, religions. And of course, let us not forget the wind of the butt.

So, how do composers set the idea of wind to music?

We may as well start with some of the stereotypical musical settings of wind – the fast, chromatic passages that rise and fall in Richard Wagner – Overture to Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), the trills and tympani in Gioachino Rossini – Storm Scene from Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), and the spooky violin glissandi in this colorful, fun work by Ferde Grofé – Cloudburst from Grand Canyon Suite.

Franz Schubert – Die Wetterfahne (The Weathervane) from Winterreise (Winter’s Journey). It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how Schubert paints the wind in this song – piano arpeggios and trills practically make you shiver, just like a cold, biting wind. This song is part of the wonderfully depressing song cycle that Schubert wrote as a he approached the end of his short life.

The wind is turning the weathervane on the roof of my sweetheart’s house. Round and round it mocks and teases my sighs and my tears…. For Nature plays with our hearts as the wind plays with the vane.

The wind also plays a part in Schubert’s Erlkönig.

Gustav Mahler – Im diesem Wetter (In this Weather) from Kindentotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). Another happy little composition, here the wind is a nasty thing that kills babies. Mahler’s amazing orchestration makes you feel the stinging raindrops and blowing gales.

In this weather, in this windy storm, I would never have sent the children out. They have been carried off, I wasn’t able to warn them!

César Franck – Les Éolides (The Breezes). This is a sort of tone-poem about Aeolus, the keeper of the winds in the Odyssey, who gifts the winds to help Odysseus find his way home. The piece doesn’t narrate the story like some other tone-poems, but instead paints a picture of the breeze blowing the sea and gently swaying a ship on its journey. The music is so ridiculously French Romantic in its melodic gesture and harmony; it’s easy to see where Debussy and Ravel got their sound. Finally, we need to note that the composer’s full name is César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck, because it takes a good bit of wind to get that name out.

Speaking of Aeolus, there’s an instrument called the Aeolian Harp which is played by – you guess it – the wind. You can listen to one here.There are two piano works related to this ethereal instrument – though neither can be said to really imitate the Aeolian Harp’s sound, they do capture the mystical, magical quality of its music. First, Frédéric Chopin’s Ab-major Etude was subtitled “Aeolian Harp” by his fellow composer, Robert Schumann, because of its quick, wind-like arpeggios.

Henry Cowell – Aeolian Harp. Cowell was known for pushing the boundaries of composition. Ironically, this work is one of his tamest, but it’s still a little different from what you might expect in a classical piano piece. And, unlike Chopin, he himself titled this piece with Aeolus’ name.

Carson Kievman – Hurricane Symphony. You might call this a modern equivalent of the Franck work mentioned earlier. It’s a longer listen, and tells the story of a real storm rather than mythology. Kievman is a living American composer whose current project is an opera about Nikola Tesla. How cool is that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwI9oNJSzAI

Johann Sebastian Bach – Kyrie, Gott Heiliger Geist (Have mercy, God Holy Ghost). This is part of Bach’s third Clavier-Übung, also called the German Organ Mass – much has been written about it, so I won’t discuss it here for the sake of brevity. This piece is a fancy setting of a hymn which pleads for mercy from the Holy Spirit, which, in the bible, first appears to the disciples in a wind. The melody of the hymn (cantus firmus) is found in the bass –  long, slow, deep notes – and as it is an organ piece, these low notes require a lot of wind flowing through organ pipes. As the piece progresses, there are rhythmic motifs that sound like the rushing of wind as well. There is also a sequence which repeats itself seven times (normally, it should be no more than four), climaxing at the highest note on the baroque organ. Bach is definitely thinking deep here.

Olivier Messiaen – Le vent de l’Esprit (The Wind of the Spirit) from Messe de la Pentecôte (Pentecost Mass) Not to be outdone by a German, Messiaen writes his own windy setting of the Holy Spirit for that big bag of hot-air, the organ. At the end, a nice fat chord puts the bellows to the test, as wind rushes through the pipes and into the church.

-= So, I promised some fart music as well. =-

Carl Orff – Ego Sum Abbas from Carmina Burana. The fart in this short little aria (if you can call it that) from this monumentally famous choral work is, sadly, nearly always ignored by conductors and performers. A baritone soloist sings a satirical monologue about being a nasty drunken abbot. But then, at 1:26, there’s a single-note tuba solo, which has no musical relation to the rest of the piece. Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s a fart. The drunken jerk of an abbot farted. And I believe it should be required that the soloist pretend to break wind at this pinnacle moment of this oratorio.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Bei der Hitz im Sommer eß ich. Mozart was a dirty little boy. He wrote a number of canons on butt licking, probably for singing with his mates at the local drinking hole. No, I’m not lying. After his death, his dirty little canons were all published, but with alternative words that were much more acceptable for public performance. The video below, unfortunately, is sung with the alternate “clean” lyrics, but here is is a translation of the original:

In the heat of summer I like to eat roots and spices, also butter and radish; they expel a lovely wind and cool me.