“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
wrote W.B. Yeats to the love of his life, Maud Gonne. Love is a strange phenomenon that can make mediocre men in to poets, artists and composers. What happens when a great poet, artist or a composer fall in love?
As evident by the above poem, it inspires them to create miraculous compositions. The piece of music that I wish to write about today is the result of a maestro falling in love.
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| Ludwig van Beethoven (Source: http://bit.ly/5qVOr) |
In the time period 1770- 1827 lived a German composer and pianist. He is known to the masses not only for his brilliant compositions but also for the rather unique bits of trivia that circle his life. (Gossip, if you may.) He was none other than Ludwig van Beethoven, who of course is my favourite composer of all time.
Für Elise or in musical jargon, “the Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor (WoO 59 and Bia 515) for solo piano.”, is the most popular piece composed by the maestro. The German name “Für Elise” translates in to English as "For Elise". Who this Elise was, remains a mystery to this day.
The most interesting bit of information about this piece apart from its unparalleled beauty and simplicity is the hidden message in the first three notes of the score. The three notes gives out the name “Elise” in two different ways. The first three notes are, E-D♯-E, which are enharmonically equivalent sounds to E-E♭-E. The E♭ is called Es in German and is pronounced as "S". Add the non-notational “LI” and you get E-(L)-(I)-E♭-E (E-li-es-e -> Elise). The second way to get this is by singing the first several notes of the composition with note names. “Dis” is the pronunciation for D♯. So we end up with “E-Dis-E-Dis-E”, which is a mondegreen (a phrase that sounds similar to another phrase so far that mishearing or misinterpretation of that phrase, when the other is pronounced or Vice-versa, is highly likely) to the name "Elise".
Beethoven had at least three romantic affairs, none of which resulted in marriage. (He died a bachelor) Of these three affaires, some speculate Therese Malfatti von Rohrenbach zu Dezza (1792–1851) to be the inspiration of the music piece claiming that the title “Für Elise” to be a faulty transcription the title “Für Therese" by Ludwig Nohl who discovered the score and published it 40 years after the composer's death.Some scholars argue that this was written for the German soprano Elisabeth Röckel (1793–1883) who indeed was known in Vienna as "Elise" and was a close friend of Beethoven's since 1808.(Not one of the said three affairs)
You can listen to the famous piece from the embedded YouTube video. Like in the previous post, Air on the G String, the video clearly shows the music notation and spatial note variation. Once you have listened to it, you will know from where you have heard this before. The extreme simplicity and popularity of this tune has had done both good and bad to it. While it took this piece to the ears of the people who are not fans of classical music, it also made them make mental links of this piece of love to very uncharacteristic actions and objects such as reversing vehicles and bread sellers. That exactly is the reason why I first gave you the piece’s background and then gave you the piece to hear. I was hoping that now because you know about the piece, you can enjoy it for what it really was.
P.S.:- On another sad note, the above mentioned poem of W.B. Yeats didn’t win him the love of Maud Gonne either.
