Beethoven Reborn

A few additions i had to make. Beware of spoilers.
Claude Debussy is groundbreaking? Yeah, right, maybe a hundred years ago. And the 20th century has been erased from the history of music again… Which brings me to ask a few more questions.
What is this about? He composes one song/piece?/composition, and suddenly gets a contract? How can he play the piano when his legs can’t reach the pedal? (Yes, it’s necessary to be able to reach a pedal if you’re competing with 17 year olds. Maybe not with 8 year olds.)

The biggest remark. Beethoven is a genius groundbreaking composer. That is, 200 years ago. Music is a cumulative process, which began much earlier than Beethoven (1600s, which is the beginning of the baroque in music(read Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach among others) still comes after renaisance, which admittedly is not my strongest suit). Beethoven in this cumulative process is a grand threshold because the next 75 years followed entirely in his footsteps—the romantic period which includes Schumann, Mendelsohn, Brahms and others. The symphony, as we know it now, has come from Beethoven. (As a fun sidenote, google the curse of the 9 symphonies, which states that a composer will die before finishing his 10th symphony) In the 20th century many composers were still inspired by him. And many, if not more, sought different paths.
You may skip the following large section.
Western music before the 20th century paid much attention to harmony, with rhythm being rather basic and melody being inseparable from harmony. On the verge of the 20th century, when industrialisation began and the World War 1 would soon happen, the music had to change. In conclusion, harmony began to slowly disintegrate. First, Debussy would begin to place importance on the sound and beauty of the harmony itself and add notes to provide a delicious french subtlety, and not on how they connect to on another. Then, Schoenberg was one of many who would destroy it completely, amd his case was the most exemplary (listen to Pierrot Lunaire). Iannis Xenakis would use the Random Number Generator to compose his melodies, thus rendering the harmonies useless. Minimalist composers would reduce their pieces to a few repeating chords and “loops” (or ostenato) and focus on the timbre rather than the harmony. And some experimentalists would write music for kettles and wheels (google intonarumori and have a listen). Much of this music was experimental and made to open our minds (like noise music), some other was meant to reflect how awful the times were (like Schoenberg and his followers), and some was truly new and amazingly beautiful (start with Ravel’s Pavane, then have a listen to Martinu’s 3rd or 4th symphony (or maybe Concerto grosso would be a bit lighter), Bartok’s Concerto for orchestra, Hindemith’s Mathis de Maler symphony—you’ll hear how different these mildly modern compositions all are). All of these built upon Beethoven, Bach, Debussy’s harmonies, explored and took them to another level. Did this happen in a hear? No, Bach died in 1750 and left a gigantic footprint, Beethoven studied Bach’s work and left his footprint after dying 1927 and Debussy knew all of the aforementioned and died in 1918. In a hundred years since then composers had free access to all of their music, analysed it above and beyond over multiple generations of students.

In conclusion, Beethoven’s style in a certain sense is outdated (ew, that’s gonna get me in trouble…). If Beethoven regressed and wrote music as he did it back then, it would at most be acknowledged by professors in music schools for its masterful use of harmony and form. After all, what good is it to compose as they did 200 years ago? Such compositions are in abundance if you look throughout history.
Actually, such a case has already happened. When Brahms composed his first symphony in 186os-70s it was dubbed as “Beethoven’s 10th symphony” and rightfully so. The opinions split—some believed it be a great piece especially considering it was Brahms’s first sympohny, while others regarded it as nothing special, because, i suppose, after Beethoven’s actual 9th symphony this one paled. But it was still composed in Brahms’s one harmonic style in accordance to those times 40 years after Beethoven’s death.

P.S. and this is personal. What’s this whole thing with treating performance (not composing) like sports, as in moving your body quickly (velocity), hitting all the right notes? Is this really what the general opinion of the job is—going out on stage, making desperate faces as if there’s no food in the fridge and moving your fingers quickly? As always, the mental part of performance studies is missing—understanding of style, choice of sound (no, sound is not a wand, it does not choose you) and learning various skills that allow you more options is just a small part that i can name easily. And if the pianist comes in late or early on a beat, the other musicians will hear that and adjust their playing (or stop and nag the pianist about it in rehearsal), and that is just a small part of what’s called ensemble playing. If everyone does their own thing without listening to each other, you will have a chaotic clash of musical opinions which is called “a mess”, and if they listen to each other and play as if a single instrument, it is called “a mazing”.